Anonymous wrote:America is just as much in fear of Israel as the Middle East countries are.
Nothing else could explain the double standards in treatment
Lol. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. The US wants israel to do the dirty work of keeping the peace in the region without a western country needing to constantly be at war or occupy some country in the region to prevent rampant anti western terrorism.
Israel is a democracy in name only . Netanyahu has been PM for years and years and years now. Longer than Putin or Erdogan have been in office.
Israel does no dirty work for us and they certainly don’t keep the peace. We do the dirty work for them.
The IDF prevents the us military from having to go in everywhere like they did with Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s no small feat.
I’m no supporter of Netanyahu, I’m anti settlement and pro two state solution. Plenty of moderates out there who support Israel’s right to exist alongside a Palestinian state, and see the mutually beneficial relationship our two countries have. I would love to see Netanyahu go and when the dust settles after this war, very possible he’ll be on the chopping block.
Where is everywhere? If we had a more balanced foreign policy and put Israel on check from time to time, we wouldn’t even get the ire and anger from the Middle East period.
Is there a way we can keep a friendship with Israel but also criticize Israel when they are wrong as Obama did once upon a time regarding settlements? Netanyahu backstabbed him to align with Putin who is now aligned with Hamas so I agree he needs to be on worse than a chopping block. He should be tried for corruption in Israeli court and jailed just like Trump should be jailed here
You have got to be kidding. The ME hates us because we have equal rights for women, lgbtq people are accepted, we are jewish, we don’t believe in public beheadings etc. Get a clue.
This statement is ridiculous. If the US didn't support dictators, murderers, and coups over and over again (Saddam, the Shah, Netanyahu, Sissi, and the list goes on) then maybe people would like them more.
Honestly people don't go around hating the US for what they do in their own country. They have their own lives to worry about. It's when the US goes and meddles in other countries, supports repressive regimes, and oh yeah, those two horrific wars that occurred in the past 20 years, kinda makes people sour on them.
Get a clue.
They hate you because you keep killing Palestinians.
If they went years without killing a Palestinian, Palestinians would still hate Jews and Israelis…and western values.
Israel has no western values. Nice try.
They are as barbaric as Hamas. And, yes they'd still hate you for stealing their land and oppressing millions of people.
Stop lying. My family members living in Tel Aviv can wear what they want, go to bars, practice their religion (not Judaism), and protest their government without getting killed. Can't say the same for surrounding countries.
These people have never been to Israel and they don’t care to learn anything about it.
Clearly. The ignorance is astounding.
Stop with your racism. I have been to the ME many times. I have worn what I want, gone to bars and practiced my religion. So yes, you can say the same for the surrounding countries. Tell me how many times you have been to Lebanon, Jordan, or Egypt? WTF do you actually know about the surrounding countries - outside of your smear campaign to dehumanize all Arabs?
My best friend is Lebanese. I am not dehumanizing Arabs. Lots of folks on this thread are dehumanizing all Israelis, though.
Anonymous wrote:All because of the Big Lie. This is what happens when terrorists declare a Day of Unparalleled Anger.
This is what happens when you let terrorists walk across your border and you respond by targeting refugees convoys and hospitals. Wait till the ground war starts. That will break Egypt neutral support for Israel. You think this is not going to be a sh#t show all through the ME. There will be a total realignment, minimum a few assassinations of heads of state(Saudi and Egypt) and it will not favor Israel.
Now let’s talk about those leftist democrats, BLM and students who support Palestinians. Oh they are so evil and the cause of all these problems for Israel! If only we can silence those people everything will be fine.
Tunisia is a mess. Has been for a long while. I am sorry for the loss of the Torah, but these days of rage are mostly ridiculous spectacle.
The way American Jews feel about Israelis being slaughtered by Hamas is exactly how Muslims around the world feel about Palestinians being slaughtered by Israel.
You don’t understand their pain? It’s the same pain a Jewish person is feeling right now
They feel so badly that they won't help save the civilians still there. Give me a break
Save them how? Egypt tried and IDF bombed the Rafah crossing. America says sorry peeps, we can’t save tax paying American citizens in Gaza but we can send a ship and planes to Israel to ship American citizens out ASAP.
Do you think Tunisia wants to war with Israel so they can bomb Tunisian hospitals and children too?
People have been waiting at the Rafa border for days. Egypt could open it if they wanted to.
If they do, Israel would bomb the crossing again then go a bit further and accidentally bomb a nearby target in Egypt saying it was to bomb Hamas bunkers. The Egyptians know this.
Who knows? If this shitshow keeps continuing , I see worse escalation to continue and with the American presidents comments, he just endangered all our ambassadors in the Middle East with one single comment. Poor Anthony Blinken looked mortified
Egypt and Jordan said straight out they will not take in Palestinians. Did you not know about that, or do you just want to speculate about what Israel would do, like you are deciding on which move to make in a video game?
Funny you say video game as Israel has produced video games about IDF soldiers where one can kill Palestinians for fun. One is called Bomb Gaza, another was called Code Red:Gaza Assault, and another is called Iron Dome Missile Defense.
Okay. And in Palestine, kindergarten graduations involve putting on skits about kidnapping and murdering Jews.
Cool. You all are terrible people, on both sides. Maybe we should let yall just work it out as you see fit. And not foot the bill.
The Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment are so intense on the pro-Israel side. It's really mind-blowing how much hate and racism they get away with while simultaneously accusing all of their detractors of "antisemitism". In a few hundred years, I'm sure the history books will have named this psychosis/era - whatever you call it - but to live it is something else.
Yah. The pro Israel rallies are really frightening with their Palestinian flag burning and chanting death to Palestinians. Not.
I take it you've never seen a settler rally in Israel? They don't chant Death to Palestinians because they deny the very existence of Palestinians. Instead they chant Death to Arabs. Two members of Bibi's cabinet have done it regularly and are quite open with their feelings. There's probably one happening in the West Bank right now.
By the way, those two cabinet members? One is in charge of the Israeli Police while the other is in charge of disbursing government funds.
Are Palestinians not Arabs?
One of the pro-Israel talking points is that there is no “Palestinian” identity, they are just “Arabs” and should therefore go live in some other Arab country. This is an incredibly bigoted hot take.
All of these little countries like Jordan, Lebanon, etc., have their own identity, the people who were forcibly expelled from the land can trace their ancestry there, they are indigenous to the land and people can deny that until they are blue in the face.
It’s not though. The notion of a Palestinian Muslim identity is not an ethnic idea. It’s nationalism and it’s relatively new:
Emergence of a distinct identity
The timing and causes behind the emergence of a distinctively Palestinian national consciousness among the Arabs of Palestine are matters of scholarly disagreement. Some argue that it can be traced as far back as the peasants' revolt in Palestine in 1834 (or even as early as the 17th century), while others argue that it did not emerge until after the Mandatory Palestine period.[59][112] Legal historian Assaf Likhovski states that the prevailing view is that Palestinian identity originated in the early decades of the 20th century,[59] when an embryonic desire among Palestinians for self-government in the face of generalized fears that Zionism would lead to a Jewish state and the dispossession of the Arab majority crystallised among most editors, Christian and Muslim, of local newspapers.[113] The term itself Filasṭīnī was first introduced by Khalīl Beidas in a translation of a Russian work on the Holy Land into Arabic in 1898. After that, its usage gradually spread so that, by 1908, with the loosening of censorship controls under late Ottoman rule, a number of Muslim, Christian and Jewish correspondents writing for newspapers began to use the term with great frequency in referring to the 'Palestinian people'(ahl/ahālī Filasṭīn), 'Palestinians' (al-Filasṭīnīyūn) the 'sons of Palestine(abnā’ Filasṭīn) or to 'Palestinian society',(al-mujtama' al-filasṭīnī).[114]
In Arab countries people primarily tie themselves to their village of origin. My own family can trace our records in our home village at least 500 years, or double the existence of the United States. While a national identity may be relatively new throughout the entire Middle East, this doesn’t mean that people don’t have a clear sense of homeland and place.
