Gaza War, Part 3

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When you want to erase a people, you destroy their libraries, their cemeteries, their cultural artifacts, the beautiful things they've built. Israel and Azerbaijan excel in this.

Gather a coalition of armies from countries around the world and fight back against Israel if this is all such a concern.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again - NO ONE IS PRO-HAMAS. Stop using that strawman to shut down discussion.

If you're making demands of Israel that you don't make of Hamas, you are supporting Hamas.

Hamas isn't directly leeching off my tax dollars the way Israel is. If we're forced to prop up Israel financially, we have some say in how it spends our money and how it behaves.

Hamas indirectly leeches off our tax dollars because Netanyahu has been propping it up for years.

This means our tax dollars are used to support two terrorist organizations -- Israel AND Hamas.

you care more about your tax dollars (or the long term goal of seeing Israel wither on the vine and die w/o U.S. support) than actually helping the people in Gaza--you focus on the former instead of calling for immediate solutions (Hamas surrendering) that would help the people in a flash of an eye.

Once more for the folks in the back: who do you want us to call!?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To be super clear, the pro-Israel argument here is that all but ten members of the UN General Assembly— representing the overwhelming majority of the population of the world— are all pro-Hamas? Most of Europe, Japan, Australia…all pro-Hamas now?

https://time.com/6452308/us-votes-against-un-gaza-ceasefire-reactions/

To be super duper clear, polls clearly show that a plurality of Gazans and a majority of American Muslims support Hamas and/or believe its attacks on 10/7 were justified.

To be even clearer, protesters here have repeatedly overtly stated their support of 10/7.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be super clear, the pro-Israel argument here is that all but ten members of the UN General Assembly— representing the overwhelming majority of the population of the world— are all pro-Hamas? Most of Europe, Japan, Australia…all pro-Hamas now?

https://time.com/6452308/us-votes-against-un-gaza-ceasefire-reactions/

What are you going on about? Are you just flooding this thread with vaguely anti-Israel nonsense to bury discussion about Hamas brutality and Palestinians' strategic embrace of terrorist violence?

The current discussion seems to be, any criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war, and the U.S.’ support thereof, is “pro-Hamas”.

So does that mean posters believe the vast majority of countries of the world are now pro-Hamas? Even the ones who supported Israel in October?

If you aren't trying to defeat Hamas, you are supporting Hamas.

Literally EVERYONE exchanging thoughts here is supportive of defeating Hamas.

The entire essence of the debate is (1) how to go about achieving that goal (either with regard for the human rights of the innocent civilians [the critics of Israel’s actions] or disregard for human life [the ride or die Zionists who want to defend Israel or obliterate the debate if that defense falls flat]), and then (2) marveling at how truly corrupt and unabashed many Zionists can be in defending the actions of the State of Israel, no matter how inhumane and bloodthirsty for revenge (while feigning shock and outrage that any other group could be allowed to resort to actions that are bloodthirsty for revenge).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:An incisive essay by Peter Beinart penned early after Oct 7. Longread but worth it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/14/opinion/palestinian-ethical-resistance-answers-grief-and-rage.html?unlocked_article_code=Chw9pPdgieGcc-P-taTJRz00hk8idJF_rINeMYm3H6O1LP3HZVKgzTLsY8fS6U59Lf-fTpUy9b5OSBvH1X7VCJuGBBn0Nei1Nw06RB41Yp4ZsqJbAafc-5M0kfD0hhVGsYcka9xCeJ9JEdAU93UwwKcz9glEa77I6vtPqNQx0rC6GVnNRIAj86RcGYaxfThI2eoyxLhxZt-JQRhL2dUJbaZCpq8SxNt2i3_2I1a8kIDfHaeHwNnwsVlyX9jIiE4fzwhUx8Tp8pjHMNXf6Wu5W5QJpINVpqrjvsynBg0g-pUh8FVBPJcDkG_CcDOrywCSkfGdenneS6WUHK6Yl0R4HTTqiPvsnXncOB3vU6ZdkiUbGIoIZQNIPR5Wec_0YA&smid=url-share

Palestinians are not fundamentally different from other people facing oppression: When moral resistance doesn’t work, they try something else. In 1972, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, which was modeled on the civil rights movement in the United States, organized a march to oppose imprisonment without trial. Although some organizations, most notably the Provisional Irish Republican Army, had already embraced armed resistance, they grew stronger after British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians in what became known as Bloody Sunday. By the early 1980s, the Irish Republican Army had even detonated a bomb outside Harrods, the department store in London. As Kirssa Cline Ryckman, a political scientist, observed in a 2019 paper on why certain movements turn violent, a lack of progress in peaceful protest “can encourage the use of violence by convincing demonstrators that nonviolence will fail to achieve meaningful concessions.”

