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.
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Notes -
This sentence bothered me a lot, because I think it really hammers home that Ike Saul is drowning in both-sides-ism. There is a world where Israelis and Muslims and Jews live side by side with equal rights, fully integrated and defused of their hate: it's called "Israel." The 20% of Israel's citizens who are Palestinian Arabs are not the problem, here. Those Palestinians who turned their noses up at a single state solution put themselves (and their descendants) in the "box" Saul decries. Hamas does not want a world of Israelis and Arabs and Muslims and Jews living side by side with equal rights. Only the Israelis want that. There are no Arabic states in which diverse groups of people live side by side with equal rights.
It's amazing to watch people equivocate in their response to this single, incredibly hard truth. The reason Israelis tell you this is because all the evidence points to it being true. To say "there is no disputing" that Israelis killing innocents engenders rage, and yet mumble about crystal balls when it is pointed out that Hamas and their backers are fully committed to the extermination of Israel, is insane to me. Exactly one side of this conflict is openly genocidal, and it's not the Israelis. "Oh I agree that Hamas is evil but it's very important that we blame Israel even for that" is such a mind-boggling take, to me.
Lebanon, albeit it’s not exactly peaceful, would seem to fit the bill.
...how?
In July of 2020, Nagi Gergi Zeidan wrote, "Today, there are 29 Jews left in Lebanon — and they are all hiding." This does not appear to have changed.
To be completely clear, you think that absent persecution, a noticeable number of people entitled by law to live in Israel would continue to live in Lebanon?
Lebanon is not a peaceful society, and maintaining a large group membership seems pretty important for keeping yourself in that society, but multiple kinds of Christians and Muslims do in fact live side by side there, and do in fact have actual in practice equal rights there.
I have not said that, nor does that seem to me in any way relevant to the conversation. The standard set by the article was:
In the first place, "living side by side" connotes a measure of peace, which you acknowledge Lebanon lacks. In the second, the Jews living there clearly do not regard themselves as enjoying equal rights. "But some Christians do!" is not a refutation of any kind.
I do not know what you think to prove. You seem at best trying to pick a nit grounded in my paraphrasing, and yet even then you are doing it badly.
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Lebanon still has Christians, as does Egypt.
What do you think that gets you?
I'm mystified by this kind of response to my claim, which explicitly cribs the words of the article about "Israelis and Arabs and Muslims and Jews living side by side with equal rights." Suggesting countries that are neither noticeably diverse nor countries that are in any plausible way committed to equal rights does not meet the spirit of the original text. "Not counting expats, we have like, two or three different religious minorities in our country!" is, I grant, a kind of "diversity," but this is still not a cultural (much less jurisprudential) commitment to the kind of broad-spectrum liberal tolerance Westerners have in mind when they talk about diverse peoples living "side by side with equal rights."
"Lebanese Jews are afraid for their lives, but they do have Christians so technically they are a nation of diverse people living side by side" does not meet the standard of "Israelis and Arabs and Muslims and Jews living side by side with equal rights." And that's before addressing stuff like sex, sexuality, political freedom, and related concerns.
Which country would qualify this standard?
Jews usually have protected statuses in Western countries, with specific laws or law enforcement rules protecting them, social media companies having antisemitism-specific regulations and anti-antisemitism groups openly controlling their content... Meanwhile there are anti-muslims rules and laws against hijabs, mosque building, honor-killing, etc. It seems to me that it would be hard to say that muslims and jews have equal rights in the West.
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To add to this, it omits Christians, who have been ethnically cleansed from almost all of Israel's neighboring states to the extent that just glassing Gaza entirely would barely put Israel on par with them, but maybe not even on par.
Speaking of which, how are Gaza’s Christians doing? The rumors of St Porphyrius church getting blown up don’t appear to be true, but Christians in Gaza seem like they have better odds of convincing someone to take them in on the basis of ‘we’re not terrorists, just ruled by crazy people’.
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Quit your lying. The Israeli negotiating position at Oslo and Camp David was colossally disingenuous and offered terms nobody would accept.
