naraburns nihil supernum
6mo ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
I've seen a few people wonder why some people support Palestine in this conflict. While videos like this one (which predates the current conflict) are undoubtedly propaganda, they do offer a window into the worldview of a person who supports Palestine.
Wikipedia claims that 40% of male Palestinians have spent some time in an Israeli prison. I hear about Israel demolishing 55,000 Palestinian structures as of 2022. I remember that Gaza had been blockaded by Egypt and Israel since 2005, despite Israel supposedly backing out of Gaza.
Even if every example of Israelis killing Palestinian civilians was collateral damage or accident, even if we assume that the cameras showing Israeli brutality always start rolling at the perfect moment to make it look like unnecessary brutality on their part, it's obvious to me that Palestine won't be able to grow under its current conditions of occupation. If the United States supports Israel, then Israel will prevail and Palestine will lose little by little every year. It will be a slow motion catastrophe, and there is nothing Palestine can do about it.
Is national, regional and global stability worth anything to the Palestinian people under such conditions? No wonder people are posting music videos in this thread of Palestinians with pipe dreams of Russia becoming a global super power again, and supporting Palestine to spite the United States. They're fucked, and I think there's something noble in fighting until you're wiped from the Earth by your enemy. Even if history remembers you as a monster, they will remember you.
I think at least for me, the question is “what exactly are the Jews supposed to do here?” People love to criticize, but I don’t think any other groups would have as measured a response as Israel has to a group of people living within a stone’s throw of their major cities having a stated aim to kill them and wipe them off the map, and who regularly target civilians with rockets and bombs and terrorist attacks. If the native tribes of North America were regularly launching missiles from their reservations, we’d probably have a very similar response. If they do all the things Palestinians regularly do from Gaza, there’d be a wall, guards, and everything else.
We’re not thinking that way because for most of us, warfare, especially warfare of this type hasn’t happened in our countries for almost a century. It’s pretty easy to sit back and arm chair quarterback when war is something you only know from movies and that being too restrained is free for me in the USA who doesn’t have do worry about anyone you know suffering the consequences. When it’s your city, your people, and so on, anyone would tend to err on the side of protecting their own.
Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank
The arabs could have taken a two state solution in the original partition - they decided to attack the new nation of Israel instead. They could have had two states in 2000 with Clinton helping - nope, turned that down. They could have elected someone to help them build Gaza into something great, nope elected literal Nazi sympathizers who want to do a genocide. I mean, at some point, what can you do?
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Notes -
I've seen a few people wonder why some people support Palestine in this conflict. While videos like this one (which predates the current conflict) are undoubtedly propaganda, they do offer a window into the worldview of a person who supports Palestine.
I'm honestly a little conflicted about who I should support. I condemn the killing of civilians by Hamas last weekend, but then I see United Nations OCHA data like this, where it says that 3,208 Palestinian civilians have died from 2008 to 2020 (compared to 177 Israeli civilians over the same period), mostly from air-launched explosions. I see people talking about supporting "the Jewish state’s justified but often brutal response", which so far includes blowing up a Palestinian house full of civilians with no warning, killing those inside, blowing up marketplaces and mosques, and attacking the Jabalia refugee camp.
Wikipedia claims that 40% of male Palestinians have spent some time in an Israeli prison. I hear about Israel demolishing 55,000 Palestinian structures as of 2022. I remember that Gaza had been blockaded by Egypt and Israel since 2005, despite Israel supposedly backing out of Gaza.
Even if every example of Israelis killing Palestinian civilians was collateral damage or accident, even if we assume that the cameras showing Israeli brutality always start rolling at the perfect moment to make it look like unnecessary brutality on their part, it's obvious to me that Palestine won't be able to grow under its current conditions of occupation. If the United States supports Israel, then Israel will prevail and Palestine will lose little by little every year. It will be a slow motion catastrophe, and there is nothing Palestine can do about it.
Is national, regional and global stability worth anything to the Palestinian people under such conditions? No wonder people are posting music videos in this thread of Palestinians with pipe dreams of Russia becoming a global super power again, and supporting Palestine to spite the United States. They're fucked, and I think there's something noble in fighting until you're wiped from the Earth by your enemy. Even if history remembers you as a monster, they will remember you.
I think at least for me, the question is “what exactly are the Jews supposed to do here?” People love to criticize, but I don’t think any other groups would have as measured a response as Israel has to a group of people living within a stone’s throw of their major cities having a stated aim to kill them and wipe them off the map, and who regularly target civilians with rockets and bombs and terrorist attacks. If the native tribes of North America were regularly launching missiles from their reservations, we’d probably have a very similar response. If they do all the things Palestinians regularly do from Gaza, there’d be a wall, guards, and everything else.
We’re not thinking that way because for most of us, warfare, especially warfare of this type hasn’t happened in our countries for almost a century. It’s pretty easy to sit back and arm chair quarterback when war is something you only know from movies and that being too restrained is free for me in the USA who doesn’t have do worry about anyone you know suffering the consequences. When it’s your city, your people, and so on, anyone would tend to err on the side of protecting their own.
they could have genuinely pursued a two state solution instead of using hamas to cripple the idea of palestinian statehood.
The arabs could have taken a two state solution in the original partition - they decided to attack the new nation of Israel instead. They could have had two states in 2000 with Clinton helping - nope, turned that down. They could have elected someone to help them build Gaza into something great, nope elected literal Nazi sympathizers who want to do a genocide. I mean, at some point, what can you do?
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