I genuinely do not know who the bad guys are. S lot of my leftist friends are against Israel, but from what I know Israel was attacked and is responding and trying to get their hostages back.
Enlighten me. Am I wrong? Why am I wrong?
And dumb it down for me, because apparently I’m an idiot.
Israel are absolutely and undeniably the bad guys. To use an analogy, imagine a school bully who is stronger and gets the support of the teachers and principal of the school, and the bully beats up the smaller kid every day until they hit a breaking point and throws a punch back. A reasonable school would support the bullied kid, but in this case, the principal just gives the bully a gun and looks away.
Israel has been dehumanizing and oppressing the Palestinian people since it’s inception and things have been getting worse. When October 7th happen, it was indeed horrible and many civilians got hurt, but Israel’s response was so completely disproportionately mad that they are actively committing genocide, treating the list of warcrimes like a to-do list.
The humanitarian aide workers.
Well obviously it’s the Western powers that gave a bunch of displaced Jews land after WWII, despite no legitimate claim to the area, and then proceeded to keep meddling in Middle Eastern affairs so they could get cheap oil. And the biggest of those Western powers directly gives taxpayer money to war profiteers so there’s a direct financial incentive to keep the genocide going.
Those are the goodest guys.
on a scale from 1 to 10 how serious are you in asking this, I ask because I am genuinly unsure if you are confused and unaware of what is happening, or if you are trying to start some shit
I’ve answered this in the post to another commenter, but I am 100% serious.
Well for Decades the Irealies have both been genociding the Palistinians, and have been on a long push to try to conflait zionism, an origionaly anti-symetic idea in eurpope, that was even embraced by the Nazis, and quinticentialy jewish, so they could use anti-semitism to shield themselvs.
The good guys are the palistinians who where there before anyone else got there, and have been being genocided agian for decades on end, and are being genocided now.
If the Israelis have been genociding the Palestinians for decades, how is it that the Palestinian population continues to grow?
10 kids born 2 killed guess what population still grew by 8
The fact that somebody would be asking this question after a year of genocide is phenomenal.
Reminder that at the outbreak of WWII, TONS of people in the US supported the Nazi regime right up until they started invading Western Europe AKA “the countries that matter”
Also worth noting that the US continued to do business with the nazis well into the war, and IBM famously facilitated the holocaust.
The palestinian people. Sure, they have done some horrible things but it’s been mostly out of desperation for decades of abuse from Israel, who are actively invading their country.
Yeah the conflict started way before october the 7th.
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oh right, totally forgot about those poor people who lived and partied next to the concentration camp and then got either kidnapped by people who wanted to break out of the concentration camp or were killed by the IDF. let’s all show a bit more empathy! 😥
It’s clear Judaism / Muslim conflicts have caused a lot more suffering to Muslims in Palestine for the last 100+ years. But the solution to this conflict will never be violence. Only diplomacy.
I’m arguing that such comments can generate hate and divide. You don’t have to agree with me on this, but I at least hope you agree that the solution is not hate, but diplomacy.
When violence is acceptable the weak and marginalized are destroyed. I only wish the best for Gaza and Israel. And in my opinion the solution is empathy and diplomacy. It’s obviously terribly hard to negotiate and empathize with your abuser. But in my opinion, if this sentiment doesn’t start the conflict will only stop when the weaker side is destroyed. I hope we can respect each other. Bless you.
It’s clear Judaism / Muslim conflicts have caused a lot more suffering to Muslims in Palestine for the last 100+ years. But the solution to this conflict will never be violence. Only diplomacy.
The mental model here is “violence and diplomacy are mutually exclusive”. In fact, they’re very closely connected, almost synonymous.
I’m arguing that such comments can generate hate and divide. You don’t have to agree with me on this, but I at least hope you agree that the solution is not hate, but diplomacy.
Agree here. I grew up in violence and lived through the peace process. It starts out violent, and you win concessions by showing strength, and then negotiate peace. That worked in Ireland in 1998 and almost worked in Palestine in 2000. Violence is the first part of the diplomacy.
When violence is acceptable the weak and marginalized are destroyed.
You’re saying that the weak should go to the negotiating table empty-handed, but that won’t solve anything for them. They need to stop being weak and start being strong, then diplomacy can start to happen.
The solution to weakness is strength. How can the weak become strong without the Armalite?
The Catholics took up arms in 1968 and came to the negotiating table in 1998. We won some concessions because we showed strength for 31 years, not “empathy”. Yasser Arafat understood this: he knew when to use violence and when to negotiate. If you defang yourself as Step One, you make diplomacy impossible.
