To wonder how anyone thought what was happening in Gaza was ok?

[march10th]

I see all these threads popping up about outrage about what's going on, especially now the UN and the US have started acknowledging the situation.
AIBU to wonder how people didn't see this from the beginning??

It's been months and thousands of people have been wiped out. As an Arab with close family links to Palestine, I think this is ethnic cleansing, similar to what Western countries have done to the indigenous people of Australia and America.

In relation to your allegation that UNRWA have collaborated with Hamas, that's a pretty serious allegation to make. Do you have evidence of this?

Yes, it's called ethnic cleansing and it's usually frowned upon by right thinking people.

Even the idea of a safe zone is seen as illegitimate, as ‘forced transfer’. So bombing is wrong, but asking people to leave an area before it is bombed is also wrong! Israel is always demonised

There appears to be nothing Israel can do that you wouldn't defend, what you're describing is a form of ethnic cleansing, which is against International law.

But of course the aim isn't to bomb Hamas, its to force Palestinians to leave Gaza or at least push them into a far smaller area, better still, drive them to break out into Egypt.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/gaza-refugees-bombed-in-tented-safe-zone-0j2pnslhz#:~:text=There%20was%20little%20shelter%20and,told%20they%20would%20be%20safe.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/21/middleeast/israel-strikes-evacuation-zones-gaza-intl-cmd/index.html

https://msf.org.uk/article/gaza-msf-strongly-condemns-deadly-israeli-attack-staff-and-family-shelter

A few examples of accounts of the bombing of 'safe zones'.

Israel is not Iceland. It is not a discrete country defined by naturally occurring features .It takes a flexible approach to its borders to phrase it politely.

Israel will always have a terrorist problem because it was founded by seizing land violently and its borders are mostly land borders where the displaced continue live. No one has criticised Israel for developing the iron dome that was largely paid for by the US. That is self defence.

The bombardment of Gaza with untargeted missiles, the targeting of hospitals, the destruction of graves and places of worship, the repeated forced displacement of the civilian population to an unsafe area , the use of starvation as a weapon of war- these are not self defence.

Isreal faced an existential threat in that the 400,000 highly educated and skilled adults who keep Israel in the developed world are oozing out of the country as the religious right takes the reins of government.

Israel exists because of the Holocaust. But that generation is dying off and is nearly gone.It relies on the US and powerful pro Israel actors in the halls of power. But secular American Jews are marrying out. There is a strong demographic association between pro Israeli sentiment and age, and in a few decades Americans will no longer be funding Israel’s with their taxes

@NotSoBigCrocodile
You’d need a pretty good Time Machine to go back to the Iron Age

Wondering if it’s Ok for US to do this while the UN have said that the actions of Israel meet the conditions of genocide.

The article says that US support allows Israel to act with a feeling of impunity. I would argue that the US under Joe Biden are also acting with a feeling of impunity. The distribution of power can change over time and I think it’s foolish for any government to behave in this way. Perhaps Biden being senior will have already passed before that time, but maybe others who are complicit will still be around to face the consequences.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/29/us-approves-weapons-bombs-israel

Ethnic cleansing is not when a group of people say they are going to kill you, ethnically cleanse you and you try and stop them from doing so.

My family were ethnically cleansed out of the middle east. Not because they were trying to kill other people, but because they were Jewish!

@LemonyTicket I'm sorry that happened to your family. It's absolutely wrong for anyone to be persecuted and driven from their home because of their faith and/or ethnicity.

Absolutely. Accusations that Israel are “ethnically cleansing” the Palestinians is just another blood libel.

There is no comparison between 7 Oct attacks and Israel’s defence against genocide.

I pray the war ends soon. A reckoning will soon take place in Rafah - this is where the blood-thirsty genocidal monsters of Hamas will hopefully be destroyed.

It is.

And it's also absolutely wrong to hang around for 80 years trying to turn back time or kill innocent people for power and control. People must accept the modern world as it is, with everyone's historic sadness considered equally, and move forward.

I would not condone a single bullet or bomb dropped on the countries that ethnically cleansed my family. That is entirely pointless warmongering destruction.

The Palestinians must accept Israel and move forward, like everyone else did.

Please bear in mind that some of us have loved ones in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza. What you appear to be looking forward to as a reckoning is likely to be their deaths.

The Palestinians must accept Israel and move forward, like everyone else did.

But will Israel accept the Palestinians? Gaza is an occupied territory they have not been let move forward no nation could in those circumstances, The West Bank has to endure constant illegal settlements, they are getting removed from their homes by force, this is not in the past this is their present.

They agreed to 30 years ago and then someone assassinated (not a Palestinian) Yitzhak Rabin, maybe you missed that. Stop victim blaming the Palestinians.

