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Conflict in the Middle East

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CallMeMammy · 02/10/2024 13:09

SharonEllis · 02/10/2024 12:59

I am not scrubbing them out but Hamas's motivation was not to wipe out Thai people. In fact the people who tend to 'scrub out' other ethnicities in Israel are those who are anti-Israel. Their narrative tends to focus on Israel as an ethno-centric white colonial state. Those who umderstand Israel better talk about its diversity

I have read in numerous news outlets that this was Hamas motivation.

Hamas justified its attack as a response to what it calls Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people.
These include security raids on Islam's third holiest site - the al-Aqsa Mosque, in occupied East Jerusalem - and Jewish settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.

Hamas also wants thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israel to be freed and for an end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip by Israel and Egypt - something both countries say is for security.

This is from a BBC article https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67039975.amp

I tend trust what reputable news outlets say over people on forums/Twitter or whatever. You of course are entitled to take your news from where ever you like.

A woman and child sitting next to a ruined building in Rafah (January 2024)

What is Hamas and why is it fighting with Israel in Gaza?

Why did Hamas attack Israel, and what has happened in Gaza since the 7 October raid?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67039975.amp

CopperTurquoise · 02/10/2024 13:09

The point isn’t that Israeli society is comprised solely of Jewish people, look at how mixed Haifa is for example where around 1 in 4 people are Arab. The point is that Israel is the only place where Jewish people are safe. No other nation state is a safe place for Jewish people to live. That’s why antizionism is antisemitism.

I think we’ve established that Europe isn’t safe. The UK is not safe. There is nowhere else in the whole world where Jewish people are safe. It is safer to be in Israel under bombardment than it is to live anywhere else because the Israeli government alone can be trusted to protect and defend Jewish people and all other citizens. Druze, Christian or Muslim. (Note the freedom of religion that is rare in the region but for many Israelis freedom from religion too.)

SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice · 02/10/2024 13:17

The answer is really very simple and it is; withdraw from Gaza, stop provoking Hezbollah and Iran, pull out the settlers from the west bank and then sit down and start to negotiate the release of Hostages and a way forward for Palestinians and Israelis to live without violence.

@mouthpipette This & the rest of your post. 🫡

HelenHen · 02/10/2024 13:17

CopperTurquoise · 02/10/2024 13:09

The point isn’t that Israeli society is comprised solely of Jewish people, look at how mixed Haifa is for example where around 1 in 4 people are Arab. The point is that Israel is the only place where Jewish people are safe. No other nation state is a safe place for Jewish people to live. That’s why antizionism is antisemitism.

I think we’ve established that Europe isn’t safe. The UK is not safe. There is nowhere else in the whole world where Jewish people are safe. It is safer to be in Israel under bombardment than it is to live anywhere else because the Israeli government alone can be trusted to protect and defend Jewish people and all other citizens. Druze, Christian or Muslim. (Note the freedom of religion that is rare in the region but for many Israelis freedom from religion too.)

No it's not the point.

Nova was an attack on Israel... absolutely. Innocent Israelis... absolutely. Despicable terrorist attack... absolutely.

However it was not a Jewish only event. So it was not 'an attack on Jews being Jews'. Everything else, yes... but that statement ignores all the other victims and is just incorrect.

CopperTurquoise · 02/10/2024 13:25

What percentage of Israeli population have Jewish ethnicity? 70? 80?

What percentage of Holocaust victims were Jewish? It’s so important to acknowledge and understand that pogroms are aimed at Jewish people. Doing so does not detract from the fact that other groups were targeted such as the Roma or gay people or the mentally ill. Who benefits from denying these facts?

SharonEllis · 02/10/2024 13:55

HelenHen · 02/10/2024 13:17

No it's not the point.

Nova was an attack on Israel... absolutely. Innocent Israelis... absolutely. Despicable terrorist attack... absolutely.

However it was not a Jewish only event. So it was not 'an attack on Jews being Jews'. Everything else, yes... but that statement ignores all the other victims and is just incorrect.

Im sorry but you are just incorrect. Just because there was a mix of people there (as you would expect at an Israeli event) does not mean that the overriding motivation was not anti-Jewish and certainly does not ignore those who were killed or taken hostage who were not Jewish. That you are persisting with this denial is deeply offensive.

YoYoYoYo12345 · 02/10/2024 14:01

maudelovesharold · 01/10/2024 23:53

Let's hope civilian casualties are kept to a minimum though ....

