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Talk:Israel/Archive2
Would the Middle East really be a better place if Israel was gone + A bit more[edit]
I'm adding this because I feel that this article is a bit one sided (as much as I love this wiki, on some subjects there is only one side (like religion, pseudoscience, and logic) some aren't as simple)
A couple of thoughts and fact checks: first of all, in the article it says that the borders weren't clearly marked in order to allow expansion. This is incorrect, they were not clearly marked but only by the wish of the marker the British used to mark the border on the map which caused tension over who gets the area within the widt of the marker. Second of all, the idependence war was initiated by the Arab Union, the only people who say Israel initiated it are conspiracy theorists. Second of all, if you initiate a war, and you lose it, don't whine over the fact that you lose some of your territory. If Israel had lost they would have lost all their territory. You don't see Mexico commuting acts of terror over the fact that they lost so much land in the Mexican American war even though America started the war. Third, if Israel never existed, a lot of modern medicine and technology wouldn't exist. I highly doubt a state of Palestine would have been so tech forward. Third, even if Israel for some reason decided to evacuate right now, Palestine has no standing army, they have no government uncontrolled by a terrorist organization (yes Hamas is a terrorist organization) and would probably be invaded by Egypt/Lebanon/Jordan within a year. Another thing is that in a bunch of African countries people are committing far more atrocious war crimes every day than Israel ever committed. The IDF is a lot more moral than so many other country's armies (for Pete's sake they give a warning before an air strike) but no one cares about the areas occupied by China and Russia now do they. Another point is that even if Palestine won a war and gained control they would become a religious country and be far less liberal than Israel. I agree that Israel needs work such as lest leniency for the religious or better yet a separation of church and state but I think it's a whole lot better than the state of Palestine. The Palestinians make themselves look like vicime but with some fact checking you can see that it is sometimes if not most of the time either a twisted truth or a utter lie. (Example: a Palestinian swimmer in the Rio Olympics claimed that Israel wouldn't let her practice in an Olympic swimming pool when after some fact checking you can see that she never officially asked permission).
If anyone has an answer to any of these points I would love to hear them but I'm fairly sure most if not all of the points are rock solid— Unsigned, by: Potpie / talk / contribs
- "Second of all, if you initiate a war, and you lose it, don't whine over the fact that you lose some of your territory. If Israel had lost they would have lost all their territory." Goes against the very fact that acquiring land by means of war is illegal under international law. Whining has nothing to do with anything. I'll repeat: the acquisition of territory by means of war is illegal under international law. There is absolutely nothing in your response that screams "rock solid" to me, because you are seemingly unaware that
- the international community (including the International Committee of the Red Cross, the UN General Assembly, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch) in all of its constituents across the board without ANY exceptions has stated multiple times that acquiring land by means of war, and the land-sea-air blockade of the Gaza Strip is illegal. It constitutes a form of collective punishment (again illegal under international law) against the civilian population. Frankly there is nothing else to say other than your write up is a pile of, excuse my language
- shit. A pile of shit. Caseinpointfan2 (talk) 23:24, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
- "acquiring land by means of war is illegal under international law". And going to war is? Israel didn't occupy those territories to build hotels and mine oil there, it did so to demilitarize bordering territories and push back the source of aggression. Also, is it me or do most people express unhealthy interest towards Israel in particular? People don't seem to be as distressed about China occupying Taiwan or Russia occupying Crimea. People also don't care about the fact that palestinians were massacred in Jordan in the 80s after they tried to "fight for their rights" there, but every killed armed palestinian "freedom fighter" by IDF must first undergo the process of being recognized as NOT an unarmed palestinian child. Hypocrisy is strong with this article, the ending statement of its introduction doesn't even try to hide it.