I only wish the best for Gaza and Israel. And in my opinion the solution is empathy and diplomacy. It’s obviously terribly hard to negotiate and empathize with your abuser. But in my opinion, if this sentiment doesn’t start the conflict will only stop when the weaker side is destroyed. I hope we can respect each other. Bless you.
I admire your values, but you’re incorrectly equating “empathy and diplomacy”. Diplomacy is more a military matter; empathy has no place in realpolitik.
Replace US with Israel in this Stokely Carmichael Quote:
“Dr. King’s policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.”
Israel, or any bully, will not be swayed by your appeals to their conscience, no matter how hard you try. Ruling classes intentionally spread pacifist propaganda becomes its completely unthreatening to them. Pacifism overall is a losing strategy with zero historical successes, as the article below gets into.
Red Phoenix - Pacifism - How to do the enemy’s job for them. Youtube Audiobook
Dr. King also changed his opinion later on. People act like he was some lifelong pacifist without knowing his full history and what changes were caused by his pacifist actions and by other’s more aggressive actions.
I think it’s important to differentiate pacifism as a strategy – the total renunciation of anything that could be considered violence, often including even mere property damage – with non-violence as one tactic among many.
Many movements have had success using non-violence as a tactic in certain situations, so long as those movements don’t take the possibility of ever using violence completely off the table (pacifism).
While you sound reasonable, your mistake seems to be to believie that Judaism is the same as Zionism. It is not. It is completely not. They are inherently incompatible. Learn about it or don’t. I’m not some kind of theological scholar or history professor. Maybe ask your local Rabbi about it.
Anyway, sorry to sound like some kind of an extremist to you, but violence is (at the moment) 100% the only answer. Not against the Jewish people, but against the fascist, zionist apartheid regime, who is committing genocide, right now, right before your eyes. Every day, bless you too.
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This is what Israel defending itself actually means
The resistance including Hamas, Ansar Allah, Iraqi resistance, Hezbollah, etc.
but from what I know Israel was attacked and is responding and trying to get their hostages back.
lol what. You do realize gaza is a concentration camp right? That’s like saying the Jews who fought back during the warsaw ghetto uprising were bad guys. Also they aren’t trying to get their hostages back at all. On oct 7 the IDF was responsible for the MAJORITY of deaths. Look up hannibal directive.
The bad guys are Zionists. Simply put they think they are superior to anyone that’s not Jewish. Not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews.
I actually didn’t realize Gaza was a concentration camp.
In 1948, during the Nakba, Israel ethnically cleansed much of Palestine. From that (and a good portion of the ethnic cleansing Israel has done since), many of the people were driven into Gaza.
In 2006, when Israel got kicked out of Gaza due to an uprising, they built a wall around it and restricted the amount of food, fuel, and other items, and banned the gazans from constructing wells, water containers, and other things that would allow the people in Gaza to stay alive longer if Israel cut off food/water supplies.
Thank you for the information. I did not know this.
the ones staying out of it
I don’t have any inherent support either side, and there’s too much history along with bias, propaganda, and outright misinformation to make a determination of who the “good guys” are, if anyone.
However, in such cases I will support the underdog on the principle that you don’t really want one side to have too much power over the other. That’s how we end up with things like ethnic cleansing and genocide. If Palestine (and Lebanon) had powerful militaries, you wouldn’t be seeing the mass devastation and huge loss of civilian lives. I’d prefer to see the sides more balanced so that they can keep each other in check.
Another angle to consider is that I consider the state of Israel to be actively harmful to Americans on the basis of:
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using our tax dollars to commit mass murder against civilians, including a staggering death toll for children
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infiltrating our government, interfering with our elections, and having an undue level of influence on American policy
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corollary to the preceding point: they support getting Trump back into the White House
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training American law enforcement, who then use their oppressive tactics on Americans
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similarly, technology they develop for surveillance and other means of control being used on Americans
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directly attacking our First Amendment rights
Bottom line is I’d say everyone sucks, but in different ways. But I am anti-Israel on the basis of them being way out of control (and without anyone to keep them in check) and due to the threat they pose to the American public.
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It’s important to separate out the government from the people, especially as it pertains to governments that don’t listen to their population and don’t have overwhelming support. Neither government is good. Most of the civilians from both sides are perfectly decent, though a number of them are misguided.
It’s really impossible to simplify it, but I’ll give it a shot with a quick timeline:
- ~1200 BCE: Several unrelated tribes of people group together to become what we now call Jews or Hebrews or ancient Israelites. How this happened and exactly when is disputed, and is significantly muddied by their own mythology.
- ~600 BCE: The first major expulsion of Jews from areas variously known through time as Palestine, Israel, Jerusalem, and many others.
