Free Palestine

What has happened historically in other countries does not excuse Israel’s behaviour. I find it strange that you think the defense of “but they did it too” makes war crimes, displacement and horrific crimes against other human beings acceptable. We are talking about displacement, murder, rape, mutilation - a country literally built on the mass graves of the people who lived there before.

If someone shot your family and used the defense “but someone down the road shot a family too why aren’t you talking about that” would you think that the murder suddenly was okay, that they had the right to do that? We learn as small children that we can’t hit, bite or steal because another child does it, but you think genocide and displacement is okay because some other psychopaths have done it before? Do you have any empathy for the native Palestinians??

What has happened historically in other countries does not excuse Israel’s behaviour. I find it strange that you think the defense of “but they did it too” makes war crimes, displacement and horrific crimes against other human beings acceptable. We are talking about displacement, murder, rape, mutilation - a country literally built on the mass graves of the people who lived there before.

If someone shot your family and used the defense “but someone down the road shot a family too why aren’t you talking about that” would you think that the murder suddenly was okay, that they had the right to do that? We learn as small children that we can’t hit, bite or steal because another child does it, but you think genocide and displacement is okay because some other psychopaths have done it before? Do you have any empathy for the native Palestinians??

Really?

So why was the pp happy to liken Israelis to illegitimate squatters but then refused to use the same words about Pakistan and just dodged the issue?

That is singling Israel out for unique criticism. So don't claim it doesn't happen.

No one is saying Israel is uniquely illegitimate - horrific crimes were committed in India, Africa, Ireland, Sudan, China, Russia, Syria - there have been many genocides in history, many war crimes. The British Empire has committed it’s fair share of war crimes (along with the Germans, French, Belgiums etc), stolen land and murdered the natives - ‘the sun never sets on the British empire’ - it doesn’t make it right. Those war crimes are remembered in history as war crimes. It doesn’t make it okay to do it - it is not now acceptable because others did it first. I don’t really understand why you would make that argument?

You can’t continue to steal land, murder and oppress people because you’re not the only murderer or thief - if that was a viable defense our prisons would be empty.

But did you miss that@samlett is a knowledgeable person? They know all about the difference between knowledge and parroting unfounded opinions and tropes.

No one is saying Israel is uniquely illegitimate - horrific crimes were committed in India, Africa, Ireland, Sudan, China, Russia, Syria - there have been many genocides in history, many war crimes. The British Empire has committed it’s fair share of war crimes (along with the Germans, French, Belgiums etc), stolen land and murdered the natives - ‘the sun never sets on the British empire’ - it doesn’t make it right. Those war crimes are remembered in history as war crimes. It doesn’t make it okay to do it - it is not now acceptable because others did it first. I don’t really understand why you would make that argument?

You can’t continue to steal land, murder and oppress people because you’re not the only murderer or thief - if that was a viable defense our prisons would be empty.

No one is saying Israel is uniquely illegitimate - horrific crimes were committed in India, Africa, Ireland, Sudan, China, Russia, Syria - there have been many genocides in history, many war crimes. The British Empire has committed it’s fair share of war crimes (along with the Germans, French, Belgiums etc), stolen land and murdered the natives - ‘the sun never sets on the British empire’ - it doesn’t make it right. Those war crimes are remembered in history as war crimes. It doesn’t make it okay to do it - it is not now acceptable because others did it first. I don’t really understand why you would make that argument?

You can’t continue to steal land, murder and oppress people because you’re not the only murderer or thief - if that was a viable defense our prisons would be empty.

But did you miss that@samlett is a knowledgeable person? They know all about the difference between knowledge and parroting unfounded opinions and tropes.

Israel is not a settler colonial project.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-40874496

Read the description of what happened during the Partition of India.

Similar, terrible, stories. Horrific violence, rape, murder of children. Massive upheaval of people.

But I'm not sure that people even know about it when they are singling out the creation of Israel for specific criticism, with their suggestions that Israel is uniquely illegitimate.

Not at all. People knowledgable about settler colonial projects know about Partition.

Not at all. People knowledgable about settler colonial projects know about Partition.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-40874496

Read the description of what happened during the Partition of India.

Similar, terrible, stories. Horrific violence, rape, murder of children. Massive upheaval of people.

