Israel - Palestine Discussion | Post Respectfully | Discuss more, tweet less

Zehner said:
First of all, I never said that the conflict was all about firing rockets. I brought them up as an example as to why Israel's war on Gaza and Russia's war on Ukraine aren't comparable, the bottom line being that Ukraine never posed a security risk while Gaza is in large parts governed by a terrorist organization which literally has the objective of killing all jews written in its Charta and backs that goal up by constantly launching missiles at Israel. That's an undisputable fact and it obviously changes how the war is perceived by the population of the war mongering country as well as allies around the world. How Hamas was born is a completely different question. Of course they have been radicalized by Israel but on the other hand, antisemitism predates Israel.

Second, the conflict is obviously complex because of said antisemitism. It's not as if Israel could just accept and everybody lives happy every after as "equal citizens" because antisemitism is omnipresent and the jews would become a minority. Hamas might or might not have a majority amongst palestinians right now but who can assure that it won't gain one in times of extreme right-wing populism, changes the constitution, puts its money where its mouth is and sees through what its Charta reads? If you were an Israeli with a family would you take that risk?

Note that I'm not taking a stance for a two state solution here, not at all, I'm just pointing out how the conflict is much more layered than you describe it. I think it is absolutely heartbreaking that such conflicts exist in modern days because of nationalism and religion but it's simply a fact that there are extremists on both sides that threaten the innocents of the other party if given enough power.
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The Hamas Charter has been amended in 2017, any reference to killing Jews has been completely removed and Hamas has aligned itself alongside the two-state solution with a state of Palestine comprised within the 4th June 1967 borders recognized by the UN. So your undisputable facts are... disputable.

It's not missiles but rockets with little effect and if you think that Hamas has the means of defeating the most powerful army in the region with around 90 to 300 nukes, backed by the most powerful army in the world, I have a bridge to sell you.

That's an absolutely ridiculous claim. Jews have lived among Arabs/Muslims for millenia. In fact throughout the centuries, they fled the persecutions in Europe by emigrating to either the Middle-East or North-Africa, and then, much later to the US. Anti-semitism has always been first and foremost a European problem. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 had anti-semitic motives behind it (prevent a massive emigration of Russian Jews fleeing the pogroms). After WWII, Europeans washed their guilt by sending the Jews as far away as they could and imposing the creation of a state on a land where other people lived for millenia. Israel was a colonial project, decided and sponsored by colonial powers, with a core group of Jewish leaders motivated by a settler-colonial ideology.

The tensions between Arabs and Jews in the Middle-East sharply arose after WWII, with the massive arrival of European Jews in Palestine and then Israel's unilateral declaration of independence in 1948, to the contrary to the UN plan (the outcome was supposed to be decided by referendum involving Arabs and Jews) which in return caused the 1948 war.

You also conveniently left out every single shit Israel has pulled since 1948, its constant slide to far-right extremism, its Apartheid policies, as well as its constant refusal to acknowledge a Palestinian state and steady grinding of the Palestinian occupied territories. Your post is such a collection of clichés, half-truths and biased views that it's not worth pursuing the conversation.
 
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That_Bloke said:
The Hamas Charter has been amended in 2017, any reference to killing Jews has been completely removed and Hamas has aligned itself alongside the two-state solution with Palestine withing the 1967 borders in accordance to the UN resolutions. So your undisputable facts are... disputable.

That's an absolutely ridiculous claim. Jews have lived and North-Africa in the region for millenia. In fact they fled the persecutions in Europe by emigrating to either the US, the Middle-East or North-Africa. Anti-semitism has always been first and foremost a European problem. The tensions between Arabs and Jews sharply arose after WWII, with the massive arrival of European Jews in Palestine and then the unilateral creation of Israel in 1948, contrary to the UN plan (it should've been done by referendum involving Arabs and Jews living in Palestine) which then caused the 1948 war.

It's not missiles but rockets with little effect and if you think that Hamas has the means of defeating the most powerful army in the region, backed by the most powerful army in the world, I have a bridge to sell you.

