As I write these words, I am sitting at home in Tel Aviv, trying to figure out how to protect my family in a house with no shelter or safe room, following with growing panic the reports and rumors of horrible events taking place in the Israeli towns near Gaza which are under attack. I see people, some of them my friends, calling on social media to attack Gaza more fiercely than ever before. Some Israelis are saying that now is the time to eradicate Gaza entirely — essentially calling for genocide. Through all the explosions, the dread and the bloodshed, speaking about peaceful solutions seems like madness to them.
Yet I remember that everything that I am feeling now, which every Israeli must be sharing, has been the life experience of millions of Palestinians for far too long. The only solution, as it has always been, is to bring an end of apartheid, occupation, and siege, and promote a future based on justice and equality for all of us. It is not in spite of the horror that we have to change course — it is exactly because of it.
I wish more people could adhere to this. The entire world seems to be heading in a bad direction.
Almost a century ago, our forefathers had fought against a rising tide of tyranny, marching almost relentlessly across the world.
I suppose it’s may soon be our turn to fight again…
By making the Palestinians pay the price for Europe’s crimes?
I really don’t think that’s what they were saying.
True
But that is exactly what is happening.
To be more clear: I’m pretty sure the person you responded to was lamenting the general rise in authoritarianism everywhere
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I say just have a proper death match and whoever is left, is left.
The comments in this thread are mind blowing. Simply put, people are cheering for pure terrorists who also want to kill all Jews, while condemning the side who has offered peace treaties multiple times, and always been either flat out rejected, or betrayed.
And somehow just because you hit back with a bigger stick after your children have been blown to bits, you’re the bad guy.
There’s a “both bad” crowd here, totally rejecting reality, and then a surprisingly large pro-terrorism crowd.
What the fuck.
Oh and don’t forget OP speaking about writing this from Tel Aviv as he would be living in Israel. He’s in UK.
I mean, both sides are bad, killing civilians in retaliation for a terror attack is still killing civilians. But to pretend that the terrorism is somehow justified is just wrong.
The sentiment, when I wrote my comment, was largely “Hamas good, Israeli bad”, which was just baffling.
Both sides have done horrible things, but only one 100% extremist and wants to rid the world of certain group of people. Remind you of a particular regime from the 40s?
Of course the whole situation is more nuanced, but that’s the brass tacs, and I just can’t wrap my head around how anyone can be pro Hamas.
You should have uncritical support of Palestinian resistance.
Its okay to have critical support of organisations like hamas.
We’re also left in a situation where Hamas is the most powerful group in the fight for Palestine because Israel funded them in the 80s to take power away from the more sane leftist PLO.
Nothing deserves uncritical support imho.
Always uncritical support for oppressed peoples resistance against oppression
Israel’s government supported and enabled Hamas because it was expedient. And to weaken credible self determination movements like PLO.
Israel created this situation.
Germany supported and enabled Hitler because it seemed convenient. Yet, we don’t blame the enabler or bystander for the actions of criminals and terrorists. Hamas is responsible for what Hamas does.
Irrelevant to today’s leadership challenges. You cannot undo what happened 30 years ago
Israel created the situation, which is not irrelevant.
It’s neither that simple nor relevant to the current situation.
You do know what quotes are, right? The things OP wrote are direct excerpts from the article, which you’d know, had you bothered to read it before commenting. Instead you chose to waste your time, going through OPs posts smh…
There’s a “both bad” crowd here, totally rejecting reality, and then a surprisingly large pro-terrorism crow
While I am extremely sympathetic to Palestinians who are totally fucked by Israel as well as Israeli citizens who are caught in a crossfire and victims of terrorist attacks, both sides are very much bad here, in terms of leadership.
That the Israeli government has effectively no plan for long-term de-escalation and encourages far-right hardliners is unacceptable. That Palestinians are increasingly clinging to Hamas and calling for Israel’s destruction is unacceptable.
Regardless of the history (and I am very aware of the repeated and at times extremely generous peace plans put forth), what matters is competency and leadership today, and the leadership of both sides here has unflinchingly chosen escalation
As a result, there is no option for Israel after this attack except an overwhelming show of force, which is both tragic and as clear and example as you can get that recent leadership has utterly failed to provide genuine safety.
This reads like one of those “I have some black friends, here’s why they’re inferior” type of rants. Lol
Absolute horseshit.
Your entire comment history makes it clear you live in the UK.
