For people who say I stand with Israel

As a Jew, states built on ethnoreligious grounds in that part of the world lead to a lot of bloodshed.. Israel's democracy is in peril due to the judicial reform.. I support Israel's right to exist in the same way I support Singapore or Ukraine or Moldova's right to exist because it is a sovereign state.

Xenia, if you think that you pay lots of taxes, let me give you a stat the top 10% of Israeli taxpayers pay 92% of the taxes in Israel. The average taxpayer in that decile only earns the equivalent of £45k so not rich people. It is a small country, if there is a brain drain of the talented and high earning, you only need tens of thousands to leave for it to be a disaster. This is a crisis in waiting (bombs, theocratic state and high tax burden not a great combination). You are far better off in the secular UK where people live together in peace, there is more even distribution of income, no bombs and no large proportion of the population excluded from the productive workforce.

I am Christian but support Israel, the only real democracy in that part of the world. If I had a choice of living in Saudia Arabia or Iran or Israel Israel is by far the better country on almost every level. There is one Jewish nation on the planet and many muslim ones. The Hamas terrorists need to be stopped and most of us in the West agree with that.

This.

Exactly that is my point- what is the point of making peace deals with Palestinians who don’t support Hamas?

How do you get rid of Hamas. Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2006. You can't have a business unless you are a Hamas member in Gaza, its embedded in the social fabric of Gazan life. Unless you literally kill 2 million gazans, then yes maybe you have a shot.

It is not like ISIS. ISIS was a militia group, they executed people for not praying at the right time, ordinary syrians feared and reviled them. Even after years of hamas rules, Gaza still has churches and Anglican hospitals

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-19/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/is-hamas-really-like-isis-experts-explain/0000018b-493f-d1fd-a59f-edbfbe090000

'As scholars, we have to try to understand their way of thinking, and there are differences,” between the two organizations, Weismann says. “ISIS originated in the Salafi stream [of Islam]. It’s a movement that’s first and foremost theological, and it sees anyone who doesn’t believe in Islam as an infidel. Hamas members, too, are infidels in the Salafi view, because they have negotiated with Israel. ISIS doesn’t do anything like that. Hamas tried to be inclusive of all of Gaza’s population. Secular residents included. In contrast, ISIS would murder any Muslim who didn’t pray at the correct time. You can’t just say, ISIS slaughtered people and so did Hamas, so they’re the same. That’s very superficial.”

Other experts agree that the fundamental strategies of Hamas and ISIS are different. “ISIS wins hearts and minds via the might of the weapon,” explains Dr. Netanel Flamer of Bar-Ilan University’s Middle Eastern studies department. “Hamas recruits the population in other ways. One of the first things that [Hamas founder] Sheikh Yassin did, for example, was to build soccer fields.”

I wish i knew what the clear answer was and if I did, I probably would get a Nobel Peace Prize. However, not knowing what to do doesn't mean you don't know what not to do.

But what power would those Palestinians have? If they brokered a peace what would happen to Hamas? What would those Palestinians want?

it’s clear Iran are funding this. Israel are basically fighting Iran (to the north and to the west.) brokering a peace with non- Hamas supporting Palestinians is unlikely to go anywhere and likely to make those Palestinians targets of Hamas too.

Gaza needs to rid itself of Hamas et al then broker peace with a two state solution

I agree that peace talks would be wonderful but The Palestinian Authority don't want to get involved.
Which Palestinians do you know who are willing to chat?
Yes Israelis will die, Yes I think Iran would like that.

They have to focus on peace talks with palestinians that do not support Hamas. They have to spend money on building a Palestinian state without Hamas, would be cheaper than trying to fight future wars with their shrinking productive tax base.

They don't have that many good options but then they squandered the past 20 years on violent coexistence with Hamas. Netanyahu encouraged Hamas over fatah so he could be mr security, have Hamas throw a few rockets over, some fighting every few years- that was viewed as mowing the lawn and ensured he stayed in power while keeping Israeli civilian casualties at the minimum. What I suppose he didn't anticipate is that hamas would go this far and slaughter people a la ISIS.