Israel, with America’s help, has done exactly that. It has repeatedly undermined Palestinians who sought to end Israel’s occupation through negotiations or nonviolent pressure. As part of the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Palestine Liberation Organization renounced violence and began working with Israel — albeit imperfectly — to prevent attacks on Israelis, something that revolutionary groups like the A.N.C. and the Irish Republican Army never did while their people remained under oppression. At first, as Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political scientist, has detailed, Palestinians supported cooperation with Israel because they thought it would deliver them a state. In early 1996, Palestinian support for the Oslo process reached 80 percent while support for violence against Israelis dropped to 20 percent.

The 1996 election of Benjamin Netanyahu, and the failure of Israel and its American patron to stop settlement growth, however, curdled Palestinian sentiment. Many Jewish Israelis believe that Ehud Barak, who succeeded Mr. Netanyahu, offered Palestinians a generous deal in 2000. Most Palestinians, however, saw Mr. Barak’s offer as falling far short of a fully sovereign state along the 1967 lines. And their disillusionment with a peace process that allowed Israel to entrench its hold over the territory on which they hoped to build their new country ushered in the violence of the second intifada. In Mr. Shikaki’s words, “The loss of confidence in the ability of the peace process to deliver a permanent agreement on acceptable terms had a dramatic impact on the level of Palestinian support for violence against Israelis.” As Palestinians abandoned hope, Hamas gained power.

After the brutal years of the second intifada, in which Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups repeatedly targeted Israeli civilians, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and Salam Fayyad, his prime minister from 2007 to 2013, worked to restore security cooperation and prevent anti-Israeli violence once again. Yet again, the strategy failed. The same Israeli leaders who applauded Mr. Fayyad undermined him in back rooms by funding the settlement growth that convinced Palestinians that security cooperation was bringing them only deepening occupation. Mr. Fayyad, in an interview with The Times’s Roger Cohen before he left office in 2013, admitted that because the “occupation regime is more entrenched,” Palestinians “question whether the P.A. can deliver. Meanwhile, Hamas gains recognition and is strengthened.”

As Palestinians lost faith that cooperation with Israel could end the occupation, many appealed to the world to hold Israel accountable for its violation of their rights. In response, both Democratic and Republican presidents have worked diligently to ensure that these nonviolent efforts fail. Since 1997, the United States has vetoed more than a dozen United Nations Security Council resolutions criticizing Israel for its actions in the West Bank and Gaza. This February, even as Israel’s far-right government was beginning a huge settlement expansion, the Biden administration reportedly wielded a veto threat to drastically dilute a Security Council resolution that would have condemned settlement growth.

Washington’s response to the International Criminal Court’s efforts to investigate potential Israeli war crimes is equally hostile. Despite lifting sanctions that the Trump administration imposed on I.C.C. officials investigating the United States’s conduct in Afghanistan, the Biden team remains adamantly opposed to any I.C.C. investigation into Israel’s actions.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or B.D.S., which was founded in 2005 as a nonviolent alternative to the murderous second intifada and which speaks in the language of human rights and international law, has been similarly stymied, including by many of the same American politicians who celebrated the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction South Africa. Joe Biden, who is proud of his role in passing sanctions against South Africa, has condemned the B.D.S. movement, saying it “too often veers into antisemitism.” About 35 states — some of which once divested state funds from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa — have passed laws or issued executive orders punishing companies that boycott Israel. In many cases, those punishments apply even to businesses that boycott only Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Palestinians have noticed. In the words of Dana El Kurd, a Palestinian American political scientist, “Palestinians have lost faith in the efficacy of nonviolent protest as well as the possible role of the international community.” Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas’s military wing, cited this disillusionment during last Saturday’s attack. “In light of the orgy of occupation and its denial of international laws and resolutions, and in light of American and Western support and international silence,” he declared, “we’ve decided to put an end to all this.”

They have lost faith and are frustrated because no one is just going to give them what they want through discussion and negotiation, because they don't have a legitimate claim. There isn't any reason to give them what they want just because they want it--I earnestly want a nice house in Arlington, can be very passionate about, talk about it all the time, tell people I should have, use nice words, but that doesn't mean others will oblige. Sometimes it is time to just stop and focus on something else.
But ok, they can choose violence, and suffer consequences (and I guess complain about them as they are now as if some grand injustice is going on when the violence didn't have to happen in the first place).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you want to erase a people, you destroy their libraries, their cemeteries, their cultural artifacts, the beautiful things they've built. Israel and Azerbaijan excel in this.

Gather a coalition of armies from countries around the world and fight back against Israel if this is all such a concern.

We know how hard Arabs are working at preserving Jewish religious and cultural sites across the Middle East

https://www.timesofisrael.com/historic-synagogue-in-tunisia-heavily-damaged-in-rioting-tied-to-israel-hamas-war/amp/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be super clear, the pro-Israel argument here is that all but ten members of the UN General Assembly— representing the overwhelming majority of the population of the world— are all pro-Hamas? Most of Europe, Japan, Australia…all pro-Hamas now?

https://time.com/6452308/us-votes-against-un-gaza-ceasefire-reactions/

What are you going on about? Are you just flooding this thread with vaguely anti-Israel nonsense to bury discussion about Hamas brutality and Palestinians' strategic embrace of terrorist violence?