You’re taking advantage of this horrific attack on Israel to do some sick false flag attack, that’s basically: “I’m an Israeli and we deserve this!”
What gave you away was that ignorant"apartheid" bullshit. Anyone living in Tel Aviv knows full well that Muslims and Arabs have full citizenship rights in Israel, including leadership roles in government.
What an asshole.
Real Israelis are dying because their genocidal neighbors who have been trying to kill them for decades have just made another attempt, and you’re here lying so that your can both-sides this issue?
Disgusting.
I didn’t use the word apartheid but it absolutely is. And individual Israelis don’t deserve this any more than the Palestinians deserve it. But your country is in the grip of absolute fanatics who absolutely will not settle for peace.
Israel has the 4th or 5th largest military in the world. The Palestinians have home-made rockets and stones. Don’t you dare play the victim.
Because if they didn’t have one of the largest and powerful militaries, they would’ve been genocided again.
You have to be pretty stupid to think that whoever has the better weapon is the bad guy.
Israel is the only party with the power to end this.
Quite the contrary.
They offered the most generous peace deal in history, and Palestinians turned them down.
Palestinians want the right of return, which would allow Palestinians to claim Israeli citizens in such numbers that they would be able to vote to turn Israel into an anti-Jewish theocracy. It would be the end of democracy in the region, and the end of all the Jews in short order.
That’s been the Palestinian sticking-point.
Israel can’t end that.
If I came in to your house and started claiming rooms, and kept saying I’ll stop if you agree that we split the house, I have a feeling you wouldn’t want to agree or say it’s a generous deal.
That’s a terrible analogy, which for all kinds of reasons doesn’t fit the fact set of how Israel came to be. But let’s pretend for a moment that it isn’t.
Let’s say the British stole my grandparents’ house from them, and control the deed to the house, and that my parents lived in it as tenants, subject to the whims of the British, and now, I have inherited the lease on the house.
You are a refugee who escaped genocide, and you negotiated with Britain for a new home.
Britain gives you a deed to half the house, and tells me that I have to move my stuff to the other side of the house to make room for you.
Britain also tells me that it will give me ownership of my half of the house. I’ll no longer be leasing it from them.
I think this is a pretty shitty deal, because, hey, Britain never had a right to take the house in the first place. So I tell Britain to go fuck themselves, and I make a plan that when you move in, I will MURDER YOU AND YOUR FAMILY. My neighbors all agree that this is a great plan.
You move into my house, and see that I haven’t moved my stuff. You tell me you’re going to take my stuff and own it, and I can stay on that half of the house and pay you rent.
I say “fuck you”, and you beat the shit out of me, and throw me into my half of the house which, by the way, I still don’t have a deed for.
Now I’m super pissed, so I wait for your must sacred holiday, and while you are deep in worship, I gather all my neighbors and try to invade your side of the house and murder you.
To EVERYONE’S surprise, you kick all our asses. You fight so well you take my side of the house, and pieces of each of my neighbors’ houses!
You tell my neighbors you just want to live in peace, and you’re willing to give back the part of the house you occupy in exchange for peace. They agree.
You make the same offer to me.
I tell you to go fuck yourself.
My brother who lives with me, kills one of your kids. You kill my brother in retaliation, and in the process kill one of my kids.
I spend the next decade trying to murder you and get you out of my house, but for every but if damage I do to you, you revisit it on me tenfold.
You are never, ever, ever going to leave my house. I can’t make you. No one can make you.
You come to me and say, hey, I’m still willing to give you the deed to your side of the house. We can both move in from this. We each have many children left. We can make a situation where they prosper together.
I tell you I’ll only make peace with you if I can move back in to your side of the house, with all my family, and some of my neighbors, and until we outnumber you and your family, and then we can vote on who has the deed to your side of the house.
You tell me that’s never going to happen, because you know if you agree to that, I will take ownership whole house back, and kick you out and probably also murder you.
You, unsurprisingly, don’t like this idea, do you say no.
I declare a second antifada and kill another one of your kids.
You build a giant fence separating my side if the house from yours.
You control the front door, so the only packages you let into my side contain food, medicine, and basic necessities.
Over the years I watch you get richer and more comfortable. My family suffers in poverty.
Any time you discuss offering peace, I tell you I either get the whole house or I’ll keep trying to kill you.
You’re getting better at defending yourself as the years go by. You are thriving.
