To wish those in Israel safety in these coming times

[mids2019]

Israel is a country at war and I know many will have links or family in that country so I think it appropriate to wish them safety in the coming days.

20% of the Israeli population are non-jewish Arabs. I wonder if those calling for “Free Palestine” picture a future Palestine with 20% Jews? If not why not?

Surely the US getting involved with actual bombs would not de-escalate the situation! What’s wrong with people. @PaxAeterna

Never underestimate the stupidity / gullibility or greed of some people.

It's sad, but it's true.

Before Balfour and the Nakba - weren’t the Arabs and Jews living together relatively harmoniously in the Palestinian region until Zionism took hold?

“With the establishment of the British Mandate of Palestine after World War I, the first British census of Palestine in 1922 enumerated a total population of about 750,000, of which 78 percent were Muslim, 11 percent Jewish and 10 percent Christian (Table 1). Nearly 25 years later, before the United Nations’ partition of the Mandate for Palestine, in 1947, the population had grown to nearly 1.8 million, with 60 percent Muslim, 31 percent Jewish and 8 percent Christian.”

https://www.passblue.com/2014/02/02/israeli-palestinian-population-growth-and-its-impact-on-peace/#:~:text=With%20the%20establishment%20of%20the,Jewish%20and%208%20percent%20Christian.

Because it was your clear implication. You weren't wishing them well, were you? Why are you still tying yourself in knots about it? Your meaning was clear, you said what you said, just own it.

Oh, give over! It’s the Palestinians who have known nothing but terror since Israel’s inception. They have been forced from their homes, occupied, blockaded, bombed, and dehumanised for generations. Israel is not the victim in this story. It is the regional superpower, armed to the teeth, backed by global powers, and enforcing brutal control over a stateless population.

Framing Israel as a helpless nation just trying to survive is laughable. If anyone has had to survive against all odds, it is the Palestinians. And they have done it with no army, no state, and no protection. Just resilience in the face of Israel’s brutality.

@purpletablet ”And they have done it with no army, no state, and no protection. Just resilience”

You mean just terrorism?

How does Israel cope with constant war? It's surrounded by hate and has known nothing but terror and war since its inception. Not much of a 'promised land': I just don't know how they survive. @missdeamenor

It might be something to do with the weaponry that they've got.

When you are using guns on kids with sticks it sure does help survival rates doesn't it?

What I actually said was that I wished for Israelis exactly what they wish for Palestinians. You were the one who jumped to the conclusion that I want Israelis to suffer. Maybe you should reflect on why you assume Israelis are so hateful that this must be the case.

No, I mean surviving decades of occupation, displacement, siege, and bombardment without the protection of a state, an army, or basic human rights. Reducing all Palestinian resistance to “terrorism” is a convenient way to ignore the root causes of this conflict and to dehumanise a people who have been fighting simply to exist.

There are obviously some Israelis who want Palestinains to suffer, just as there are some Palestinians who want Israelis to suffer. You wish suffering on the former, but apparently not the latter. And therein lies the hypocrisy.

I’ll be perfectly honest and say I do regard the Palestinians who ‘expressed their rage’ on October 7th as savages. That includes civilians participating in the slaughter, rapes and kidnapping, and those cheering, attacking and spitting on the dead bodies, that also includes those who brought their children to see the grotesque spectacle of a murdered baby and a toddler paraded in their coffins.

Never seen an Israeli do any of that and they’re not even allowed to quite reasonably be angry about the beyond barbaric atrocities that was enacted on their people that day, let alone express them in words, without being labelled as monsters.

How would any other society react to the events of Oct 7th? Do you think they’d be sympathetic to the savages that horrifically wiped out whole communities and families, and hundreds of young people at a music festival inflicting as much terror and as much pain as it is possible to experience? Babies and children kidnapped by the very savages who carried out those acts? Do you think they’d say ‘ah, but we feel sorry for them that they create the situation to want to do that to us, we should help them do it again, and again’.

I wouldn’t, I’d feel absolutely murderous and want them all wiped off the face of the earth, especially if I had the means to do it quickly.

