Israel / Palestine: are you a woman that has changed your views in the last two years?

[catspyjamas1]

I was hardcore left for 20+ years. That meant Israel and the IDF were the devil. Signed and paid for Labour voter, Jeremy Corbyn voter, social studies courses etc. Since October 7th, I’ve had a revelation. As have many women just like me.

YANBU: I’m also discovering that all the things I believed in Left feminism isn’t reality.
YABU: I’m a Leftist woman and haven’t changed my view.

Please link any other threads on this I can read – thanks!

Israel should have peace and security within its own borders.

7th October was an horrific act of terrorism.

The war in Gaza has been appalling and yes, I would consider it a genocide.

The Palestinian people deserve a state of their own.

I hold all these views simultaneously, as a woman.

Why isn’t more time spent working on actual two-state solutions? Apparently a map exists from previous talks. I wonder if an elevated high speed rail link between Gaza and the West Bank could provide a solution.

Why has this conflict, thousands of miles away, been allowed to become a source of conflict and a litmus test issue in the UK when we have our own tragedies and scandals to consider? The infected blood scandal is a case in point, along with child sexual abuse.

A decade or two ago it was entirely possible to agree to disagree on this matter and I think that we should endeavour to return to that conversation. More unites us than divides us.

Over 70,000 Palestinians have been murdered and you still believe this shite? Christ, the Israeli propaganda machine got you good! Is your news source YouTube or TikTok?

I hate threads like this tbh. October 7 was an atrocity, over 1k Israelis died and women were savagely raped, other people beaten, it’s absolutely horrendous. It doesn’t warrant 70,000 people being murdered in response though somehow. But yeah, Palestinians somehow need to move past the Nakba, and the widespread ongoing dispossession ever since…

And whilst we’re on it, I haven’t heard anyone calling Islamophobia out today following the mosque shooting in the states but we hear outpourings against antisemitism daily when Jews have been attacked. And yeah I’m saying this as a Jew so don’t come at me. It’s just shameful double standards.

I answered your question in my first sentence.

I used to be neutral/ not massively interested in Israel/ Palestine conflict due to fatigue from hearing about it non stop growing up in the former USSR...later, when learning more about conflict my sympathy was growing towards Palestinians plight, while still seeing both sides.

However, October 7th brought the horrid global antisemitism of supposedly progressive people into the focus - including Left's unwillingness to accept that Palestinians did some horrible, inexcusable things on that day, and the unwillingness by a lot of the left's righteous warriors like Greta and Corbyn to acknowledge killings, rapes and torture of the Israeli women that happened that day. These people failed to voice any support for the Israeli victims and actually seem to cheer on Hamas which is a massive WTF in my world.

Also, it brought into sharp focus pure and simple Jew haltered displayed by people like Corbyn and the Green party - the people who are supposedly progressive and liberal. It left me feeling massively disappointed and to be honest I now see far left the same as far right - not going anywhere near either of them.

No one expects Palestinians to be moving past Nakba or the deaths from Israeli missiles. No one argues it is not tragic or unfair.

However, portraying Palestinians as passive victims is not entirely fair as they are definitely not passive and not always the victim. And portraying Israelis as devils incarnate also not fair, either as over this time they often tried very hard to find a solution, have been attacked and have to deal with daily bombardments and terrorist acts. It s a 70 year old conflict, very complex and complicated. There is no simple solution, and it will not be made any less complex by killing Jews in Golders Green, by torching ambulances - or, indeed, by shooting people in mosques.

I agree. This conflict has opened my eyes to the fact that the Corbyn/Polanksi faction are extremists, which I hadn’t twigged before. They seem more extreme than the likes of Tommy Robinson when they talk about open borders and ‘Jewish supremacy’.

The majority of Israelis are gleeful about killing people? Do you have a source for this?

Yes. My eyes and ears. All you have to do is look at Israeli media or the Israeli side of social media. Knock yourself out.

You've seen the social media profiles of the majority of the Israeli people? At least 5 million people? That's a bit creepy.

Demonising Israeli (and in this case, specifically Israeli Jews) as somehow uniquely evil is actually classic antisemtisim. Let's not forget that over the years, israelis have voted in leftist parties, have given up land for peace.

In the interest of fairness, let's look at how "fucked up" (your words) the Palestinians are. Palestians' own polling www.pcpsr.org/ shows the majority support the massacre of civilians on 7/10 and don't think Hamas should disarm. The majortiy don't support a 2 state solution and believe in "armed struggle" rather than neogitations.
Analysis by the Washington Institute shows that a majority of the Palestinian respondents believe that “eventually, the Palestinians will control almost all of Palestine, because God is on their side”

So, turns out that both sides in this conflict are a bit fucked up. Probably why this is going on for so long.

Not everything needs to be compartmentalised.

the IDF is evil and their atrocities can’t be listed in a quick post but the list goes on and on. Most recently, they sexually assaulted flotilla activists.