You have left out everry single shit Israel has pulled out since 1948 and its constant refusal not only to acknowledge a Palestinian state but also constantly grinding the occupied territories. Your post is such a collection of cliches, half-truths and undeniable bias that it's not worth pursuing the conversation.
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I do tend to give German people a bit of leeway on the topic as I don't think they are given a balanced education on the topic given the way the German state behaves regarding the issue.

The points about antisemitism are so off mark, wait until he finds out where a lot of the Jews went after being expelled by the Spanish in the 1400s.
 
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Fenômeno said:
I do tend to give German people a bit of leeway on the topic as I don't think they are given a balanced education on the topic given the way the German state behaves regarding the issue.

The points about antisemitism are so off mark, wait until he finds out where the Jews went after being expelled by the Spanish in the 1600s.
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I don't. Not when their country is at it once again, and after the US, the most active supporter of the most documented genocide in human history.

They can't hide behind History forever and the last 16 months should have opened some eyes.

Enough is enough.
 
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I see we're still perpetuating this silly notion of Hamas being a threat to Israel's existence. Yes, a ragtag militant group, backed only by a paper tiger in Iran is somehow an existential threat to the only nuclear power in the region, backed by a superpower who's seemingly and zealously more loyal towards them than their own nation. Oh and the Palestinians are on the brink of being ethnically cleansed in Gaza to seemingly no objection from the Liberal governments of the West. I guess if you believe that Hasbara propaganda then even 80 years of occupation, land grabs, apartheid, perpetual slaughter and soon to be ethnic cleansing of Palestinians makes this issue seem 'complex'.

I just wish folks would be consistent. The sensible stance would be to be opposed to both Israeli and Russian aggression and expansionism, if you cherry pick which one deserves a more nuanced reservation then your principles aren't sincere and you'd deservedly be called out for being a hypocrite.
 
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Ultimate Grib said:
If only we could eradicate the world of religion, it would be a much more peaceful place.
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Except this problem has been largely perpetuated by the ethno-fascist Zionist movement, which itself was founded by an atheist. Go to any Palestinian rally and you'll see an abundance of good-faith Jewish protestors, including Rabbis. As for the other side, the Palestinian resistance that preceded Hamas was a secular one, and not one motivated by theological jihadist principles. So I'd consider it a little reductionist to simply say none of this would have been transpired in the absence of religion.
 
Anyone who posts from that Osint613 account which likes to incite violence against children and call them terrorists is a deranged troll.
 
Kaos said:
Except this problem has been largely perpetuated by the ethno-fascist Zionist movement, which itself was founded by an atheist. Go to any Palestinian rally and you'll see an abundance of good-faith Jewish protestors, including Rabbis. As for the other side, the Palestinian resistance that preceded Hamas was a secular one, and not one motivated by theological jihadist principles. So I'd consider it a little reductionist to simply say none of this would have been transpired in the absence of religion.
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In the absence of religion there would have been no tensions to start off with and Jews, Muslims and Christians wouldn't have existed, they would have simply been all called Arabs.

Many crimes, murders and wars have been committed in the name of "God".

If we take God out of that equation probably 80% of conflicts wouldn't have happened so I wouldn't say it is reductionist.
 
That_Bloke said:
The Hamas Charter has been amended in 2017, any reference to killing Jews has been completely removed and Hamas has aligned itself alongside the two-state solution with Palestine withing the 1967 borders in accordance to the UN resolutions. So your undisputable facts are... disputable.

It's not missiles but rockets with little effect and if you think that Hamas has the means of defeating the most powerful army in the region with around 90 to 300 nukes, backed by the most powerful army in the world, I have a bridge to sell you.

That's an absolutely ridiculous claim. Jews have lived among Arabs/Muslims for millenia. In fact throughout the centuries, they fled the persecutions in Europe by emigrating to either the Middle-East or North-Africa, and then, much later to the US. Anti-semitism has always been first and foremost a European problem. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 had anti-semitic motives behind it (prevent a massive emigration of Russian Jews fleeing the pogroms). After WWII, Europeans washed their guilt by sending the Jews as far away as they could and imposing the creation of a state on a land where other people lived for millenia. Israel was a colonial project, decided and sponsored by colonial powers and with a core group of Jewish leaders motivated by a settler-colonial ideology.