But it’s simply fact that the area wasn’t Muslim in any significant numbers until the 1500s.
This idea that Palestinian Arabs existed as some distinct identity for 2,000 years in what is now Israel is completely ahistoric.
This is like denying that Egypt wasn’t a country before Islam. People in the Arab world converted to Islam as it spread. So the Palestinian Muslim’s ancestors may indeed have been in the region for 2,000 years.
Arabs have been in the region. No one disputes that.
But Palestinians as a distinct people did not exist as a concept until much, much later.
I’m really not following your argument. A group of people who are not Jewish have lived in that region for thousands of years. They now call themselves Palestinians. Their religion before 1500 or their understanding of nation-states does not matter. As indigenous people they have ties to the land and it is their homeland as much as anyone else.
Wrong.
If we’re talking literally about what is now Israel, the land was:
1. Jewish
2. Then Roman
3. Then Christian
4. Muslims came in around the 1500s
5. Brits took it over and made it Mandatory Palestine, which had 500,000 Jews and 1 million Muslims
We’re focusing here specifically on the land in question, not the Middle East in general.
This is a totally absurd argument. Land does not have a religion. The people on the land have a religion. If the “land” was Jewish, Roman, whatever, it doesn’t matter. The humans who live on the land have a claim- the Palestinians. If they change their religion or become colonized- they still have a claim on the land.
Then at least be honest and say they aren’t an ethnicity distinct from anyone else. Just say they lived there.
They dont just live there, they are FROM there. That's the point
No. Arabs are not from what is now Palestine.
I don't know who this Palestinian denier is but she clearly knows ZERO actual Arabs in real life. The numbers for Jews in Palestine at the 19th/20th century are incredibly off. Muslims accounted for over 85% of the population in 1880. They began immigrating from Europe in the 1900s and increased numbers dramatically during that time.
The erasure of Palestinians should not be tolerated. It's bad enough that Israelis have kicked them off their land now they usurp culture and deny their existence.
*Jews began immigrating from Europe. That's why numbers started increasing. They doubled their numbers by the 1920s after the mass emigration movements.
Yet Muslims were massacring Jews en masse ? Do you think Jews in a migrant and anti semitic humanitarian crisis in Europe would even settle there if it weren’t safe?
Some Jews even left America to go to Mandatory Palestine because it was more safe there than here with anti Semitism
You miss the point entirely. You can claim all you want that Jews have a claim to the land for 2000 years. Ok. Whatever. We'll assume that there's no statue of limitations and my 2% Ghanian DNA means I can go take back Ghana.
Palestinians living on the land in the 1920s - 1940s (and now), did not care that this group of immigrants had ancestors that once occupied the area over 2000 years ago. All they saw - rightly - were boatloads of immigrants from W and Eastern Europe who were displacing them from their homes. Same in 47 and 48. They arrived as Europeans. you can argue the DNA all you like but they arrived on boats en masse from a different continent with an entirely different culture to the region.
Sure, the land was sold fair and square. We can blame the British. But please stop this line re: Jewish migrants from Europe somehow belonging to the land over the people that had been sitting there for generations.
This is such BS. Jews were IDPs. Stateless. But sure — we were privileged Europeans.
Yes, to the native people on the land they were. Particularly when they started taking their homes and land - and doing so rather violently.
So you can claim the connection all you want, but if you cannot understand it from the position of the people living on the land then you have no possible empathy. If someone tried to take your house now and told you that they used to live their years ago but were forcible moved out to Europe about 50 years ago, you'd tell them to eat it.
Same same.
Well imagine returning to the land where the temples and homes built by your forebears like Solomon and David are still standing, to have someone else claiming it's theirs.
You'd tell them to eat it, right? Well, that's the Arabs.
Are you kidding? I wouldn't expect to reclaim something from 2000 years prior. That's insane. I certainly wouldn't expect temples from biblical times to still be standing, nor would I start throwing around names from the Bible like any of these people would've known them. LOL
Really? Well, the Native Americans reclaimed Kennewick Man. So that's YET ANOTHER bogus argument you've made.
You keep failing with analogy after analogy. Maybe at some point that will sink in.
I'm with PP who thinks this has broken your brain. You realize the American Indian wars were in the late 1800s, right? Let's try counting to 2,000. Plus, the Native Americans never moved to Europe to camp out for a few thousand years and then try to return.
Sorry my friend, I am not the one with the broken brain. You and your little friend cannot even come up with proper, logical or historically accurate analogies.
I'm going to bed, you can continue your smooth-brained circle jerk without me.
You said that you deserve Israel because Solomon and David are your forebears. That is logic?
It's your logic that Arabs deserve Israel because grandpa planted an olive tree, so....
Correct. If your direct ancestors lived and farmed on land and did not sell it, that is your land. I’m glad you are finally figuring this out.
But if your ancestors lived there for a thousand years and built massive temples on it and ALSO DID NOT SELL IT, somehow it's NOT their land.
Some warped logic there.
I guess you figure the paintings and jewelry stolen from Jews by Nazis didn't really belong to the Jews either, right?
Ok once again:
Things you bought and have a direct connection to: yours
Things the Bible says are yours: not necessarily yours
Oh so all of that stone, those massive ancient walls and temples are just a figment of biblical imagination and don't really exist now.
You are quite a piece of work.
Correct. You have zero personal connection to those historical sites. Therefore they do not belong to you.
In fact ancient archaeological sites, like the Pyramids, arguably belong to all of humanity, not just one ethnic group. Although the pyramids are a lot more impressive than anything in Israel.
No one destroyed the pyramids, idiot.
But way to erase Jewish identity. They belong to everyone? Our Western Wall? Our holy sites?
You, as a person, are separate from the heritage of your ethnic group. Just because you have a connection to land does not mean you are owed land. If your ancestors are Egyptian you cannot hop back there and demand a right to live there because pyramids. Destroyed or intact.
Stop lecturing me. After WWII, Jews were stateless. They had nowhere to go.
Tell me where they should have gone. I’d love to hear your ideas.
Having something stolen from you does not give you the right to steal. Two wrongs do not make a right. Perhaps you should ask yourself where the people of Gaza should go now.
I believe in a two state solution.
But you didn’t answer my question. Where should Jews have gone in 1945?
If Jews insisted on a Jewish state, then in 1945 they should have gone to an empty place where no one else lived. Enough with your Benny Morris crap.
But they did. The rallying call for early Zionists to found a homeland in Palestine was "A land without a people for a people without a land."
this pro-apartheid booster cannot read. Palestine was not an empty place. Far from it. It had loads of natives living on the land who were explicitly referenced in both Balfour and the White Papers. Jews of Europe knew of the people there and moved ahead. And they rejected Kenya by a decisive vote from years earlier.
I cannot believe you really believe that you went to an empty land. The brainwashing is unreal.
While the palestians do have legitimate reasons to be unhappy, unhappyness is counter productive. Whether the world likes it or not, Israel has thrived and so it is not going away. So, yes, it was very sad what happened. but someday they need to realize that living well is the best revenge, that they should concentrate on education. that they should spend no money on arms and all on building industry.
but of course that won't happen. like the cuban americans, they want a time turner. but that will never happen. it cannot happen.
this is the realist argument. I’ve heard some intelligent criticism about the PA and Israel’s failure to enable Hamas to become a “real” government in the past 2 decades. Hamas needs to want peace & civil society; Israel has to let it happen. The more the Palestinians are goaded into an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic ideology the more they just hurt themselves. A one-state solution cannot happen under those terms.