Yeah….right. The chances of civilian casualties being kept to a minimum are, as I’m sure we all know, precisely zero. The civilians will bear the brunt, as always. Unfortunately not all civilians have the protection of bunkers and iron domes.

Iran fires missiles indiscriminately, even I to the west bank killing a Palestinian man.

At least with Israel taking on hezbollah they are obviously targeted attacks. Hamas also doesn't give 2p for civilians.

SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice · 02/10/2024 14:03

BillySnuz · 01/10/2024 17:59

Are you ok @SometimesCalmPerson? Because you don’t seem like you’re ok.

Firstly, a couple of questions for you. What language do Israelis speak, and where does it come from? (Answer: Hebrew - Ancient Israel. Hebrew has its origins in the Semantic language group known as the Canaanite group, which has its written records dating back to the second millennium BCE).

Now answer this question: what language do Palestinians speak and where does that language come from? (Answer: Arabic - this language can can be traced back to the Arabian Peninsula, where it developed over time from a group of dialects spoken by the nomadic Bedouin tribes - the earliest form of Arabic, known as Old Arabic, dates back to the 4th century CE).

The connection between the Jewish people and Israel goes back long before the birth of either Christianity or Islam. Jews created a society there in the days of Joshua, a kingdom in the days of Saul, and a nation with Jerusalem as its capital in the days of King David - more than 3,000 years ago.

Jews are the only people who ever created a nation state there. At all other times in the past 3,000 years it was merely an administrative district in an empire whose centre was elsewhere: the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Alexandrian, Roman and Byzantine empires, the Crusaders of the Holy Roman Empire, the various Muslim empires such as the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Mamluks and Ottomans - and finally, the British. Jews are the only people who have maintained a continuous presence in the land. They are its indigenous, original inhabitants.

Let’s compare and contrast this to the other side shall we? Remember, at the end of the day Palestinians are Arabs - there is no such thing as a separate Palestinian people, no matter what dodgy, ahistorical nonsense some TikTok accounts spew out. The Gazans are mainly Egyptian (their surnames bear this out). The Israeli Arabs that decided to stay after 1947 had most likely lived on the land for centuries. And the ones who now live under Palestinian Authority rule in the West Bank are made up of peoples who came to the land from all over the Ottoman Empire. Again, you can tell by the surnames. You can also tell by studying Ottoman and British Mandate census accounts and records. It’s all verifiable.

And here’s the thing, because the British Mandate was so well run and there was a good chance a person could get employment, there was lots of legal and illegal immigration from Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Under the Ottomans, the population of Palestine generally was small. Jerusalem, for obvious reasons, was an exception. Palestine as a nation and ‘population’ is relatively recent construct. They didn’t even start calling themselves Palestinians until the mid-ish 1960s, it was the Soviet Union that even gave them the idea (because the Soviet Union was rabidly antisemitic and did everything it could to stoke tensions in the region). They are Arabs.

Also, black Israeli Jews, of which there are many, will be shocked to find out that they are in fact white (Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews make the Jewish world very ethically and racially diverse).

I support the right of Palestinians to a state of their own, and the right of Palestinian children and youth to a future of dignity and hope. But don’t start with this “deeper roots in the land” discussion, because history doesn’t lie, antisemites do.

@BillySnuz

Jews are the only people who ever created a nation state there
The formation of nation states is a relatively new evolution in human society so this isn’t proof that Jewish people were in the region before Palestinians. The Ancient Greeks never had a nation state, but you’d be hard pressed to declare that they weren’t a people who were indigenous to Greece.

Prior to the migration of the Israelites into the region of Yehudah ( later named Judaea after Yehuda) around 1200BC, there were Canaanite kingdoms and chiefdoms all over the region of Palestine.

The city of Jericho was founded around 7000 BC. The region started out with fortified cities and petty kingdoms, similar to Ancient Greece. One Kingdom was the Kingdom of Canaan. Which as you know, the Israelites invaded and conquered. But the point is that when this happened, the entire region of these city states and petty kingdoms was being referred to as Filistin (Palestine) by the ancient Greeks and Egyptians.