The tensions between Arabs and Jews in the Middle-East sharply arose after WWII, with the massive arrival of European Jews in Palestine and then Israel's unilateral declaration of independence in 1948, to the contrary to the UN plan (the outcome was supposed to be decided by referendum involving Arabs and Jews) which in return caused the 1948 war.

You also conveniently left out every single shit Israel has pulled since 1948, its constant slide to far-right extremism, its Apartheid policies, as well as its constant refusal to acknowledge a Palestinian state and steady grinding of the Palestinian occupied territories. Your post is such a collection of clichés, half-truths and biased views that it's not worth pursuing the conversation.
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This isnt true.

One of Hamas's most senior officials said on Wednesday a document published by the Islamist Palestinian group last week was not a substitute for its founding charter, which advocates Israel's destruction.
Speaking in Gaza City, Mahmoud al-Zahar, a regular critic of Israel, said the political policy document announced in Qatar on May 1 by Hamas's outgoing chief Khaled Meshaal did not contradict its founding covenant, published in 1988.
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https://www.reuters.com/article/wor...-softened-stance-toward-israel-idUSKBN1862O4/
 
Zehner said:
Please explain to me how exactly how I'm having a "complete nightmare" right now.
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If nothing else, you falsely invoking the charge of "whataboutism", and complaining about other people being unnuanced, is pretty funny when you're trying and failing to respond to things that are actually happening.
 
Ultimate Grib said:
In the absence of religion there would have been no tensions to start off with and Jews, Muslims and Christians wouldn't have existed, they would have simply been all called Arabs.

Many crimes, murders and wars have been committed in the name of "God".

If we take God out of that equation probably 80% of conflicts wouldn't have happened so I wouldn't say it is reductionist.
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They existed together prior to the establishment of the Israeli state. Jerusalem was a genuine melting pot of different cultures and religions before it became the apartheid zone it is today under Israel's watch and occupation.

Perhaps this belongs in the religion thread, but I feel that human beings by design are belligerent, with or without religion. In the absence of it they'd find another crutch to use for a casus belli.
 
thegregster said:
Him and the other animals in Hamas today.

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Out of interest, why the sudden outrage now all of a sudden? I assume you don't particularly care for the thousands of Palestinian children that have been butchered, babies being deliberately sniped. Or have you personally dehumanised them to the extent that they're just numbers and don't warrant the same outrage you're showing now?

I'm not turning this into a race to the bottom, but I'd like to think all of us here would condemn Hamas for any proven atrocity and war crime they've committed. Though for Israel's apologists that indulge in hit and run posting here I don't see the same level of outrage directed at the IDF murdering Palestinians. Why is that?
 
Kaos said:
Out of interest, why the sudden outrage now all of a sudden? I assume you don't particularly care for the thousands of Palestinian children that have been butchered, babies being deliberately sniped. Or have you personally dehumanised them to the extent that they're just numbers and don't warrant the same outrage you're showing now?

I'm not turning this into a race to the bottom, but I'd like to think all of us here would condemn Hamas for any proven atrocity and war crime they've committed. Though for Israel's apologists that indulge in hit and run posting here I don't see the same level of outrage directed at the IDF murdering Palestinians. Why is that?
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I have condemned Israel for years on here.
 
thegregster said:
This isnt true.


https://www.reuters.com/article/wor...-softened-stance-toward-israel-idUSKBN1862O4/
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Here's the 2017 Charter in full.

I don't hold Hamas in a particularly high esteem nor do I agree with their views, but Article 20 is what you should pay attention to.

However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.
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I do however acknowledge that me writing "aligned itself alongside a two state solution according the UN resolutions" was incorrect. I'll consequently edit my post.

Now, if you're done with nitpicking my posts, you might want to answer my question. Where did you see that Hamas fighter gloating about the dead hostages? I must have watched that video a dozen times and I can't, for the life of me, find that part.