- ~538 BCE: Jews are allowed to return (until next time).
- ~538 BCE through 1896 CE: For the sake of brevity, let’s just say Jewish people rarely had real control over this land and were consistently persecuted and/or expelled from wherever they were.
- 1896 CE: Theodor Herzl writes “The Jewish State” and births the modern Zionist movement, claiming Jews have a right to Israel primarily on religious basis. He approaches world leaders saying as such and finds little traction.
- 1920: Britain takes control of the area now called Mandatory Palestine.
- 1941-1945: The Holocaust. I assume no additional information needed.
- 1945-1948: The Holocaust gives significant weight to Zionists’ arguments that Jewish people need their own country. As many Jews have already been emigrating there (known as “Aliyah” or Jewish emigration to the promised land) since Zionism took hold, the powers that be (UK and US primarily) already have control of the area (still Mandatory Palestine), and a desire to maintain control of the area, they decide to give most of that land to the Jews and call it Israel.
- 1948: Israel is officially recognized by the United States, its primary backer today. As part of this recognition, Israel and its allies committed what is commonly known as “The Nakba.” A huge number of Palestinians were killed, injured, jailed, or forcibly removed from the area.
- 1948: Arab-Israeli War. The Arab countries unite to fight the new state of Israel. This, as with most wars, is primarily because of power. The don’t want the West to be controlling the region. The Arabs lose, but nobody loses more than Palestine.
- 1948: Palestinian attacks on Israel start. I don’t have anywhere else to put this, but know that the end of the Arab-Israeli War didn’t end Palestinians fighting for their land and independence. They will continue to do so by any means available to them.
- 1956: Suez Crisis. Israel and its backers invade and militarily occupy part of Egypt and take control of the Suez canal because Egypt decided to nationalize it. This war is transparent in its goal for power.
- 1967: Six Day War. Israel invades a variety of areas that it borders, including land owned by Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Palestine would be listed as well if it were recognized as a state. They’re successful in only six days. Notable areas you may have heard of that were militarily acquired by Israel at this time are the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights. Israel still retains control over these conquered areas.
- 1973: Yom Kippur War. Arab states attack to try to get back the land lost in the Six Day War. Israeli victory.
- 1978: Camp David Accords. Israel agrees to give some land back in return for being recognized by Egypt as a state. Sedat, the Egyptian leader, would be assassinated in part because of this action.
- 1987–1993: First Intifada. More organized and wide-scale Palestinian insurgency than we’ve seen before. Palestinians are fighting for their independence and their land. The insurgency is suppressed.
- 2000–2005: Second Intifada. Same reasons and result as the first.
- 2006-current: Much like the intifadas, there’s a lot to say here, but for the sake of brevity (lol too late) the Palestinian attacks that started in 1948 continue to this day. Israel intermittently declares various wars with the claim that they’re rooting out terrorists, Hamas, Hezbollah, and more.
This leaves out a lot. It’s just not possible to condense it. But (mostly) off the top of my head, that’s what I’d consider most of the most important bits.
The way I see it, whether or not you think Israel is “the good guys” largely hinges on whether or not you think Jews have a right to the land of Israel, and whether or not you think that claim was executed in a humane way.
I would compare it to the Native Americans - were the Americans of that time period the “good guys”? In my opinion, absolutely not. Were the Native Americans wrong for defending their land? Again, absolutely not. Were they wrong for attacking innocent civilians in retribution (for their land being taken, their own innocent civilians being killed, a genocide in progress)? Maybe, but it’s also understandable that when you’re working from a position of basically zero power against a behemoth, you can’t fight the way the behemoth fights, or you’re going to lose.
The way I see it, the Palestinian people just want a place to live and develop, and nobody’s giving them a way out, so they’re trying anything and everything they can.
1967: Six Day War. Israel invades a variety of areas that it borders
You’ve made a pretty good summary, but I have one quibble: Egypt, Syria and Jordan were planning to attack Israel. Israel launched pre-emptive strikes.
You left out the protocol of the elders of zion and the backlash it caused against Jews. It’s fairly important as a catalyst for some of the 20th century shit.
I’m actually okay with that not being included as a critical point in Israeli history. My understanding is it was one piece in a long line of antisemitism, and while it was known by the Nazi party, it was known by the leadership to be fictional and wasn’t used seriously as propaganda by them. That’s not to say it didn’t have any effect, just that I’m not convinced it made much difference when it comes to the creation of Israel as a state.
I’m open to alternative viewpoints if you want to provide evidence or just offer some book titles that might change my mind.
