GrimTuesday

You realize that these sorts of things can be guaranteed as part of the creation of single state, right? It's not like some blinding flash of light is going to illuminate the sky and Israel and Palestine will merge into a single state. There is going to be a significant role of outside influence by the US and the other great powers in the establishment of a single state and it would necessarily require certain protections for Jews to ensure that they weren't persecuted. If you want a Jewish dominated ethnostate, too fucking bad, you don't get to colonize a land and disenfranchise those who have been living there for centuries. You can cry all you want about second class citizens in history, but we're in the present, and we can choose to learn for the mistakes and inequalities of the past, we don't have to repeat them now that the shoe is on the other foot. In the American south, the line was always we can't give slaves equal rights to their masters, otherwise they will rise up against the whites and there will be a race war. This has been echoed every time there has been an oppressor and oppressed dynamic throughout history. Don't get me wrong, in a few cases, is has come to fruition, but in the vast majority of cases, it has not.

I get where you're coming from on this, but we're not talking about the US and Canada, or the UK and Spain. Russia can have Kaliningrad because they have the ability in terms of military might and international stature to tell everyone else to fuck off, a theoretical Palestinian state has none of those things. In fact, Israel has said numerous times that even in the case of a two state solution, the Palestinian state would still be less than a state. They would not have control of their airspace, they could not have a military and would still be more or less a territory of the Israeli state and eternally at their mercy. As for the distance, everything in a two state solution would be built around Israel's security concerns given any ground travel would necessarily have to go through Israel. There would be dozens of checkpoints similar to what we see in the West Bank now, and this would be both for security reasons, as well as to make it as hard as possible to travel between the two parts of the state and create fragmentation within the population. There is nothing at odds with reality when it comes to a one state solution. The primary driver of antisemitism amongst the Palestinians is not some battle of civilization bullshit that has been fed to us by Islamophobic assholes who want you to believe that the Muslim world is incapable of coexisting with Christian/secular European oriented countries, the primary driver is the Israeli occupation. Removing the occupation, while it would not be an immediate remedy, would be the single biggest step you could take towards mitigating antisemitism in the Muslim world. Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived in those lands in relative peace for centuries, it can happen again. This is not wishful thinking, in South Africa, blacks and whites live side by side in relative peace, British people and Irish people, while the centuries of occupation aren't forgotten, are able to coexist with little problem. Wounds such as these, no matter how deep, can be healed, you just have to stop tearing them open over and over again.

Demanding that a people just accept their dispossession, especially one that is still within living human memory is gross. Jewish people have the right to safety and security, but not at the expense of another people. One multiethnic state where both Israelis and Palestinians are afforded equal rights and the safety and protection of all people is guaranteed by the state from the river to the sea is the only just solution. This does not mean the dispossession of Israelis, but reparations will have to be made to Palestinians. There really isn't. It's not like The US did it because of some policy shift, it's more so the US negotiated to make this a craven, meaningless motion that does nothing to stop the Israeli ethnic cleansing campaign (in so far as the UN could ever do anything to stop this). Humanitarian pauses are meaningless, it's a small window of peace before the horrors of war start up again and is little more than PR.

You're right, I should have something more in line with "the broader popular memory only focuses on the fact that apartheid ended and never looks at the horrible things that those we consider to be the good guys did as part of the struggle to end it". This does not mean violence was vital to the struggle, but it was undeniably part of it. Of course, I also want to make it clear that I don't think violence can ever achieve a lasting peace. At some point, Hamas and the other Palestinian groups will have to lay down their arms and diplomacy must be the path forward, but we all know that will never happen so long as Israel continues on as it has not just for the last two months, but for at least the last 25 years or so.