What about the West Bank? Fatah has tried to peacefully coexist for decades now. Settlers are still stealing land with impunity, Palestinians have no rights vis a vis Israelis, the Palestinian government has no authority over settlers within its borders either in legal settlements or illegal settlements and the Israeli government has authority everywhere in the West Bank. Is that what you think Gaza should strive for?
That’s an illogical argument, the kind of stupidity that will keep the situation mired forever. Just because the situation in the West Bank is troubled doesn’t mean Hamas’s goal to destroy Israel is legitimate. That said, pretty sure I would prefer life in the West Bank to Gaza.
So what should Palestinians do? Just accept that they have no rights and will slowly be pushed off of their land. They should lay down arms and just accept it?
stop being terrorists, accept a 2-state solution, and build their civil society.
Is Netanyahu offering the two-state solution that was called for by the United Nations decades ago?
Anonymous wrote:America is just as much in fear of Israel as the Middle East countries are.
Nothing else could explain the double standards in treatment
Lol. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. The US wants israel to do the dirty work of keeping the peace in the region without a western country needing to constantly be at war or occupy some country in the region to prevent rampant anti western terrorism.
Israel is a democracy in name only . Netanyahu has been PM for years and years and years now. Longer than Putin or Erdogan have been in office.
Israel does no dirty work for us and they certainly don’t keep the peace. We do the dirty work for them.
The IDF prevents the us military from having to go in everywhere like they did with Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s no small feat.
I’m no supporter of Netanyahu, I’m anti settlement and pro two state solution. Plenty of moderates out there who support Israel’s right to exist alongside a Palestinian state, and see the mutually beneficial relationship our two countries have. I would love to see Netanyahu go and when the dust settles after this war, very possible he’ll be on the chopping block.
Where is everywhere? If we had a more balanced foreign policy and put Israel on check from time to time, we wouldn’t even get the ire and anger from the Middle East period.
Is there a way we can keep a friendship with Israel but also criticize Israel when they are wrong as Obama did once upon a time regarding settlements? Netanyahu backstabbed him to align with Putin who is now aligned with Hamas so I agree he needs to be on worse than a chopping block. He should be tried for corruption in Israeli court and jailed just like Trump should be jailed here
You have got to be kidding. The ME hates us because we have equal rights for women, lgbtq people are accepted, we are jewish, we don’t believe in public beheadings etc. Get a clue.
This statement is ridiculous. If the US didn't support dictators, murderers, and coups over and over again (Saddam, the Shah, Netanyahu, Sissi, and the list goes on) then maybe people would like them more.
Honestly people don't go around hating the US for what they do in their own country. They have their own lives to worry about. It's when the US goes and meddles in other countries, supports repressive regimes, and oh yeah, those two horrific wars that occurred in the past 20 years, kinda makes people sour on them.
Get a clue.
They hate you because you keep killing Palestinians.
If they went years without killing a Palestinian, Palestinians would still hate Jews and Israelis…and western values.
Israel has no western values. Nice try.
They are as barbaric as Hamas. And, yes they'd still hate you for stealing their land and oppressing millions of people.
Stop lying. My family members living in Tel Aviv can wear what they want, go to bars, practice their religion (not Judaism), and protest their government without getting killed. Can't say the same for surrounding countries.
These people have never been to Israel and they don’t care to learn anything about it.
Clearly. The ignorance is astounding.
Stop with your racism. I have been to the ME many times. I have worn what I want, gone to bars and practiced my religion. So yes, you can say the same for the surrounding countries. Tell me how many times you have been to Lebanon, Jordan, or Egypt? WTF do you actually know about the surrounding countries - outside of your smear campaign to dehumanize all Arabs?
I’ve been to Egypt many many times and basically have the freedom as a non-Muslim to do whatever I want. Not sure why you believe otherwise. Lebanon is known for a great party scene. It’s not like people don’t live and thrive in these countries, even if they are poor.
I'm responding to the woman who said - "My family members living in Tel Aviv can wear what they want, go to bars, practice their religion (not Judaism), and protest their government without getting killed. Can't say the same for surrounding countries." I may have quoted the wrong PP. But the idea that you cannot go to bars, wear what you want, and practice religion in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt is complete BS based in racism and Islamophobia. I go to Lebanon with family. I dress far more conservatively than many of the women there.
Anonymous wrote:All because of the Big Lie. This is what happens when terrorists declare a Day of Unparalleled Anger.
This is what happens when you let terrorists walk across your border and you respond by targeting refugees convoys and hospitals. Wait till the ground war starts. That will break Egypt neutral support for Israel. You think this is not going to be a sh#t show all through the ME. There will be a total realignment, minimum a few assassinations of heads of state(Saudi and Egypt) and it will not favor Israel.
Now let’s talk about those leftist democrats, BLM and students who support Palestinians. Oh they are so evil and the cause of all these problems for Israel! If only we can silence those people everything will be fine.
Tunisia is a mess. Has been for a long while. I am sorry for the loss of the Torah, but these days of rage are mostly ridiculous spectacle.
The way American Jews feel about Israelis being slaughtered by Hamas is exactly how Muslims around the world feel about Palestinians being slaughtered by Israel.
You don’t understand their pain? It’s the same pain a Jewish person is feeling right now
They feel so badly that they won't help save the civilians still there. Give me a break
Save them how? Egypt tried and IDF bombed the Rafah crossing. America says sorry peeps, we can’t save tax paying American citizens in Gaza but we can send a ship and planes to Israel to ship American citizens out ASAP.
Do you think Tunisia wants to war with Israel so they can bomb Tunisian hospitals and children too?
People have been waiting at the Rafa border for days. Egypt could open it if they wanted to.
If they do, Israel would bomb the crossing again then go a bit further and accidentally bomb a nearby target in Egypt saying it was to bomb Hamas bunkers. The Egyptians know this.
Who knows? If this shitshow keeps continuing , I see worse escalation to continue and with the American presidents comments, he just endangered all our ambassadors in the Middle East with one single comment. Poor Anthony Blinken looked mortified
Egypt and Jordan said straight out they will not take in Palestinians. Did you not know about that, or do you just want to speculate about what Israel would do, like you are deciding on which move to make in a video game?
Funny you say video game as Israel has produced video games about IDF soldiers where one can kill Palestinians for fun. One is called Bomb Gaza, another was called Code Red:Gaza Assault, and another is called Iron Dome Missile Defense.
Okay. And in Palestine, kindergarten graduations involve putting on skits about kidnapping and murdering Jews.
Cool. You all are terrible people, on both sides. Maybe we should let yall just work it out as you see fit. And not foot the bill.
The Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment are so intense on the pro-Israel side. It's really mind-blowing how much hate and racism they get away with while simultaneously accusing all of their detractors of "antisemitism". In a few hundred years, I'm sure the history books will have named this psychosis/era - whatever you call it - but to live it is something else.
Yah. The pro Israel rallies are really frightening with their Palestinian flag burning and chanting death to Palestinians. Not.
I take it you've never seen a settler rally in Israel? They don't chant Death to Palestinians because they deny the very existence of Palestinians. Instead they chant Death to Arabs. Two members of Bibi's cabinet have done it regularly and are quite open with their feelings. There's probably one happening in the West Bank right now.
By the way, those two cabinet members? One is in charge of the Israeli Police while the other is in charge of disbursing government funds.
Are Palestinians not Arabs?
One of the pro-Israel talking points is that there is no “Palestinian” identity, they are just “Arabs” and should therefore go live in some other Arab country. This is an incredibly bigoted hot take.
All of these little countries like Jordan, Lebanon, etc., have their own identity, the people who were forcibly expelled from the land can trace their ancestry there, they are indigenous to the land and people can deny that until they are blue in the face.