- 1896 CE: Theodor Herzl writes “The Jewish State”
- 1897 CE: Theodor Herzl writes “Mauschel”
Herzl believed that there were two types of Jews, Jiden (Yids) and Juden (Jews), and considered any Jew who openly opposed his proposals for a Zionist solution to the Jewish question to be a Mauschel. The article has often been taken, since its publication, to be emblematic of an antisemitic strain of thinking in Zionism, and has been described as an antisemitic rant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl
Due to his Zionist work, he is known in Hebrew as Chozeh HaMedinah (חוֹזֵה הַמְדִינָה), lit. ‘Visionary of the State’. He is specifically mentioned in the Israeli Declaration of Independence and is officially referred to as “the spiritual father of the Jewish State”.
the powers that be (UK and US primarily) already have control of the area (still Mandatory Palestine), and a desire to maintain control of the area, they decide to give most of that land to the Jews and call it Israel.
Israel wasn’t created by the UK or the US (or the UN). Israelis declared the state of Israel themselves after seizing territory in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
The UN did have a plan to create an Israel in 1947, but that didn’t happen, because neither the Jews, the Arabs, nor the UK were on board.
I think this might be a semantic argument - it’s not important to me if we use the words “give” or “create.” Happy to use whatever words you prefer for allies having power and control of an area and ensuring that power and control is transferred to their chosen ally.
British Mandatory Palestine was officially ending May 15, 1948. Israel announced its independence on May 14, 1948. The United States officially recognized Israel as a state 11 minutes after it declared itself a sovereign state. It’s strange to suggest these are coincidences rather than planned action with their allies, but there’s plenty of evidence in addition to this to make it very clear that Israel wouldn’t have stood a chance without the backing of their superpower friends.
Thank you for the detailed timeline. However, it raises a serious question for me. Am I misreading, or does your timeline show that the Jews were systematically oppressed and dislocated from their home land for about 2400 years? If so, wouldn’t that make it understandable why they’re so hostile to a foreign group that again wants to displace them from their home?
Here’s the issue: who’s home is it? Is it the home of people who haven’t lived there for hundreds of years or the home of the people who currently do? Neither of these two groups had anything to do with what happened previously.
Jews had lived in the area for a very long time even after most were expelled. This was relatively peaceful (though not perfect). The current issues started when settlers came, who were not from there, and purchased farms. They later decided they would only hire Jewish workers, despite Muslims traditionally tending it (which hurt production because the Jewish settlers had no idea how to do so, but production wasn’t the goal). Muslims then fought back as their livelihood was being taken from them. The settlers used militias to attack back and used it as justification to take more.
Those militias became the IDF when Israel formed. Israel still uses this tactic of provoking an attack and then using that as an excuse to use more force to take more territory. This has happened many times now and the current fight is just the latest, but not a new event.
There are no “good guys” but there are victims. Anyone just trying to live their lives is a victim. The bad guys are the ones trying to take this away from others.
does your timeline show that the Jews were systematically oppressed and dislocated from their home land for about 2400 years?
That’s one interpretation, though I’d disagree with it. I have Jewish heritage - enough that a significant portion of my ancestry was wiped out in the Holocaust, though obviously a few of them were lucky and escaped to the US with the help of a sponsor. I don’t practice Judaism as a religion and don’t really relate much to any of my heritage. Is Israel my homeland? Not at all. The United States is my homeland. Before that, Germany would be my homeland. Before that… well, I’m not sure, but history would suggest it’s highly unlikely it was Israel. I have zero attachment to that land, much like I expect you have zero attachment to the land of your ancestors from millennia ago. (I also have zero attachment to the land of my non-Jewish ancestry. I have no idea what it is from thousands of years ago, but I wouldn’t care if I did.)
Would I and other Jewish people be justified in kicking out Germans, because they spent hundreds of years there? What about the Russians? Poles? The Jewish diaspora has gone all over the place and made just about everything their home. Why should they have claim to land that their great great great great great ancestors once conquered and stole from somebody else?
If so, wouldn’t that make it understandable why they’re so hostile to a foreign group that again wants to displace them from their home?
I would argue Israel wasn’t their home until they moved there over the last hundred or so years. Home isn’t where some of your family lived 3000 years ago. The individuals in question never lived there. Their parents never lived there. Their grandparents never lived there. None of these people had any idea what Israel was even like. Today, there are more Jewish people in the United States than there are in Israel, and they’re happy to call the United States home.
If we’re going to make the argument that people should be allowed to lay claim to land their ancestry owned 3000 years ago, we open up a lot of questions.