The current discussion seems to be, any criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war, and the U.S.’ support thereof, is “pro-Hamas”.

So does that mean posters believe the vast majority of countries of the world are now pro-Hamas? Even the ones who supported Israel in October?

If you aren't trying to defeat Hamas, you are supporting Hamas.

Literally EVERYONE exchanging thoughts here is supportive of defeating Hamas.

The entire essence of the debate is (1) how to go about achieving that goal (either with regard for the human rights of the innocent civilians [the critics of Israel’s actions] or disregard for human life [the ride or die Zionists who want to defend Israel or obliterate the debate if that defense falls flat]), and then (2) marveling at how truly corrupt and unabashed many Zionists can be in defending the actions of the State of Israel, no matter how inhumane and bloodthirsty for revenge (while feigning shock and outrage that any other group could be allowed to resort to actions that are bloodthirsty for revenge).

if the concern was about the immediate safety of the people that would show in the approach taken--you all focusing on the long game of turning Israel into a villian are not showing care for the immediate safety of Gazans
TODAY-Hamas can surreder. Protest in the streets about that. Protest in front of Hamas's leaders. Instead you protest in front of Austin's house to play the long game in a land dispute.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The level of antisemitism is astounding here.
I am sure someone will soon post how Jews wrote how they would overtake the world in a Jewish Prague cemetery. They did not; haters wrote them, and people still believed them.
Is Israel overly aggressive now? Maybe. Are Palestinians Hamas fanatics? Maybe.
Yet, many of you sound like total racist trash, regardless of whom you are supporting, Israel or Hamas.

No one supports Hamas!!!!

You can’t even admit Israel has gone WAY PAST any norms and is just bombing it all and killing everyone.

A Now we’re at organ theft. Mutilated corpses. Decayed infants. They are never coming back from this on the world stage

This is an outright lie. It is a disgusting and disgraceful lie. Enough. You can be anti-Israel. Fine, get it. But to pass on these barbaric lies about organ theft. Good Lord - you’re taking a page right out of Blood Libel, FFS.

Decayed infants story is true.

Organ theft has happened in the past. Read the newsweek article cited earlier.

Mutilated corpses and organ theft was accused yesterday in a letter and was reported and the allegations were reported by the Washington Post. There was no comment from Israel at the time the Post published the story. You cannot say it is an outright lie.

PP from above has a good point. These were 80 bodies returned by Israel. What happened to these 80 people while under Israeli custody?

What’s happened to the 107 hostages, including young people and infants, that are still being kept by Hamas and Islamic Jihad?

Nice deflection. This has nothing to do with organ theft. If you listen to the rabid, dehumanizing, anti-Palestinian racism coming from Israel’s leaders, you’ll understand why and how organ theft has happened. If you can steal Palestinian land and lives, why would you not steal Palestinian organs?

Your whole argument is that Jews are just so terribly inherently evil, of course they will steal organs. If you think a person or group is the definition of evil, where evil literally flows from, everything that is bad on earth flows from them.

Where do I say “Jews”? I say “Israel’s leaders.” Your claim is absurd. Please stop throwing up melodramatic smoke screens about Jew hatred in a blatant effort to hide Israel’s repugnant behavior. Israel has admitted to organ theft, especially skin theft, in the past, and it is at least possible it is still doing the same thing. This is not conduct an ethical person would want to support.

This is gross distortion of reports - unsubstantiated and denied by Israel - from almost a decade ago. There is no evidence this is happening now. This rumor has been fueled by unsubstantiated claims from a Hamas-aligned organization.

An ethical person isn’t spreading blood libel-type rumors to fuel hatred against Jews. Enough.

But the former head of the Abu Kabir forensic institute near Tel Aviv, Dr. Yehuda Hiss, acknowledged the practice, so your accusation that people are "spreading blood libel-type rumors to fuel hatred against Jews" is simply histrionic and illogical. Instead of throwing up a smoke screen in an attempt to silence concerns, why not call for an independent investigation to prove or disprove the claims?

Here is some further information:

"Israel has admitted pathologists harvested organs from dead Palestinians, and others, without the consent of their families – a practice it said ended in the 1990s – it emerged at the weekend."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/21/israeli-pathologists-harvested-organs

From the same report:

"Channel 2 TV reported that in the 1990s, specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives.

The Israeli military confirmed to the programme that the practice took place, but added: "This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer."

Hiss said: "We started to harvest corneas ... whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family.""

Jumping to the present ... Yesterday, Israel handed over about 80 corpses to officials in the Gaza Strip without any explanation of where they came from. Gaza authorities are saying there are signs of organ theft and have called for an independent international investigation. They are also saying there have been previous incidents since October 7 of corpses missing organs and exhumed corpses. They say Israelis dug up a mass grave and confiscated bodies and that the IDF confiscated dozens of corpses from two hospitals in Gaza.

Given Israel's history and the current information, the concerns are very reasonable. I'm sure we'd all welcome an independent investigation to clear up the matter one way or the other.

Can you tell me which organ can be harvested and TRANSPLANTED from a decaying body?