You don’t have to be a ‘leftie’ to condemn the actions of Israel and to support the Palestinian’s right to freedom.

I’m not a ‘leftie’ either but god help me, I think I would rather die than support a country like Israel.

Given up land that isn’t even theirs in the first place? Israeli settlers are evil.

Totally agree. I used to think I was politically on the left but after October 7, my eyes were totally opened. It's juts been an excuse for pure classic antisemitism.

It's not to say that Gaza hasn't been horrific and there haven't been war crimes and the current Israeli government is the most far right, populist and anti democratic ever. But the obsession with Israel and Palestine is like nothing else. I remember the Tamil genocide in Sri Lanka, depserate Tamils lying in front of buses in London to try to get some attention. And the recent Rohingya genocide in Myanmar - because they didn't have so many phones (too poor and marginalized), then it wasn't "livestreamed" and didn't count? And the UAE being complicit in the Sudan genocide, who's boycotting Dubai? I've never seen anything like it.

I don't have a potiical home anymore. I may just vote Conservative - for the first time ever - because Kemi at least is clear eyed on this issue and sees it for what it was (may even get over her being pro Brexit, that's how bad it is)

Case in point. Thank you for exemplifying.

And I assume you mean all (jewish) Israelis? Not just the 300,000 who live in post 1967 territories?

Unfotunately the Palestinians are doing nothing to actually build the state that they want. They turned away from the peace deals offered which would have given them exactly that.

If a state were the ultimate goal, then why didn't they declare a state in 1948? Why didn't they declare a state before Israel controlled the WB and Gaza in 1967? Why didn't they accept the Camp David deal in 2000? Why not the Anna polis deal in 2007? They have HAD many opportunities to have their own state but they never had the institutions of state ready to go or the consensus and support to make the necessary compromises. The majority still, to this day, believe that they will win and beat Israel and have all of mandatory Palestine.

Persaonlly, I'd love the two state solution to be a possibility. I think we are further from that than we have been in the last 30 years. Both because of Israeli setter expansion anda move to the right in Israel and also because of weak Palestinian support for it too and poor democratic state institutions.

Yes.

I was on both sides, in that I believed Palestinians have the right to their homes and Israel needs to do whatever it can to protect itself.

The more I see the death and destruction imposed by Israel, the children burning to death or run over by bulldozers whilst sleeping on the streets, the relentless sexual abuse against women, and the genocide as a whole, I believe Israel is very much the aggressor here and I no longer have any sympathy for it.

Each of those deals required them to give up more and more of their land. It’s not unreasonable that they weren’t keen on the idea.

@Sartre
It doesn’t warrant 70,000 people being murdered

What do you put the total death toll at, if 70,000 are murder? (Hamas says 72,000 total).

Is your view that all the Gaza conflict deaths are murder? Even those of Hamas fighters?

In your view was any military response illegitimate? Or just that the military response should have avoided all deaths?

Because that does sound like a double standard.

No possible interpretation of the laws of armed conflict could support it.

So it's not about a Palestinian state then is it? It's about having it all and there being no Israel and no compromise.

The Palestinians Arabs wanted it all in 1948 and thought they would get it and lost. And have basically been losing ever since.

It's not unreasonable that they are not keen on the idea. Neither are Israelis for that matter. But it's called compromise. And accepting reality. That's the whole basis of the two state solution.

I think the same.

Are the IDF committing war crimes against Palestine in plain sight? Yes.

Are Hamas a murderous terrorist organisation willing to use Palestinian civilians as human shields? Yes.

They’re both as bad as each other imo. May the best (or worst) one win.

What I don’t understand is how, after 9/11, there was a massive movement to denounce any resultant Islamophobia. Yet, since 7/10, antisemitism has been allowed to run rife unchecked.

My views have shifted over a much longer timespan , think three decades. I come from a family background which naturally encouraged support for insurgency/resistance and such like. That was my starting point and yes it was simplistic, naive and didn’t really stand up to wider scrutiny, geo-political reality, or modern historical context .

I have visited and spent time in Israel when I was much younger. I think for me now the crux is - Israel exists in a part of the world where it is literally surrounded by groups, communities - including those living in Gaza under the terrorist group Hamas, organisations, governments, well financed terrorist groups, who all despise Israel and despise Jewish people, dehumanise them to the extent of routinely describing them as cockroaches and worse. This is the day to day, week to week, year to year, and decade to decade, reality of Israel’s existence. I was so shocked by what I heard when people described the music festival massacre and the massacres at the kibbutz . Dawn French’s reaction particularly angered me.

And now what is happening in England to Jewish people living here. This has been allowed to forment over the past couple of years - and the irony is many of the people shouting ‘globalise the intifada’ have no idea what that means or the wider historical context involved. It’s so shameful as is the ignorance and the wanton anti-semitism.

Nothing to do with the Jewish faith. Countless Jews oppose Israeli actions.

You literally referred to Jews in your previous post. You're very confused.