It’s not though. The notion of a Palestinian Muslim identity is not an ethnic idea. It’s nationalism and it’s relatively new:
Emergence of a distinct identity
The timing and causes behind the emergence of a distinctively Palestinian national consciousness among the Arabs of Palestine are matters of scholarly disagreement. Some argue that it can be traced as far back as the peasants' revolt in Palestine in 1834 (or even as early as the 17th century), while others argue that it did not emerge until after the Mandatory Palestine period.[59][112] Legal historian Assaf Likhovski states that the prevailing view is that Palestinian identity originated in the early decades of the 20th century,[59] when an embryonic desire among Palestinians for self-government in the face of generalized fears that Zionism would lead to a Jewish state and the dispossession of the Arab majority crystallised among most editors, Christian and Muslim, of local newspapers.[113] The term itself Filasṭīnī was first introduced by Khalīl Beidas in a translation of a Russian work on the Holy Land into Arabic in 1898. After that, its usage gradually spread so that, by 1908, with the loosening of censorship controls under late Ottoman rule, a number of Muslim, Christian and Jewish correspondents writing for newspapers began to use the term with great frequency in referring to the 'Palestinian people'(ahl/ahālī Filasṭīn), 'Palestinians' (al-Filasṭīnīyūn) the 'sons of Palestine(abnā’ Filasṭīn) or to 'Palestinian society',(al-mujtama' al-filasṭīnī).[114]
In Arab countries people primarily tie themselves to their village of origin. My own family can trace our records in our home village at least 500 years, or double the existence of the United States. While a national identity may be relatively new throughout the entire Middle East, this doesn’t mean that people don’t have a clear sense of homeland and place.
But it’s simply fact that the area wasn’t Muslim in any significant numbers until the 1500s.
This idea that Palestinian Arabs existed as some distinct identity for 2,000 years in what is now Israel is completely ahistoric.
This is like denying that Egypt wasn’t a country before Islam. People in the Arab world converted to Islam as it spread. So the Palestinian Muslim’s ancestors may indeed have been in the region for 2,000 years.
Arabs have been in the region. No one disputes that.
But Palestinians as a distinct people did not exist as a concept until much, much later.
I’m really not following your argument. A group of people who are not Jewish have lived in that region for thousands of years. They now call themselves Palestinians. Their religion before 1500 or their understanding of nation-states does not matter. As indigenous people they have ties to the land and it is their homeland as much as anyone else.
Wrong.
If we’re talking literally about what is now Israel, the land was:
1. Jewish
2. Then Roman
3. Then Christian
4. Muslims came in around the 1500s
5. Brits took it over and made it Mandatory Palestine, which had 500,000 Jews and 1 million Muslims
We’re focusing here specifically on the land in question, not the Middle East in general.
This is a totally absurd argument. Land does not have a religion. The people on the land have a religion. If the “land” was Jewish, Roman, whatever, it doesn’t matter. The humans who live on the land have a claim- the Palestinians. If they change their religion or become colonized- they still have a claim on the land.
Then at least be honest and say they aren’t an ethnicity distinct from anyone else. Just say they lived there.
They dont just live there, they are FROM there. That's the point
No. Arabs are not from what is now Palestine.
I don't know who this Palestinian denier is but she clearly knows ZERO actual Arabs in real life. The numbers for Jews in Palestine at the 19th/20th century are incredibly off. Muslims accounted for over 85% of the population in 1880. They began immigrating from Europe in the 1900s and increased numbers dramatically during that time.
The erasure of Palestinians should not be tolerated. It's bad enough that Israelis have kicked them off their land now they usurp culture and deny their existence.
*Jews began immigrating from Europe. That's why numbers started increasing. They doubled their numbers by the 1920s after the mass emigration movements.
Yet Muslims were massacring Jews en masse ? Do you think Jews in a migrant and anti semitic humanitarian crisis in Europe would even settle there if it weren’t safe?
Some Jews even left America to go to Mandatory Palestine because it was more safe there than here with anti Semitism
You miss the point entirely. You can claim all you want that Jews have a claim to the land for 2000 years. Ok. Whatever. We'll assume that there's no statue of limitations and my 2% Ghanian DNA means I can go take back Ghana.
Palestinians living on the land in the 1920s - 1940s (and now), did not care that this group of immigrants had ancestors that once occupied the area over 2000 years ago. All they saw - rightly - were boatloads of immigrants from W and Eastern Europe who were displacing them from their homes. Same in 47 and 48. They arrived as Europeans. you can argue the DNA all you like but they arrived on boats en masse from a different continent with an entirely different culture to the region.
Sure, the land was sold fair and square. We can blame the British. But please stop this line re: Jewish migrants from Europe somehow belonging to the land over the people that had been sitting there for generations.
This is such BS. Jews were IDPs. Stateless. But sure — we were privileged Europeans.
Yes, to the native people on the land they were. Particularly when they started taking their homes and land - and doing so rather violently.
So you can claim the connection all you want, but if you cannot understand it from the position of the people living on the land then you have no possible empathy. If someone tried to take your house now and told you that they used to live their years ago but were forcible moved out to Europe about 50 years ago, you'd tell them to eat it.
Same same.
Well imagine returning to the land where the temples and homes built by your forebears like Solomon and David are still standing, to have someone else claiming it's theirs.
You'd tell them to eat it, right? Well, that's the Arabs.
Are you kidding? I wouldn't expect to reclaim something from 2000 years prior. That's insane. I certainly wouldn't expect temples from biblical times to still be standing, nor would I start throwing around names from the Bible like any of these people would've known them. LOL
Really? Well, the Native Americans reclaimed Kennewick Man. So that's YET ANOTHER bogus argument you've made.
You keep failing with analogy after analogy. Maybe at some point that will sink in.
I'm with PP who thinks this has broken your brain. You realize the American Indian wars were in the late 1800s, right? Let's try counting to 2,000. Plus, the Native Americans never moved to Europe to camp out for a few thousand years and then try to return.
Sorry my friend, I am not the one with the broken brain. You and your little friend cannot even come up with proper, logical or historically accurate analogies.
I'm going to bed, you can continue your smooth-brained circle jerk without me.
You said that you deserve Israel because Solomon and David are your forebears. That is logic?
It's your logic that Arabs deserve Israel because grandpa planted an olive tree, so....
Correct. If your direct ancestors lived and farmed on land and did not sell it, that is your land. I’m glad you are finally figuring this out.
But if your ancestors lived there for a thousand years and built massive temples on it and ALSO DID NOT SELL IT, somehow it's NOT their land.
Some warped logic there.
I guess you figure the paintings and jewelry stolen from Jews by Nazis didn't really belong to the Jews either, right?
Ok once again:
Things you bought and have a direct connection to: yours
Things the Bible says are yours: not necessarily yours
Oh so all of that stone, those massive ancient walls and temples are just a figment of biblical imagination and don't really exist now.
You are quite a piece of work.
Correct. You have zero personal connection to those historical sites. Therefore they do not belong to you.
In fact ancient archaeological sites, like the Pyramids, arguably belong to all of humanity, not just one ethnic group. Although the pyramids are a lot more impressive than anything in Israel.
No one destroyed the pyramids, idiot.
But way to erase Jewish identity. They belong to everyone? Our Western Wall? Our holy sites?
You, as a person, are separate from the heritage of your ethnic group. Just because you have a connection to land does not mean you are owed land. If your ancestors are Egyptian you cannot hop back there and demand a right to live there because pyramids. Destroyed or intact.
Stop lecturing me. After WWII, Jews were stateless. They had nowhere to go.
Tell me where they should have gone. I’d love to hear your ideas.
