You are framing it as if the problem is Hamas and the existence of Hamas.
Isn't the existence of Hamas only strengthened by the war, by the actions of Israel ?
I would argue that the October 7 attack was highly beneficial for the expansionist plans of Israel. Highly beneficial for Netanyahu, who now can stay in power under martial law instead of fearing prosecution for his previous crimes.
Hamas will not magically cease to exist when Palestinians are treated like that.
Imagine the amount of hate that is brewed against Israel again right now. Would you ever forget or forgive if as a child you were starved, and witnessed endless horrors ? Your city in shambles, rubble and blood everywhere, death and misery wherever you look at ?
Let's quote Netanyahu himself in 2019, at a party meeting:
> Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
I think the argument that the use of violence to defeat an enemy only serves to create more enemy doesn't hold water. There are plenty of historical examples where brute force was used to bring an enemy to submission and that was more or less the end. We can go WW-II or we can look at more recent examples like Al Qaeda or ISIS or Chechnya. There are many more.
No argument that the extreme right in Israel benefited from the Oct 7th attack. So far anyways. What exactly that means in terms of "expansion" remains to be seen. Isn't annexing the west bank and giving Palestinians Israeli citizenship the real solution anyways? Modulo trying to "convince" them to leave that's more or less the plan of the Israeli right.
There was plenty of hate towards Israel before Oct 7th. The hate that manifested in Oct 7th was more or less unprecedented. I can't say there is more hate now. Check out some Gaza school textbooks from before Oct 7th. They raise their kids on hate (in UN funded schools).
I also can't predict where things go from here. I think the shift that happened in Israel on Oct 7th is that Israel should not try to control or predict the intent of their enemies. Israel needs to take away the capacity of those opponents to attack Israel. You can see this in Lebanon where Israel is still hitting Hezbollah wherever they can. In the past Israel would worry about retaliation, now Israel is more worried about capabilities and is willing to deter retaliation through use of more force. Deterrence + removing capabilities.
In Lebanon you could argue Lebanese would object to Israel bombing their country but some are happy that Hezbollah is getting decimated. The Palestinian authority and some Palestinians are happy that Israel is going after Hamas and PIJ militants aggressively in the west bank.
Gaza is a very different story but they were also terrorized by Hamas. What things look like after the war - who knows. Hard to even say when this war ends and what that looks like. I would like to hope there is some better lives for everyone and peace but that seems very unrealistic. The western countries talking about a two state solution are smoking some good stuff.
How do you not see this as circular reinforcement?
Hamas justifies it's attacks by pointing to Israel, and Israel justifies it by pointing to Hamas.
Things like Hamas still holding 50 hostages, rockets still being fired into Israel etc.
Israel will not magically stop when Hamas still exists.
> Imagine the amount of hate that is brewed against Israel again right now. Would you ever forget or forgive if as a child you were starved, and witnessed endless horrors ? Your city in shambles, rubble and blood everywhere, death and misery wherever you look at ?
And so do attacks like October 7th. Of course Israelis want to get rid of Hamas. The majority of Israelis don't want to genocide the Gazans, but like you pointed out, Netanyahu and his goons do.
> The majority of Israelis don't want to genocide the Gazans.
According to a recent poll:
Nearly half (47 percent) of respondents agreed that "when conquering an enemy city, the Israel Defense Forces should act as the Israelites did in Jericho under Joshua's command – killing all its inhabitants."
82 percent of respondents supported the expulsion of Gaza's residents
56 percent favored expelling Palestinian citizens of Israel
These are very, very different situations. You are comparing nations and cultures that have be living side by side for thousands of years to a 77 year old state (Israel) occupying territory that has been Palestinean for thousands of years.
Israel and Ozzy Osbourne were born on the same year. People that were born after Ozzy, can no longer return to their birthplace, because it is now Israel and they are besieged in Gaza.
Not really Palestinian to be fair. Jewish, Greek, Roman, Islamic, Ottoman, and finally British, in that order. Palestinians then started a war of aggression to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state, and then lost that war. You can not lose what you never had. If you want to talk about occupying, why is the al-aqsa mosque built where it was, if not for trying to erase native ties to the land?
Native ties? Who the do you think the Palestinians are? Did they just appear one day and occupied Palestine?
The Palestinians are the natives of Palestine. They literally have direct ancetrial ties all the way back to the original Hebrew occupants.
Like many people, they've been occupied, mixed, and they've adopted the religions and customs of their occupiers. That doesn't mean they've not been inhabiting the land for centuries.
Are they less deserving of their ancetrial homes simply because European colonists decided they wanted a religious ethnostate?
My family has ancetrial ties to Britain, do I get to go there and kick out someone from their home because of my ancetrial ties?
Heck I likely have Roman ties, do I get to go to Italy to reclaim my birthright?
Some Palestinians have direct ties to ancient Israelites as well. But the Hebrew occupants were expelled by force, hence the spread out Jewish population. The story is not one of the Jewish people remaining in the region and converting to Islam. At least not for the most part.
The Palestinians are not less worthy because the Jewish people, refugees, returned to their historic homeland. They are less worthy because they chose to wage war against them and lost.
