What are your opinions on Israel x Palestine?

[♥ pppp3 ♥]

^ Be careful donating money atm as lots of the Palestinians with big followings on instagram etc are saying they're not seeing much in the way of aid. Better off (for now) going to protests, boycotting certain brands and entities (google BDS palestine), calling your local and state MPs to put in a complaint (or go old school and write a letter) and even something as simple as amplifying Palestinian voices (sharing their content on your stories to get more reach). Social media has played a really powerful role in this wave of resistance. The Israeli propaganda machine is failing big time. Once a ceasefire is granted and we can actually SEE aid being distributed, donating to credible charities and the like will be super important. Also keeping active and not letting the idea of Palestinian liberation fall to the wayside once the bombs stop blasting every one to pieces. A ceasefire is the first step, then working on dismantling the occupation and ending all forms of apartheid should be the next.

[jmg]

I know this is an old thread but I think what Israel is doing currently and in the past to Palestine is abhorrent. It's genocide on every level and it has been horrific seeing the nonstop violence. I always have been, and always will be, anti-war. I'm also very tired of the rhetoric that anyone who is against what Israel is doing is antisemitic. That couldn't be further from the truth. I don't have any ill feelings towards Judaism or the people who practice it. I do have a problem with acts of violence. The people being killed are innocent and they have lived very hard lives due to Israel's actions against them. I've been disgusted with the US government and other governments aiding and funding Israel's actions. It's also shocking to me that any Jewish people are okay with what is happening. They are no strangers to being the victims of senseless violence and genocide. So for them to be committing the genocide themselves, is such a scary thing to witness. I would think of all people they would know how wrong this is.

[♥ pppp3 ♥]

Interested to see what happens with the ICJ hearing. South Africa had some compelling points.. if a case for genocide is even plausible it looks like many western countries will have to reconsider their stance so as not to get mixed up in potential war crimes. Also the fact that it was South Africa to lead the charge is *chefs kiss*

[mokavanila]

I know this is an old thread but I think what Israel is doing currently and in the past to Palestine is abhorrent. It's genocide on every level and it has been horrific seeing the nonstop violence. I always have been, and always will be, anti-war. I'm also very tired of the rhetoric that anyone who is against what Israel is doing is antisemitic. That couldn't be further from the truth. I don't have any ill feelings towards Judaism or the people who practice it. I do have a problem with acts of violence. The people being killed are innocent and they have lived very hard lives due to Israel's actions against them. I've been disgusted with the US government and other governments aiding and funding Israel's actions. It's also shocking to me that any Jewish people are okay with what is happening. They are no strangers to being the victims of senseless violence and genocide. So for them to be committing the genocide themselves, is such a scary thing to witness. I would think of all people they would know how wrong this is.

(you need an account to see links)

Israel is fully justified in using military force to respond to Hamas’s October 7 attack.

[jmg]

(you need an account to see links)

Israel is fully justified in using military force to respond to Hamas’s October 7 attack.

They are murdering innocent citizens that have nothing to do with Hamas. Gaza is also essentially a giant open aired prison. When you treat people like animals and take away everything from them, you're welcoming violence. People have a right to be free without oppression.

[♥ pppp3 ♥]

lmao you realise birth rates have nothing to do with genocide right? birth rates are up all over the world. also you're kind of disproving your own point with that graph... an average of 250 palestinians a day are dying in gaza with a population of about 2million.. so far over 1% of the population is confirmed dead (not including dead under rubble, which there would be thousands more). if whats happening now is allowed to continue for the same length of time as say, the cambodian genocide (4 years/ 1464 days) that would be nearly 20% of the population if the average daily deaths stays the same. if you think this is anything but war crimes and ethnic cleansing you are truly misguided and / or racist.

[Druid]

Israel is committing genocide and apartheid, and has been since long before October 7th. I'm going to say right at the top that Hamas did also commit war crimes that day, which I don't condone, because that's something that gets twisted if it's not made explicitly clear, but the scale is honestly not at all comparable.

I also acknowledge that as an occupied people, Palestinians do have a legal right to armed resistance. Here's an article outlining relevant international law (not written in the context of the Oct 7th attack, but provides some important context for exactly how skewed the response has been): (you need an account to see links) - Al Jazeera, 2017

Trying to avoid saying too much that's personally identifying but I've been focused on this more than anything else for the last few months - there's a lot of Zionism in the legal field, and law students are silenced, sanctioned, lose job and placement opportunities, etc for saying anything in support of Palestine. So yeah I've been doing a lot of reading/analyzing/advocating in that vein. I'll compile a bunch of sources here for anyone interested. A few things are unfortunately paywalled, I personally use Firefox with the Bypass Paywalls Clean v3.4.9.0 extension to get around that.

(you need an account to see links) - the Nation, Nov 21 2023
This includes a brief overview about why the Law Review pulled the essay, “The Ongoing Nakba: Towards a Legal Framework for Palestine,” from publication, with a more thorough report linked, and then includes the essay itself. To be clear, it was on track for publication before being pulled - please ignore the clickbaity vibe the Nation has added. The author, Rabea Eghbariah, is a human rights lawyer and doctoral candidate at Harvard. I first read the essay when he posted it / before this Nation thing, and it's a really strong piece.