Over time, yes different empires conquered the region, including the Kingdom of Judea which replaced the Kingdom of Canaan, but the name of the larger region as Palestine (in different permutations) endured for over 4,000 years.

what language do Palestinians speak and where does that language come from? (Answer: Arabic - this language can can be traced back to the Arabian Peninsula,
Language spoken as a result of conquest and colonisation do not turn inhabitants into the ethnicity that conquered and colonised them. There are plenty of Palestinian Israeli citizens that do speak Hebrew today right now. Yes, there was an Islamic empire in the region from 600-1920 CE or so but there is no evidence this was accompanied by ethnic cleansing such that the inhabitants were entirely replaced by waves of Arabic peoples. Just like the latinised Gauls, Goth and Hispanic were not magically ethnically replaced by Italian Romans for speaking Latin for so long that even today they speak a language based on Latin and not whatever they spoke before Roman conquest. Surnames are no indicator as these are often modified into the new official language rather than kept original. Even the name Yehudah then Judah, is now written as Joshua because names shift in response to changes in official languages.

In fact DNA studies and archaeological evidence have proven consistently that Jewish Israelites and Muslim/Christian Palestinians are both descended from the original Semitic peoples of the Levant.

Both are indigenous, which is why a two state solution where the region is shared is the most just solution to the returning Jewish and the never left Palestinians.

SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice · 02/10/2024 14:05

SharonEllis · 02/10/2024 13:55

Im sorry but you are just incorrect. Just because there was a mix of people there (as you would expect at an Israeli event) does not mean that the overriding motivation was not anti-Jewish and certainly does not ignore those who were killed or taken hostage who were not Jewish. That you are persisting with this denial is deeply offensive.

It doesn’t mean that the over-riding motivation was anti Jewish either though.

Especially in light of how the Hamas terrorists themselves spoke and acted. They did not spare any man, woman or child for being a fellow Muslim, or a Christian or a Buddhist…they killed them too.

YoYoYoYo12345 · 02/10/2024 14:06

BillySnuz · 01/10/2024 17:59

Are you ok @SometimesCalmPerson? Because you don’t seem like you’re ok.

Firstly, a couple of questions for you. What language do Israelis speak, and where does it come from? (Answer: Hebrew - Ancient Israel. Hebrew has its origins in the Semantic language group known as the Canaanite group, which has its written records dating back to the second millennium BCE).

Now answer this question: what language do Palestinians speak and where does that language come from? (Answer: Arabic - this language can can be traced back to the Arabian Peninsula, where it developed over time from a group of dialects spoken by the nomadic Bedouin tribes - the earliest form of Arabic, known as Old Arabic, dates back to the 4th century CE).

The connection between the Jewish people and Israel goes back long before the birth of either Christianity or Islam. Jews created a society there in the days of Joshua, a kingdom in the days of Saul, and a nation with Jerusalem as its capital in the days of King David - more than 3,000 years ago.

Jews are the only people who ever created a nation state there. At all other times in the past 3,000 years it was merely an administrative district in an empire whose centre was elsewhere: the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Alexandrian, Roman and Byzantine empires, the Crusaders of the Holy Roman Empire, the various Muslim empires such as the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Mamluks and Ottomans - and finally, the British. Jews are the only people who have maintained a continuous presence in the land. They are its indigenous, original inhabitants.

Let’s compare and contrast this to the other side shall we? Remember, at the end of the day Palestinians are Arabs - there is no such thing as a separate Palestinian people, no matter what dodgy, ahistorical nonsense some TikTok accounts spew out. The Gazans are mainly Egyptian (their surnames bear this out). The Israeli Arabs that decided to stay after 1947 had most likely lived on the land for centuries. And the ones who now live under Palestinian Authority rule in the West Bank are made up of peoples who came to the land from all over the Ottoman Empire. Again, you can tell by the surnames. You can also tell by studying Ottoman and British Mandate census accounts and records. It’s all verifiable.

And here’s the thing, because the British Mandate was so well run and there was a good chance a person could get employment, there was lots of legal and illegal immigration from Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Under the Ottomans, the population of Palestine generally was small. Jerusalem, for obvious reasons, was an exception. Palestine as a nation and ‘population’ is relatively recent construct. They didn’t even start calling themselves Palestinians until the mid-ish 1960s, it was the Soviet Union that even gave them the idea (because the Soviet Union was rabidly antisemitic and did everything it could to stoke tensions in the region). They are Arabs.

Also, black Israeli Jews, of which there are many, will be shocked to find out that they are in fact white (Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews make the Jewish world very ethically and racially diverse).

I support the right of Palestinians to a state of their own, and the right of Palestinian children and youth to a future of dignity and hope. But don’t start with this “deeper roots in the land” discussion, because history doesn’t lie, antisemites do.

Very good points which will be ignored.