Luckily I’m not in government and luckily the Israeli government hasn’t acted as some Israelis may have wanted them to do. They acted to remove the source of the terror and indoctrination, sadly with civilian deaths in the process due to the very actions of Hamas in using their people as sacrifices/human shields/martyrs offering no protection that any civilian should be able to count on when their government deliberately invokes war and surrounding non hostile countries not granting refuge as has happened in every war in human history.

Let’s not forget a majority of those parents in Gaza elected a terrorist organisation to govern them knowing full well what their charter was and by doing so knowingly surrendered their children to a never ending conflict. They had autonomy when they voted in Hamas. The Palestinians consistently rejected their own State because they wanted ALL the land.

See the reverse psychology now with their supporters insisting Israel wants ALL the land so they allowed THEIR citizens to be sacrificed on Oct 7th so they could START a war in Gaza.

How can anyone with a modicum of intellect and a brief research of the history would buy this is beyond me but actually it’s not because it’s borne out of a plain old hatred of the Jewish people.

As PPs have said they even stoop so low as to try to defend the Iranian regime, on a site known for the defence of women’s rights, because they just CANNOT bring themselves to even consider that Israel may not be the bad guy,

I am wise enough to understand though that the fake cause of the Palestinians can be reversed, the web of indoctrination can be unravelled, and the next generations of Palestinian people can live in peace alongside Israel.

That means first getting rid of the tentacles of Hamas, and its evil serpent master, Iran.

Thankfully Israel has taken on the challenge and will prevail.

And yes, Netanyahu is a bloody hero for doing what no one else had the courage to do.

More reverse psychology copied from Israel’s decades long fight to exist since its inception.

Palestinians have not been fighting to exist. They have been fighting for Israel not to exist.

See corrected it for you.

You make me laugh. If the “Poor Palestinians” hadn’t made Israeli lives a daily misery with their constant rockets followed by the rape, torture and mutilation and kidnap of civilians, we wouldn’t be where we are.

You’re bang on that if Israel was helpless it wouldn’t exist. Luckily it isn’t helpless!

What you’ve written is a clear example of how dehumanising language is used to justify mass violence. Calling an entire population “savages” and suggesting they deserve to be wiped off the face of the earth is not righteous anger. It is genocidal thinking.

October 7 was horrifying. The killing of civilians is always wrong. But if you truly cared about human life, you would also condemn the mass killing of Palestinian civilians. Over 15,000 children have died in Gaza. Entire families have been erased. Hospitals and refugee camps have been bombed. That is not self defence. That is collective punishment.

You say you have never seen Israelis do those things. But there are videos of settlers cheering as Gaza burns, of soldiers mocking and abusing Palestinians, of children being detained, of people being humiliated and brutalised under occupation. Just because it is not shown the same way in the media does not mean it does not happen.

You also claim that Palestinians voted for endless war. Gaza has not had an election since 2006. Nearly half the population is under 18. Most have grown up knowing nothing but blockade, airstrikes, and military raids. Blaming them for their own suffering is not only cruel, it is factually incorrect.

If your idea of peace requires flattening Gaza, praising Netanyahu, and calling millions of people “savages,” then you are not defending Israel. You are defending ethnic cleansing.

I believe both Palestinians and Israelis deserve peace and safety. But that will never happen while one side holds all the power and the other is blamed for daring to exist.

That’s not a correction. It’s a distortion.

Palestinians have been fighting for the right to live freely on their own land, without military occupation, siege, and forced displacement. Framing their struggle as a desire to erase Israel is a convenient way to avoid confronting the reality of what they have endured since 1948.

Demanding freedom and dignity is not the same as demanding someone else’s destruction. Maybe you should ask yourself why you view Palestinian existence as such a threat.

Yep. I imagine Sinear, Nasrallah et al, are screaming in the bowels of hell at what they inadvertently helped to happen.

Bad judgment call there.

👏👏

What a load of nonsense. Palestinians - or as they were known at the time, Arabs - started a civil war against the Jews in 1947, after the UN vote.

Later, in 1948, the day after the Jews declared independence, the Arab League attacked the newly formed State of Israel in an attempt to annihilate it.

In the course of those two wars, there were many Arabs who lost their homes. Some by force; others because they'd left home temporarily to allow for the Jews to be pushed into the sea, and were left high and dry when that dastardly plan didn't succeed.

It should be noted that many Jews lost their homes too, in East Jerusalem (Sheikh Jarrah), Old City and other places.