- I would also like to point out that I never signed under accepting the international law. Neither did my relatives nor anyone I know. The prevalent law is the law of the state one currently resides in, or the law one makes up if in position of such power. The International Law is both a bureaucratic nonsense AND a means to express some bias towards Israel; most of muslim and African countries don't give a single shit about basic human rights, let alone International Laws, yet all bitching and moaning is directed almost entirely at Israel. It's a small and only Jewish country. Give it a rest, guys, just carry on building your islamic paradise in Western Europe and Democratic US states. Leave Israel be. 2.206.169.21 (talk) 08:52, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
- Firstly, your grasp of international politics is very weak. China does not in fact occupy Taiwan, Taiwan claims to be the rightful capital of China. Secondly, statements such as "most of muslim and African countries don't give a single shit about basic human rights, let alone International Laws, yet all bitching and moaning is directed almost entirely at Israel." are grossly incorrect. While the dominant factions may indeed not care one iota for human rights, there may be other factions within the governments who do, not to mention the potentially diverse positions of the citizenry. To your complaint that we only criticize Israel, I have only puzzlement. Our article on Muslim majority countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia are hardly glowing with praise. Thirdly, "Give it a rest, guys, just carry on building your islamic paradise in Western Europe and Democratic US states." seems to infer that the editors of this wiki are mostly Muslim. I can assure you that this inference is absurd, and furthermore is based on pure conjecture. Fourthly, international law, despite being weak and toothless in most cases, seeks to impose a set of standards on all nations, large or small. This means that there can be no exceptions, as a standard that only applies to one applies to no one, since it is unrealistic to expect it to be followed if you yourself are unwilling to bear the same weight. Finally, your cries for us to ignore Israel are ignorant, for if it is engaging in authoritarian behavior, it is within the purview of this wiki to document such behavior and refute the excuses given. In conclusion, I find your complaints ignorant and devoid of merit, sad pathetic things without virtue or worth. Good day. ☭Comrade GC☭Ministry of Praise 13:46, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
Apartheid? Again[edit]
Of course the label 'Apartheid' is bound to stir some emotions on both sides. At RationalWiki our job is to sort out the fact from fiction and clear up misunderstandings. Same with this article as any other.
If we're going to examine the claim of Israeli Apartheid, we need to define what Apartheid is. In South Africa, businesses would only serve or employ people of a certain ethnicity. People of a certain ethnicity are confined to version neighborhoods, often separated by a wall barrier. Roads are segregated based on race. Typically one race controls all of this, using these laws for their benefit. The other race(s) get the short end of the stick, with bad infrastructure and employment.
Sound familiar? It's the West Bank. Now in Israel proper, Arabs and Jews can live in peace without much trouble. But in the West Bank, there is segregated housing, race-based roads, employment discrimination, and different laws for different races. The Jews get to sit in the prefabricated houses on the hills that are built to code, while the Arabs have to live in shoddy packed housing in the valleys where rainwater and sewage flows in the streets. The Jews get the clean wide highways while the Arabs get the rundown bumpy alleyways. Jewish neighborhoods are protected by tall barriers while Arab ghettos are raided by Israeli commandos.
This is segregation, and even though Israel proper does not have these policies, the fact that they are implemented in the West Bank by Israel means Israel is an Apartheid state. To say it isn't is to deny the reality before your eyes and to whitewash the truth. Applesauce (talk) 23:32, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
- Doesn't Israel also force contraception on ethopian woman ? Diacelium (talk) 23:45, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
- Except if you are going to call Israel an Apartheid state, you must also do the same for Syria and Lebanon, which also treat the Palestinians like shit. Jordan, not so much; more societal racism than anything overt by the government. Egypt... I don't even know. Turkey, well, depends on your view of Cyprus. Morocco? It keeps getting brought up for something I don't really understand. Russia is... weird.