I'm asking because you've been really outraged by dead Israelis civilians (and rightly so), but I just can't remember you being so worked up about dead Palestinians. Did I miss something?
 
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Kaos said:
They existed together prior to the establishment of the Israeli state. Jerusalem was a genuine melting pot of different cultures and religions before it became the apartheid zone it is today under Israel's watch and occupation.

Perhaps this belongs in the religion thread, but I feel that human beings by design are belligerent, with or without religion. In the absence of it they'd find another crutch to use for a casus belli.
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That isnt true. Jews and Christians were discriminated for hundreds of years in Jerusalem.

Also today Arabs countries still discriminate against non-Muslims.
 
thegregster said:
I have condemned Israel for years on here.
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Fair enough if thats the case. I just haven't noticed you posting much here, so if all I've seen so far are intermittent posts seemingly criticising only one side (the disproportionately oppressed side), then that's why I came to the conclusion I did. Especially since we've had Israeli apologists here with their customary hit and run posts.
 
thegregster said:
That isnt true. Jews and Christians were discriminated for hundreds of years in the region.

Also today Arabs countries still discriminate against non-Muslims.
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It was by no means a utopia of co-existence, but co-exist they did. And it was Arabs who opened their homes to Jews fleeing persecution and pogroms in Europe. Certainly a far-cry from the apartheid, subjugation and dehumanisation we're seeing from Zionists in Israel, the forefathers of whom are not in anyway religious.
 
Kaos said:
Fair enough if thats the case. I just haven't noticed you posting much here, so if all I've seen so far are intermittent posts seemingly criticising only one side (the disproportionately oppressed side), then that's why I came to the conclusion I did. Especially since we've had Israeli apologists here with their customary hit and run posts.
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I have avoided the topic for a good few years.
 
thegregster said:
I have avoided the topic for a good few years.
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And yet you pop up again, but only to criticize one side.

I mean there's been 16 months of genocide and I just can't remember you showing the same level of compassion to the Palestinians. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
 
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Zehner said:
the objective of killing all jews written in its Charta and backs that goal up by constantly launching missiles at Israel.
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All you have to do to get people to take you seriously is cite where in the Hamas charter they call for the eradication of all Jews, it's a publicly available document so I'm sure it won't be to hard to copy/paste the relevant article.
 
Ultimate Grib said:
In the absence of religion there would have been no tensions to start off with and Jews, Muslims and Christians wouldn't have existed, they would have simply been all called Arabs.

Many crimes, murders and wars have been committed in the name of "God".

If we take God out of that equation probably 80% of conflicts wouldn't have happened so I wouldn't say it is reductionist.
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Er, you`ve just bypassed significant facts about different people`s historical ethnicity - yes Jewishness is an ethnicity, it`s not a race. And saying that somehow all those people in that region you`re discussing would have `all been called `Arabs` instead of Jews, Muslims and Christian is completely factually wrong. There are many ethnic groups that became Christian and Muslim in the ME and Levant etc - including Assyrians, Armenians, Chaldeans and more. `Arabs` is a broad term that doesn`t cover it. Jewish religion was not one unified monogamous religion followed by all Jewish people in that region - there were different sects.

As for the idea that armed conflicts are all about Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious differences - no, religion is often used as the cover for land grabs, power struggles, inter-ethnic conflicts. You also have bypassed the Ottoman Empire and its activities which were certainly expansionist.
 
RedTiger said:
All you have to do to get people to take you seriously is cite where in the Hamas charter they call for the eradication of all Jews, it's a publicly available document so I'm sure it won't be to hard to copy/paste the relevant article.
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Here's a quote from The Atlantic:

"The Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realization of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: ‘The day of judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jews will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say ‘O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

This is a frank and open call for genocide, embedded in one of the most thoroughly anti-Semitic documents you'll read this side of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Not many people seem to know that Hamas’s founding document is genocidal.
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Article 7 of their 1988 Charter.