My children have no future to speak of. If I loved them more than I hate you, I’d just accept the deed to half the house and see if we can work together and live side by side in prosperity.
But I don’t. I fucking hate you so fucking much. So I teach my kids to hate you, and I strap bombs to them and send them to try to hurt you.
… And that’s pretty much where we are today.
It does fit because the Brits gave me the house down the street years ago when they owned the street and I’ve not stopped taking other houses.
There’s no point talking about what happened to the original house.
You’re angry at what I’m doing now to you and your family. Taking your house because I believe have all the power and right to do so and you have no power or right to stop me.
You have every right to be angry and strike back in self defence against such oppression.
Its not for people who have no fear of ever experiencing this oppression to judge you or your actions.
Also you believe indigenous people need a deed to the land for them to not have it stolen from them. Cringe take. Would you say that Americans were justified in their actions towards the native Americans because they had no official ownership of their land in the eyes of Europe.
Oh well, if one guy disagrees, the historical record must be wrong!
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They might consider using quotation marks in the future.
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I hope the world remembers this the next time they want to start calling Israel apartheid for building security fences on their borders.
For their entire existence they’ve lived with genocidal neighbors who would, in a heartbeat, murder all Jewish children and wipe them from the map.
Palestinian terrorists have been raining rockets down at Israeli civilians constantly for years.
But if Israel does a targeted, surgical strike of terrorist infrastructure, CALLING the buildings ahead of time to people evacuate, and even dropping a warning shot first… There is no end to people calling Israel the villain.
Hell, people lose their shit if Israel bulldozes a house that Palestinians were using as a terrorist base.
Glad to see at long last that the world is remembering who the actual terrorists are, and finally backing Israel.
There are so many things I could say to this, but I’ll just leave these here instead:
As some gamers would say: Git gud
That just shows that Israel has the better military. Everyone already knows that.
It has nothing to do with who is justified in the conflict.
If 10,000 people wielding rocks tried to take over the Whitehouse, I’m pretty sure we’d see 10,000 dead people with rocks in their hands. Does that make them the good guys?
Palestinians have been TARGETING Israeli children for death. Israel had been targeting military targets, and with a better record of minimizing civilian casualties than even the United States.
… Let’s it put it this way: if Palestinians put down their weapons, this conflict would be over in a matter of months.
If Israel out down their weapons, Palestinians would murder them all. It’s in their elected leaders’ charter, for fucks sake.
🙉🙈🙊
You just look up Israeli snipers and killing children if you want to talk about targeting children.
I mean you had plenty of people try to take over the white house on Jan 6 and not a lot of them were shot.
Also by your rock example, are you telling me you think all of the 31,000 Palestinians killed by IDF or settlers in 2018 were active combatants?
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If you have a source for that, share it.
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The big difference between the sides is that Israel’s rules of engagement are all about minimizing civilian casualties, and when one of their soldiers violates that policy, Israel investigates and punishes them. Contrast that to Hamas, who have no rules of engagement, and deliberately and openly celebrate their targeting of Israeli civilians. And when they succeed in killing innocent children, they are celebrated.
Seems like a lot of people making unvarified claims. Nothing new.
The commission, set up by the UN Human Rights Council in May, said that “more than 6,000 unarmed demonstrators were shot by military snipers” during weeks of protest.
“The Commission found reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot at journalists, health workers, children and persons with disabilities, knowing they were clearly recognisable as such,” it said.
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Read the fucking room. Or better still, the article. Israel is the aggressor and has left the Palestinians nothing to lose.
I’m sorry but that’s not true, there are going to be consequences for this. Israel cannot back down now because it sets an absolute precedent that you can do shit like this to get your way. I do not agree with Israel’s policies in the region or the atrocities that they certainly have committed but this… this has the power to turn public opinion. The repercussions are going to be horrifying and hamas knows it, and they don’t care.
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Yes, they should just lay down and take it. Maybe we should give them all some of those super loud rape whistles and they can just all blow them constantly. That will surely make the Israelis stop.
I did read the room. Caught you in a pathetic lie.
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ADL money probably
That ain’t it, chief. Israel is a violent colonizer. Individual Jews are often persecuted for being Jewish. Those are separate and unrelated statements.
If you want to know who the lying shill is, look elsewhere in the thread. I called him out, and you can see his comment history for yourself.
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I believe it is not possible,
not for me,
not for you,
to have a complete and balance view of the whole situation. Trying to do so would drive me mad with anger and desperation.