Organs must usually be harvested and transplanted within hours, although some harvested organs are used in academia for dissection. It appears organs were missing from some of the approximately 80 bodies returned to Gaza. If the organs were harvested, it is likely they were taken from people who had died very recently. Some of the returned bodies were decomposing, so they may have been left to rot after their organs were taken. Corpses confiscated from hospitals in Gaza may have recently died, possibly in the hospital. Bodies that were exhumed from mass graves are less likely to have viable organs, but that depends on how recently they died.

There are non-trivial concerns about illegal organ harvesting. Why not encourage an independent investigation that would clear up the matter one way or the other? If the concerns are groundless, everyone is better off having that out in the open. If they are valid, we need to know that too.

[Anonymous]

Nothing excuses 10/7, but to say that Israel is justified and totally blameless in both the conditions on the ground prior and its indiscriminate response in the aftermath ignores objective reality. Worse, it prevents real progress towards a lasting solution.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be super clear, the pro-Israel argument here is that all but ten members of the UN General Assembly— representing the overwhelming majority of the population of the world— are all pro-Hamas? Most of Europe, Japan, Australia…all pro-Hamas now?

https://time.com/6452308/us-votes-against-un-gaza-ceasefire-reactions/

What are you going on about? Are you just flooding this thread with vaguely anti-Israel nonsense to bury discussion about Hamas brutality and Palestinians' strategic embrace of terrorist violence?

The current discussion seems to be, any criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war, and the U.S.’ support thereof, is “pro-Hamas”.

So does that mean posters believe the vast majority of countries of the world are now pro-Hamas? Even the ones who supported Israel in October?

If you aren't trying to defeat Hamas, you are supporting Hamas.

Literally EVERYONE exchanging thoughts here is supportive of defeating Hamas.

The entire essence of the debate is (1) how to go about achieving that goal (either with regard for the human rights of the innocent civilians [the critics of Israel’s actions] or disregard for human life [the ride or die Zionists who want to defend Israel or obliterate the debate if that defense falls flat]), and then (2) marveling at how truly corrupt and unabashed many Zionists can be in defending the actions of the State of Israel, no matter how inhumane and bloodthirsty for revenge (while feigning shock and outrage that any other group could be allowed to resort to actions that are bloodthirsty for revenge).

if the concern was about the immediate safety of the people that would show in the approach taken--you all focusing on the long game of turning Israel into a villian are not showing care for the immediate safety of Gazans
TODAY-Hamas can surreder. Protest in the streets about that. Protest in front of Hamas's leaders. Instead you protest in front of Austin's house to play the long game in a land dispute.

For the umpteenth time: why do you think Hamas cares what the U.S. taxpayer thinks? Why would they care if we protest?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An incisive essay by Peter Beinart penned early after Oct 7. Longread but worth it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/14/opinion/palestinian-ethical-resistance-answers-grief-and-rage.html?unlocked_article_code=Chw9pPdgieGcc-P-taTJRz00hk8idJF_rINeMYm3H6O1LP3HZVKgzTLsY8fS6U59Lf-fTpUy9b5OSBvH1X7VCJuGBBn0Nei1Nw06RB41Yp4ZsqJbAafc-5M0kfD0hhVGsYcka9xCeJ9JEdAU93UwwKcz9glEa77I6vtPqNQx0rC6GVnNRIAj86RcGYaxfThI2eoyxLhxZt-JQRhL2dUJbaZCpq8SxNt2i3_2I1a8kIDfHaeHwNnwsVlyX9jIiE4fzwhUx8Tp8pjHMNXf6Wu5W5QJpINVpqrjvsynBg0g-pUh8FVBPJcDkG_CcDOrywCSkfGdenneS6WUHK6Yl0R4HTTqiPvsnXncOB3vU6ZdkiUbGIoIZQNIPR5Wec_0YA&smid=url-share

Palestinians are not fundamentally different from other people facing oppression: When moral resistance doesn’t work, they try something else. In 1972, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, which was modeled on the civil rights movement in the United States, organized a march to oppose imprisonment without trial. Although some organizations, most notably the Provisional Irish Republican Army, had already embraced armed resistance, they grew stronger after British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians in what became known as Bloody Sunday. By the early 1980s, the Irish Republican Army had even detonated a bomb outside Harrods, the department store in London. As Kirssa Cline Ryckman, a political scientist, observed in a 2019 paper on why certain movements turn violent, a lack of progress in peaceful protest “can encourage the use of violence by convincing demonstrators that nonviolence will fail to achieve meaningful concessions.”

Israel, with America’s help, has done exactly that. It has repeatedly undermined Palestinians who sought to end Israel’s occupation through negotiations or nonviolent pressure. As part of the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Palestine Liberation Organization renounced violence and began working with Israel — albeit imperfectly — to prevent attacks on Israelis, something that revolutionary groups like the A.N.C. and the Irish Republican Army never did while their people remained under oppression. At first, as Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political scientist, has detailed, Palestinians supported cooperation with Israel because they thought it would deliver them a state. In early 1996, Palestinian support for the Oslo process reached 80 percent while support for violence against Israelis dropped to 20 percent.