I'm not saying you said that, I'm explaining my thought process as to what language I use. I do not agree with the methods that Hamas uses, but I do believe that it has to be placed in to the proper context of a broader movement for liberation. Hamas and its violent actions are an inevitable and condemnable part of a liberatory movement, but it is an outgrowth of the suffering of Palestinians and the only way to stop it is to understand what is fueling the rage that drives people to commit acts of such inhumanity and addressing it. As for this idea that I'm selling genocide propaganda, I (of course) disagree. No where have I ever said that Hamas should be allowed to conduct unlimited acts of violence on Israeli civilians, nor have I ever advocated for the removal of Jews from Israel. You are correct that it is not a binary between peaceful victimhood and genocide, but I don't believe I have advocated for such and if something I wrote came off as advocating for such a perspective, that was not my intention. That said, I can admit that perhaps I am being a bit hard headed here. Seeing the ghoulish things coming from the pro-Israel side of things (not on here necessarily, even those I disagree with here pale in comparison) absolutely has me digging my heels in more so than I normally would lately. South Africa obviously isn't a 1 to 1 comparison, my point is that once a liberatory/revolutionary movement has reached it's goals, the violence that was involved is forgotten. South Africa is a good example of one where basically everyone agrees that it was the right and just outcome, but some fucked up shit happened on the side of the ANC. Despite that, the broader popular memory only focuses on the fact that apartheid ended and never looks at what it took to end it.

No, I'm not doing that. This idea that liberation can only be undertaken by perfect victims, needs to be dispelled. It's like focusing on Mandela and painting him as simply a peaceful activist while ignoring the fact that he refused to disavow the violence that the ANC did in pursuit ending apartheid. Now, the level of violence the ANC engaged in wasn't on the level of Hamas, but they did some awful shit, go look up necklacing if you don't know what that is. Violence is part of the liberatory struggle, sometimes it is ugly, more often than not in fact, but once it has passed, those crimes are whitewashed, either consigned to the dust bin of history and memory holed, or are portrayed as a tragic necessity. I personally think that being more clear eyed and honest about is an important part of breaking the notion that the only legitimate method of resistance in the face of a violent occupation is some kind of nonviolent Ghandi style, which even in the case of Indian independence does not fully capture how history happened. At this time, Israel has created a situation where Hamas is the representative of the Palestinian struggle, and pretending that, as an organization, they aren't liberatory in nature and are simply one dimensional terrorists is used to invalidate the entire movement. I'd rather we focus on groups like the PFLP or one of the left wing liberation groups, or someone like Marwan Barghouti but with Fatah being basically discredited in the eyes of many Palestinians due to their servile collaboration with the Israeli occupation and corruption, Hamas is what they have and we can put Hamas in the proper context while still acknowledging their crimes.

These two sides aren't even the same species (metaphorically, of course). It's not two guys of different height, it's one side that is able to commit acts of brutality with impunity against the second side where as the other side can at most cause minor, relatively insignificant damage (This is not to say that Hamas' actions aren't horrific or are acceptable, simply that they don't actually imperil Israel's existence as a state). A 5'2 human is able to kill a 6'8 person, it may be harder than just punching them, but give them a knife or a gun, or even just a significant amount of training in hand to hand combat and they absolutely could kill the larger person. Short of getting their hands on a nuke, there is nothing that Hamas could do to actually destroy the state of Israel. The only way the state of Israel could be "destroyed" is if the current incarnation were to be scrapped an a single state where equal rights were afforded to both sides (which would have to involve a guarantee of the safety of Jews from persecution), and that will never be achieved through violence. At this point, the aim is to end the occupation, and the only route that Palestinians have been given is to make the occupation so costly in dollars and in lives that it becomes impossible to maintain, because Israel will never end the occupation, they will just continue the grinding ethnic cleansing they have been doing since 1948.

Well I for one am shocked that the IDF was full of shit the whole time and when it didn't pan out, they just moved onto the next lie.

This idea that Hamas is a 5'2 guy punching a 6'8 guy is just idiotic. You're trying to conjurer a power dynamic where a terrorist group is equal to a nuclear power with basically a blank check from the global hegemon. It's more accurate to compare Hamas to a house cat and Israel to a person. The cat can raise hell, make a racket and can even cause some (relatively) small amount of damage, but no matter how much a homicidal maniac it may be (and all cats are), the damage it can actually cause, no matter how painful in the moment, is ultimately not life threatening. Now, don't get me wrong, Hamas isn't some kind of sweet little kitty that sits in your lap, it's a mean ally cat that hisses and scratches anyone who comes close, but ultimately it's not actually dangerous to an adult human. You're understanding of Hamas and liberation movements in general is puddle deep. In the words of Phil Ochs "In every American community, you have varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally."