- The site of Tell Mulabbis is usually identified with the Casale Bulbus, which the Count
of Jaffa handed over to the Hospitaller Order in 1133 CE together with the 'des moulins
des trois ponts' (the mills of the three-bridges
- villagers from hills of Samaria repopulated Mulabbis during the 18th century (Yaʿari 1947, 244). Mulabbis figures on Pierre Jacotin's map, which was surveyed in 1799 (Karmon 1960, 168-170) Avraham Yaʿari claims that malaria and disputes with neighbouring nomadic tribes led
to the abandonment of the village (Yaʿari 1947, 243-244)
- Both Jewish and Arab sources ascertain that Mulabbis was settled again by the Abu Hamed al-Masri clan, of Egyptian origins at some point before the middle of the 19th century.
- "Following Ibrahim Pasha’s campaign, Egyptian immigrants, headed by Abu Hamed
al-Masri, settled in Mulabbis. It was a part of a larger wave of Egyptian migration to
Palestine’s coastal plain.21 Ottoman cadestral (tapu) registers mention common Egyptian
names, like ‘Abed b. ‘Abd al-‘Al and Musa b. Muhammad Bardawil, indicating that the
village was mainly, if not solely, inhabited by Egyptian immigrants"
- In 1878, Mulabbis became the first village in Palestine to be acquired by Jews with the intention of establishing an agricultural colony in 1878, establishing the moshava (colony) of Petah Tikva on its lands
So you are telling me that the Jewish people that legally immigrated to the region, bought land from people of Egyptian descent that lived there, almost 200 years ago, don't have rights?
The Jews in Israel didn't kick anyone out of their homes before the 1948 war on them started.
Where do you live? What's your right to the land? If you are persecuted everywhere and in your tradition there is a strong and proven connection to Rome then yes, you can go back to Rome. Do you pray to go back to Rome? Was your family evicted by force from Rome? If I go digging in Rome am I going to find historical artifacts linking you to Rome? If you immigrated to Rome and bought property should we consider you to be a colonialist?
EDIT:
I don't look at my neighbor and say that because he's an immigrant he has no rights. I don't say Palestinians that lived in the region have no rights either. I do stand by the Jewish people being the indigenous people of the region. The only reason they were not there is that they were expelled by force and prevented from returning. They never left, in spirit, and they never gave up on wanting to return.
The height of hypocrisy is that European colonizers of the new world, with zero connection to it, who massacred the local populations wherever they arrived, cause them suffering to date, and who stole the land and resources they live on, are calling the Jewish people who have one of the clearest and strongest connections to their land, supported by rich historical and archeological accounts, who once they could, as refugees themselves with almost nowhere to go, immigrated legally to their land and bought it back, colonizers. That the Arabs who attacked the Jews and ethnically cleansed them from the region even before Zionism was a thing (In Tsfat, in Hebron, in Jerusalem), who attacked Israel on the day it was established even though it offered its Arab/Palestinian residents to become equal citizens ( https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/israel.asp ), who like the Hussein's in Jordan are often themselves colonizers, are somehow the ones wronged in this story and who deserve the sort of self determination as countries they never had before WW-I and WW-II.
> Some Palestinians have direct ties to ancient Israelites as well. But the Hebrew occupants were expelled by force, hence the spread out Jewish population.
But dude, this is the only paragraph that matters. Israel is persecuting and stealing land from the descendants of the Hebrews all because they aren't the right race and religion.
The 47 partition and 48 war didn't happen because the Israeli settlers were behaving like doves.
And no, just having the same religion as ancient inhabitants does not magically grant you land. That's insanity as I pointed out.
Exactly the same as if a native American came to my home and demanded that I leave because this was their ancetrial land.
What happened in the 1800s was horrific, just like what's currently happening in Israel. It's not hypocrisy to see past genocides as wrong and identify a current genocide. You don't "get one" just because my ancestors did one. Nor do you "get one" just because your parents/grandparents/or great grandparents were subject to one.
You are always the villain when you murder people to steal their land.
At some point I'll give up on this thread but you're wrong.
The only reason I'm arguing the historical context is to counter the ridiculous argument of colonialism or the equally ridiculous revisionism about the connection of the Jewish people (ethnically and religiously) to the land.
Go back and check the history prior to 47-48. The migrants, and the native Jewish population, were under constant attack by Arabs. Not because the Jews "stole" anything. Simply because they are Jews. The "Yeshuv" back then, and now, acted in self defense. The security organizations that were formed were formed as a result of attacks on Jewish people. Attacks (read as massacres and ethnic cleansing) on Jews (native Jews who lives there forever, and migrants) predate Zionism. Jewish people either have been there forever, or were migrants that bought property, often developing areas nobody wanted to live in (due to swamps, Malaria etc.). The area was not as desirable as it is now, it was a disease ridden sh*thole which the Jewish people turned into an amazing modern country (compare to the surrounding countries).