The 1996 election of Benjamin Netanyahu, and the failure of Israel and its American patron to stop settlement growth, however, curdled Palestinian sentiment. Many Jewish Israelis believe that Ehud Barak, who succeeded Mr. Netanyahu, offered Palestinians a generous deal in 2000. Most Palestinians, however, saw Mr. Barak’s offer as falling far short of a fully sovereign state along the 1967 lines. And their disillusionment with a peace process that allowed Israel to entrench its hold over the territory on which they hoped to build their new country ushered in the violence of the second intifada. In Mr. Shikaki’s words, “The loss of confidence in the ability of the peace process to deliver a permanent agreement on acceptable terms had a dramatic impact on the level of Palestinian support for violence against Israelis.” As Palestinians abandoned hope, Hamas gained power.

After the brutal years of the second intifada, in which Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups repeatedly targeted Israeli civilians, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and Salam Fayyad, his prime minister from 2007 to 2013, worked to restore security cooperation and prevent anti-Israeli violence once again. Yet again, the strategy failed. The same Israeli leaders who applauded Mr. Fayyad undermined him in back rooms by funding the settlement growth that convinced Palestinians that security cooperation was bringing them only deepening occupation. Mr. Fayyad, in an interview with The Times’s Roger Cohen before he left office in 2013, admitted that because the “occupation regime is more entrenched,” Palestinians “question whether the P.A. can deliver. Meanwhile, Hamas gains recognition and is strengthened.”

As Palestinians lost faith that cooperation with Israel could end the occupation, many appealed to the world to hold Israel accountable for its violation of their rights. In response, both Democratic and Republican presidents have worked diligently to ensure that these nonviolent efforts fail. Since 1997, the United States has vetoed more than a dozen United Nations Security Council resolutions criticizing Israel for its actions in the West Bank and Gaza. This February, even as Israel’s far-right government was beginning a huge settlement expansion, the Biden administration reportedly wielded a veto threat to drastically dilute a Security Council resolution that would have condemned settlement growth.

Washington’s response to the International Criminal Court’s efforts to investigate potential Israeli war crimes is equally hostile. Despite lifting sanctions that the Trump administration imposed on I.C.C. officials investigating the United States’s conduct in Afghanistan, the Biden team remains adamantly opposed to any I.C.C. investigation into Israel’s actions.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or B.D.S., which was founded in 2005 as a nonviolent alternative to the murderous second intifada and which speaks in the language of human rights and international law, has been similarly stymied, including by many of the same American politicians who celebrated the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction South Africa. Joe Biden, who is proud of his role in passing sanctions against South Africa, has condemned the B.D.S. movement, saying it “too often veers into antisemitism.” About 35 states — some of which once divested state funds from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa — have passed laws or issued executive orders punishing companies that boycott Israel. In many cases, those punishments apply even to businesses that boycott only Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Palestinians have noticed. In the words of Dana El Kurd, a Palestinian American political scientist, “Palestinians have lost faith in the efficacy of nonviolent protest as well as the possible role of the international community.” Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas’s military wing, cited this disillusionment during last Saturday’s attack. “In light of the orgy of occupation and its denial of international laws and resolutions, and in light of American and Western support and international silence,” he declared, “we’ve decided to put an end to all this.”

They have lost faith and are frustrated because no one is just going to give them what they want through discussion and negotiation, because they don't have a legitimate claim. There isn't any reason to give them what they want just because they want it--I earnestly want a nice house in Arlington, can be very passionate about, talk about it all the time, tell people I should have, use nice words, but that doesn't mean others will oblige. Sometimes it is time to just stop and focus on something else.
But ok, they can choose violence, and suffer consequences (and I guess complain about them as they are now as if some grand injustice is going on when the violence didn't have to happen in the first place).

Well, I guess there you have it. Nothing is available to them through negotiation and peace, as you just said. They also have no “legitimate claim”, as you also just said.

So all the talk about Palestinians squandering multiple chances for a peaceful existence and a state of their own was rooted in Israeli lies, so it seems. Is that what you’re staring here for everyone?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be super clear, the pro-Israel argument here is that all but ten members of the UN General Assembly— representing the overwhelming majority of the population of the world— are all pro-Hamas? Most of Europe, Japan, Australia…all pro-Hamas now?

https://time.com/6452308/us-votes-against-un-gaza-ceasefire-reactions/

What are you going on about? Are you just flooding this thread with vaguely anti-Israel nonsense to bury discussion about Hamas brutality and Palestinians' strategic embrace of terrorist violence?

The current discussion seems to be, any criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war, and the U.S.’ support thereof, is “pro-Hamas”.

So does that mean posters believe the vast majority of countries of the world are now pro-Hamas? Even the ones who supported Israel in October?

If you aren't trying to defeat Hamas, you are supporting Hamas.

Literally EVERYONE exchanging thoughts here is supportive of defeating Hamas.