Silly me, I forgot that Gaza is the so called only true democracy in the middle east that currently has Israel under an apartheid regime and actually has the power to carry out the ethnic cleansing campaign in question. You whine about double standards without understanding that the Palestinian resistance and the Israeli state are not in any way comparable. One is a terrorist/liberatory organization where as the other is the most powerful state in the middle east and has the express and unyielding backing of the global hegemon. To try to hold them to the same standard is disingenuous and only serves to deflect criticism and obfuscate the material conditions that creates these terrorist groups.

We have seen members of the current government calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, but of course, they're just fringe figures who aren't representative of anything, right?

Not gonna post any of the tweets because they all have videos that are pretty awful to look at and I'm not interested in posting corpses, but Israel has been bulldozing Palestinian cemeteries in Gaza, this is the second one I have seen reports about in the last week or so. Israel won't even allow the dead peace.

Some of you seem to be under the misapprehension that in order to be a liberatory movement, it has to be made up of good, moral people who you agree with, which is definitely not the case. But this is also why you don't assassinate or delegitimize the secular leftists who are more inclined towards a lasting peace even if it isn't the one you want (most of the left wing groups advocate for a single state where both Israelis and Palestinians are equal) while also surreptitiously supporting the inflexible religious fundamentalists.

You're just plain wrong, and I don't think there is anything I can do to convince you otherwise because you're just gonna keep calling me a Hamas sympathizer or whatever rather than actually engaging with why Hamas exists and why do they what they do, because right now your understanding of Hamas is basically on the same unthinkingly shallow level as "they hate us for our freedom" was regarding Al-Qaeda in the wake of September 11th. Go read some Avi Shlaim or Ilan Pappe, maybe you'll learn something.

Your comparisons between Hamas and ISIS are fundamentally flawed. Hamas is a home grown terrorist organization that (Whether you acknowledge it or not) is fighting for the liberation of their people. ISIS is a international terrorist group that is seeking to establish a religious theocracy that is not built on any nationality or ethnic group, but rather based on religion. ISIS did not enjoy the same level of popular support in the areas they occupied because they were seen by a significant amount of the people in those areas as invaders or outsiders. In that case, you can defeat them militarily, because the civilians you may be killing in the crossfire didn't necessarily share an identity or aspirations with ISIS. In addition, the groups fighting ISIS were the Kurdish groups as well as the Iraqi military, so you have a situation where the state/the local ethnic group in the case of the Kurds, is acting within their own boarders against an outside or insurgent force on behalf of its citizens. The better comparison would be Ireland and the IRA which killed many civilians in addition to their British occupiers and even then, they only laid their arms down as part of a political negotiation. But of course we don't make the comparison because how could we compared civilized European terrorists with the savage Muslim terrorists. Acknowledging that an organization's primary goal is one of liberation and understanding why they act in the manner they do is not the same thing as endorsing their methods or ideology. But by all means reading taking my posts in the most bad faith interpretation as possible. Shawn Fain is legitimately one of the most inspiring people in American politics right now and the UAW is show us the power the unions can wield for the betterment of society.

All this quibbling about semantics and definitions is just a distraction and an attempt to both delegitimize and justify the plight of the Palestinians while recentering Jews as the victims. Defending a state that is actively and enthusiastically committed to apartheid and ethnic cleansing of a native population (note, I'm not say Palestinians are the only native population so don't come at with that shit) that many scholars consider to be at least approaching the threshold where it could be considered a genocide, if not already a full blown genocide. Fucking crybully shit.

The most moral army in the world.

IDF forces killed 3 hostages, which begs the question, why is the IDF shooting what likely appeared to be unarmed civilians on sight? Now, you're going to say that Hamas hides amongst civilians so how could they know in the moment, but the fact still remains that even if there are terrorists in their midst, you're not supposed to shoot civilians.

