To think Israel won't exist much longer?

There currently seems to be genocidal rhetoric being spoken about quite openly on Israeli TV
Like Eliyahu yossian telling everyone on chanel 14 that 'there are no civilians in Gaza, only 2.5 million terrorists'

@SerafinasGoose @Wanderingowl
thanks both for your posts, which add detail and nuance. I accept you rightly calling me out for my more intemperate remarks.

Of course, as you say, it is far more complicated than my account. However, I note that nuance and context always seems goes in one direction . One side appears uninterested in truth, only in motivated reasoning and marshalling facts and opinion that lead to the same end. If only both sides were held to the same standard of behaviour, I think we’d be having a conversation that was very different in tone and content. As it is, I am perhaps more strident than I need to be.

They're all over the threads this morning doing antisemitisms left, right, and centre.

Given that we've reached the 'going from room to room pulling out individuals Jews and beating them to death is legitimate criticism of Isreal [sic]' stage of Jew-hating, I think we can expect a lot more of this over the coming days and weeks.

Indeed, and this is what's going on again. Relations had warmed between Israel and Saudi to the extent that Saudi was on the brink of recognising the Israeli state. What followed this was the 7th October massacre.

It's almost a repetition of the history of Arafat and Rabin, who for all their efforts (and Nobel Peace Prizes) in nearly bringing about the Oslo Accords, came under vicious attack from their own sides. Rabin's widow blamed Netanyahu for her husband's assassination. And Arafat ended up holded up in a compound, with the ANO and later Hamas splitting off from Fatah for being too secular, and for recognizing Israel's right to exist. In retrospect, how Arafat managed to survive until his seventies is nigh-on miraculous.

There are those on both sides of this festering mess who don't want a two-state solution, and who will willingly take out those on their own side who attempt to bring this outcome about. It isn't quite so simple as two sides bombarding each other.

There's a lot in @Eatapeach's detailed post that is well informed and makes a lot of sense. It loses me at two key points.

The Palestinian people are not innocent lambs, cornered and slaughtered by the Israeli war machine. They are the architects and victims of their own downfall.

I couldn't disagree more vehemently with this statement. Of course innocent civilians are precisely that. They were born into a political shitstorm that's beyond most people's understanding, much less control, and are certainly not responsible for what their ancestors may or may not have agreed some 70 years ago. Recall, it isn't just the Palestinian side that ensured the Oslo Accords could never have come about. Innocent Palestians are as much victims of this tragic mess as innocent Israelis.

As for this:

Every single statement made against Israel is an outright lie

there is simply no reasoning with this kind of absolutism.

@Akatsiya what’s your point? That Jews are the real antisemites?

I must say, this is an unexpected new entry into the ‘Most Preposterous Self-Outing as a Hateful Bigot’ competition, but well done on coming up with something original so late in the thread.

this sums it up in a nutshell

It's not quite that simple eatapeach. Expanding your borders for security is, frankly, bullshit. It's opportunism. You also have a situation that the one time in history that there almost was a two state solution, in the 90s, factions in Israel, specifically Netanyahu, helped engineer a situation where it became impossible. By riling people up until Rabbin was assassinated. Then helping to fund and create Hamas to replace Fatah. The narrative that Israel is entirely an innocent victim here is disingenuous.

There are Israelis who are innocent victims and there are Palestinians who are innocent victims. But there are also factions, on both sides, who have benefitted and will continue to benefit from ongoing aggression which will only end if they wipe out the other side.

People have an issue with basic facts. There was no Palestine or Israel before 1948. Palestine was a geographical and administrative designation for a place that had been governed by other empires for many hundreds of years. There were indigenous Jews and indigenous Arabs. There were Jews who migrated in from elsewhere , and Arabs who also migrated in - to benefit from the development that the Jews brought.
Two states were offered, only one side accepted. Jews therefore got their state.
Arabs rejected the possibility of their own state, and instead launched a war of extermination, which they lost. They tried again in 1967 and lost. They tried again in 1973 and lost. Each time they tried , and lost, Israel was able to expand. Israel expanded to secure its borders and its people. Israel made deals - land for peace, that did nothing except demonstrate that peace and land were not the aims of the Palestinian leadership.
The Palestinian people are not innocent lambs, cornered and slaughtered by the Israeli war machine. They are the architects and victims of their own downfall, and mostly they are victims of their own leadership and hatred. There is no cycle of violence, there is just a permanent war against Israel, in which the murderous infamy of one side is never mentioned.
And isn’t it interesting, despite protestations that ‘criticism of Israel is not antisemitic’, that whenever it kicks off in Gaza, Jewish schools have to close or bring in extra security, that crowds fill the streets chanting ‘gas the Jews’ or ‘Khaybar, Khaybar…’, that Jews are verbally and physically attacked in London, New York, Sydney.
Israel is a proxy for ‘Jews’, and Anti-Israel/pro-Palestine activism as a proxy for antisemitism. Every single statement made against Israel is an outright lie, a distortion, an inversion, or a projection, with context clumsily stripped away altogether or torn apart and bodged back together into some grotesque Frankenstein’s monster of a narrative that cannot conceal its own true nature.
Cry me a river Jordan, Jew haters.

