cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/23289837
Using eyewitness reports, video footage, articles, photographs, eyewitness evidence and over investigatory material, much of it recorded by Israeli soldiers, the historian has produced what Haaretz calls “the most methodical and detailed documentation in Hebrew (there is also an English translation) of the war crimes that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza”.
Some of the most shocking incidents documented by Mordechai include a Palestinian woman with a child being shot while waving a white flag, starving girls being crushed to death while queuing for bread, a handcuffed 62-year-old Palestinian man getting run over by an Israeli tank and an air strike targeting people trying to help a wounded boy.
from #MiddleEastEye #MEE
By Nadav Rapaport in Tel Aviv, Israel and Oscar Rickett in London
Published date: 6 December 2024 14:25 GMT
Respect to you, Lee Mordechai. It takes a lot of bravery to do something like this; I’d imagine this will have some negative repercussions for his career.
This is a huge sort of cue that what is being done on the Israeli side has at least a substantial moral weight against it To say nothing of any overall “balance” of things
Every Israeli I’ve ever known born after 1980 has always supported multi state (typically a third for the Orthodox bc they’re tired of doing military service for religious scholars’ “safety”) and hates all of this. I worked in intelligence with hundreds of ex-IDF primarily special forces and cyber. They had me in tears pointing out and sharing their disgust with settlements lurking over every Arab or bedouin shack in the middle of nowhere. Netanyahu was hanging on by a thread to avoid the popular opinion that he should be in prison. This was his 9/11, WMD, moment.
And yet they’ve democratically elected Netanyahu yet AGAIN.
Every Israeli in America that I’ve known including some whose kids worked in the IDF, claim they are against what Israel is doing but gets strangely quiet if anyone else says it, or if others object to zionism in general, or zionist politicians. They seem to want to give lip service as pushback, and want that to be the end of the conversation. You’ll see a few oppose the war on gaza, but then push hard for Josh Shapio, the zionist noobie governor, as Bidens VP choice, or hem and haw about violent settler actions. They claim they feel scared of antizionists targetting them for zionisms crimes and feel “unsafe” in the US, but they demand a lot more assurance of their own voice than they are willing to give to the anti violence-across-the-board concerns of Palestinian safety, like when students or muslim americans exercise their right of political free speech. Its a very wierd convolution of self serving and principled, and its a bit sick.
This guy the story is about seems to be truly principled, so my hat is off to him and I hope he doesnt suffer for gathering the info about those war crimes. But you know 100% know that he will be violently oppressed for doing this, right? He will probably be imprisoned and then killed.
Please take the time to read this, because you sound intelligent and like you give a shit about other people. I hope you can understand my perspective whether you agree. But I spent too long writing this, and nobody is clicking this deep, so this is all for you, Internet stranger (and hopefully new friend). So take the time to really think about this and not about how you’re going to respond. At the end you’ll even find an example of what taught me to listen to people even if I know I vehemently disagree but accept I’ll never change their minds.
That’s the point of the below… Not to persuade you of an opinion (I haven’t even shared my opinions in here)
Occupied West Bank and Gaza, and further settlement anywhere, are a different conversation than the existence of Israel, as well as whether it be in the Levant.
You’re equivocating and intermingling what are two completely different concepts. And then intermingling your feelings and response.
When I asked all my progressive friends and colleagues what we can do (this was like…3 yrs ago?), they just got downtrodden and didn’t have hopeful answers. (Sounds like what you’ve described as weird or I extrapolated as you suggesting “shifty”. I think they’re just shutdown by an emotional trigger (you said they hate the war… Good guys, right?) combined with not having anything helpful to say)
They explain the conservative argument against Arab citizenship and voting rights is the resulting immediate “overthrow” of status quo bc of demographics, the subsequent changes to law, and the virtual destruction of Israel. They don’t like that hence preference to multi state.
Perhaps you can challenge your intellectual biases and ask your friends directly about why they believe in the existence of “an” Israel or any Jewish state. That’s a completely different conversation for them that perhaps you haven’t seen that way.
Are you pro choice? Have you argued with an anti choice person? It’s a fundamental belief to them that an embryo is a life. So your arguments don’t matter to them the way they do to you. If your friends fundamentally believe they need a home and they’re in one they have had and defended for nearly a century at this point, some Sephardim even longer, they can agree with a parallel of “the US stop invading Mexico” but not “the US should pack up and leave it’s land behind to the indigenous that have survived” (and even that gives grace bc not all Palestinians are generational like native Americans)
Your call for carefully boxing concepts to be examined seperately is a nonfunctional idea from the getgo. These things are all connected and deeply related, for zionists as much as rank-in-file jews, and any student of human nature and history. What you ask for is a carefully controlled ground in order to begin to argue your case, and life doesnt fit into that model. As an example, try explaining to someone in a carefully concept boxed way why right wing jews spit on christian travelers in Jerusalem. You cant without dumbing it down to empty propoganda tropes. The effort to distance current events from the broader and more informative arc of history seems to be a self serving zionist trap, and I dont know if you are just a victim of that ideology or a pusher of it, but either way, it doesnt matter because it doesnt work at all.