But I'm not sure that people even know about it when they are singling out the creation of Israel for specific criticism, with their suggestions that Israel is uniquely illegitimate.

Watch “Tantura” on Amazon Prime. It shows interviews with Palestinian villages, ex IDF soldiers and Israeli settlers all living around Tantura in 1948. The Israeli settlers talk about fleeing the war and how they were actually taken in as refugees by Palestinians, lived in their houses and that they lived peacefully alongside them. That all changed when the newly formed Israel sent in soldiers to take the port town and expel the villagers - the soldiers have admitted in their old age to massacring a lot of the inhabitants - shooting, incineration with a flame thrower, dismemberment and rape was the reward those Palestinians got for helping refugees. Many are now buried in a mass grave under a carpark at what is now a seaside resort, others have been forced into over populated areas like Gaza as Palestinian territory is reduced year after year. Countries like the UK decided to give away the Palestinians land and let over 800,000 be forcibly displaced, houses and land stolen, thousands massacred. Israel cites the people who fought back as they were being displaced at gunpoint as the reason they could not live alongside Palestinians - good old victim blaming. No one objects to people buying land or property like normal immigrants, it’s the displacement and murder that leaves a bad taste.

In 1967 Israel expanded its borders further stealing more land and expelling more Palestinians. Each year more and more Palestinian villages are demolished and annexed by Israel - these are called “settlements”. They are regularly criticised by the international community and yet we buy products from there and do nothing to stop Israel from constantly expanding it’s boarders. Netanyahu and his evil side kicks have spoken openly about achieving “Greater Israel” which means that they want to annex parts of Gordan, Syria, Lebanon and other surrounding countries.

A Palestinian, born in what is now called Israel, has no right to return to the land but a jewish person with no ties to the land born in Texas can go and claim citizenship. Your level of rights in Israel is determined by your religion, it is an apartheid state. Israeli politicians are currently discussing expelling all arabs from the West Bank which would more or less see Palestine cease to exist.

There weren’t just randomly ‘given’ Israel so it wouldn’t be anything like giving them Wales.

Partition is still something that is done in modern times. How else could you sort out a situation where two groups of people want their own country? Czechoslovakia was divided in the 1990s, for example.

I think many people say the creation of Israel was the wrong move only because of how things have panned out. They don’t tend to disagree with the partition of India and Pakistan, or Ireland and N Ireland.

People say that the Palestinians are right to continue fighting because Israel ‘took their land’, but that sort of thing happened in numerous other places and the best outcomes have always been for people who accepted the partition even when it involved significant movement of people. So I don’t see it as a great historical injustice at all. The only reason it looks like that is because the Palestinians and surrounding countries completely refused to accept the idea of a Jewish state alongside them.

Given the long history of Jews being expelled from whatever countries they have tried to settle in, and of the recent final solution that sought to exterminate them, do you think that Jews need their own country? One they will not be persecuted in, expelled from or rounded up from for industrial slaughter?

Currently I would have to say no. You can't really claim that in the UK for example, or other European countries, jews are in danger of being expelled or rounded up for industrial slaughter, can you?

But I would also accept that the situation would have looked very different in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust when these decisions were being made, and they didn't have the benefit of seeing into the future.

Given the long history of Jews being expelled from whatever countries they have tried to settle in, and of the recent final solution that sought to exterminate them, do you think that Jews need their own country? One they will not be persecuted in, expelled from or rounded up from for industrial slaughter?

Currently I would have to say no. You can't really claim that in the UK for example, or other European countries, jews are in danger of being expelled or rounded up for industrial slaughter, can you?

But I would also accept that the situation would have looked very different in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust when these decisions were being made, and they didn't have the benefit of seeing into the future.

Oh and while we're at it, other colonised groups who deserve self determination in their own homelands are the Kurds, the Yazidis, the Druze, the Western Saharans, the Uyghurs and the Rohingya. #FreeKurdistan

I'm hazarding a guess that one of the problems people might have right now with recognising a Palestinian state is that it is currently part-run by a proscribed terrorist organisation which is actively holding hostages.

Nobody here to my knowledge, on the loosely pro-Israel side, has ever questioned the concept of a two state solution which by definition means believing in the legitimacy of a Palestinian state.