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Secular Israeli society is also undergoing severe genetic decline as a consequence of Ashkenazi - Mizrachi intermarriage, and the more endogamous Charedim don’t serve in the IDF or Mossad, so you will find no disagreement from me there.
It was extremely common in the mid 90s in mainstream Western leftist (not even radically, mainstream-ish publications like the NYRB, the Guardian’s opinion section, the Center-left French and Italian press) to justify the first intifada’s terror attacks against civilians including teenagers and children on similar grounds, that these were dispossessed people just trying to defend their land and doing what they could in protest. It’s nothing new, it’s common even.
If some Native American terror movement rises out of the alcoholic emptiness of the reservations to start committing terror attacks against white American civilians, including children then I fully expect that the reaction on this sub will be the same as the Israeli one.
These narratives were justifying Palestinian hatred of Israel, which is different from saying 'They’re boys who try to storm the food distribution sites'. It's the same kind of difference between 'Yes the Palestinians attack Israeli civilians but that's OK because X' and 'actually, there is no such thing as an Israeli civilian, they're fighting-age men/women and due to conscription they're all military targets - anything is permitted'. The former is an attempt at some kind of moral argument excusing admitted hatred, the latter is a way to cover up actions that stem from hatred as practical necessity. If the Israelis were really so concerned about old men and women/children getting food, they wouldn't restrict food aid so much. There are many better ways to prevent crowd crush or rationalize food distribution besides machine-gun fire and artillery!
The whole concept is bizarre. Suppose the Palestinians somehow laid so many roadside bombs Israelis couldn't get food without being gruesomely maimed. Then the Palestinians say 'oh they were clearly trying to steal food, we were simply punishing thieves per age-old traditions - cutting a leg here or there with a landmine works wonders to prevent theft'. It's just adding insult to injury.
The key difference is that native Americans get all kinds of special privileges in America. Native Americans get special casino rights, scholarships and all kinds of affirmative action.
Many on this forum are too accustomed to dismissing racism and oppression. Most of the time, the concept is used inappropriately. Blacks in America receive all kinds of special privileges, the US media and govt tries to sweep black anti-white terror attacks under the rug. So the narrative that they're systemically oppressed doesn't hold. The US military doesn't set up 'if you come near our command post we will shoot you and then confirm the kill' zones in black neighbourhoods. If George Floyd was a 13 year old girl being shot at from long range, people here would likely have a different stance.
Nevertheless, it is possible for one people to actually oppress another. Palestinians don't get to jury-vote their coethnics out of crimes in Israeli courts, there is/was no Palestinian president of Israel... they're actually being oppressed.
Sure, but why? Because they’ve engaged in a (so far) futile decades-long campaign to reverse the Jewish settlement of the levant that eventually angered the settlers enough that they imposed a series of escalating forms of oppression on them. Losing East Jerusalem, much of the West Bank, various other territories was the direct consequence of losing wars (just as it was for the Native Americans) many times in a row. The walls and checkpoints that prevent many Palestinians from living and working in Israel were likewise erected solely in response to terror attacks on Israeli civilians committed by these people and in their name. At every juncture, the noose tightened slowly because the Palestinians did not admit defeat and surrender, culturally and militarily, which is the route to survival for any conquered people.
Native Americans have reservations and affirmative action, sure, but many live on territory far removed from their ancestral homeland due to the westward forced migrations of the 19th century, and in total they have only a tiny percentage of their historical holdings (obviously), far less proportionally than the Palestinians have. Much of the Indian welfare and casino apparatus also only came into being a century or more after the great majority of the country was ethnically cleansed of most or all of its native population, so Israel has time yet.
There has been no effective organized black nationalist movement in American history, and the last ineffective one fizzled out in the 1970s. Crime stats are one thing (almost no black-on-white crime is ‘terrorism’, that ascribes a political and ideological aspiration to the perpetrators that, as mentioned, they just don’t have), 300 armed and trained black men aren’t invading the country club to slaughter the men and rape the women as part of a race war against whites designed to drive them back to Europe, that isn’t something that happens in America.
There is a world in which the Palestinians accepted the reasonable 1967 borders (after already losing to Israel twice), kept a substantial proportion of their land, fortified their borders with the help of their Arab neighbors (such that no settlers would be coming in) and set up a relatively peaceful coexistence with Israel. As they did before and after, they chose otherwise. Gaza would not have been destroyed if Hamas hadn’t gambled on Hezbollah and West Bank Palestinians successfully joining a huge uprising on October 7th.
The Arabs are actually oppressed, certainly. But they are oppressed because they have continued to make very bad decisions in service of their pride over their comfort, liberty and life for so many years and show no sign of stopping. They had options and still do, if worse ones.
You're just describing how imperialism works, that's how countries get their borders. My point is that defensive violence is basically reasonable. It can't be less reasonable than offensive violence.
Most accept this and would take it a step further, viewing defensive violence as legitimate and offensive violence as wrong. Israel routinely says it's fighting a defensive struggle for survival to justify its tactics and campaigns, to justify foreign military aid and diplomatic assistance. But they're fighting offensively.
The Israelis didn't accept those borders and rejected them, that's why they took various territories beyond '67 borders in the Six Day War. They changed those borders and have continued to cement their territorial holdings by splitting up the Palestinian held land in the West Bank, creating new settlements.
Reasonable borders are based on power and Israeli power is unstable.
Israel is not a great power due to its small size and doesn't have the luxury of prosecuting this kind of campaign, they only get away with it due to US diplomatic and military support. Without America, they would've run out of bombs to blow up Gaza with and much else besides. Without America, their missile defence would be much less effective. Without American diplomacy and aid deals their neighbours would be much more hostile. The Israeli situation is unstable, they have a high-tech economy dependent on not being sanctioned, a high-tech military dependent on US weapons, a fractious democracy unsuited for juche-style isolation.
Constantly angering the Arab and Islamic world is not a smart idea. Israelis may be better at fighting but they're vastly outnumbered. This is not America vs native Americans. It is provocative and obnoxious behaviour to derive national legitimacy from harsh treatment in the ghettoes and expulsions in Eastern Europe and then ghettoize the locals of a graciously granted strip of land, while continuously striving to expand it for lebensraum. This kind of behaviour has and will reduce favourability in the West.
The Palestinians have made bad decisions, so has Israel. There may not be much sympathy for yet another Israeli crisis where they 'need' a surge of aid and support to get out of a fix. What is their plan for China inciting trouble, getting Hamas some first-rate MANPADs, ATGMs and killer drones to drag the US into more MENA drama? What is their plan for EU sanctions or the US walking away? Or even just a prolonged insurgency and skirmishing with Iran that wrecks their economy? Vae victis works both ways.
Yes, Israel was founded in the wrong place.
I reject the characterization of colonialism as wrong. The end of empire led to a sustained and considerable decline in quality of life in many parts of the world.
While I agree that Israel’s future is very uncertain Israeli unreasonableness has yet to be tested. In the event of European sanctions and American disengagement, an end to all aid, a prolonged military crisis and food supply issues, I think there’s every chance that in the resulting domestic political upheaval they negotiate with the Europeans and Gulf Arabs and agree to some kind of two-state solution; they know if they’re overrun its lights out forever, or at least another 2000 years.
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