As for trying to turn back time you might also have missed the Israeli claim to the land because their ancestors may have lived there 3000 years ago. The Palestinians who have been displaced in living memory are not allowed to return and those still living in the OT are having their homes stolen everyday.

It's hard to accept a nation who keeps killing your friends, family, neighbours etc and stealing your possessions. Obviously a sign of their inferiority in your eyes.

Please. I clearly mean I look forward to the defeat of Hamas. Not the deaths of innocent people.

Gaza has not been occupied since 2005. The only reason Israel are there now is because of a war that Hamas started.

Exactly, that was a pretty bloodthirsty statement in itself considering even the US are opposed to it because of the immense risk to civilians who were forcibly displaced to Rafah by Israel

@Parkingt111 the poster seems to see nothing wrong with how it was phrased, either...

Israel has always accepted Palestine. Since the very first offer of division. It was the Arab nations who would not accept Israel. This is simple, irrefutable fact.

Gaza is not occupied. It is under blockade, because the objective of it's government and many of it's people is to use every means and opportunity to murder Jewish people with a goal of annihilating the entire country.

When they stop, the blockade stops.

I am not a mindreader, but I'd imagine Israel and most of it's people would be delighted to live peacefully with it's neighbour. I don't imagine needing to spend billions of dollars to fight off daily missiles is the ideal goal of anyone.

Sadly, Gaza is not interested in that.

I have a masters in middle eastern history. I haven't "missed" anything. Thanks though. I am sure you have watched a lot of TikTok. They did not agree to it. The assassination did not stop a peace agreement. The Palestinians said no. They always have. That's historical record.

Beyond history, in today's actual world in front of your very eyes, there is a government in control of Gaza with a charter and everything. They even go on TV repeatedly and tell you in very clear terms: they will NEVER accept Israel, and their goal is to kill all Jews and take Israel over. Perhaps you think they're joking?

Jews have as much, if not more, right to live in the middle east (and particularly Israel) as Muslims do. Muslims conquered the whole lot and made everyone dhimmi who wasn't a Muslim. It was entirely their choice to conquer and subjugate others and I don't particularly judge them for history - it happened and the past is the past.

But the fact remains, the entire Middle East does not belong to Muslims. And they have forced all other people's out of their homelands either by conversion, ethnic cleansing or making life unpleasant. This is why every surrounding country is now 95% or more Muslim. And they have their way they want to live, which is evidently intolerant of others.

Even today in 2024 minority groups experience horrific persecution. The plight of non Muslims in Sudan, Pakistan, Iraq or many other places is completely tragic. But of course, you care nowt about that. The Yazidis, the indigenous Kurds of Northern Iraq are, to this day, in daily genocide. Thousands of their women are missing after being taken as sex slaves at ages as young as 10. The remaining women force fed contraceptives so they cannot breed more non-Muslims. I believe just a few weeks ago we watched these girls burned alive in a cage as they refused to convert.

Perhaps in your mind their is some fantasy where this is righteous. In mine, there is not. Just the simple fact that if you can't treat minorities like equals, you haven't got a leg to stand on when they want independence from you. And so Israel stands as the ONE tiny, teeny scrap of land that gained such independence for an indigenous minority, and it's a bloody tragedy you do not fully support that.

There exists no possibility, nor has there EVER existed, a possibility for Jews to live as equals with the same rights as a Muslim on their own ancestral lands. As such, it's completely right and just that they have independence to do so. I am sure, like my family, almost all those people would have far preferred not being colonised, expelled, murdered, subjugated or deported in the first place - but here we are!

"It's hard to accept a nation who keeps killing your friends, family, neighbours etc and stealing your possessions" Yes, it is. Gaza alone has committed 2300 terrorist attacks against Israel and fired hundreds of thousands of missiles at them. I think perhaps 7/10 was a point where they'd simply had enough.

What about the last 6 months makes you think that will happen?

@LemonyTicket Israel has not always accepted Palestine.

If the Israeli government and political system accepted Palestine, there wouldn't be public declarations from significant figures about how proud they are of having prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state.

If the Israeli government accepted Palestine, 'settlers' wouldn't be seizing land, oppressing people and killing people in the West Bank.

If the Israeli government accepted Palestine, IDF bulldozers probably wouldn't have flattened Palestinian homes and the people attempting to protect them in Rafah pre-withdrawal.

If the Israeli government accepted the rights of Palestinian people to live, there probably wouldn't be the level of potential war crimes going on in Gaza that there are. There is evidence of systematic targeting of essential infrastructure and groups of people, including targeting of children, journalists and healthcare professionals. Efforts to get aid in to prevent starvation have been hindered at every turn. That does not match up with an underlying acceptance of people's rights to live.