What would happen with a ground invasion - tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers would die. Hamas knew Israel would invade, they have booby trapped the whole place. They are doing this to trigger Israel to enter into a war with Iran. They are doing this so that more Jews would be killed.

We’re basically seeing the mantras on the barn wall! 4 legs good, two legs bad. One day these people will turn round and the words will read four legs good, two legs even better. The pigs will be sleeping in the beds. Then they will be too unsure of themselves to be able to understand, let alone voice concerns about the situation

@lavender2023
And your point is???
Nobody but extremists want war. Of course war is expensive but what do you propose as the alternative?

Oh I know let's just

• keep refusing any peace settlements

I’m sorry to interrupt the narrative running round in your head/you’ve copied and pasted off social media. But you have no idea what my views on the IDF.

Secondly, pleas point out where I have equated Hamas with all Palestinians! I’ll safe you the trouble - no where.

nothing I’ve said is Islamophobic. You, however, throwing the word round eats into its power that can be used where true islamaphobia occurs. But it’s not a magic word to shut down reasonable debate!

Maybe if the Arab nations recognised Israel and didn’t make it clear time and time again their wish to destroy Israel then there could be peace.

Unfortunately for many of these extremist/terrorist groups only total annihilation of Israel would lead to peace.

We need to call it as it is. This is no a fight against oh so nasty Israel creating a feeling of oppression, it is a war against the very existence of Israel.

I have a Jewish background and whilst I don't agree with everything Israel has done and I feel desperately sorry for ordinary Palestinian people especially the children,, I do support Israel, the only democracy in the middle East. Surrounded by enemies they have no choice but to defend themselves.

Unfortunately, destroying this islamic extremist group would just mean that more islamic fundamentalist groups are created due to the pain and suffering. Israel has been in a state of permanent war during this past 70 years. Israel isn't America, do they want to continue in this state of permanent war.

'A professor in the Department of Public Policy of Tel Aviv University, and founder of its Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research, Ben-David is a data person. Meetings with him are a carpet bombing of graphs, numbers, curves and percentages. But if one had to select just one number from among those he cites, it might well be 397,744. That’s what you get when you add to the number of senior faculty members employed by Israel’s research universities (8,142), the numbers of physicians (29,803) and of people employed in high-tech (359,799). According to the data of the Innovation Authority, 30 percent of those in high-tech are not technological staff, which brings the number Ben-David is referring to down to approximately 290,000.

If this group is pushed beyond the limits of its collective capacity, many of its members will activate the ejection seat. We will watch them land via a golden parachute elsewhere, while the plane we’re on heads for a crash. “All that’s needed to bring about ruination,” he says, “is for a few tens of thousands to get up and leave.

Ben-David adds that the two highest economic deciles in Israel pay about 92 percent of the income tax – a sharp rise since the year 2000, when they were the source of 83 percent of the income tax. Those people – 20 percent of the population – are not necessarily millionaires. “The average monthly income in the ninth [highest] decile is 19,000 shekels gross [$5,200],” he notes. “They are people who see themselves as the middle of the Israeli middle class of Israel. Sometimes they have a hard time making ends meet. And it’s on their shoulders that the whole load falls.””

We are looking at a future now where 50% of Israeli children would be haredi and arabs who perform far below their counterparts in the neighbouring arab countries. These are the children who would form the tax base to pay for the future wars. Wars are not cheap. If there is no solution for peace and also no solution to the narrow tax base/education problem, then Israel would cease to exist.

Israel has to make peace not because it values arab lives, but because it has no other choice if it wants to exist. The mantra of 'it will all be all right' does not work in a world where America is no longer top dog.

We all talk of the defense of western civilisation but half of Israeli children do not have access to western level education and the majority of Israeli adults do not earn western incomes. If you want to defend western civilisation, you need western incomes.