You opinions are obvious from the topics you chose and the way you go about discussing them. You tell yourself that you’re a moderate American zionist and you’re one of the people I talk about.
I have a hard time believing that. Any progressive would or should have said a real honest two state solution and a good neighbor policy over an extended period (which was never tried was it), and a disolution of the blockade of Gaza and the west bank. In time, thats going to work. Jews and muslims had common cause in the ottoman empire for 800 years and got along relatively well. Its when the far right religious splinter groups on both sides (although mostly the jewish side) take power that there are problems, and jews cant win through military force, even in a relatively small defensive ground like Israel. Regardless of whether Zionists are monsters or righteous, they are 100% doomed-- and personally I’d make a strong case for “monsters”. And they will drag innocents of all kinds down with them.
This could be a directly quoted passage from the South African governments justifications for brutality back in their apartheid era, do you see that? South Africa still exists, does it not?
The only person you’d every claim is unbiased is someone who agrees with everything you say. We’re all a lot more emotional in our reasoning than we’d care to acknowledge. The way I think of it is that everyone is trying to validate their own worldview constantly. You see it as bias, and I see it as you being biased toward me. Shrug beleive what you like, it doesnt affect me much. Want to prove to me that you’re unbiased? go ahead. Do it, I’ll read your answer. This oughta be good.
They wouldnt hesitate to say that Israel has no reasonable basis to exist as a state in the modern era. Its on the wish list of a bunch of violent religious zealots, for shaky and self serving ideological grounds. It was a mistake to make that state, but it was born out of global pitty for the events of WW2. Jews are not in any sort of danger globally that they’d “need” a state, and some (including me) would even suggest that the need for a state stems from a desire not for a safe homeland, but for a place where dina demalkuta dina can be defined on their own terms, inevitably by rich people who are up to no good. The biggest enemy of the jewish people are usually monied interests and rightwing religious extremists of all sorts-- many of them zionists-- the same as its been going back to the very first kingdom of israel, and in every jewish political event since then. The biggest enemies of jews people are other jewish people, and its always been that way.
Of course I am pro choice. Who would I be to tell people what to do with their bodies? And I dont argue with pro lifers, I shun and disempower them. I think I understand how influence works and I see that its not worth my time to try to counter them directly based on my personal spoken ideology. Speaking to them is a waste of time.
You equate that to reaching the Sephardim. Thats troubled me for a while frankly. After this last round of dinner parties of largely Jewish American guests, I have frankly written most of them off. These are people I’ve known all my life. I tried telling myself that despite these conversations I know for a fact that they are good people-- except when this issue comes up a dark cloud descends. If the cost of being their friend is tolerating varying levels of zionism, then I cant do it. At best they are victims of deep propoganda, and I’m too tired and old to make that my problem. History will sort them and their ideas out, not my cautious quips over dinner, under threat of doxing myself in this viscious and unforgiving pogrom against anyone who supports basic human rights. I do miss my old Jewish friends, but perhaps I never understood all of who they actually were, and now I know. Say you discovered that the nicest person you know occassionally ate a random kid. Could you still be friends? There are lines.
Jews suffered in the US the same as the Irish, the italians, the germans, native americans, and the asians, and the hispanics, and far FAR less than African Americans. But not a lot lately, so I think you’re crybullying here, which is the new normal. Muslims and people who advocate for human rights are being oppressed, beaten, disenfranchised and silenced pretty openly. So lets worry about these vague far fetched stories about your and my friends existential fears that they need to “defend” themselves in the US after the people that are being openly oppressed and murdered are cared for. So you’ll need to take yourself to the back of the concern line, and maybe you could take a stand and get to work on justice causes yourself if you fear for existential injustice that might effect you. Set some norms. Embrace a universal declaration of human rights, for jews and goyim equally. Theres no reason to be against such a thing is there?
You tell me out the gate you’re not going to try and then start refuting every word. I’m not wasting more time reading this. Good luck having relationships with anyone who shares different ideas than yours. I’m sure you’re great at defeating your loved ones.
You asked for an honest conversation and to explore these issues in detail and that’s what I gave you, at some time cost to myself. Now that your pressing your viewpoint falls absolutely flat, you have no rebuttal and you run for the hills in mock protest.
This is why I am done with people like yourself who are so crazily hypocritical. You cant even have an honest conversation on ground you dont control. You dont want to talk, you want to lecture! You want to isolate everyone else’s viewpoint and human rights out of that lecture while you talk about your needs and your fears and your struggles. And ignore everything else’s needs and rights. Thats not how life works.
The Palestinians have rights that are equivalent to yours and mine. All of the goy and gods chosen people have exactly the same rights whether you like it or not. The entire world knows this.
When Israel eventually ends up defeated and a pariah state, I hope you ponder how that came about, instead of childishly crying and finger pointing at everyone else’s hatreds except your own vicious hatreds.
In the end you’re just another self serving supremecist, no better than the American KKK.
Goodbye and good riddance.
Those are a lot of words and I don’t fully understand your point. But essentially the only way to peace is an end of the genocide, the apartheid and the Zionist colonization as a whole, with equal rights plus compensation for the native Palestinians and acknowledging the right of return of the displaced.