As a political struggle, that happens to be true, but the underlying tension was there. The Ottomans allowed Jewish migration to Palestine, and from 1882 that migration was explicitly Zionist. There might once have been different expressions of Zionism that would be compatible with a Palestinian identity, but the conflict was always latent.
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I was not referring to you. In fact I was agreeing with you that people who only highlights the plight or reasoning of one single side is not doing right. In my previous posts I had already emphasized the violence of the Israeli government in this region should equally be condemned.
No one denies that Israel has the right to defend themselves. What people are arguing is that Israel created the situation that led to the terror attack this week.
It is Israel who have turned Gaza into an open air prison. Who have turned off water and electricity to 2 million people with an average age of 25. Who respond to attempts of peaceful (or at least non-lethal) protest by gunning down hundreds with sniper fire. Who responded to this weekās terror attack by calling Palestinians āhuman animalsā and promising a full siege of that area. Who have indiscriminately carried out a non-stop aerial bombardment against one of the most densely populated places on earth. Who intentionally atagonise Palestinians by forcefully evicting Palestinians from their homes and moving in Israeli families under protection of the IDF - a tactic of using civilians as cover for military strategy that only Hamas receives criticism for.
Palestinians are second class citizens, at best, on their own land. Palestinians may well deny the right of Israel to exist - which I do not support - but Israelis also deny the right of Palestine, and Palestinians, to exist.
Neither side is innocent and both sides are victims in certain instances. I couldnāt sleep last night night thinking of the innocent people being killed, maimed and displaced by yet another mindless conflict. The people who were murdered at the concert, the people who were shot marching on the wall, the people being bombed cowering in their homes with no food or water - they all deserve our sympathy.
Netanyahu uses the murder of Jews in the Holocaust and previous pogroms to justify the methods of his own facism. Its nothing but a tool to him, a useful way of writing off criticism of him and his government as anti-Semitic. His senior leadership speaks openly in genocidal terms about Palestinians while sheltering behind the idea that it is they who are under threat of annihilation.
Palestinians are not animals, they are not sub-Human and they are not mindless zombies hell-bent on the destruction of the Israeli state. They are people, most of whom were born into a situation straight out of a dystopian novel - cut off from the rest of the world and denied basic human rights and needs by a government with comparitively unlimited resources and weaponry.
Iām not trying to āboth sidesā this thing because only one of the two parties has power. Israel. As the āsideā with more power they certainly hold more responsibility. Iāve seen Palestinians being told to oppose Hamas if they want a peaceful resolution but I havenāt seen Israelis being told to oppose Netanyahu. Heās every bit as guilty of using civilians as human shields to justify military action he already wants to take.
Israel has the right to defend itself. It does not have the right to commit genocide.
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^^^ Great post.
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The best thing for me to do after reading this much one sided filth is to walk away and take the highroad otherwise I will get a ban.
Have a great day.
With the radicals on both sides, the peace deals were always likely to fail.
Netanyahu isnāt the sole big bad evil. Series of missteps taken by both sides and other external actors lead to his rise.
But as they say , people have to deal with what is at present not whatās happened in the past.
Maybe they are just unfortunately expert at having to tally the numbers of civilian deaths?
Estimated to be 2m in Gaza and an additional 3 million in the West Bank.
There was an illuminating episode during Trumpās presidency when he was with the King of Jordan talking Israel. In Trumpās typical way he talked about something being straight forward that he had no understanding of and publicly provisionally offered the West Bank to King Abdullah. You could see the āfuck thatā look immediately hit his face.
It really needs to be understood that the Arab countries on the borders of these provinces have no interest in taking in these people for fear they will then just inherent the same issue.
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I hate breaking this to you, but we are in 2023, not in 1948. But in case you just woke up from a long sleep: Jordan and Egypt have normalised their relationship with Israel since decades. Syria and itās vassal-state Lebanon have since long abandoned the idea to abolish Israel. Even the ultra-religious Gulf states are now practicing business with Israel as if nothing ever happened. SA are on track to normalise their relationship too and it will happen very soon, the current events notwithstanding. We are far away now from the broad pan-Arab coalition which took shape in the period after WW2.
On the other hand, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, who supports them both, are an entirely different story, which is very unfortunate. But please, letās not confuse the average Palestinian people with Hamas.
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Note this only 2 or 3 days later already out of date with the Palestinian line now back to normal i.e. way higher than the israeli one.
A reference for what happens to Palestinians when they try unarmed protests Israeli forces kill dozens of Palestinians in protests as US embassy opens in Jerusalem ā as it happened | Israel | The Guardian
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If you manage to argue your points in an elaborate way without insulting fellow posters, youāll never get a ban. Itās your choice to stay out of the debate, but if you wade in with scatter-gun arguments like your earlier one, then donāt be surprised to be challenged.
And calling Sweetingās post one sided filth is bizarre to say the least. If you disagree with its content, then challenge it by all means, but with rational arguments, not with snobbish comments like this one.
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Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,ā Netanyahu told his Likud partyās Knesset members in March 2019. āThis is part of our strategy"
This has got to be peak Bibi
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Did he really said that in public? 
Itās a good article btw. This cancer of a man needs to be taken off power before any talks of apeasement can begin, and as we see, Hamas and this guy are the two faces of the same coin.
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The only filth on this entire thread are your ignorant, generalising, racist statements about Palestinians and Arabs. Everyone else is engaging thoughtfully. You should have been banned already
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He should have resigned , or have been forced to , the day after the attack. No matter what happens now he will be gone in six months , just like Golda Meir after the Yom Kippur debacle. Like the report said , just wait until they start delving into what he has been doing since he formed the present government.
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The forum is better for having an alternate view. So if Dutch wants to give a pro Israel perspective, thatās fine. Thereās certainly plenty of that around the world, so itās not unusual.
As ever, for the discussion to be reasonable, then insults and blanket statements should be avoided, and as my old maths teacher once said, show your working!
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At least they (Haaretz) got the perspective right
He was convinced that he could make deals with corrupt Arab tyrants while ignoring the cornerstone of the Arab-Jewish conflict, the Palestinians.
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You can be supportive of Israel without dehumanising the Palestinians.
My problem with his position is that it assumes that all Palestinians are evil terrorists who deserve to be treated inhumanely.
There is no acknowledgement of the crimes committed against them.
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Exactly.
Itās a difficult subject, but an exchange of views is possible if we are reasonable.
For some with a direct emotional connection to it, it may not be possible. I think Dutch was making a fundamentally sound choice simply not to engage, with an unfortunate characterization of the position that he simply does not wish to engage. I think it would be best to leave it at that - if you cannot restrain yourself from calling someoneās viewpoint āfilthā (which Dutch did, but so did WeeJoe), probably best to stay out of the thread.
I am going to ignore the various reports in this thread, and ask all posters to adhere to that general rule.
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Could be a similar situation to the 9/11 warnings in that authorities were aware that the World Trade Centres were being targetted (Bin Laden was pretty open about that in his videos and of course had done it once before) but knowing that an attack is coming and knowing how that attack is coming can be very different things.
I think its fair to say the method of the attack by Hamas was pretty surprising compared with previous attacks.