What does 'Free Palestine' mean to you?

[TwigletsAndRadishes]

I just read that Rachel Zegler shared the trailer for Snow White and commented attached to it, '....and always remember, free Palestine.'

It just got me thinking, what does 'Free Palestine' or 'A Free Palestine' mean to you?

What is it you would want to see in order to be satisfied that Palestine is free and Palestinians are free?

It always amazes me when people give opinions on something they can’t possibly fathom.

Do you have any experience of directing warfare in a densely populated area where your many targets are spread out and are directing their side of the war from deep tunnels underground and won’t just come out to fight fairly when you ask them nicely?

What would you do? Leave them there to carry on indefinitely, send thousands of your own soldiers to their certain deaths into booby traps and ambushes, or destroy the tunnels from the air after warning civilians to leave, which the IDF do actually do whether anyone wants to admit that or not.

That’s what I think too.

so it’s not actually necessary to flatten Gaza to get to Hamas

It actually is. There are hundreds of miles of tunnels, often from below people's houses. The IDF are still finding them. Similarly in Southern Lebanon where Hezbollah have similarly made many tunnels.

But if I had expressed support for the military action- still not being an army tactician myself- that would have been acceptable?

As for ‘warning civilians to leave’ where are they supposed to go when designated safe areas and camps have been bombed?

Yup.

I grew up watching the PLO do the same thing - and hijacking passenger aeroplanes as well ...

Sorry I can't see how your post answers mine.

As a Western citizen why am I personally Jew hating to want both Palestine and Israel to co exist in peace.

And using the words "final solution" is disgusting.

The other poster said: ‘there wouldn’t even be any settlements there today if the Palestinian leadership had accepted any of the amazing peace offers to partition the land presented to them in the last few decades’.
Which of those partition plans offered the Palestinians in the West Bank nothing but a “shed”?
As far as I’m aware, the offer made at the Camp David summit in 2000 included about 92% of the West Bank, all of Gaza and parts of East Jerusalem. Apparently Israel also offered land swaps in compensation for the land annexed in West Bank.
After that offer was rejected, Clinton proposed 94–96% of the West Bank for Palestinians, with some land swaps, a capital in East Jerusalem, and limited refugee return.
In 2008, Israel proposed a Palestinian state on 93–94% of the West Bank, with land swaps from Israeli territory (mostly near Gaza).
How is any of this “significantly less land” for the Palestinians?

Thank you, I think I am broadly in agreement with much of that, again, in theory and with the caveat that my understanding of the complicated background is rather rudimentary. I suppose the concept of one state would be like a united Ireland, but come as far as we have, we are still not at a place where that would be accepted by many, and possibly never will. These old resentments, hatreds and sectarian loyalties get perpetuated through each new generation and as surely as each generation is taught to speak and read and write, it is also taught who to hate, fear or distrust.

And using the words "final solution" is disgusting.

But that's the language Hamas, Hezbollah, and the PLO before them use: they want to wipe Israel from the face of the earth. It's the first element of all the manifestoes of those groups.

You need to face facts about the deep Jew-hatred of those groups [supposedly] speaking for the Palestinian people. And that's it anti-semitism which is tacitly supported by the West.

Nobody is talking about wiping Israel. Hamas don’t have the ability to do it. That is not being discussed as a plan. It’s simply not on the cards at all. Israel is not going to be wiped out.

In the meantime, 1 in 46 in Gaza are dead. There is the highest number per capita of child amputees in the world. Most of it is destroyed and now Israel are dropping dump bombs on these people.

Who is at risk of being wiped out here?

Nobody is talking about wiping Israel.

That’s not true though. Hamas leaders have repeatedly spoken about doing exactly that. A senior Hamas official said in an interview in October 2023 that Hamas aims to repeat the October 7th attack until Israel is annihilated.
Whether or not they have the capacity to achieve their goal is a different matter, but their ideology and past behavior definitely suggest a continuous threat.

Exactly @inamarina

And anyone who thinks that the organised Jew-hating groups such as PLO , Hamas, Hezbollah and so on are going to change is dangerously naive.