The entire essence of the debate is (1) how to go about achieving that goal (either with regard for the human rights of the innocent civilians [the critics of Israel’s actions] or disregard for human life [the ride or die Zionists who want to defend Israel or obliterate the debate if that defense falls flat]), and then (2) marveling at how truly corrupt and unabashed many Zionists can be in defending the actions of the State of Israel, no matter how inhumane and bloodthirsty for revenge (while feigning shock and outrage that any other group could be allowed to resort to actions that are bloodthirsty for revenge).

if the concern was about the immediate safety of the people that would show in the approach taken--you all focusing on the long game of turning Israel into a villian are not showing care for the immediate safety of Gazans
TODAY-Hamas can surreder. Protest in the streets about that. Protest in front of Hamas's leaders. Instead you protest in front of Austin's house to play the long game in a land dispute.

For the umpteenth time: why do you think Hamas cares what the U.S. taxpayer thinks? Why would they care if we protest?

The U.S. doesn't care if you protest either. Israel doesn't care if you protest. What you protest about shows your values. You don't value an immediate ending the violence. You value the accomplishment of a long term agenda.
The war can come to an end, but it doesn't have to be on your terms. If you insist on that, the rest of us do not need to be concerned with "babies!" cries. If you don't want to use any means necessary to end war, you have no sympathy with me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An incisive essay by Peter Beinart penned early after Oct 7. Longread but worth it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/14/opinion/palestinian-ethical-resistance-answers-grief-and-rage.html?unlocked_article_code=Chw9pPdgieGcc-P-taTJRz00hk8idJF_rINeMYm3H6O1LP3HZVKgzTLsY8fS6U59Lf-fTpUy9b5OSBvH1X7VCJuGBBn0Nei1Nw06RB41Yp4ZsqJbAafc-5M0kfD0hhVGsYcka9xCeJ9JEdAU93UwwKcz9glEa77I6vtPqNQx0rC6GVnNRIAj86RcGYaxfThI2eoyxLhxZt-JQRhL2dUJbaZCpq8SxNt2i3_2I1a8kIDfHaeHwNnwsVlyX9jIiE4fzwhUx8Tp8pjHMNXf6Wu5W5QJpINVpqrjvsynBg0g-pUh8FVBPJcDkG_CcDOrywCSkfGdenneS6WUHK6Yl0R4HTTqiPvsnXncOB3vU6ZdkiUbGIoIZQNIPR5Wec_0YA&smid=url-share

Palestinians are not fundamentally different from other people facing oppression: When moral resistance doesn’t work, they try something else. In 1972, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, which was modeled on the civil rights movement in the United States, organized a march to oppose imprisonment without trial. Although some organizations, most notably the Provisional Irish Republican Army, had already embraced armed resistance, they grew stronger after British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians in what became known as Bloody Sunday. By the early 1980s, the Irish Republican Army had even detonated a bomb outside Harrods, the department store in London. As Kirssa Cline Ryckman, a political scientist, observed in a 2019 paper on why certain movements turn violent, a lack of progress in peaceful protest “can encourage the use of violence by convincing demonstrators that nonviolence will fail to achieve meaningful concessions.”

Israel, with America’s help, has done exactly that. It has repeatedly undermined Palestinians who sought to end Israel’s occupation through negotiations or nonviolent pressure. As part of the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Palestine Liberation Organization renounced violence and began working with Israel — albeit imperfectly — to prevent attacks on Israelis, something that revolutionary groups like the A.N.C. and the Irish Republican Army never did while their people remained under oppression. At first, as Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political scientist, has detailed, Palestinians supported cooperation with Israel because they thought it would deliver them a state. In early 1996, Palestinian support for the Oslo process reached 80 percent while support for violence against Israelis dropped to 20 percent.

The 1996 election of Benjamin Netanyahu, and the failure of Israel and its American patron to stop settlement growth, however, curdled Palestinian sentiment. Many Jewish Israelis believe that Ehud Barak, who succeeded Mr. Netanyahu, offered Palestinians a generous deal in 2000. Most Palestinians, however, saw Mr. Barak’s offer as falling far short of a fully sovereign state along the 1967 lines. And their disillusionment with a peace process that allowed Israel to entrench its hold over the territory on which they hoped to build their new country ushered in the violence of the second intifada. In Mr. Shikaki’s words, “The loss of confidence in the ability of the peace process to deliver a permanent agreement on acceptable terms had a dramatic impact on the level of Palestinian support for violence against Israelis.” As Palestinians abandoned hope, Hamas gained power.

After the brutal years of the second intifada, in which Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups repeatedly targeted Israeli civilians, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and Salam Fayyad, his prime minister from 2007 to 2013, worked to restore security cooperation and prevent anti-Israeli violence once again. Yet again, the strategy failed. The same Israeli leaders who applauded Mr. Fayyad undermined him in back rooms by funding the settlement growth that convinced Palestinians that security cooperation was bringing them only deepening occupation. Mr. Fayyad, in an interview with The Times’s Roger Cohen before he left office in 2013, admitted that because the “occupation regime is more entrenched,” Palestinians “question whether the P.A. can deliver. Meanwhile, Hamas gains recognition and is strengthened.”