- The problem for me with the WB is the question of "what's the future"? If Israel is going to keep control of the entire thing for the next century, at some point you basically have millions of people without any country or basic semblance of society, so yes, that road eventually does lead to Apartheid. We can argue till we are blue in the face of when that demarcation is, but it will be at some point. If Israel plans to give up control of the bulk of the WB to an independent state, well, why isn't it happening? It's been half a century; surely even without an agreement Israel could say "this contiguous giant chunk is yours, do what you want with it". If Israel plans to carve out chunks of it piece by piece, which is what appears to be happening, are they going to grant the people citizenship or not? Israel offered citizenship when it annexed Jerusalem, but not when it kept expanding settlements into the WB. Because if you take the land but kick out the people, that's definitely a crime against humanity of one form or another. CorruptUser (talk) 23:49, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
- Which is precisely why we should link to a better researched and more neutral source than this article. So I put the link to Wikipedia in, which is a much more in depth and nuanced discussion than the crap you, Applesauce, keep reinserting. On another note, how many black ministers did Apartheid South Africa have? How many black ambassadors? How many black members in its national soccer rugby and cricket teams? Worzelpete (talk) 00:01, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
- @CU Many Palestinians don't want to be Syrian, Lebanese, or Jordanian as this would mean forfeiting their refugee status preventing them from being able to return. Regardless, racism (in a xenophobic way) does exist in all of those societies. Our page on the Western Sahara already mentions the apartheid conditions that Morroco has imposed on them. I have not researched much about the Cyprus conflict but both the Greek Cypriots, backed by Greece, and the Turkish Cypriots, backed by Turkey, were responsible for ethnic cleansing during the civil war; the country, from what I understand, is plagued by racism. There may be an argument to make that the crime of apartheid is being committed but I heard of this argument. I am unaware of any modern claim of segregation in Russia but I do know that before Lenin, Tsarist Russia had a strong segregational society which separated White Rus from the Central Asians.--Owlman (talk) (mail) 00:30, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
- Which is precisely why we should link to a better researched and more neutral source than this article. So I put the link to Wikipedia in, which is a much more in depth and nuanced discussion than the crap you, Applesauce, keep reinserting. On another note, how many black ministers did Apartheid South Africa have? How many black ambassadors? How many black members in its national soccer rugby and cricket teams? Worzelpete (talk) 00:01, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
Why I made the latest reversion[edit]
There were several edits made to the article which were added without any source and written in such a way as to bias the reader toward one particular viewpoint. I fully understand that RationalWiki has SPOV rather than Neutral POV, but that still doesn't excuse the text that was added here.
- This edit isn't too bad, but there is the problem of it being unsourced, which apparently the author of the edit really doesn't like. It's a whole lot of minutia about how same-sex marriages work in Israel, when marriage law isn't even the subject of the section ('Human rights').
- The next edit is where it gets bad. Here the author deletes an entire (SOURCED!) paragraph and replaces it with a pro-Israel screed. The screed berates Palestine for not having more liberal domestic policies, while completely ignoring the point of pro-Palestine critics with regards to gay rights in Israel, namely that gay rights is used as a dodge by pro-Israel people during arguments about the conflict.
What's the problem here? Unsourced statements and between-the-lines innuendo are big problems with these edits, but the biggest problem is that the editor is ideologically-driven to edit the article in favor of one side, in a topic that this community has repeatedly fought over in the past and decided should be neutral (unlike articles on religion or politics). PBfreespace (talk) 23:41, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
The list of political parties right now is severely outdated.[edit]
Prior to the 2019 elections many events have taken place including, for example, the dissolution of Zionist Union and more importantly the formation of Kahol-Lavan (which now includes Yesh Atid).
Many other parties were formed or gained prominence, e.g. the batshit insane dumb PR act controversial Zehut.
In addition, there's no mention at all of Meretz, which is relatively well-known too and has been around when the article was updated the last time. --RIFF WAVEfmt (talk) 07:32, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
DuceMoo revamp[edit]
Done with what I'm gonna do to the Israel article. @Bongolian thoughts? Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante ItalianoMake a Reservation 22:17, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
File:The_captivity_of_Judah.jpg leads to deadend[edit]
I tried finding out who painted the image, when, etc. to implement in the article. When clicking https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/File:The_captivity_of_Judah.jpg and going to source, it leads to http://clipart.christiansunite.com/1251110461/Old_Testament_Clipart/Old_Testament003.jpg, a deadend. — Godless Raven talkstalkwalkbalk 🌹