They even admitted negotiations were a joke:
Meanwhile of course, the Israelis were busy adding new 'facts on the ground' like they've been doing the whole time.
If you don't negotiate honestly, in good faith, you won't get a diplomatic solution.
Oman? I invite you to substantiate this assertion further. And it's not like Israel's doing great at this either.
This simply isn't true, even putting to one side all the Muslims they've expelled and designated non-citizens. Taking Arab land and redistributing it to Israeli settlers for instance. Demolishing 100 times more Palestinian houses than they let them build. Refusing to let Arabs, Israeli citizens or not, live in several hundred Israeli small towns. Restrictions on freedom of speech, assembly and movement.
The Israelis clearly don't want a country where Jews and Muslims live side by side, they want a country where Jews are on top, they take action to achieve it and they've enshrined it into law:
Pro-Israel people should base their arguments on the rule of force because they don't really have a leg to stand on in terms of morality.
@naraburns might not have modded you for calling him a liar, but I will.
No matter how strongly you feel about someone's opinion, you may not personally attack people, and calling someone a liar is definitely a personal attack. If you genuinely believe someone is lying, you'd better be able to make a very solid case for that beyond "Your opinion is wrong and bad." You aren't a mind-reader, so the bar for accusing someone of lying is very high, and I suggest you don't try.
I don't feel like I've ever seen this rule enforced before.
Example.
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We have definitely modded people for calling other posters liars before.
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I have not said anything known to me to be untrue, and I find this level of antagonism as surprising as it is unwarranted.
Oman? This Oman? I see no indication that their country qualifies as a counterexample.
As for Israel, I have nothing to say in defense of Israel's own errors. That they are the sole liberal democracy in the Middle East is not an assertion that they are perfect, or even that they are good. I find none of this relevant to any of the statements I made in my previous post. I think @Pasha makes an interesting counterclaim that the 20% Arab population of Israel is being deliberately limited to that in order to preserve the Jewish state, that seems plausible to me. But it is still substantially more tolerant of Arabs and Muslims, than any sharia-oriented country is of Jews. You mentioned Oman, the first sentence of this Wikipedia page is worth chewing on:
Anyway, I think maybe you've confused me for someone else, or something, because most of what you've written here is entirely beside the point. I am not pro-Israel in any meaningful sense of the words. But I am very, very anti-Hamas, to say nothing of their bloodthirsty paymasters.
Later sentences in the same article:
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Agreed on your last paragraph strongly. She wrote a lot of words that basically said she had no solutions. And in all the rambling she said the right answer and rejected it. As long as that is true there really isn’t a solution. The correct thing to do with a homicidal criminal is to put them in prison. And everything seems to indicate it’s not that bad of prison.
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The reason a "one-state" solution is impossible is that the current arrangement can only be maintained as long as that ratio doesn't go above 20%-ish (which includes various groups more sympathetic to Israel like Christian Arabs and Druzes). If there was a real one-state, it would not be a functional democracy and certainly not a Jewish one, which is the point of Zionism in the first place. There has never been any doubt that Zionists will not give Arabs political rights unless if they are small enough to not be threatening. Israel purposefully crafted its citizenship laws to exclude vast majority of Arabs, and only expanded the citizenship status slowly and to small groups once Jewish immigration meant that this would not alter the voting population much. It is extremely hypocritical to pretend this is not true and somehow non-Israel passport holder Arabs could get equal political rights if only they wanted. Even in best case scenario (where peace and friendship between the peoples are established by magic tomorrow), this would never be accepted by Israel as there are not enough Jews left in the world to immigrate and keep up the population ratio in Jews' favor.
What is that evidence exactly? West Bank is defanged and as a result it is rapidly being invaded by Jewish settlements inflicting death by thousand cuts to the already tiny Arab ghettoes. And this happens even while Arabs are very much sticking to their guns. Not to mention that the far-right is rapidly taking over Israeli politics. These people are the future.
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