As Palestinians lost faith that cooperation with Israel could end the occupation, many appealed to the world to hold Israel accountable for its violation of their rights. In response, both Democratic and Republican presidents have worked diligently to ensure that these nonviolent efforts fail. Since 1997, the United States has vetoed more than a dozen United Nations Security Council resolutions criticizing Israel for its actions in the West Bank and Gaza. This February, even as Israel’s far-right government was beginning a huge settlement expansion, the Biden administration reportedly wielded a veto threat to drastically dilute a Security Council resolution that would have condemned settlement growth.

Washington’s response to the International Criminal Court’s efforts to investigate potential Israeli war crimes is equally hostile. Despite lifting sanctions that the Trump administration imposed on I.C.C. officials investigating the United States’s conduct in Afghanistan, the Biden team remains adamantly opposed to any I.C.C. investigation into Israel’s actions.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or B.D.S., which was founded in 2005 as a nonviolent alternative to the murderous second intifada and which speaks in the language of human rights and international law, has been similarly stymied, including by many of the same American politicians who celebrated the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction South Africa. Joe Biden, who is proud of his role in passing sanctions against South Africa, has condemned the B.D.S. movement, saying it “too often veers into antisemitism.” About 35 states — some of which once divested state funds from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa — have passed laws or issued executive orders punishing companies that boycott Israel. In many cases, those punishments apply even to businesses that boycott only Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Palestinians have noticed. In the words of Dana El Kurd, a Palestinian American political scientist, “Palestinians have lost faith in the efficacy of nonviolent protest as well as the possible role of the international community.” Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas’s military wing, cited this disillusionment during last Saturday’s attack. “In light of the orgy of occupation and its denial of international laws and resolutions, and in light of American and Western support and international silence,” he declared, “we’ve decided to put an end to all this.”

They have lost faith and are frustrated because no one is just going to give them what they want through discussion and negotiation, because they don't have a legitimate claim. There isn't any reason to give them what they want just because they want it--I earnestly want a nice house in Arlington, can be very passionate about, talk about it all the time, tell people I should have, use nice words, but that doesn't mean others will oblige. Sometimes it is time to just stop and focus on something else.
But ok, they can choose violence, and suffer consequences (and I guess complain about them as they are now as if some grand injustice is going on when the violence didn't have to happen in the first place).

Well, I guess there you have it. Nothing is available to them through negotiation and peace, as you just said. They also have no “legitimate claim”, as you also just said.

So all the talk about Palestinians squandering multiple chances for a peaceful existence and a state of their own was rooted in Israeli lies, so it seems. Is that what you’re staring here for everyone?

yes, looks like nothing is available to them trough peace. No one thinks their cause is valid. So yes, they can choose to live a civilized life or be violent, but suffer the consequences without looking for pity. We all have to analyze our wants and desires in this way, Palestinians are not special and exempt from this. No inherent reason they must get what they want. Why?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An incisive essay by Peter Beinart penned early after Oct 7. Longread but worth it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/14/opinion/palestinian-ethical-resistance-answers-grief-and-rage.html?unlocked_article_code=Chw9pPdgieGcc-P-taTJRz00hk8idJF_rINeMYm3H6O1LP3HZVKgzTLsY8fS6U59Lf-fTpUy9b5OSBvH1X7VCJuGBBn0Nei1Nw06RB41Yp4ZsqJbAafc-5M0kfD0hhVGsYcka9xCeJ9JEdAU93UwwKcz9glEa77I6vtPqNQx0rC6GVnNRIAj86RcGYaxfThI2eoyxLhxZt-JQRhL2dUJbaZCpq8SxNt2i3_2I1a8kIDfHaeHwNnwsVlyX9jIiE4fzwhUx8Tp8pjHMNXf6Wu5W5QJpINVpqrjvsynBg0g-pUh8FVBPJcDkG_CcDOrywCSkfGdenneS6WUHK6Yl0R4HTTqiPvsnXncOB3vU6ZdkiUbGIoIZQNIPR5Wec_0YA&smid=url-share

Palestinians are not fundamentally different from other people facing oppression: When moral resistance doesn’t work, they try something else. In 1972, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, which was modeled on the civil rights movement in the United States, organized a march to oppose imprisonment without trial. Although some organizations, most notably the Provisional Irish Republican Army, had already embraced armed resistance, they grew stronger after British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians in what became known as Bloody Sunday. By the early 1980s, the Irish Republican Army had even detonated a bomb outside Harrods, the department store in London. As Kirssa Cline Ryckman, a political scientist, observed in a 2019 paper on why certain movements turn violent, a lack of progress in peaceful protest “can encourage the use of violence by convincing demonstrators that nonviolence will fail to achieve meaningful concessions.”