10:21, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
- Seems like a WP Commons issue, not a ratwiki problem. Techpriest (I am Alpharius! /
/
/
) 11:53, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
Edit war[edit]
And there I was thinking my Israel expansion would be entirely non-controversial. lol 🎄Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano🎄Ask about our holiday specials! 21:36, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
- Would the BoN obsessed with this page like to present any arguments before they cut out large, well-cited, and relevant portions of text?-Flandres (talk) 23:56, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
- The funny thing is that I’m also pro-Israel. I’m just not super thin-skinned when it comes to acknowledging the state’s many faults. 🎄Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano🎄Ask about our holiday specials! 23:58, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
Bibi[edit]
What does Bibi mean please? Harry Potter (talk) 21:54, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
- It’s a nickname for Benjamin Netanyahu, can’t say I know where it comes from. Christopher (talk) 21:58, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
Israel has too many dmn parties[edit]
I get it's weird to bi-partisan Americans, but Knesset is not exceptionaly unproductive, and that wouldn't make it less democratic anyway. So I removed it. The partisan election council is not an actual problem either, since the parties are there to check each other and have judicial review. I probably should add more information about the actual democratic defeciancies though.--Nngnna (talk) 18:43, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
Sources[edit]
This page makes some claims that aren't supported by facts. Notably the section on the Nation State Law is quite badly flawed. I don't intend to get into a political debate saying this, and I have no intention of editing the page. It is a subject ripe for edit wars. If you do genuinely critical reading around the subject there is a lot of analysis of the law. The sources cited are from fairly explicitly anti-Israel sources, Middle East Eye and Al Jazeera. There are better, more neutral sources on the law that disagree with the analysis currently presented here. Dancer (talk) 14:53, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
Edit to add; This may be completely useless, so I apologise in advance, I was wondering if it would be possible for people who do want to edit this page to create a sandbox version for the purpose of discussing the politics of Israel and the Palestinians in a way that accounts for the opposing viewpoints. I feel like the whole subject is so polarising that finding ways to reach a consensus that satisfies opposing views would be good. Dancer (talk) 15:00, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
Origin of Six Day War[edit]
This article doesn’t mention that Egypt committed an act of war by blocking’s Israel’s access to the Red Sea via the Straits of Tiran.
Torture Section missing citations?[edit]
Just noticed that there is some uncited paragraphs in the bottom half in this section. The first half appears to be fine and correlates with the citiation, but the bottom half just don't have any references anywhere.
Did anyone forget to add it or was it accidentally deleted? --Mofosyne (talk)
interesting article[edit]
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/176673/emotional-nakba— Unsigned, by: 66.87.114.44 / talk / contribs
"What used to be Palestine"??[edit]
"A lot of stress also arises because Israel currently occupies the territory of what used to be Palestine; the Muslim Palestinians demand their own state and want Israel to stop treating them like garbage."
How come the so called Rational Wiki talks about a non existing past state? Until the establishment of the PA (Palestinian Authority) through the Oslo accords in the 90s, "Palestine" never existed. It's as simple as that. The second part of the statement is also incorrect, and written in a way that doesn't fit a serious wiki.— Unsigned, by: 5.29.21.176 / talk / contribs
- There is so much wrong with this, but first of all, Palestine was a British mandate before the creation of the modern state of Israel. Palestine was also guaranteed its own territory through the UN partitioning, which is all (to varying degrees) occupied by Israel. Also, attempts to deny the injustices faced by Palestinians is pure denialism. You might want to read RationalWiki:What is a RationalWiki article? Plutocow (talk) 20:20, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
- Regardless, that was neither well phrased nor cleverly phrased. I have tried to touch it up. --Bertrc (talk) 02:19, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
Are there any decent attempts to justify the settlements in Palestinian land?[edit]
Has anybody seen any decent (or, at least, not completely awful) attempts at justifying the settlements on Palestinian land? It doesn't need to be perfect and can have serious flaws and/or lack of being thought through. I just want to try to get some insight into the mentality. Sure the temple mount might have some complexities, but I want to understand any thoughts, fears, what-have-you of the political block pushing the settlements other than "Manifest Destiny", "Because we can" and/or "It's our turn, now" (and/or "because it gins up our base") --Bertrc (talk) 01:23, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