Fenômeno said:
You are wrong about the Hamas charter, it was changed in 2017 so not a indisputable fact. The current position is to revert to 1967 borders. Furthermore, the only people being wiped out here are the Palestinians, you can't have one set of standards for one party and another for the other. By most definitions the Israeli state has carried out many terrorist acts themselves.

The conflict exists because Europeans genocided Jews and instead of taking responsibility imposed these people onto a foreign land/people who had no involvement in the genocide. At the same time they artificially exported European antisemitism to the middle East as a result.

You either believe in democracy or not, a true democracy protects minorites and is non violent in escence. It seems there's colonial arrogance here where only the white man can have democracy while excuses are made for other people around the world who are too violent and uncivilised to have it.
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The 1988 Charter was not revoked. The most amount of distancing from it they did was calling it a 'historic document' of their organization.

I agree with your second paragraph.

Regarding the third one: You put words in my mouth that I didn't say. I described why I believe it is complicated and not that I think a one state solution is wrong. Obviously the Palestinians are the ones suffering from suppression and Israel's settlement politics are clearly imperialistic and despicable. But Hamas committed many acts of terror as well and it's human nature that Israeli's fear for their safety if they have to trust on people they deem their enemies (and who have many reasons to hate Israel) not exploiting the power they could gain in case of a one state solution. That doesn't mean that I'm against it, I'm merely trying to point why I don't believe it is as straightforward as you think.
 
That_Bloke said:
The Hamas Charter has been amended in 2017, any reference to killing Jews has been completely removed and Hamas has aligned itself alongside the two-state solution with a state of Palestine comprised within the 4th June 1967 borders recognized by the UN. So your undisputable facts are... disputable.

It's not missiles but rockets with little effect and if you think that Hamas has the means of defeating the most powerful army in the region with around 90 to 300 nukes, backed by the most powerful army in the world, I have a bridge to sell you.

That's an absolutely ridiculous claim. Jews have lived among Arabs/Muslims for millenia. In fact throughout the centuries, they fled the persecutions in Europe by emigrating to either the Middle-East or North-Africa, and then, much later to the US. Anti-semitism has always been first and foremost a European problem. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 had anti-semitic motives behind it (prevent a massive emigration of Russian Jews fleeing the pogroms). After WWII, Europeans washed their guilt by sending the Jews as far away as they could and imposing the creation of a state on a land where other people lived for millenia. Israel was a colonial project, decided and sponsored by colonial powers and with a core group of Jewish leaders motivated by a settler-colonial ideology.

The tensions between Arabs and Jews in the Middle-East sharply arose after WWII, with the massive arrival of European Jews in Palestine and then Israel's unilateral declaration of independence in 1948, to the contrary to the UN plan (the outcome was supposed to be decided by referendum involving Arabs and Jews) which in return caused the 1948 war.

You also conveniently left out every single shit Israel has pulled since 1948, its constant slide to far-right extremism, its Apartheid policies, as well as its constant refusal to acknowledge a Palestinian state and steady grinding of the Palestinian occupied territories. Your post is such a collection of clichés, half-truths and biased views that it's not worth pursuing the conversation.
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See above for the Hamas Charter. That aside, you don't need an army in order to pose a security threat. That's the core principle of terror.

I agree with you on most of the rest. But that doesn't change the fact that people are living there now and call Israel their home who had nothing to do with all those things or the settlement politics either. And can you really blame them for seeing an organization as an enemy that was openly antisemitic for the best part of its history and commits terrorist acts?
 
Amir said:
Yes, it's both.

As for the infant, he was taken with his 4 year old brother and mother. Their bodies were returned today. It's possible they were killed in an IDF airstrike - this is what Hamas says - but ofcourse they should never have been in Gaza in the first place.
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I genuinely haven't understood this story - Hamas said in November 2023 that they were dead - and blamed an airstrike - so why this such a surprise?

Hamas armed wing says youngest hostage, relatives killed in previous Israeli air strike​

November 29, 20239:35 AM EST
https://www.reuters.com/world/middl...tives-killed-previous-israeli-air-2023-11-29/
 
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