Israel, with America’s help, has done exactly that. It has repeatedly undermined Palestinians who sought to end Israel’s occupation through negotiations or nonviolent pressure. As part of the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Palestine Liberation Organization renounced violence and began working with Israel — albeit imperfectly — to prevent attacks on Israelis, something that revolutionary groups like the A.N.C. and the Irish Republican Army never did while their people remained under oppression. At first, as Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political scientist, has detailed, Palestinians supported cooperation with Israel because they thought it would deliver them a state. In early 1996, Palestinian support for the Oslo process reached 80 percent while support for violence against Israelis dropped to 20 percent.

The 1996 election of Benjamin Netanyahu, and the failure of Israel and its American patron to stop settlement growth, however, curdled Palestinian sentiment. Many Jewish Israelis believe that Ehud Barak, who succeeded Mr. Netanyahu, offered Palestinians a generous deal in 2000. Most Palestinians, however, saw Mr. Barak’s offer as falling far short of a fully sovereign state along the 1967 lines. And their disillusionment with a peace process that allowed Israel to entrench its hold over the territory on which they hoped to build their new country ushered in the violence of the second intifada. In Mr. Shikaki’s words, “The loss of confidence in the ability of the peace process to deliver a permanent agreement on acceptable terms had a dramatic impact on the level of Palestinian support for violence against Israelis.” As Palestinians abandoned hope, Hamas gained power.

After the brutal years of the second intifada, in which Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups repeatedly targeted Israeli civilians, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and Salam Fayyad, his prime minister from 2007 to 2013, worked to restore security cooperation and prevent anti-Israeli violence once again. Yet again, the strategy failed. The same Israeli leaders who applauded Mr. Fayyad undermined him in back rooms by funding the settlement growth that convinced Palestinians that security cooperation was bringing them only deepening occupation. Mr. Fayyad, in an interview with The Times’s Roger Cohen before he left office in 2013, admitted that because the “occupation regime is more entrenched,” Palestinians “question whether the P.A. can deliver. Meanwhile, Hamas gains recognition and is strengthened.”

As Palestinians lost faith that cooperation with Israel could end the occupation, many appealed to the world to hold Israel accountable for its violation of their rights. In response, both Democratic and Republican presidents have worked diligently to ensure that these nonviolent efforts fail. Since 1997, the United States has vetoed more than a dozen United Nations Security Council resolutions criticizing Israel for its actions in the West Bank and Gaza. This February, even as Israel’s far-right government was beginning a huge settlement expansion, the Biden administration reportedly wielded a veto threat to drastically dilute a Security Council resolution that would have condemned settlement growth.

Washington’s response to the International Criminal Court’s efforts to investigate potential Israeli war crimes is equally hostile. Despite lifting sanctions that the Trump administration imposed on I.C.C. officials investigating the United States’s conduct in Afghanistan, the Biden team remains adamantly opposed to any I.C.C. investigation into Israel’s actions.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or B.D.S., which was founded in 2005 as a nonviolent alternative to the murderous second intifada and which speaks in the language of human rights and international law, has been similarly stymied, including by many of the same American politicians who celebrated the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction South Africa. Joe Biden, who is proud of his role in passing sanctions against South Africa, has condemned the B.D.S. movement, saying it “too often veers into antisemitism.” About 35 states — some of which once divested state funds from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa — have passed laws or issued executive orders punishing companies that boycott Israel. In many cases, those punishments apply even to businesses that boycott only Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Palestinians have noticed. In the words of Dana El Kurd, a Palestinian American political scientist, “Palestinians have lost faith in the efficacy of nonviolent protest as well as the possible role of the international community.” Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas’s military wing, cited this disillusionment during last Saturday’s attack. “In light of the orgy of occupation and its denial of international laws and resolutions, and in light of American and Western support and international silence,” he declared, “we’ve decided to put an end to all this.”

They have lost faith and are frustrated because no one is just going to give them what they want through discussion and negotiation, because they don't have a legitimate claim. There isn't any reason to give them what they want just because they want it--I earnestly want a nice house in Arlington, can be very passionate about, talk about it all the time, tell people I should have, use nice words, but that doesn't mean others will oblige. Sometimes it is time to just stop and focus on something else.
But ok, they can choose violence, and suffer consequences (and I guess complain about them as they are now as if some grand injustice is going on when the violence didn't have to happen in the first place).

Well, I guess there you have it. Nothing is available to them through negotiation and peace, as you just said. They also have no “legitimate claim”, as you also just said.

So all the talk about Palestinians squandering multiple chances for a peaceful existence and a state of their own was rooted in Israeli lies, so it seems. Is that what you’re staring here for everyone?

yes, looks like nothing is available to them trough peace. No one thinks their cause is valid. So yes, they can choose to live a civilized life or be violent, but suffer the consequences without looking for pity. We all have to analyze our wants and desires in this way, Palestinians are not special and exempt from this. No inherent reason they must get what they want. Why?

*through peace

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nothing excuses 10/7, but to say that Israel is justified and totally blameless in both the conditions on the ground prior and its indiscriminate response in the aftermath ignores objective reality. Worse, it prevents real progress towards a lasting solution.

Who is asking for progress? Many (including Israel) are fine with the status quo.