- Uh, it's basically what European settlers did to indigenous folk all around the world. There's no justifying this blatant land theft. "But they can always leave!" Says the one with the privilege of not being subjected to apartheid just because of their ancestry, and who the entire world sees their ethnicity as vicious, barely-human savages. A lot of Palestinians did leave, and most of those are still stuck in the same camps they were forced into ever since the Naqba. There ain't no justifying this. It's ugly, it's brutal, and it's entirely supported by the champions of humans rights here in the West. Vee (talk) 01:29, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
- @Vee, Yeah, see, that doesn't give me a decent or non-completely-awful attempt at justifying the Settlements! :-D Believe me, I have no shortage of arguments for why they are not justified! However, I do not need to leave my own head to find why they are not justified. I am trying to get beyond my blind spots and beyond my echo chamber. In all honesty, I can think of at least a few justifications for land theft (perhaps not perfect, but not entirely indefensible) Unfortunately, none of them apply to this situation. There must be some settlement supporter out there who has a justification that doesn't boil down to "Might makes Right". Srsly, I am looking for any nuance to the argument because I cannot see any nuance. I never trust my brain when I think something this large is so clear cut. --Bertrc (talk) 01:52, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
- Well I think (though I disagree with this argument) that the Palestinian support for terrorist organizations like HAMAS, and the HAMAS occupation of Palestinian territory justifies the presence of the IDF in Palestinian land from the perspective of the Israeli state. Especially given HAMAS expressed genocidal intentions against Jewish people. That can come to justify the military occupation of Palestinian territory in the eyes of the Israeli state. The settlements themselves are often framed under the belief that many Jewish people are in actuality descendent of those who were indigenous to that land, and that the "arabs" are the true colonizers. This has some shaky historical grounding (read: next to none), but it is what fuels many of the claims of "birth right" to occupy say land. From the perspective of many Jewish people living in Israel and many Jewish Americans, the only reasonable and moral response to widespread antisemitism is the establishment of a country for Jewish people -- and especially one that has the military defense against the many hostile populations to Jewish people that exist outside of it. There is also the idea that Jewish people are only returning to the home they hailed from, and so no one has the right to tell them they are illegally occupying the territory of a foreign nation. This specifically in reference to the west bank.
- @Vee, Yeah, see, that doesn't give me a decent or non-completely-awful attempt at justifying the Settlements! :-D Believe me, I have no shortage of arguments for why they are not justified! However, I do not need to leave my own head to find why they are not justified. I am trying to get beyond my blind spots and beyond my echo chamber. In all honesty, I can think of at least a few justifications for land theft (perhaps not perfect, but not entirely indefensible) Unfortunately, none of them apply to this situation. There must be some settlement supporter out there who has a justification that doesn't boil down to "Might makes Right". Srsly, I am looking for any nuance to the argument because I cannot see any nuance. I never trust my brain when I think something this large is so clear cut. --Bertrc (talk) 01:52, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
- There are problems with this argument as it oversimplifies the relationship that Palestinians have with HAMAS, over-states the military threat that Palestinians actually have, is used to justify ethno-nationalism, relies on historical narratives that are widely contested, and over-states the religious significance of the land being occupied, etc. But it is no doubt an argument that many supporters of Israel's occupation believe in. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 06:41, 10 November 2022 (UTC).
- Sure, the military occupation has some arguments in its defense, and the need for a Jewish homeland definitely has some points that can be raised in its favor, but I do not see how those could apply to the settlements. Israel doesn’t need the land, since there is enough space using the 1967 borders and the settlements actually reduce the buffer between Israeli citizens and those who want to wipe them out. As for the manifest destiny angle, I don’t see how that is anything other than a “because we can”/“might makes right” argument. --Bertrc (talk) 23:39, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
- Framing it as manifest density is inaccurate because it's not so much that the land is some pre-ordained God given right... but rather that the land itself is where Jewish people originally hailed from are are in fact indigenous to. This is used to undermine the narrative that Palestinians use to describe their struggle, as a struggle against colonization. I have have got into arguments with Zionists who fully believe the establishment of Israel AND the settlements in the West Bank is in fact an act of decolonization. That the presence of the Palestinians is only such because they displaced Jewish people from the land and colonized Israel. This narrative extends to the North Africans who see themselves as Jews, seeing themselves as having been displaced from the land by the "Arabs". There is a lot wrong with this narrative, but to frame it as "might makes right" or "manifest destiny" is fairly inaccurate. -Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 00:50, 11 November 2022 (UTC).