Having something stolen from you does not give you the right to steal. Two wrongs do not make a right. Perhaps you should ask yourself where the people of Gaza should go now.
I believe in a two state solution.
But you didn’t answer my question. Where should Jews have gone in 1945?
If Jews insisted on a Jewish state, then in 1945 they should have gone to an empty place where no one else lived. Enough with your Benny Morris crap.
But they did. The rallying call for early Zionists to found a homeland in Palestine was "A land without a people for a people without a land."
this pro-apartheid booster cannot read. Palestine was not an empty place. Far from it. It had loads of natives living on the land who were explicitly referenced in both Balfour and the White Papers. Jews of Europe knew of the people there and moved ahead. And they rejected Kenya by a decisive vote from years earlier.
I cannot believe you really believe that you went to an empty land. The brainwashing is unreal.
While the palestians do have legitimate reasons to be unhappy, unhappyness is counter productive. Whether the world likes it or not, Israel has thrived and so it is not going away. So, yes, it was very sad what happened. but someday they need to realize that living well is the best revenge, that they should concentrate on education. that they should spend no money on arms and all on building industry.
but of course that won't happen. like the cuban americans, they want a time turner. but that will never happen. it cannot happen.
Does that apply before or after a settler kills them?
whether you like it or not, the numbers killed by settlers is small. They need to concentrate on building their society, taking the loss. once it is strong, and once they say publically that they accept Israel's existance, the small number of deaths with dwindle.
but this will never happen, so I don' t know why I bother. They will use every death to get angry and fight instead of building what could truly last.
The number of civilians killed by Hamas is nothing compared to the 13,000 Palestinians Israel has killed in the past 20 years. But you know, Jews are a special people so they are of higher importance than Palestinians.
Eh. I worked in the Middle East for years. Including Israel. Back in the days when Israel used to stamp your passport; and thus making it impossible to enter some Middle East countries if you had an Israeli stamp in your pages.
Last time I was there they gave your entry on separate piece of paper so people did not have to have 2 passports to get around.
Other than selling weapons and petroleum equipment and services over there I see very little need for American economy to be involved; if we would produced the oil we need for our country.
Really no one, on any side (except maybe Israel but that is unlikely) likes Americans or America. Like we are the most unwelcome country over there.
I doubt it has changed in the last 10 years, probably gotten worse.
Anonymous wrote:Back to reality … IDF must have good intelligence assets now, with the quickening success it has been having with neutralizing important Hamas leaders. This may be displeasing to some people, who are rooting for “that team” against Israel, but it should not be: Hamas cannot hold the people of Gaza hostage anymore.
Do you think this is going to make Gazans pro-Israel? They may kill Hamas, but they've solidified hatred of Israel in another generation.
They have solidified hatred for Israel in another generation for an entire REGION, not just Gaza. It’s an endless cycle of hatred and violence. As an American I want off this ride.
Do you really not understand the the hatred exists no matter what Israel does?
It is Israel's mere existence that causes the hatred (with a hefty dose of religious intolerance as the cherry on the sundae).
JFC. You guys have to stop the perpetual victimization. It really is so counterproductive to any peace in the region. You cannot argue with the pro-Israel people because they justify murder with "well, my existence bothered him". No, Barbara, it was the fact that you killed his family. If you would stop that, he'd be cool.
Leave Maryland and meet other people. Make friends with Arabs. You will learn that they are humans - just like you - who want to live in peace. If you stop bombing them, they will be ok. It is YOUR hatred that exacerbates this.
So how do you explain the massacre of Jews by Palestinians before the state of Israel even existed?
How do you explain the Arab/Palestinian attempt to eradicate Israel on the day it was founded?
How do you explain the Hamas charter calling for the obliteration of Israel?
I grant you that there are thriving Christian and Jewish populations in many ME countries. I mean, you have ___________, and ____________, and _________________, and ______________. So we have to take those examples into account.
Anonymous wrote:All because of the Big Lie. This is what happens when terrorists declare a Day of Unparalleled Anger.
This is what happens when you let terrorists walk across your border and you respond by targeting refugees convoys and hospitals. Wait till the ground war starts. That will break Egypt neutral support for Israel. You think this is not going to be a sh#t show all through the ME. There will be a total realignment, minimum a few assassinations of heads of state(Saudi and Egypt) and it will not favor Israel.
Now let’s talk about those leftist democrats, BLM and students who support Palestinians. Oh they are so evil and the cause of all these problems for Israel! If only we can silence those people everything will be fine.
Tunisia is a mess. Has been for a long while. I am sorry for the loss of the Torah, but these days of rage are mostly ridiculous spectacle.
The way American Jews feel about Israelis being slaughtered by Hamas is exactly how Muslims around the world feel about Palestinians being slaughtered by Israel.
You don’t understand their pain? It’s the same pain a Jewish person is feeling right now
They feel so badly that they won't help save the civilians still there. Give me a break
Save them how? Egypt tried and IDF bombed the Rafah crossing. America says sorry peeps, we can’t save tax paying American citizens in Gaza but we can send a ship and planes to Israel to ship American citizens out ASAP.
Do you think Tunisia wants to war with Israel so they can bomb Tunisian hospitals and children too?
People have been waiting at the Rafa border for days. Egypt could open it if they wanted to.
If they do, Israel would bomb the crossing again then go a bit further and accidentally bomb a nearby target in Egypt saying it was to bomb Hamas bunkers. The Egyptians know this.
Who knows? If this shitshow keeps continuing , I see worse escalation to continue and with the American presidents comments, he just endangered all our ambassadors in the Middle East with one single comment. Poor Anthony Blinken looked mortified
Egypt and Jordan said straight out they will not take in Palestinians. Did you not know about that, or do you just want to speculate about what Israel would do, like you are deciding on which move to make in a video game?
Funny you say video game as Israel has produced video games about IDF soldiers where one can kill Palestinians for fun. One is called Bomb Gaza, another was called Code Red:Gaza Assault, and another is called Iron Dome Missile Defense.
Okay. And in Palestine, kindergarten graduations involve putting on skits about kidnapping and murdering Jews.
Cool. You all are terrible people, on both sides. Maybe we should let yall just work it out as you see fit. And not foot the bill.
The Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment are so intense on the pro-Israel side. It's really mind-blowing how much hate and racism they get away with while simultaneously accusing all of their detractors of "antisemitism". In a few hundred years, I'm sure the history books will have named this psychosis/era - whatever you call it - but to live it is something else.
Yah. The pro Israel rallies are really frightening with their Palestinian flag burning and chanting death to Palestinians. Not.
I take it you've never seen a settler rally in Israel? They don't chant Death to Palestinians because they deny the very existence of Palestinians. Instead they chant Death to Arabs. Two members of Bibi's cabinet have done it regularly and are quite open with their feelings. There's probably one happening in the West Bank right now.
By the way, those two cabinet members? One is in charge of the Israeli Police while the other is in charge of disbursing government funds.
Are Palestinians not Arabs?
One of the pro-Israel talking points is that there is no “Palestinian” identity, they are just “Arabs” and should therefore go live in some other Arab country. This is an incredibly bigoted hot take.
All of these little countries like Jordan, Lebanon, etc., have their own identity, the people who were forcibly expelled from the land can trace their ancestry there, they are indigenous to the land and people can deny that until they are blue in the face.