@inamarina But they don’t have the capacity to do it. Who is in danger of being wiped out here?

Hamas seem to pose the exact same sized threat to Israel has they ever did. So what is all the killing going to achieve anyway?

Israeli politicians have also said this, and as we have seen they have the capacity and international support to do so which is very worrying.

So should Israel just sit back and let October 7th happen again and again?
It wasn’t even an attack on a military base or similar, but an absolutely vicious assault on peaceful civilians.
If Hamas aren’t planning to change their behaviour, can’t you see why Israel might want to annihilate them?

But Israel is killing many more civilians? The previous hostilities did not annihilate them anyway - it’s merely pushed more people into their arms. What is going to be different this time?

I think it’s wrong that so many people are suffering. What is the end goal here? They have broken the ceasefire and they have rejected the Arab plan? Where is the path to peace.

So, should Palestinians just sit back and let an ethnosupremacist, brutal occupying power humiliate and harrass and kidnap (sorry, "legally arrest and hold in detention and/or convict under martial law" - in the same sense that Apartheid and Jim Crow were "legal"), at will and shoot to kill them again and again and again then?

Your framing is fundamentally dishonest!

Hamas is awful and despicable, and the massacres they carried out on Oct 7 against Israel and the capturing of innocent people for ransome is indefensible. But I have never seen as much hatred and intent to unnecessarily wipe out another far weaker people - by a Western style ( and fully Western backed) democratic, nuclear armed sovereign country - as is being demonstrated right now by Israel* towards the Palestinians, (including in a general way in the West Bank without any hostages there to ‘release by military pressure’).

On the news this week I saw a Likud member seem to gloat over what ‘Unleashing Hell’ in Gaza would look like.

Maybe you can see how, given the Israeli actions on the Palestinian people that has actually been accompanying this pronouncement, “Seeing what unleashing Hell looks like” does not sound all that dissimilar to the obscene phrase you refer to - just to a different people. Israel’s actions look just as much like indefensible terrorism and savagery as Hamas/Palestinian Jihad’s - but this time using more sophisticated methods against many thousands more.

The general oppression of Palestinians by Israelis did not all only begin on Oct 7 either, even if Hamas’s attack effectively constituted a declaration of war against Israel. You can see that even if you only look at ‘Breaking the Silence’ and accounts from the former IDF soldiers telling the truth. These soldiers are not so easy for Israelis to dismiss for not telling them what they like to hear as the other non-mainstream Israeli news outlets seem to be. ( For the main Israeli news cover-ups see +972 Magazine
How Israeli journalists carry out PR for the army
https://www.972mag.com/israeli-journalists-pr-army-october-7

As for the Palestinians’ attitude towards Israelis now, how likely are they to have improved feelings towards them in preference to Hamas after this?
Hamas is an ideology as much as a group made up of a finite number of bodies that can eventually be eliminated and it may just grow even bigger as a movement

The Likud party, currently de facto controlling Netanyahu, has as its manifesto that Israel should have all the land including any that ever was supposed to be Palestinian. From the river to the sea. No Palestine on the map. Netanyahu has been working tirelessly for years against any two state solution which is why he previously backed Hamas and split any power from the Palestinian authority. He and his backers do not care about the hostages. All of this is not to get hostages back.

(*By ”Israel” I mean the current governing power and the extremists, not all Israelis.)

And from hamas presumably?

To me it means a Palestine free of Hamas and any terrorist ideology. A peaceful democratic place which doesn’t threaten its neighbours.

So how should have Israel reacted to October 7th in your opinion?

Negotiated to get the hostages back. Maybe asking a neutral party to help with the negotiations, and to also negotiate a long term peace plan.

Trying to bomb an ideology out of existence hasn't worked out that well, and has resulted in the death of some of the hostages.

I mean, call me bonkers but: anything short of a genocidal onslaught sounds like a pretty solid approach?

In all seriousness: how did countries such as the UK, Spain and others react to the likes of PIRA or the ETA Militar? Basically: more like that!

Exactly! I always think it's a bit odd when people say "well what else could Israel do except kill 50,000 people and destroy every home/school/hospital"

Really???