- It should be said that this "justification" is very ad hoc and has like fuck all to the original motivations behind establishing Israel; which DOES NOT extend past the 19th century. Zionism as a movement is fairly young historically and the motivations have always been purely about escaping antisemitism elsewhere. The idea of Jewish people being indigenous to the land, or the land itself having religious significance have all been very recent narratives that have only ever come after the establishment of Zionist settlements. I don't think the people who espouse these narratives are bullshitting though, or doing it out of ill intent. There is a genuine existential fear underlying this, and we can't ignore the significance the holocaust has impacted the psyches of many a Jewish persons. All that being said there is still a period of thousands of years to which the ethnic Palestinians occupied that land. Jewish Palestinians are also a thing, though the Zionists I have spoken too are extremely reluctant to acknowledge that. The Palestinians also claim themselves to be indigenous to that land, and they view the Jewish settlers and in fact Israel as a whole as nothing more then the product of settler colonialism. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 00:50, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
- Yeah, that doesn’t quite hold up. According to the Torah, the Israelites, themselves, were colonizers. So we are back to manifest destiny: “We were and are allowed to be colonizers, but the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Europeans, etc. (I think the seleucids and sassinids are in there somewhere) do not get to be colonizers.” Besides, the Romans ran roughshod through the area in, what, the 100’s? That was almost 2 millennia ago. I’m pretty sure that Arabs were present well before the Rashiduns brought Islam to the area. --Bertrc (talk) 21:17, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
- They were. The Nabataeans were Arabs after all. Vee (talk) 22:18, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
- If you are going to set the standard of sound argumentation as justification I would agree that these arguments don’t hold up to scrutiny. As I said the Palestinians have been occupying the land for thousands of years, claims of the land once belonging to the kingdom of Israel is a moot point, and regardless the west bank itself never carried with it religious significance and was not the reason why labour Zionists set up settlements in the area to begin with back in the 19th century. You have to keep in mind though curse of knowledge bias. For those who lack the historical context do these narratives in attempt to justifying occupation and settlements resonant as effective propaganda? Absolutely. The idea too that Palestinians themselves are incompatible with the existence of Israel and Jewish people as a whole also resonates a lot with people, hence why allegations of antisemitism targeted at those who openly support Palestine works so well. Political careers have been ruined that way. What seems like a obvious falsehood to you is not so for many who have heard nothing but the alternative their entire life. But the sense of existential persecution by Jewish people not only in Israel but globally is more than real. To desire a nation of refuge and even to expand that area of refuge to house more Jewish people is not by any means an irrational desire. People just don’t want to acknowledge the fact that it involves ethnic displacement and apartheid like conditions as a result, because it complicates a strong emotional narrative that makes the Israel people de facto the ones who are oppressed in this dynamic. So when you ask about decent attempts as justification, the follow up question is decent for who? Me or you? Or the average supporter of these settlements? - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 23:12, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
- I think to add to that there is a rhetorical method that aims to minimize the possibly genocidal implications by refusing to acknowledge Palestinian people as a distinct ethnicity. Instead you hear people simply refer to all of them as "Arabs" and lump them into the the surrounding Arabic populations of North Africa and the Middle East. I heard one person say to me "The Arabs already have so many of countries of their own. Why do they need this other one? Why can't they just let the Jews claim the land and have a country for themselves?". There is a purpose to that because if the Palestinians themselves are not considered a valid ethnic group then displacing them from their lands cannot be seen as potential ethnic erasure because the "arabs" can just move into the surrounding countries where "they" belong and "their" culture is sustained. A very little said about the blatant racism of this kind of rhetoric, but I think people genuinely believe it to be true. It's easy to dismiss when you are not immersed in these types of narratives, and I think that is also what makes many of us ill equipped to address it. At the same time there is no denying the explicit genocidal calls of groups like HAMAS. HAMAS is the biggest stick in the wheel for folks like myself (and presumably you) who believe the settlements need to be removed, and the occupation of Palestine ended. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 04:17, 17 November 2022 (UTC).
