To think Israel won't exist much longer?

[sergeantsalt]

Support in the west is declining, and when Israel doesn't have weapons and defense funding they won't be able to defend against their neighbouring countries on their own. AIBU to wonder how much longer it can exist given they are losing support?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

this sums it up in a nutshell

@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.

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.

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.

@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.

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'

Does anyone in Israel know if he's been charged with hate crime or is that sort of conversation acceptable?

Eatapeach, I have to say I wasn't expecting that response. I wish everyone could be like you, the world would be a better place. I know it sounds like such a cliche, but this is such a complex situation. And if there is any hope for peace, it comes from people accepting that. But I don't know how it will come about when currently, the whole situation is dominated by people who want genocide over peace.

For a long time, I hated when people speaking up for Palestine were accused of anti-semitism but the reality is very clear in the last few weeks, that a lot of people have been using support of Palestine as an outlet for anti-semitism. It doesn't mean that everyone who sympathises with Palestinians is anti-semitic but some absolutely are. And it's honestly like some people are genuinely refusing to accept the utter horror of what happened on October 7th.

@OhHelloTheres do you know more about it by any chance?
I mean what hope do the people of Gaza have when the winner of the Israel Defence Price says quite confidently that 'the state of Israel needs to accept that there are no innocents in Gaza'

It is very clear that the right wing government of Israel see the gazans as lesser beings

@Wanderingowl @Eatapeach
All of this, more of this please.
An oasis of sanity and understanding amidst all the raging noise.

Thanks @Eatapeach for both a very interesting discussion and generous response. I can understand where you're coming from, especially since current discussion of the middle eastern situation often seems to be lacking a backdrop. IMO, and I'm happy to accept I might be wrong in this observation, this often amounts to as crude a distinction as to who is seen to be on the 'left' and who the 'right', and for people to flock to one side or the other on the basis of this kind of strange political 'tribalism'. I suspect those chanting 'Free Palestine' are of the same ilk as those chanting other political slogans seeming to emanate from the left, but which look nothing like any form of leftism I've ever seen in my life before. The L/R distinction is fast becoming meaningless; no longer is it clustering around the centre as is the British way, and IMO should not give people an easy 'out'. They should think about and work through their political loyalties, and examine why it is they hold the opinions they hold. Unfortunately as we've seen in too many of these threads, people are often unwilling to do this.

I've seen footage of what some of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators were chanting about UK Jews, and was horrified. The last century has shown where this kind of thinking has led. I'm also deeply worried by the rhetoric permeating our universities: in particular the unions. A local branch came under fire for its vocerifous support of David Miller, who was sacked by the University of Bristol for whipping up anti-Jewish sentiment. That branch stood by him and wanted him reinstated. They found themselves on the receiving end of accusations of antisemitic racism (which is fair, they should have investigated their loyalties more closely). The charge stuck against Miller, who even at his tribunal accused the JSoc of being a racist group because it supported Zionism. Unsurprisingly, Bristol stuck to their guns and refused to reinstate him. This lazy, ideological adherence to supposed left-wing thinking (that isn't left) is one of many reasons I'm currently seriously reconsidering my membership of the UCU. And I'm wondering what the hell working in today's universities must be like for my (sometimes very left wing) Jewish colleagues.

I read Anthony Julius's The Trials of the Disapora after I heard him interviewed on Radio 4 when the book was first published. This resugence of antisemitism is sadly not new, albeit I do disagree with his ultimate conclusions that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic. Such an erudite, nuanced book IMO deserved a more balanced conclusion. In the meantime, Jewish people have suffered in silence an increasing groundswell of antisemitism for nigh-on two decades, if not more.

As to backdrop, a lot of people seem to be forgetting who Hamas are. And who Netanyahu is, and his role in sabotaging the only real chance at a peace deal there's ever been. Hamas are the progeny of the ANO. The ANO, who employed some of the most barbaric instruments of torture humanity ever conceived, who orchestrated the Pan Am bombings, and who wanted every single Jew massacred. Celebrating their hideous actions is IMO akin to al qaeda supporters dancing in the streets after 9/11. But somehow, because it didn't happen on our doorsteps in the West, UK demonstrators seem to find this perfectly OK.

I find it unconsionable.

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.

That's counter-factual.

They abandoned their homes temporarily, because they were told that they'd be in the middle of a ruddy great battle. They didn't leave because they thought that Jordan and Lebanon were going to give them mansions with 100 acres.

It's nothing but propaganda.

In any case, it absolutely did not give Israel any right to take their land.

Yes, more of this please. Tell us that the Palestinian people are the architects of their own downfall and that every thing said about Israel is simply a lie. Maybe you and the five other supporters will start to believe it. This is what hasbara is for anyone who isn't aware. And at the same time saying all supporters of the Palestinian people are anti-smites.

Lacking so much in self-awareness that they don’t catch the dramatic irony of bringing up the pain of antisemitism in one breath and in the next breath telling a persecuted people who have been systematically ethnically cleansed that they “brought it on themselves”. 🤦‍♀️ It is classic abused becomes the abuser.

And the people afterwards encouraging this vile rhetoric and calling it a breath of fresh air. I honestly had to laugh.

Video of the Israeli hostages speaking:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzCGgFngy2D/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

The BBC and other mainstream news outlets in the UK have chosen not to show this as it's doing Hamas’s work for them. Why are you posting it?