Actually we do have a fair amount of information, some from a few hostages, but mostly from the families of the hostages who go on news programs to talk about their loved ones who were released and to advocate for those still being held, and it basically boils down to the hostage taking itself was violent and traumatic, but the actual time they were being held hostage was more or less humane given the conditions that Israel has imposed on Gaza. A few posts ago, you said that Hamas is running a PR campaign, and you're right. That is why the hostages that are coming out aren't reporting beatings or sexual assaults. For the most part the biggest complaints were they couldn't bathe and some got lice and other health issues associated with hygiene, the conditions were pretty spartan, they had to keep relatively quiet so as not to attract much attention, and towards the end, they weren't getting a ton of food. Oh, and of course the fear of being killed by their own government.. Really the main thing we hear from the government/the doctors the government has assigned to the hostages is that they are traumatized, which, no shit,they saw people they knew get horribly murdered and then were taken hostage and forced to live under the constant knowledge that their lives could end at any moment from a bomb dropped by their own government. If anything, I would say that the lack of reporting about significant mistreatment from the Israeli government sources is indicative of the treatment the hostages experienced Now, I'm not saying no one had a rough time, nor am I saying this was some kind of fun adventure these people were on, they're being kept hostage in a war zone they're not at summer camp, and Hamas treating them humanely is not something that pro-Palestinian folks should trumpet as a win, civilians should have never been subjected to those conditions in the first place. However, if we're acknowledging Hamas has an interest in keeping the hostages as safe and well kept as possible so as to leverage them both as PR pieces as well as to extract some sort of concessions, then it becomes pretty plain that these accusations of sexual assault of hostages are premature and the reason they are so readily accepted is because of the unconscious Islamophobia that has become more or less baked into our culture.

Jesus fucking Christ, you're repeating was little more than speculation from a state department official who was talking out his ass. Even Israel said that was too far in terms of speculation.

Lets be honest, Israel probably considers any military aged males to be potential combatants, the US does the same thing to obfuscate the scale of civilian casualties in military actions.

It's now been 60 days since the bombardment of Gaza began and we still have people here justifying ethnic cleansing. Not only that, we have people loudly wondering what will happen to Palestinians now as if this is some sort of unforseen crisis like a natural disaster, rather than the cold, calculated culmination of 75 years of Apartheid. What Hamas did on October 7th was wrong, what Israel has done since then is order of magnitude worse.

Human rights organizations do not have to worry about having their access stripped for not toeing the Israeli line in the same way that news outlets do. We have seen time and time again (not just in this conflict, but throughout the last century or so) that news media will absolutely propagate state narratives to ensure that they still have access to those sources.

Calling someone a liberatory organization is not the same as endorsing their methods.

Probably a international human rights organization or the UN. Investigative journalists are only able to access information that the Israeli government provides, and as we all know, Israel has a history of lying and omitting important information to fit their narrative. They also have sympathetic journalists and outlets who will uncritically repeat their propaganda even within those well reputed, independent media organizations, the same as basically every country does. Except I'm not doing that, in either case. I described Hamas as a liberatory organization because no matter how much you want to focus on their antisemitism, they absolutely are fighting for Palestinian freedom. I don't like Hamas, I don't like their politics but it is true. If you only see Hamas as some kind of one dimensional genocidal organization, you've fallen for propaganda. If you see them as some sort of organization of saints who are pure in their intentions, you've fallen for propaganda. Hamas has committed crimes against humanity, and I absolutely want to see those who perpetrated those crimes punished in a criminal court, but they also have legitimate grievances and motivations. As for diminishing the atrocities, We have very little in the way of independently verified information of the atrocities, most of the reporting is second hand and comes from IDF or Israeli government sources. We absolutely must acknowledge the atrocities Hamas committed, but lets be honest, Israel is losing the battle of public perception, and they know that they will be given a level of credulity and will stretch that as far as they can to try and regain control of the narrative. It's not just Israel that does this, it's basic PR shit.