- Sure, given the thoroughfare, yeah, there is such a mix that perhaps "Arabs were already there" is an over-simplification. Regardless, I just want to understand why . . . Well, probably not logical understanding but humanity understanding. What does Israel gain from the settlements? I can totally understand the desire for maintaining a Jewish state -- Regardless of any flaws in the argument, the centuries of anti-Semitism leading up to the Holocaust at least make the argument understandable (to me) -- But I cannot understand the Settlements; not even a toe-hold of grasping it, other than the human inclination of "might makes right". Heck, even "Might makes Right" is shaky, since, although they are mighty within their borders, the rest of the world is still incredibly anti-Semitic and the settlements do nothing but erode Israel's external support! Ugh, even the European ethnic cleansing of the Americas was driven by getting wealth and resources (That does not make it excusable, but at least I understand it) Are there some vast resources within Palestinian lands that I don't know about? Is Israel in danger of becoming so over-populated that supporters of the settlements feel they need the additional land? Or is it really just a belief in Manifest Destiny? --Bertrc (talk) 00:28, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- @Bertec. Yeah, not justifying the actions of Israel, but I understand the emotional lead-up. After the Holocaust, these people were traumatized beyond imagination take the Jewish Avengers AKA Nakam this shows the anger and fury of the jewish survivors. Now, you send them off to their fabled ancestral homeland. Of course, The Palestinians had a right then to be mad and fight back to keep their land. However, for the traumatized Jews; this triggered the memory of the Holocaust and likely displaced their anger from the nazis onto the Palestinians. Thus, the original wound of the Holocaust has lingered on, by infecting them with fear and desperation. This gets passed down through generations who fears that lowering their guard means another holocaust will happen. Therefore, we got a toxic cycle that renews itself all because of the nazis. On a second note, not going to condone or justify the treatment of Palestinians by Israel as it is wrong. I think the mindset of most jews who support Israel is that Israel is a safety blanket. After thousands of years of antisemitism; a psyche has been built up. Where Jews do not feel safe. Israel offers that security blanket of protection. A last Refuge, the last sanctuary. Back during the Unite the Right "Jews will not replace us" my family talked about fleeing to Canada. I thought Canada wasn't safe enough; only Israel could save us. Cladr01 (talk) 19:29, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
- Most of Israel is pretty mountainous with very difficult terrain to farm from, the west bank has always been an attractive place for settlers because it's west of the Jordan River, with a lot of fertile farmland. Settlements have always been set up in this area by Zionists since the start of the movement in the 19th century because the land it particularly useful in growing grain. Palestinians were using the land initially to sell grain to Europe, and it was only natural that settlers would want to set up shop in the region so to be able to grow and sell food of their own (rather than risk food-shortages in historical regions associated with places like Judea). That hasn't entirely changed to this day (though now we do have the benefit of better infrastructure to transport food, the west bank still has plenty a valuable natural resources for farming.). There has never been a moment in the last 200 or so years where there hasn't been colonial settlements in the west bank -- it just started to greatly intensify after the Israeli-Arab war in the latter half of the 20th century similar in time period to when Israel was expanding settlements into Egypt. Israel had made peace deals with Egypt and pulled out of the region, but I don't there has ever been a successful follow-through between establishing a peace deal between Israel and Palestine (not with a lack of trying by the PLO). There is incentive to having access to agricultural resources, a hope that they can displace hostile nationalists groups, and possibly collateral being held as a negotiation tactic. There is also the proximity that the west back has to Jerusalem that no doubt has it's cultural value. A lot of settlements are being set up solely to house Jewish people so they can be closer to Jerusalem; which carries with it obvious religious value. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 01:18, 18 November 2022 (UTC).