For the next 19 years the Arabs lived happily under either Jordan (Judea aka West Bank) or Egypt (Gaza). During those years they, along with the other surrounding Arab nations, kept attacking the Jews in a myriad of ways.

In about 1964 the erstwhile Arabs of Mandatory Palestine rebranded themselves as Palestinians, while they continued to campaign and work towards the annihilation of Israel.

In 1967, in an existential war, Israel took back Judea from Jordan, and Gaza from Egypt. Ever since, the Arab inhabitants of those territories, by now named Palestinians, have waged a war of attrition against Israel.

Despite many overtures and attempts at peace deals by Israel, the Palestinians were adamant to remain belligerent. Their demands are ostensibly for self rule, yet every time they've been offered actual an actual state in return for peace, they declined.

Over the years, notably since the intifadas, Israel was forced to tighten its borders and checkpoints between the Palestinian areas and the rest of Israel. This was in order to protect innocent Israelis from Palestinian terrorism.

In 2005 Israel withdrew from Gaza, in an attempt to hand the Gazan Palestinians a chance for self autonomy. Unfortunately they preferred spending their efforts and $billions to attack Israel, rather than building their own state. They launched hundreds of thousands of missiles into Israel, indiscriminately targeting civilian areas.

Invariably Israel was forced to respond militarily, and that of course gave them photo ops to cry genocide and oppression.

That's the history of 'Palestinian' 'oppression' in a nutshell.

Read my post again and then come back and respond.

What descriptor would you use of the Palestinians who PARTICIPATED IN OCT 7TH?

I’ve seen the uncensored videos. Have you? Savages is too polite IMO.

Not sure why the argument is always that nearly half of the population is under 18. Their parents weren’t when they voted Hamas in. Where was their responsibility to their children? Do they not have any?

Most have grown up knowing nothing but blockades, airstrikes and military raids BECAUSE their parents voted in Hamas.

Whose fault is it that Gaza has not had an election since 2006? Israel’s?

What did they endure under Egyptian and Jordanian occupation from 1948 to 1967?

How did they become under Egyptian and Jordanian occupation?

How did Gaza and the West Bank come under Israeli occupation?

How did they even become Palestinians as they self identified as Arabs and no sovereign or national identity existed before Yasser Arafat invented it in 1964.

Why did Israel AND EGYPT have to put up border walls?

Conveniently forgot those bits?

Palestinians aren’t a threat to me at all. Do you assume I’m Israeli? I have the capacity to think relatively clearly though, can do my own research, and am not blinded by hate for Israel and the Jewish people.

Imagine seeing photos of children being blown to pieces, babies where you can count every rib, hearing a tape of a little girl pleading to be rescued before she is shot 100s of times, hearing testimony from Dr's speaking of children being executed and not just thinking but actually typing about these victims 'crying genocide'. I'm sure their mums, if they are still alive, would love to hear their babies cry one last time. It's a fucking cruel world that we live in that's for sure.

That is not “history in a nutshell.” It is a heavily edited version of events that leaves out decades of dispossession, military occupation, and systemic discrimination.

Yes, there was conflict in 1947 and 1948. But what you have omitted is that over 700,000 Palestinians were displaced during the Nakba. Many were forcibly expelled. Entire villages were erased. Those people and their descendants have never been allowed to return, even though international law recognises their right to.

You claim that Arabs lived happily under Jordan and Egypt, but that ignores the fact that many were still refugees, stateless, and denied basic rights. You also leave out Israel’s own aggression, including illegal settlements, home demolitions, and the occupation that began in 1967 and continues to this day.

The idea that Palestinians simply “rebranded” themselves is a way to strip them of identity and legitimacy. Palestinian identity and connection to the land existed long before 1964. That is a matter of historical record.

You speak of peace offers but ignore the conditions that came with them. These often involved permanent occupation, fragmented land, and no real sovereignty. That is not a peace any people would accept.

And no, Israel did not just “withdraw” from Gaza in 2005. It removed settlers but kept full control over Gaza’s borders, airspace, and sea access. That is not autonomy. That is a blockade.

Reducing Palestinian resistance to terrorism while ignoring the daily oppression they face is not telling the truth. It is reframing reality in order to justify injustice.

Great summation.