Then you of all people should know better. Shame on you.
Please tell the UN and the rest of the world about your theory, because you seem to be the only one believing it. Dehumanising and eradicating identity, whilst simultaneously victim blaming. Shame on you again.

That exact thing happened to my family. In Iraq. Smuggled out under heavy blankets in a jeep. Weren't allowed to leave through legal means as they weren't allowed passports.

Palestinians left because they were promised bigger and better things after the war. They were promised the land they had previously only been tenants of would become theirs after the war.

Absolutely disgusting victim blaming going on there. I'll wait for the day your neighbours are raped and shot dead and you flee with your dc. I'll then tell you it was your fault you lost your home as you abandoned your neighbours. I hope you remember your words until your dying day.

ETA: I'm not reporting this because I want people to see your true colours. I pray this never comes back on you or your dc.

Why should they be allowed back to their own land and homes? Civilians? Civilians who thought that they were evacuating temporarily, to avoid being caught between two armies?

Why do you think?

Do you know that acquisition of land, by means of war, is expressly forbidden under the Geneva Conventions? Yet that is what Israel did and continues to do.

Yes, I know people like that as well. From Iraq. Lost everything.

... So they left? Why would they be allowed back when they showed they're perfectly happy for their neighbours to be killed? They took a gamble and they lost.

I know, people still living, not allowed to return to their own land.

Yes, and many still have deeds of what was their land. No right to return of course.

Yes @OhHelloTheres all Israel wanted was peace. Of course they will need more land, do you think they are going to want to live in tents in the desert?

Account of Deir Yassin from some of the the soldiers. Unsurprisingly these were covered up.

It was a pogram

Yes, a lot of people did willingly make themselves refugees, in the sense that they went along with what they were told to do by Arab leaders and left.

That's arrant nonsense, they thought that they were evacuating temporarily, to avoid being caught up in a war zone. The Israelis then pretended that nobody lived there and that it was theirs for the taking.

They could have all lived in peace. It's what Israel signed up to. The Palestinians refused. Multiple times.

What on earth makes you think Israel needs more land?! They have all of the Negev desert still to develop 🤦🏻‍♀️ You're so delusional it's unreal.

We need to stop with the "we all could have lived happily together" nonsense, because that was never the intention of Israel. 78% of Palestine became Israel in 1948, with a huge number of Palestinians being forced from their homes. Over the years more and more land has been confiscated, and Palestinians are supposed to be happy with any crumbs they've been thrown. As Israel expands every year, it's not rocket science that even more land and resources will be needed. I suspect we might see some settlements in Gaza in the near future... If only the selfish, heartless Palestinians could learn to live together 🙄

Yes, a lot of people did willingly make themselves refugees, in the sense that they went along with what they were told to do by Arab leaders and left. Others didn't want to leave their farms but as the farms weren't actually theirs, they were tenants not land owners, they had to leave when the land was bought.

Deir Yassin is one of the examples of when they were forcibly removed by what I can only really call a terrorist organisation. I know they called themselves a paramilitary group but really, they were terrorists. Those events were disgusting.

I thought we weren't allowed to talk about babies being ripped out of women's bodies though without actual proof? Because when that happened in Israel just over three weeks ago we were told it didn't happen unless they could see the proof. Rightfully so, I guess.

Anyway, unless you're under the false impression that hundreds of thousands of people lived in Deir Yassin I think we can all agree that was a minority. It should absolutely never have happened, it was disgusting and deplorable.

No, it's a problem when more than one group want to claim the land as theirs, as given by G-d. That's where the problems lie. If only one people wanted the land, the land would've been theirs. People would've lived alongside everyone else and it wouldn't have been a problem.

Do you think people willingly made themselves refugees? Gave up farms that had been in the family for many generations? Did the people of Deir Yassin just leave as advised by the neighbours, or were they mass raped, with foetuses ripped out of their wombs and killed in front of them? Did they then quietly leave, or were they not massacred?