(you need an account to see links) - the Guardian, Oct 11 2023
"On 7 October, the national security council spokesperson Adrienne Watson stated that the US “unequivocally condemns the unprovoked attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians”. Every one of us must stand up and denounce the killing of every civilian, Israeli or Palestinian or otherwise. But Watson’s use of the word “unprovoked” is doing a lot of work here. What exactly counts as a provocation? Not, apparently, the large number of settlers, more than 800 by one media account, who stormed the al-Aqsa mosque compound on 5 October. Not the 248 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or settlers between 1 January and 4 October of this year. Not the denial of Palestinian human rights and national aspirations for decades. One can, in fact must, see such actions as provocations without endorsing further murderous violence against civilians. But if you watched only US news, you would be likely to presume that Palestinians always act while Israel only reacts."

(you need an account to see links) - Frontline, Dec 15 2023
"In the US, to speak of Intifada—uprising, resistance—in this case against genocide, against your own erasure—is considered to be a call for the genocide of Jews. The only moral thing Palestinian civilians can do apparently is to die. The only legal thing the rest of us can do is to watch them die. And be silent. If not, we risk our scholarships, grants, lecture fees and livelihoods."

(you need an account to see links) - Amnesty International, 2022
This describes Israel's system of apartheid against Palestinians, before Oct 7

Israeli attitudes - CRUCIAL context for the violence Israel is committing against Palestinians

Please log in to view spoilers.

It is a genocide.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor statistics - as of Jan 19 2024

Please log in to view spoilers.

(you need an account to see links) - Amnesty International, Oct 20 2023

(you need an account to see links) - United Nations, Dec 12 2023



- the CEO of (you need an account to see links)

A lot of these links and descriptions were assembled and ready to go in my sent texts to my dad, because when I was visiting over Christmas I mentioned the word genocide and it turned into a huge fight. He's an educated, reasonable person, and he knows a basic overview of the history of the state Israel and the way it was formed in the 40s. He said he "hasn't been keeping up with what's going on, but it's very complicated" and was adamant that he could not accept that "the Jewish state has genocidal intent." I'd mention direct quotes from Israeli politicians, he'd say that doesn't mean it's the view of the whole state ("it's the PM and the defence minister"), or it must be taken out of context ("it's from a press conference, about this"). I'd mention statistics and things that have been targeted, he'd say he doesn't trust my sources ("Amnesty International and the UN"). We had to fully give up on talking, and I sent him a bunch of this stuff to read.

I'm mentioning this fight because it's an example of Israel's meticulous public image campaign, specifically the conflation of Zionism and Judaism, working exactly as designed. The public generally knows there's a complex history, knows about the Holocaust and the persecution of Jews, and as a result there's an extreme aversion to critiquing Israel at all out of fear of being anti-Semitic.There are a lot of anti-Zionist Jewish people - they get silenced by Zionists as "a handful of self-hating Jews." Israel is not Judaism. It is a state, with an army, committing atrocities. There is some added nuance from a colonial perspective - there's a difference between colonizing out of like, greed and a sense of adventure [UK flag emoji] and colonizing as stateless refugees. And the UK was directly involved in "giving" Palestine to Israel (because of course) - it was occupying Palestine before. While other formerly British-occupied territories have achieved independence, Palestine has remained subject to apartheid and genocide.

And no one is calling for the expulsion of all Israelis from Palestine, which is how anti-colonialist and anti-Zionist perspectives get framed. But the Israeli government absolutely is trying to kill or expel all Palestinians, which is the dark and terrible irony of the whole thing. It is our responsibility to educate ourselves, to read about what's really going on, before attaching ourselves to particular opinions based on vibes and censorship. And I know "educate ourselves" feels like a propaganda-loaded term, but look at what both sides are saying and form an opinion based on that. Seek out primary sources, and think critically about them. A bunch of stuff in this post is Israeli, or is written in response to publicly-available Israeli statements. They're not hiding it, they're just saying it's justified. It isn't - nothing justifies genocide.


Media framing

Please log in to view spoilers.

...also that fight over the word genocide was the literal day before South Africa brought the genocide case to the ICJ.

(you need an account to see links) - PBS, Jan 3 2024

I highly recommend reading the whole application if you have the attention span, and following the case - there's video available. If you don't want to read 84 pages (fair) there are summaries available too, like this:

(you need an account to see links) - Ceasefire.ca, Jan 5 2024
"The South African court application includes nine pages of evidence of genocidal intent, including calls from Israeli decision-makers and military officials for Gaza to be “wiped out”, “flattened”, “erased”, and “crushed”, and statements such as '[t]here are no innocents in Gaza; the children of Gaza have brought this on themselves; there should be one sentence for everyone there — death.'"