It’s not though. The notion of a Palestinian Muslim identity is not an ethnic idea. It’s nationalism and it’s relatively new:
Emergence of a distinct identity
The timing and causes behind the emergence of a distinctively Palestinian national consciousness among the Arabs of Palestine are matters of scholarly disagreement. Some argue that it can be traced as far back as the peasants' revolt in Palestine in 1834 (or even as early as the 17th century), while others argue that it did not emerge until after the Mandatory Palestine period.[59][112] Legal historian Assaf Likhovski states that the prevailing view is that Palestinian identity originated in the early decades of the 20th century,[59] when an embryonic desire among Palestinians for self-government in the face of generalized fears that Zionism would lead to a Jewish state and the dispossession of the Arab majority crystallised among most editors, Christian and Muslim, of local newspapers.[113] The term itself Filasṭīnī was first introduced by Khalīl Beidas in a translation of a Russian work on the Holy Land into Arabic in 1898. After that, its usage gradually spread so that, by 1908, with the loosening of censorship controls under late Ottoman rule, a number of Muslim, Christian and Jewish correspondents writing for newspapers began to use the term with great frequency in referring to the 'Palestinian people'(ahl/ahālī Filasṭīn), 'Palestinians' (al-Filasṭīnīyūn) the 'sons of Palestine(abnā’ Filasṭīn) or to 'Palestinian society',(al-mujtama' al-filasṭīnī).[114]
In Arab countries people primarily tie themselves to their village of origin. My own family can trace our records in our home village at least 500 years, or double the existence of the United States. While a national identity may be relatively new throughout the entire Middle East, this doesn’t mean that people don’t have a clear sense of homeland and place.
But it’s simply fact that the area wasn’t Muslim in any significant numbers until the 1500s.
This idea that Palestinian Arabs existed as some distinct identity for 2,000 years in what is now Israel is completely ahistoric.
This is like denying that Egypt wasn’t a country before Islam. People in the Arab world converted to Islam as it spread. So the Palestinian Muslim’s ancestors may indeed have been in the region for 2,000 years.
Arabs have been in the region. No one disputes that.
But Palestinians as a distinct people did not exist as a concept until much, much later.
I’m really not following your argument. A group of people who are not Jewish have lived in that region for thousands of years. They now call themselves Palestinians. Their religion before 1500 or their understanding of nation-states does not matter. As indigenous people they have ties to the land and it is their homeland as much as anyone else.
Wrong.
If we’re talking literally about what is now Israel, the land was:
1. Jewish
2. Then Roman
3. Then Christian
4. Muslims came in around the 1500s
5. Brits took it over and made it Mandatory Palestine, which had 500,000 Jews and 1 million Muslims
We’re focusing here specifically on the land in question, not the Middle East in general.
This is a totally absurd argument. Land does not have a religion. The people on the land have a religion. If the “land” was Jewish, Roman, whatever, it doesn’t matter. The humans who live on the land have a claim- the Palestinians. If they change their religion or become colonized- they still have a claim on the land.
Then at least be honest and say they aren’t an ethnicity distinct from anyone else. Just say they lived there.
They dont just live there, they are FROM there. That's the point
No. Arabs are not from what is now Palestine.
I don't know who this Palestinian denier is but she clearly knows ZERO actual Arabs in real life. The numbers for Jews in Palestine at the 19th/20th century are incredibly off. Muslims accounted for over 85% of the population in 1880. They began immigrating from Europe in the 1900s and increased numbers dramatically during that time.
The erasure of Palestinians should not be tolerated. It's bad enough that Israelis have kicked them off their land now they usurp culture and deny their existence.
*Jews began immigrating from Europe. That's why numbers started increasing. They doubled their numbers by the 1920s after the mass emigration movements.
Yet Muslims were massacring Jews en masse ? Do you think Jews in a migrant and anti semitic humanitarian crisis in Europe would even settle there if it weren’t safe?
Some Jews even left America to go to Mandatory Palestine because it was more safe there than here with anti Semitism
You miss the point entirely. You can claim all you want that Jews have a claim to the land for 2000 years. Ok. Whatever. We'll assume that there's no statue of limitations and my 2% Ghanian DNA means I can go take back Ghana.
Palestinians living on the land in the 1920s - 1940s (and now), did not care that this group of immigrants had ancestors that once occupied the area over 2000 years ago. All they saw - rightly - were boatloads of immigrants from W and Eastern Europe who were displacing them from their homes. Same in 47 and 48. They arrived as Europeans. you can argue the DNA all you like but they arrived on boats en masse from a different continent with an entirely different culture to the region.
Sure, the land was sold fair and square. We can blame the British. But please stop this line re: Jewish migrants from Europe somehow belonging to the land over the people that had been sitting there for generations.
This is such BS. Jews were IDPs. Stateless. But sure — we were privileged Europeans.
Yes, to the native people on the land they were. Particularly when they started taking their homes and land - and doing so rather violently.
So you can claim the connection all you want, but if you cannot understand it from the position of the people living on the land then you have no possible empathy. If someone tried to take your house now and told you that they used to live their years ago but were forcible moved out to Europe about 50 years ago, you'd tell them to eat it.
Same same.
Well imagine returning to the land where the temples and homes built by your forebears like Solomon and David are still standing, to have someone else claiming it's theirs.
You'd tell them to eat it, right? Well, that's the Arabs.
Are you kidding? I wouldn't expect to reclaim something from 2000 years prior. That's insane. I certainly wouldn't expect temples from biblical times to still be standing, nor would I start throwing around names from the Bible like any of these people would've known them. LOL
Really? Well, the Native Americans reclaimed Kennewick Man. So that's YET ANOTHER bogus argument you've made.
You keep failing with analogy after analogy. Maybe at some point that will sink in.
I'm with PP who thinks this has broken your brain. You realize the American Indian wars were in the late 1800s, right? Let's try counting to 2,000. Plus, the Native Americans never moved to Europe to camp out for a few thousand years and then try to return.
Sorry my friend, I am not the one with the broken brain. You and your little friend cannot even come up with proper, logical or historically accurate analogies.
I'm going to bed, you can continue your smooth-brained circle jerk without me.
You said that you deserve Israel because Solomon and David are your forebears. That is logic?
It's your logic that Arabs deserve Israel because grandpa planted an olive tree, so....
Correct. If your direct ancestors lived and farmed on land and did not sell it, that is your land. I’m glad you are finally figuring this out.
But if your ancestors lived there for a thousand years and built massive temples on it and ALSO DID NOT SELL IT, somehow it's NOT their land.
Some warped logic there.
I guess you figure the paintings and jewelry stolen from Jews by Nazis didn't really belong to the Jews either, right?
Ok once again:
Things you bought and have a direct connection to: yours
Things the Bible says are yours: not necessarily yours
Oh so all of that stone, those massive ancient walls and temples are just a figment of biblical imagination and don't really exist now.
You are quite a piece of work.
Correct. You have zero personal connection to those historical sites. Therefore they do not belong to you.
In fact ancient archaeological sites, like the Pyramids, arguably belong to all of humanity, not just one ethnic group. Although the pyramids are a lot more impressive than anything in Israel.
No one destroyed the pyramids, idiot.
But way to erase Jewish identity. They belong to everyone? Our Western Wall? Our holy sites?
You, as a person, are separate from the heritage of your ethnic group. Just because you have a connection to land does not mean you are owed land. If your ancestors are Egyptian you cannot hop back there and demand a right to live there because pyramids. Destroyed or intact.
Stop lecturing me. After WWII, Jews were stateless. They had nowhere to go.
Tell me where they should have gone. I’d love to hear your ideas.
Having something stolen from you does not give you the right to steal. Two wrongs do not make a right. Perhaps you should ask yourself where the people of Gaza should go now.
I believe in a two state solution.
But you didn’t answer my question. Where should Jews have gone in 1945?
If Jews insisted on a Jewish state, then in 1945 they should have gone to an empty place where no one else lived. Enough with your Benny Morris crap.
But they did. The rallying call for early Zionists to found a homeland in Palestine was "A land without a people for a people without a land."
this pro-apartheid booster cannot read. Palestine was not an empty place. Far from it. It had loads of natives living on the land who were explicitly referenced in both Balfour and the White Papers. Jews of Europe knew of the people there and moved ahead. And they rejected Kenya by a decisive vote from years earlier.