The story of the peaceful native Arabs that somehow got forcibly displaced through some "occupation" is bogus. Never happened. The Arabs that got displaced got displaced during a war they started after they rejected the partition plan (that gave them like 98% of the land in the middle east and like 75% of the original "British Mandate" land that included Jordan). Because Jews and Arabs apparently can't live together (not because of the Jews) then the reasonable solution at the time was to create different political entities for those groups. The partition plan left a tiny sliver of the Levant to be a primarily Jewish state (that guaranteed the rights of minorities, and still does, unlike any Arab country) and a vast middle east to the Arabs. The Arabs wouldn't have that and decided they were going to just kill the Jews and take all the land. This is how we got here. Now the people that ended up as refugees in that war (and their descendant) still want to kill the Jews and take the land.
So sure, some Palestinian, who maybe has ancient Israelite blood in his veins, needs to live somewhere else because of this. If his people actually wanted to make this a win/win and cared about things like human rights and freedom maybe this wouldn't be the outcome. But he's not "rejected" from Israel because of his faith or ethnicity.
Re: Genocide. The word has become meaningless. According to the anti-Israeli killing a single Palestinian can constitute a "genocide" as per their interpretation of the legal definition. The simple truth is that Israel is not killing all Palestinians because of them being Palestinians. Or all Gazans for any reason. I.e. there is no genocide. There might be war crimes in Gaza but those are not comparable to what most people would consider genocide and particularly not comparable to the Nazis systemic murder of six million Jews in Europe. There was no war in Europe between the Jews and the Germans. There were no military targets. There were no Jews that were not a target because they lived somewhere else. If you seriously can not see the difference then you need to read more about the Holocaust. Assuming 60,000 Gazans have been killed (which we don't know but that's the number Hamas publishes more or less) that number is perfectly in line with what you would expect in this kind of war, about half or 30% being combatants is also expected. If we didn't have a war, there wouldn't be civilian casualties. If we didn't have a war we wouldn't see the scale of destruction we see in Gaza. A war has two parties and Israeli soldiers are dying and getting wounded every day and Israel proper is still occasionally getting attacked by mortars and rockets.
Take a look at what Russia did to Checnya, or to Mariupol, or with Assad to Aleppo and other Syrian cities. Take a look at what western countries did in places like Mosul. In terms of brutality and impact to population Gaza is far from the worse war we've seen even in recent decades. It's certainly the war with the most media focus though. Never has a terrorist organization gotten so much positive media in the west. Uninvolved civilians shouldn't need to suffer like this, but it's a reality of war, a war that the Palestinians decided to start on Oct 7th and are still insisting on continuing to fight. There is a fine line- If Israel does change course towards murdering the entire population of Gaza then that's a different story. So far this has not been the story - far from it. Israel is mostly applying the same standard of care as any other western nation, and way above that of non-western nations. Russia leveled Grozny to the ground and 80k people were killed in that war ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War#Siege_of_Gr... ) and nobody said the g word.
EDIT: Also worth adding the word genocide was being thrown around from about Oct 8th without much relationship to Israel's actions. The dilution of this word is doing a disservice to humanity. It is weaponized as part the war as a tool for Palestinians against Israel. I have to admit this is working very well. The various forces here that are pushing narratives seem to have been very well prepared for the Oct 7th attack. I'm not sure if the word genocide has been used previously in the conflict - that's also possible. Using the word is a lot more effective than trying to have a more nuanced debate ratios between civilians and combatants and what is legal use of force in war and what isn't and comparing to other conflicts. Hamas must have known Israel would respond with a heavy hand and that would result in large scale destruction and civilian casualties. They obviously understood the consequences of using civilian infrastructure and tunneling under civilians.
> If you want to talk about occupying, why is the al-aqsa mosque built where it was, if not for trying to erase native ties to the land?
The second temple was destroyed in 70 CE and the first Al Aqsa mosque was likely built in 600s. What is your argument here? Both religions share a common lineage so it's not unusual that Islam would revere the same location as an older religion with the same origin story.
You are forgetting the Natufians, residing in the Levant from 15,000 to 11,000 BC. Should we revive the Natufian identity and claim the land ? They are the OG Levantians after all.
Can you see how this makes no sense ? Why create so much pain and suffering ?
They just had a working state with working institutions that carried on, prussian, protestant bureaucracy carrying on even after the die hard nazis had died out.
Islamic culture is unable to produce these institutions .
I mean I was trying to show that the Germans don't suicide bomb busses in Kaliningrad even after their own much worse version of the Nakba. In general, most losers of wars, especially of wars of aggression that they themselves started, don't spend then next century suicide bombing and turning down deals that they deem beneath them. They take what they can get and get on with their lives, being productive and improving the future for their children.
Isn't the existence of Hamas only strengthened by the war, by the actions of Israel ?
I would argue that the October 7 attack was highly beneficial for the expansionist plans of Israel. Highly beneficial for Netanyahu, who now can stay in power under martial law instead of fearing prosecution for his previous crimes.
Hamas will not magically cease to exist when Palestinians are treated like that.
Imagine the amount of hate that is brewed against Israel again right now. Would you ever forget or forgive if as a child you were starved, and witnessed endless horrors ? Your city in shambles, rubble and blood everywhere, death and misery wherever you look at ?