- Sure, given the thoroughfare, yeah, there is such a mix that perhaps "Arabs were already there" is an over-simplification. Regardless, I just want to understand why . . . Well, probably not logical understanding but humanity understanding. What does Israel gain from the settlements? I can totally understand the desire for maintaining a Jewish state -- Regardless of any flaws in the argument, the centuries of anti-Semitism leading up to the Holocaust at least make the argument understandable (to me) -- But I cannot understand the Settlements; not even a toe-hold of grasping it, other than the human inclination of "might makes right". Heck, even "Might makes Right" is shaky, since, although they are mighty within their borders, the rest of the world is still incredibly anti-Semitic and the settlements do nothing but erode Israel's external support! Ugh, even the European ethnic cleansing of the Americas was driven by getting wealth and resources (That does not make it excusable, but at least I understand it) Are there some vast resources within Palestinian lands that I don't know about? Is Israel in danger of becoming so over-populated that supporters of the settlements feel they need the additional land? Or is it really just a belief in Manifest Destiny? --Bertrc (talk) 00:28, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
- They were. The Nabataeans were Arabs after all. Vee (talk) 22:18, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
- Yeah, that doesn’t quite hold up. According to the Torah, the Israelites, themselves, were colonizers. So we are back to manifest destiny: “We were and are allowed to be colonizers, but the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Europeans, etc. (I think the seleucids and sassinids are in there somewhere) do not get to be colonizers.” Besides, the Romans ran roughshod through the area in, what, the 100’s? That was almost 2 millennia ago. I’m pretty sure that Arabs were present well before the Rashiduns brought Islam to the area. --Bertrc (talk) 21:17, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
- It should be said that this "justification" is very ad hoc and has like fuck all to the original motivations behind establishing Israel; which DOES NOT extend past the 19th century. Zionism as a movement is fairly young historically and the motivations have always been purely about escaping antisemitism elsewhere. The idea of Jewish people being indigenous to the land, or the land itself having religious significance have all been very recent narratives that have only ever come after the establishment of Zionist settlements. I don't think the people who espouse these narratives are bullshitting though, or doing it out of ill intent. There is a genuine existential fear underlying this, and we can't ignore the significance the holocaust has impacted the psyches of many a Jewish persons. All that being said there is still a period of thousands of years to which the ethnic Palestinians occupied that land. Jewish Palestinians are also a thing, though the Zionists I have spoken too are extremely reluctant to acknowledge that. The Palestinians also claim themselves to be indigenous to that land, and they view the Jewish settlers and in fact Israel as a whole as nothing more then the product of settler colonialism. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 00:50, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
- Framing it as manifest density is inaccurate because it's not so much that the land is some pre-ordained God given right... but rather that the land itself is where Jewish people originally hailed from are are in fact indigenous to. This is used to undermine the narrative that Palestinians use to describe their struggle, as a struggle against colonization. I have have got into arguments with Zionists who fully believe the establishment of Israel AND the settlements in the West Bank is in fact an act of decolonization. That the presence of the Palestinians is only such because they displaced Jewish people from the land and colonized Israel. This narrative extends to the North Africans who see themselves as Jews, seeing themselves as having been displaced from the land by the "Arabs". There is a lot wrong with this narrative, but to frame it as "might makes right" or "manifest destiny" is fairly inaccurate. -Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 00:50, 11 November 2022 (UTC).
- Sure, the military occupation has some arguments in its defense, and the need for a Jewish homeland definitely has some points that can be raised in its favor, but I do not see how those could apply to the settlements. Israel doesn’t need the land, since there is enough space using the 1967 borders and the settlements actually reduce the buffer between Israeli citizens and those who want to wipe them out. As for the manifest destiny angle, I don’t see how that is anything other than a “because we can”/“might makes right” argument. --Bertrc (talk) 23:39, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
- There are problems with this argument as it oversimplifies the relationship that Palestinians have with HAMAS, over-states the military threat that Palestinians actually have, is used to justify ethno-nationalism, relies on historical narratives that are widely contested, and over-states the religious significance of the land being occupied, etc. But it is no doubt an argument that many supporters of Israel's occupation believe in. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 06:41, 10 November 2022 (UTC).
Genocide in Gaza?[edit]
According to Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is defined as the following:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Israel has killed 18k Palestinians in Gaza: [1]
Of these fatalities, there are 7,875+ children killed: [2]
there are 6,130+ women (see above link for children killed)
there are 678 elderly people killed ([3])
300 medical staf killed (see the source for the 18k Gazans killed)
and 133 UN staffers killed ([4])
Israel deliberately targets civilians or intentionally neglects to limit civilian casualties([5])
Israel has deliberately withheld all supplies of food, water, and electricity to the Gazan civilian population:
Prominent Israeli politicians have called for genocide ([7]) and have used dehumanizing language to refer to Palestinians ([8])
Gaza is also a ruin. Israel has been deliberately targeting hospitals and schools, and is also targeting civic infrastructure: [9]
Regardless of whether or not you agree what Israel is doing in Gaza is genocide (and, IMO, if you were intellectually honest you'd say that the case that Israel isn't conducting a genocide by the definition offered by the Convention is very thin and arguably denialism), at the very least it is clear it is a crime against humanity and is morally and legally indefensible. Carthage (talk) 23:56, 15 December 2023 (UTC)