I cannot believe you really believe that you went to an empty land. The brainwashing is unreal.
While the palestians do have legitimate reasons to be unhappy, unhappyness is counter productive. Whether the world likes it or not, Israel has thrived and so it is not going away. So, yes, it was very sad what happened. but someday they need to realize that living well is the best revenge, that they should concentrate on education. that they should spend no money on arms and all on building industry.
but of course that won't happen. like the cuban americans, they want a time turner. but that will never happen. it cannot happen.
this is the realist argument. I’ve heard some intelligent criticism about the PA and Israel’s failure to enable Hamas to become a “real” government in the past 2 decades. Hamas needs to want peace & civil society; Israel has to let it happen. The more the Palestinians are goaded into an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic ideology the more they just hurt themselves. A one-state solution cannot happen under those terms.
What about the West Bank? Fatah has tried to peacefully coexist for decades now. Settlers are still stealing land with impunity, Palestinians have no rights vis a vis Israelis, the Palestinian government has no authority over settlers within its borders either in legal settlements or illegal settlements and the Israeli government has authority everywhere in the West Bank. Is that what you think Gaza should strive for?
That’s an illogical argument, the kind of stupidity that will keep the situation mired forever. Just because the situation in the West Bank is troubled doesn’t mean Hamas’s goal to destroy Israel is legitimate. That said, pretty sure I would prefer life in the West Bank to Gaza.
So what should Palestinians do? Just accept that they have no rights and will slowly be pushed off of their land. They should lay down arms and just accept it?
stop being terrorists, accept a 2-state solution, and build their civil society.
As someone above clearly stated, the two state solution is no longer viable, thanks to settlers. The West Bank has no territorial integrity. In fact it was never really viable. Would Israel accept a full Palestinian military? Palestinian control over airspace? Right now Israel is an apartheid state.
Anonymous wrote:America is just as much in fear of Israel as the Middle East countries are.
Nothing else could explain the double standards in treatment
Lol. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. The US wants israel to do the dirty work of keeping the peace in the region without a western country needing to constantly be at war or occupy some country in the region to prevent rampant anti western terrorism.
Israel is a democracy in name only . Netanyahu has been PM for years and years and years now. Longer than Putin or Erdogan have been in office.
Israel does no dirty work for us and they certainly don’t keep the peace. We do the dirty work for them.
The IDF prevents the us military from having to go in everywhere like they did with Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s no small feat.
I’m no supporter of Netanyahu, I’m anti settlement and pro two state solution. Plenty of moderates out there who support Israel’s right to exist alongside a Palestinian state, and see the mutually beneficial relationship our two countries have. I would love to see Netanyahu go and when the dust settles after this war, very possible he’ll be on the chopping block.
Where is everywhere? If we had a more balanced foreign policy and put Israel on check from time to time, we wouldn’t even get the ire and anger from the Middle East period.
Is there a way we can keep a friendship with Israel but also criticize Israel when they are wrong as Obama did once upon a time regarding settlements? Netanyahu backstabbed him to align with Putin who is now aligned with Hamas so I agree he needs to be on worse than a chopping block. He should be tried for corruption in Israeli court and jailed just like Trump should be jailed here
You have got to be kidding. The ME hates us because we have equal rights for women, lgbtq people are accepted, we are jewish, we don’t believe in public beheadings etc. Get a clue.
This statement is ridiculous. If the US didn't support dictators, murderers, and coups over and over again (Saddam, the Shah, Netanyahu, Sissi, and the list goes on) then maybe people would like them more.
Honestly people don't go around hating the US for what they do in their own country. They have their own lives to worry about. It's when the US goes and meddles in other countries, supports repressive regimes, and oh yeah, those two horrific wars that occurred in the past 20 years, kinda makes people sour on them.
Get a clue.
They hate you because you keep killing Palestinians.
If they went years without killing a Palestinian, Palestinians would still hate Jews and Israelis…and western values.
Israel has no western values. Nice try.
They are as barbaric as Hamas. And, yes they'd still hate you for stealing their land and oppressing millions of people.
Stop lying. My family members living in Tel Aviv can wear what they want, go to bars, practice their religion (not Judaism), and protest their government without getting killed. Can't say the same for surrounding countries.
These people have never been to Israel and they don’t care to learn anything about it.
Clearly. The ignorance is astounding.
Stop with your racism. I have been to the ME many times. I have worn what I want, gone to bars and practiced my religion. So yes, you can say the same for the surrounding countries. Tell me how many times you have been to Lebanon, Jordan, or Egypt? WTF do you actually know about the surrounding countries - outside of your smear campaign to dehumanize all Arabs?
My best friend is Lebanese. I am not dehumanizing Arabs. Lots of folks on this thread are dehumanizing all Israelis, though.
if true, this is sad as sh$t. You can watch your best friends family get bombed and feel nothing? How can you justify Israel's continued aggressions knowing how her family will be affected? I cannot take this. Our family in Lebanon has been a wreck. They have been through so much.
Anonymous wrote:America is just as much in fear of Israel as the Middle East countries are.
Nothing else could explain the double standards in treatment
Lol. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. The US wants israel to do the dirty work of keeping the peace in the region without a western country needing to constantly be at war or occupy some country in the region to prevent rampant anti western terrorism.
Israel is a democracy in name only . Netanyahu has been PM for years and years and years now. Longer than Putin or Erdogan have been in office.
Israel does no dirty work for us and they certainly don’t keep the peace. We do the dirty work for them.
The IDF prevents the us military from having to go in everywhere like they did with Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s no small feat.
I’m no supporter of Netanyahu, I’m anti settlement and pro two state solution. Plenty of moderates out there who support Israel’s right to exist alongside a Palestinian state, and see the mutually beneficial relationship our two countries have. I would love to see Netanyahu go and when the dust settles after this war, very possible he’ll be on the chopping block.
Where is everywhere? If we had a more balanced foreign policy and put Israel on check from time to time, we wouldn’t even get the ire and anger from the Middle East period.
Is there a way we can keep a friendship with Israel but also criticize Israel when they are wrong as Obama did once upon a time regarding settlements? Netanyahu backstabbed him to align with Putin who is now aligned with Hamas so I agree he needs to be on worse than a chopping block. He should be tried for corruption in Israeli court and jailed just like Trump should be jailed here
You have got to be kidding. The ME hates us because we have equal rights for women, lgbtq people are accepted, we are jewish, we don’t believe in public beheadings etc. Get a clue.
This statement is ridiculous. If the US didn't support dictators, murderers, and coups over and over again (Saddam, the Shah, Netanyahu, Sissi, and the list goes on) then maybe people would like them more.
Honestly people don't go around hating the US for what they do in their own country. They have their own lives to worry about. It's when the US goes and meddles in other countries, supports repressive regimes, and oh yeah, those two horrific wars that occurred in the past 20 years, kinda makes people sour on them.
Get a clue.
They hate you because you keep killing Palestinians.
If they went years without killing a Palestinian, Palestinians would still hate Jews and Israelis…and western values.
I think you greatly misunderstand Palestinians. They are not fundamentalists who hate Western values. Their core issues have always been economic and political. Look at the PLO. It was not a religious organization. It was a nationalist organization. There are exactly zero references to Islam in the original 1968 Charter. The only reference to religion is "he liberation of Palestine, from a spiritual point of view, will provide the Holy Land with an atmosphere of safety and tranquility, which in turn will safeguard the country's religious sanctuaries and guarantee freedom of worship and of visit to all, without discrimination of race, color, language, or religion. Accordingly, the people of Palestine look to all spiritual forces in the world for support. "
If you want to know how the people of Palestine would be living without the Palestinian/Israeli issue itself, it would probably look like Jordan, but without a constitutional monarchy. 2.2 million of them live there. Women can dress like normal, although somewhat more modestly than our current spandex culture allows. You can be gay there, although the capital city is more tolerant than the rest of the country. It's not perfect, but it's not sharia either.