SharonEllis · 02/10/2024 14:07

@HelenHen @Lettherebejustice & anyone else denying the antisemitic motivation of the 7 October attacks. This is the testimony Quaid Farhan Alkadi, one of several Bedouins attacked:

'The terrorists tested Alkadi to make sure he was Muslim, asking him about chapters in the Koran and the number of prayers per day. “I spoke to them in Arabic. I told them I was a Muslim,” he said. “They saw that it was okay, and then they told me, ‘Take us in your car to where there are Jews.'”
Asked by the interviewer what he thought at that moment, Alkadi said, “I was ready to die. I wouldn’t point out a Jew, not even a cat. The whole community there are good friends of mine.”
www.thejc.com/news/world/i-was-shot-by-hamas-for-not-pointing-out-where-the-jews-were-says-rescued-bedouin-hostage-k3ppk9ki

StandingSideBySide · 02/10/2024 14:09

YoYoYoYo12345 · 02/10/2024 14:01

Iran fires missiles indiscriminately, even I to the west bank killing a Palestinian man.

At least with Israel taking on hezbollah they are obviously targeted attacks. Hamas also doesn't give 2p for civilians.

If you’ve been watching the news for the past year you can’t have missed all the attacks on the civilian population of Gaza.
Israel say they are not targeting civilians and do exactly the opposite. Netanyahu said he considers ALL Palestinians to be Hamas and he’s doing exactly the same again now.

HelenHen · 02/10/2024 14:17

I'm really not getting into that with you. It's fine if you believe it. However the attack was against Israel.

SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice · 02/10/2024 14:19

The point is that Israel is the only place where Jewish people are safe. No other nation state is a safe place for Jewish people to live. That’s why antizionism is antisemitism.

I think Jewish people in the US are objectively at least as safe if not more so than Jewish people in Israel. Certainly, if you look at the odds of dying in a terror attack, you are better off in the US than in Israel. Then, in terms of feeling safe, which Jewish child is more likely to be familiar with needing and using safe rooms and bomb shelters? An Israeli one or an American one? I don’t think Jewish Israelis feel safe at all, and I think that feeling is one reason why their military are going way overboard on the retaliation and counterattacks.

I think what you say is more of an aspirational goal for Israel, a vision of a golden future than any reality since its founding.

SharonEllis · 02/10/2024 14:19

SharonEllis · 02/10/2024 14:07

@HelenHen @Lettherebejustice & anyone else denying the antisemitic motivation of the 7 October attacks. This is the testimony Quaid Farhan Alkadi, one of several Bedouins attacked:

'The terrorists tested Alkadi to make sure he was Muslim, asking him about chapters in the Koran and the number of prayers per day. “I spoke to them in Arabic. I told them I was a Muslim,” he said. “They saw that it was okay, and then they told me, ‘Take us in your car to where there are Jews.'”
Asked by the interviewer what he thought at that moment, Alkadi said, “I was ready to die. I wouldn’t point out a Jew, not even a cat. The whole community there are good friends of mine.”
www.thejc.com/news/world/i-was-shot-by-hamas-for-not-pointing-out-where-the-jews-were-says-rescued-bedouin-hostage-k3ppk9ki

Also to @SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice

I cannot be possible that people on this thread are arguing that 7 October was not antisemitic.

SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice · 02/10/2024 14:20

SharonEllis · 02/10/2024 14:07

@HelenHen @Lettherebejustice & anyone else denying the antisemitic motivation of the 7 October attacks. This is the testimony Quaid Farhan Alkadi, one of several Bedouins attacked:

'The terrorists tested Alkadi to make sure he was Muslim, asking him about chapters in the Koran and the number of prayers per day. “I spoke to them in Arabic. I told them I was a Muslim,” he said. “They saw that it was okay, and then they told me, ‘Take us in your car to where there are Jews.'”
Asked by the interviewer what he thought at that moment, Alkadi said, “I was ready to die. I wouldn’t point out a Jew, not even a cat. The whole community there are good friends of mine.”
www.thejc.com/news/world/i-was-shot-by-hamas-for-not-pointing-out-where-the-jews-were-says-rescued-bedouin-hostage-k3ppk9ki

And then he was shot by Hamas and taken hostage. You missed that part.

SharonEllis · 02/10/2024 14:23

SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice · 02/10/2024 14:20

And then he was shot by Hamas and taken hostage. You missed that part.

Edited

No, I didnt miss that part. Why are you invested in denying the antisemitic motivation of the attack? Against all evidence and reason.

HelenHen · 02/10/2024 14:25

SharonEllis · 02/10/2024 14:23

No, I didnt miss that part. Why are you invested in denying the antisemitic motivation of the attack? Against all evidence and reason.

Because you DID miss that part actually.

SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice · 02/10/2024 14:25

SharonEllis · 02/10/2024 14:19

Also to @SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice

I cannot be possible that people on this thread are arguing that 7 October was not antisemitic.

I agree it isn’t possible.
Oct 7th was antisemitic, but the splitting of hairs I am seeing is was it directly or indirectly antisemitic?

If the primary target were Israelis, and most Israelis are Jewish, then it is indirectly antisemitic.

If the primary target were Jews, and nonJewish Israelis were simply collateral damage, then it was directly antisemitic.

Either way, it was antisemitic whether the targets were all Israelis or Jewish Israelis.

SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice · 02/10/2024 14:27

SharonEllis · 02/10/2024 14:23

No, I didnt miss that part. Why are you invested in denying the antisemitic motivation of the attack? Against all evidence and reason.

Why are you erasing the fact his Muslim religion and Arab ethnicity still got him shot and kidnapped as a hostage just like the Jewish hostages?

NoisyPombear · 02/10/2024 14:29

HelenHen · 02/10/2024 14:17

I'm really not getting into that with you. It's fine if you believe it. However the attack was against Israel.

You will do anything to deny and ignore antisemitism, won't you?

SharonEllis · 02/10/2024 14:31

NoisyPombear · 02/10/2024 14:29

You will do anything to deny and ignore antisemitism, won't you?

Its mindblowing.

SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice · 02/10/2024 14:31

It doesn’t matter to me very much what the motivation in the mind of a terrorist was. Some could literally have had no motivation beyond the desire to rape and kill defenceless people with no consequences. Terrorists don’t screen out rapists and murderers like legitimate armed forces do, they’ll take the worst sort of criminals that simply do it because they enjoy it. They’d be doing it to Gazans if they had a chance.

SharonEllis · 02/10/2024 14:35

SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice · 02/10/2024 14:31

It doesn’t matter to me very much what the motivation in the mind of a terrorist was. Some could literally have had no motivation beyond the desire to rape and kill defenceless people with no consequences. Terrorists don’t screen out rapists and murderers like legitimate armed forces do, they’ll take the worst sort of criminals that simply do it because they enjoy it. They’d be doing it to Gazans if they had a chance.

It matters very much and to pretend otherwise is to deny antisemitism & its role in attitudes towards Jewish people and that state of Israel. But at least you have admitted it, which I suppose is something as it means everyone reading your posts knows where you are coming from.

BillySnuz · 02/10/2024 14:36

CopperTurquoise · 02/10/2024 13:25

What percentage of Israeli population have Jewish ethnicity? 70? 80?

What percentage of Holocaust victims were Jewish? It’s so important to acknowledge and understand that pogroms are aimed at Jewish people. Doing so does not detract from the fact that other groups were targeted such as the Roma or gay people or the mentally ill. Who benefits from denying these facts?

Doing so does not detract from the fact that other groups were targeted such as the Roma or gay people or the mentally ill. Who benefits from denying these facts?

Hi, sorry - more myth busting from me (there is a lot of confusion about the actual victims of The Holocaust, and it’s not helped by the fact that Wikipedia is also totally wrong/ misleading).

The Holocaust was the industrialized slaughter of 6 million Jews and over one million Roma and Sinti by the Nazis and their collaborators. While the Nazis targeted many groups, only Jews — and in some countries, Roma and Sinti — were subject to extermination as per the policies of the Final Solution. *The Holocaust destroyed 66 percent of Europe’s Jewish population over the span of less than six years.

Now, the Nazis obviously persecuted and murdered other groups: black people, disabled people, Freemasons, Gay people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Polish and Slavic citizens and POWs, political opponents and trade unionists, Catholic and Protestant clergy. But they weren’t earmarked for complete and utter annihilation like the Jews, Roma, and Sinti were.

Interestingly, the T4 programme — a campaign of forced sterilisation, then later mass murder through involuntary euthanasia— that you mentioned was abandoned in in 1941, bowing to public pressure (it elicited public protests), and also the fact many of its personnel were needed in occupied Eastern Europe for ever larger campaigns of genocide. So that is one instance where the Nazis did backtrack. I’m one of three — one older brother I already mentioned, another older brother who is profoundly autistic. It chills me to the core that autistic people would have been rounded up by the Nazis, experimented on and then murdered.

Then the Wannsee conference took place in 1942 which sanctioned The Final Solution and the wheels were set in motion.

*the exact number of Romani people that the Nazis and their collaborators murdered is not fully known, because population records of these two groups were not kept.