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Notes -
But this isn't the apologetic position.
The Israeli apologetic position is that they should be allowed to wreck Hamas and Gaza now precisely because things have not been harmonious and Palestinians willfully destroyed a dissatisfying but functional equilibrium meant to minimize their suffering (and the hit to Israeli PR) so fuck them.
The line is "they could have made Gaza a paradise but chose rockets" not "Gaza was a paradise and then the Fire Nation attacked".
Neither side actually defends the view that things were fine. The point is they're bad because of the other side and it's time to give up on pretending they'll ever be good with them still in the picture.
Thank you for the reminder and reframing. Gaza before Oct 7 was an attempt to give a safe space to people who identify as Palestinian, where they could be as free and democratic as they wanted. Oct 7 is what they did with it.
If they’d had their own nation-state ala the two-state solution, and if that nation had attacked Israel, the latter would be justified by the long-held rules of war to conquer the territory and rule.
All sufficiently accurately modeled hypotheticals come down to the cliche, “If the Palestinians laid down their arms today, tomorrow there would be peace. If the Israelis laid down their arms today, tomorrow they’d all be dead.”
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