Do not take this as a simplistic endorsement of all things Palestinian. But if you misunderstand the people, you can't possibly solve the problem.
Anonymous wrote:Back to reality … IDF must have good intelligence assets now, with the quickening success it has been having with neutralizing important Hamas leaders. This may be displeasing to some people, who are rooting for “that team” against Israel, but it should not be: Hamas cannot hold the people of Gaza hostage anymore.
Do you think this is going to make Gazans pro-Israel? They may kill Hamas, but they've solidified hatred of Israel in another generation.
They have solidified hatred for Israel in another generation for an entire REGION, not just Gaza. It’s an endless cycle of hatred and violence. As an American I want off this ride.
Do you also want off the ride in Ukraine?
Nope, I actually don’t. Ukraine is legitimately defending itself and there’s an actual strategic interest in the Us not allowing Russia to annex Ukraine. I’ve never seen a coherent argument as to why Israel is such an important “ally.” It’s more like it’s the US’s dependent and destroys our credibility on the world stage.
Yes Putin and Xi are currently hanging out and asking for a new world order. The Arab world has snubbed Biden and Co. Apparently Blinken was kept waiting an entire day to meet MBS who kept delaying the meeting.
The U.S. is getting sidelined because of its blind support for Israel. The U.S. needs to stay out of this conflict. Most of the hatred for the U.S. around the world is because of its unwavering support for Israel and Israel doesn’t care. They take billions from the U.S. and then keep killing Palestinians indiscriminately. How is Israel useful to the U.S.????
Anonymous wrote:Back to reality … IDF must have good intelligence assets now, with the quickening success it has been having with neutralizing important Hamas leaders. This may be displeasing to some people, who are rooting for “that team” against Israel, but it should not be: Hamas cannot hold the people of Gaza hostage anymore.
Do you think this is going to make Gazans pro-Israel? They may kill Hamas, but they've solidified hatred of Israel in another generation.
They have solidified hatred for Israel in another generation for an entire REGION, not just Gaza. It’s an endless cycle of hatred and violence. As an American I want off this ride.
Do you really not understand the the hatred exists no matter what Israel does?
It is Israel's mere existence that causes the hatred (with a hefty dose of religious intolerance as the cherry on the sundae).
JFC. You guys have to stop the perpetual victimization. It really is so counterproductive to any peace in the region. You cannot argue with the pro-Israel people because they justify murder with "well, my existence bothered him". No, Barbara, it was the fact that you killed his family. If you would stop that, he'd be cool.
Leave Maryland and meet other people. Make friends with Arabs. You will learn that they are humans - just like you - who want to live in peace. If you stop bombing them, they will be ok. It is YOUR hatred that exacerbates this.
So how do you explain the massacre of Jews by Palestinians before the state of Israel even existed?
How do you explain the Arab/Palestinian attempt to eradicate Israel on the day it was founded?
How do you explain the Hamas charter calling for the obliteration of Israel?
I grant you that there are thriving Christian and Jewish populations in many ME countries. I mean, you have ___________, and ____________, and _________________, and ______________. So we have to take those examples into account.
You're a moron. Lebanon was founded as a Christian country by the French. The population was 60/40 Christian to Muslim. Christians are thriving there and there are a lot of them. The president is a Maronite Christian. 10% of Egypt is Coptic. Our best friends are Christians from Jordan. And we are good friends with Lebanese Druze. Do you actually know ANYONE from an Arab country? Anyone at all?
And yes, the native ARabs were very angry on day 1 when they were kicked out of their houses, burned and murdered. It was a pretty disgusting display of violence during the Nakbah.
Anonymous wrote:America is just as much in fear of Israel as the Middle East countries are.
Nothing else could explain the double standards in treatment
Lol. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. The US wants israel to do the dirty work of keeping the peace in the region without a western country needing to constantly be at war or occupy some country in the region to prevent rampant anti western terrorism.
Israel is a democracy in name only . Netanyahu has been PM for years and years and years now. Longer than Putin or Erdogan have been in office.
Israel does no dirty work for us and they certainly don’t keep the peace. We do the dirty work for them.
The IDF prevents the us military from having to go in everywhere like they did with Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s no small feat.
I’m no supporter of Netanyahu, I’m anti settlement and pro two state solution. Plenty of moderates out there who support Israel’s right to exist alongside a Palestinian state, and see the mutually beneficial relationship our two countries have. I would love to see Netanyahu go and when the dust settles after this war, very possible he’ll be on the chopping block.
Where is everywhere? If we had a more balanced foreign policy and put Israel on check from time to time, we wouldn’t even get the ire and anger from the Middle East period.
Is there a way we can keep a friendship with Israel but also criticize Israel when they are wrong as Obama did once upon a time regarding settlements? Netanyahu backstabbed him to align with Putin who is now aligned with Hamas so I agree he needs to be on worse than a chopping block. He should be tried for corruption in Israeli court and jailed just like Trump should be jailed here
You have got to be kidding. The ME hates us because we have equal rights for women, lgbtq people are accepted, we are jewish, we don’t believe in public beheadings etc. Get a clue.
This statement is ridiculous. If the US didn't support dictators, murderers, and coups over and over again (Saddam, the Shah, Netanyahu, Sissi, and the list goes on) then maybe people would like them more.
Honestly people don't go around hating the US for what they do in their own country. They have their own lives to worry about. It's when the US goes and meddles in other countries, supports repressive regimes, and oh yeah, those two horrific wars that occurred in the past 20 years, kinda makes people sour on them.
Get a clue.
They hate you because you keep killing Palestinians.
If they went years without killing a Palestinian, Palestinians would still hate Jews and Israelis…and western values.
Israel has no western values. Nice try.
They are as barbaric as Hamas. And, yes they'd still hate you for stealing their land and oppressing millions of people.
Stop lying. My family members living in Tel Aviv can wear what they want, go to bars, practice their religion (not Judaism), and protest their government without getting killed. Can't say the same for surrounding countries.
These people have never been to Israel and they don’t care to learn anything about it.
Clearly. The ignorance is astounding.
Stop with your racism. I have been to the ME many times. I have worn what I want, gone to bars and practiced my religion. So yes, you can say the same for the surrounding countries. Tell me how many times you have been to Lebanon, Jordan, or Egypt? WTF do you actually know about the surrounding countries - outside of your smear campaign to dehumanize all Arabs?
My best friend is Lebanese. I am not dehumanizing Arabs. Lots of folks on this thread are dehumanizing all Israelis, though.
if true, this is sad as sh$t. You can watch your best friends family get bombed and feel nothing? How can you justify Israel's continued aggressions knowing how her family will be affected? I cannot take this. Our family in Lebanon has been a wreck. They have been through so much.
Stop making assumptions. I'm not justifying anything. If you read my post, you would have seen that my family members were protesting in Israel two months ago. Of course I feel empathy for her family. Just like she feels empathy for my family in Tel Aviv. We both want peace.
People don't understand that the history of Palestine in this conflict was nationalist, not Islamist. They are probably not old enough to remember how this all started. All they know is the Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS, Iran.
Anonymous wrote:People don't understand that the history of Palestine in this conflict was nationalist, not Islamist. They are probably not old enough to remember how this all started. All they know is the Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS, Iran.
They absolutely understand and want to reframe the conflict as a vast religious one because people are much less sympathetic to Islamist ambitions than the simple idea of wanting to live in your homeland.
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