First, it’s worth noting that this is also the home of Palestinians. The origins of Palestinians are much less clear than the origins of Jewish people in large part because the Jews have been uniquely good at maintaining their culture, so we have a much better grasp on Jewish people throughout history than we do of Palestinians. But at its core, the fact is Palestinians haven’t ever lived anywhere else. This means they’re also “so hostile to a foreign group that again wants to displace them from their home.”
Second, to be consistent, we’d have to revert a lot of borders to ancient times. Does that mean we should all revert borders to what they were 3000 years ago? Why 3000? Why not 2000? 4000? Regardless, you’re uprooting a lot of people - and you’d have to provide a really good justification for that, and I don’t see it.
Third, even if we agreed the Jews have a right to this land and we should revert to their ancient borders and give them control, that doesn’t mean they have a right to attempt genocide on those living there. The moment they embarked on the Nakba, they should have lost their allies in their mission. Assuming they have a right to the land, they have to humanely displace the people there, ensure they have a new place to live, and give them adequate compensation for the land and the massive inconvenience you’ve caused by uprooting their entire lives. Sort of a “sorry we’re doing this, but we’re trying to make it right.” Instead, they’ve killed millions of people over the decades.
I’m referring to this part of your timeline-
“~600 BCE: The first major expulsion of Jews from areas variously known through time as Palestine, Israel, Jerusalem, and many others. ~538 BCE: Jews are allowed to return (until next time). ~538 BCE through 1896 CE: For the sake of brevity, let’s just say Jewish people rarely had real control over this land and were consistently persecuted and/or expelled from wherever they were.”
Maybe I’m misreading it, but it seems to imply that they were, as a people, born from that land, and systemically were persecuted through the course of around 2400 years.
I think there’s a lot of fuzzyness around the idea of “born from that land.” It’s not like they sprouted out of the earth. As with just about any people, there was a lot of rape and murder of warring tribes until some combination of them stopped doing as much rape and as much murder and somewhat arbitrarily called themselves “one people.” If you want to call that “born from that land,” sure, but their ancestry goes back further than that. We’re all just apes.
Just count the dead, injured, displaced, starved, and dehydrated on either side. You’ll find pretty quickly the numbers are extremely disproportionate. If that’s [not] a baseline consideration for your judgment then you should think on that.
[Edit in brackets]
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This is absolutely false, hamas is not anti-semitic, they’re anti-zionist. You’re doing the british / murican tabloid thing of equating the two.
- Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.
Fine but why does one potential future genocide justify the realized genocide currently under way?
…it doesn’t?
I don’t understand your response then. If it doesn’t then why would it be a consideration here?
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I’ve made no claims about the ethics of Hamas here. Simply put, genocide is not an act of strategy, and putting the ethics of retaliation aside, does nothing to further the security of your own citizens. Israel has not made its people safer, rather the opposite. It has paved the road to open war with other nations, and is walking it.
I generally agree that the response seems lopsided. However, I also find it odd that Hamas simply hasn’t returned the hostages. This to me signifies two possibilities- they are not actually interested in peace, or they don’t believe that returning the hostages will stop Israel’s destruction.
Would that appraisal of the situation seem reasonable?
Hamas wants to trade those hostages for Palestinian hostages. Which have been imprisoned for decades.
It is a tale of “Israel started it” and the Palestinians have no other possible way to make demands from Israel than using the same tactics.
Israel openly says they will continue the destruction. Even if Hamas releases the hostages. Their government does not care about hostages. But the Israeli people do. Hamas would be giving up the only leverage they have against Israel by releasing the hostages.
Not really. Israel has a vested interest in continuing this land grab. The hostages are a convenient excuse, but separate from the inciting event. Furthermore it’s just as likely the hostages have been killed in israeli bombings.
I see. So you think Israel wants the hostages to be kept in order to give them a public excuse to continue their campaign?
No. I said they’re a convenient excuse. If they were to return then a new excuse would be found. The impetus for this campaign started as “self defense” in response to the Oct 7 attack. Then when that was no longer sufficient to justify things they moved onto the hostages as a bargaining chip.
There is a lot more to this way than just the hostage situation - Israel has been in control of Palestinian territory for a long time (they consider it theirs) and they have been fighting with the Hamas organization for years now. This is the single worst escalation of it.
Hamas doesn’t want peace. The status quo is domination of Palestine under Israel government - erasure of Palestine effectively if they laid down arms and disbanded. They want liberty, and payback for hardships.
There isn’t reason to believe Israel will stop the attacks on return of the hostages, as they have gone overwhelmingly above and beyond the total damage done by Hamas (even comparing women and children victims vs. the concert raid that started it all) and given Netanyahu’s far right government is at the helm, so your second point has merit.
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Yes, we oppose Israel’s genocide here.
wasps 🤝 genocide