Israel has bombed every hospital in Gaza. Some thousand + children have had limbs amputated without anesthesia. Israel controls the borders of Gaza, which it has blockaded. It has cut food, water, electricity and internet. It has targeted and killed over 100 journalists, to suppress public knowledge of its war crimes - this is itself also a war crime. And in its allied countries - Canada, the US, and the UK especially - speaking out against Israel, or even in solidarity with Palestine, is posited as hate speech. I honestly don't know what to do, beyond just staying informed, continuing to talk about it, and fighting reprisal as needed.

In short, it's not genocide. For one thing, the population in Gaza in 1965 was 265k and it is now 2.1mil - so if there's been an ongoing genocide it's been an incredibly unsuccessful one. The Palestinian population is growing far faster than the world jewish population. But what about the current horrific attacks on Gaza, isn't that genocide? No, it's not genocide, it is not an attempt to wipe out a specific race or group of people. Whatever you think about Israel's actions, and I certainly disagee with them, they are not trying to kill all Palestinians and they never have.

Call it unacceptable. Call it inhumane treatment. Call it collective punisment. But using the term genocide cheapens it and, in the manner that it is often used to attack Israel by claiming they're doing as was done to them in the holocaust it is, I'm afraid, antisemitic.

I posted this before reading back through the whole thread. I want to clarify that when I talk about genocide, I mean under Netanyahu's government (actively since October 2023, and with rhetoric leading toward that for years before) - not for the entirety of the time the state of Israel has existed. You also covered in great detail a lot of the history that I skimmed over, which I appreciate. It is absolutely noteworthy that it's not like a Jewish government came in out of nowhere and started oppressing Palestinians, the Nakba was a collaborative effort and Jews were extraordinarily wounded as a people in the Holocaust immediately before that.

I see a lot of non-Jews saying what is and isn't antisemitic, and I think - I would never tell a person of colour that what they feel is racist actually isn't. I would never tell a trans person what they feel is transphobic actually isn't. As a queer person, I wouldn't expect to be challenged over what I feel is homophobic. So I hope that people can understand that things that they don't feel are said with any antisemitic intent can feel intensely antisemitic on the receiving end and try to understand why.

I think a big part of this is that pro-Palestinian speech is being misconstrued and assigned meanings it doesn't have, and which would make it anti-Semitic if that's what it actually meant. I agree that telling marginalized groups what they should and shouldn't be offended by feels wrong, but where I've seen this actually occurring it's less "that isn't offensive" and more "that isn't what that means."

Like, "from the river to the sea" is the big one - it does not mean and has never meant killing all Jews in that region, but it has been construed in that way by particular people with the goal of villainizing Palestinian solidarity, and that meaning has been spread to Jews who are of course horrified by it. That meaning needs to be corrected, which comes out as "but wait it's not anti-Semitic," which feels gross. And then there are the same people who assigned it that meaning in the first place going like, "well if that's how Jews hear it how dare you tell them they're wrong," meanwhile it's still being used at the peaceful protests it was co-opted from, and letting people hear it as a genocidal cry against Jewish people is extremely harmful. But even if it were swapped out, whatever new chant protestors came up with would get the same treatment, because the people working to villainize Palestinian voices are relentless and efficient.

By all means call for free Palestine, I agree with you. Please call for an Israeli ceasefire and call Israel out on its crimes and abuses. But do try to understand why the instinct for harsh defence is there, in the same way that you understand it for the Palestinians. I would ask that with every call for a ceasefire you equally and at the same time call for Hamas to give up the hostages and surrender its leaders. Because Hamas has the capacity to do one good thing for the people of Palestine and do its part toward securing a ceasefire too. Because peace can't be one sided. Because everyone should get to be safe, and free.

I think the "equally" is where things get lost here, because condemning Hamas is like, already a given. As you said, Hamas is a militant group that took control over Gaza with force. They knew Israel would respond violently to the Oct 7th attack, which was deplorable, and they do not have the interests of Palestinian people at heart - they rely on unrest in the area to maintain power, so they want to extend that unrest. Condemning Hamas is not controversial, it has been the predominant position of everybody since October 7th.

The Western world as a whole is incredibly skewed toward Israel, which is what created the need for leftists to speak up for Palestine. That does create echo-chambers where we're the majority, but we are still functionally a distinct minority. Part of what gave rise to the movement is the difference between the outpouring of support for Israel on October 7th and the absolute silence on the violence against Palestine before that. Adding "and Hamas" to every condemnation of Israel would just uphold that imbalance - it's not that we don't condemn Hamas, but is everyone condemning Hamas throwing in an "and Israel"? Maybe a little more now, as the genocide case gets more undeniable, but in November? No, people were losing their jobs for condemning Israel. And there's the scale - I don't want them to have hostages, I don't think their leaders should be free to keep doing what they're doing, but in terms of severity of devastation those are both a fraction of what's going on in Gaza. That cannot be as much of a priority, and somehow at the same time, for the mainstream media it is the only priority.

[Politoed]

I dont like war, I dont like people being hurt. Honest truth and child like as it may I wish we all could get along