What a heap of bollocks. Pointing out that there was Muslim imperialist conquest of swathes of the world is not racist.

Neither is pointing out there was Catholic imperialist conquest, European imperialist conquest, nor any other.

It's historical fact.

Doesn't quite fit your narrative mind huh.

I do not understand how anyone in their right minds think Israel has any alternative.
Do you want to live in a world ruled by Islamic extremists?

This thread is starting to sound like an EDL meeting

Wow @LemonyTicket . If anyone had swapped your word "Muslim" for Jewish you'd be crying antisemitism. It really doesn't work both ways, does it? 🤔

What absolute garbage

Why don’t you hold the IDF who have been committing genocide for decades to the same standard?
they are the military authority there not the other way round
comparing criticism of an apartheid state to the holocaust is ridiculous and disgusting
Also equating Hamas = all of Palestine is deeply racist and Islamophobic

I am not Jewish and normally take no interest in politics or religion.

Is anyone actually saying “I stand with Israel,” as though we fully support the Israeli government and every policy it has ever adopted? Can anyone ever feel that way about any country?

But OK, yes, if you wish: “I stand for Israel.” For me, this means that they’re in an impossible situation and I fully support their struggle to find a way out of it.

They are trying to deal with a neighbouring country governed by terrorists who literally want to annihilate them. The Hamas Covenant, according to Wikipedia, “proclaims that Israel will exist until Islam obliterates it, and jihad against Jews is required until Judgement Day. Compromise over the land is forbidden. The documents promote holy war as divinely ordained, reject political solutions, and call for instilling these views in children.”

That’s a moronic recipe for endless misery and conflict, and yet Israel is berated for somehow not having found a solution over the years, as though they could have struck a deal with these nutters who have never been interested in striking a deal.

The suffering of the people in Gaza is blamed on Israel, yet it’s Hamas who have fucked them over completely. I can understand Israel’s reluctance to approve plans to dig a well if Gaza is riddled with underground tunnels, capillaries feeding the Hamas network. And Hamas base their rocket launch sites around schools, nurseries and mosques, instead of creating missile defence systems like Israel’s “iron dome.” They literally use their most vulnerable people as human shields. Yet the death of every Gazan child is blamed on Israel.

The IDF’s task of trying to destroy this enemy is rather like trying to treat a body riddled with cancer. The UN has criticised Israel’s warning to evacuate northern Gaza, but what else are they supposed to do? They’ve given people a chance. Hamas, of course, has told everyone to stay put, so that they can keep using them as shields. Whatever “collateral damage” (a ghastly euphemism) emerges from this conflict, I place the blame with Hamas, not Israel.

There’s a lot of talk about numbers, as though what matters is the tally of deaths and supporting Israel is somehow discounting the number of children (etc) killed in Gaza, insinuating that “Palestinian lives are worth less” etc. Are people really too stupid to tell the difference between babies accidentally killed during conflict and babies deliberately dismembered in front of their parents, or sliced from the womb? The difference between people dying in a missile attack and people being deliberately hunted for hours on end, raped, tortured, mutilated, burned alive?

All this without even mentioning the threat of Hezbollah.

The true liberation of Palestine is not the destruction of Israel, but the destruction of Hamas and similar malignant organisations. Unfortunately, I doubt this is possible. Religious fanaticism, perverted into murderous dogma, will probably always exist, for as long as there are weak minds to embrace it.

If I could wave a wand, I’d crate a lovely island somewhere for Israel to relocate to, where they can live in peace and leave their psychopathic neighbours to enjoy their mayhem.

"They seek only an oppressive, authoritarian Muslim led ethno state where anyone but them has no privilege."

I see 🤔. Sounds familiar

Thank you LemonyTicket** as always very informative historical insight!

Yes it's a great way to distribute meaningless soundbites to people with damaged attention spans.