Free Palestine

[mommyandmore]

Please forgive my ignorance! Please can someone tell me the history of this? I have obviously seen and read what has unfolded over the past year but I’d really like someone to break down what’s happening. The things I’m seeing are horrific! Thanks and please no sarky comments, I’m really wanting to educate myself further about this.

Watch “Tantura” on Amazon Prime. It shows interviews with Palestinian villages, ex IDF soldiers and Israeli settlers all living around Tantura in 1948. The Israeli settlers talk about fleeing the war and how they were actually taken in as refugees by Palestinians, lived in their houses and that they lived peacefully alongside them. That all changed when the newly formed Israel sent in soldiers to take the port town and expel the villagers - the soldiers have admitted in their old age to massacring a lot of the inhabitants - shooting, incineration with a flame thrower, dismemberment and rape was the reward those Palestinians got for helping refugees. Many are now buried in a mass grave under a carpark at what is now a seaside resort, others have been forced into over populated areas like Gaza as Palestinian territory is reduced year after year. Countries like the UK decided to give away the Palestinians land and let over 800,000 be forcibly displaced, houses and land stolen, thousands massacred. Israel cites the people who fought back as they were being displaced at gunpoint as the reason they could not live alongside Palestinians - good old victim blaming. No one objects to people buying land or property like normal immigrants, it’s the displacement and murder that leaves a bad taste.

In 1967 Israel expanded its borders further stealing more land and expelling more Palestinians. Each year more and more Palestinian villages are demolished and annexed by Israel - these are called “settlements”. They are regularly criticised by the international community and yet we buy products from there and do nothing to stop Israel from constantly expanding it’s boarders. Netanyahu and his evil side kicks have spoken openly about achieving “Greater Israel” which means that they want to annex parts of Gordan, Syria, Lebanon and other surrounding countries.

A Palestinian, born in what is now called Israel, has no right to return to the land but a jewish person with no ties to the land born in Texas can go and claim citizenship. Your level of rights in Israel is determined by your religion, it is an apartheid state. Israeli politicians are currently discussing expelling all arabs from the West Bank which would more or less see Palestine cease to exist.

That is nonsense - a civil war was fought in Ireland because part of the country was signed away and several generations bear the scars of fighting over that issue. It is only in the last 20 years we have had peace and that was with a very complicated peace process where both sides got equal rights in government, police, army and they also get a choice of passports - you can live in Northern Ireland and choose to have a British passport, Irish passport or both. Today many still express a desire for a united Ireland - our stories and our history is intertwined and while the wound has largely healed there is still a scar. The only way any conflict ends is when all sides get a seat at the table and all sides get equal rights.

There should be no jewish state, muslim state, catholic state etc… there should just be equal rights for all people. End of story.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-40874496

Read the description of what happened during the Partition of India.

Similar, terrible, stories. Horrific violence, rape, murder of children. Massive upheaval of people.

But I'm not sure that people even know about it when they are singling out the creation of Israel for specific criticism, with their suggestions that Israel is uniquely illegitimate.

Not at all. People knowledgable about settler colonial projects know about Partition.

I've been told confidently before stuff like 'of course people interested in this stuff know ....' only to find out that they do not know it at all.

Even basic stuff like where Gaza is on a map is beyond some.

So I absolutely do not believe this claim.

Israel is not a settler colonial project.

No one is saying Israel is uniquely illegitimate - horrific crimes were committed in India, Africa, Ireland, Sudan, China, Russia, Syria - there have been many genocides in history, many war crimes. The British Empire has committed it’s fair share of war crimes (along with the Germans, French, Belgiums etc), stolen land and murdered the natives - ‘the sun never sets on the British empire’ - it doesn’t make it right. Those war crimes are remembered in history as war crimes. It doesn’t make it okay to do it - it is not now acceptable because others did it first. I don’t really understand why you would make that argument?

You can’t continue to steal land, murder and oppress people because you’re not the only murderer or thief - if that was a viable defense our prisons would be empty.

no the word "white" isn't against the guidelines.

I didn't see your post to know why it got deleted. On these threads it's normally personal attacks or racism.

if you email mumsnet they will tell you why.

But did you miss that@samlett is a knowledgeable person? They know all about the difference between knowledge and parroting unfounded opinions and tropes.

But of course!

I think you don't understand what illegitimate means.

Really?

So why was the pp happy to liken Israelis to illegitimate squatters but then refused to use the same words about Pakistan and just dodged the issue?

That is singling Israel out for unique criticism. So don't claim it doesn't happen.

I don't think anyone explained which country Israel was a colony of yet either.

Why didn’t you add the many Islamic Conquests to your list? Virtually every Islamic country has been formed through violent invasion and forced theocracy on the natives.

What has happened historically in other countries does not excuse Israel’s behaviour. I find it strange that you think the defense of “but they did it too” makes war crimes, displacement and horrific crimes against other human beings acceptable. We are talking about displacement, murder, rape, mutilation - a country literally built on the mass graves of the people who lived there before.

If someone shot your family and used the defense “but someone down the road shot a family too why aren’t you talking about that” would you think that the murder suddenly was okay, that they had the right to do that? We learn as small children that we can’t hit, bite or steal because another child does it, but you think genocide and displacement is okay because some other psychopaths have done it before? Do you have any empathy for the native Palestinians??

Isn’t that the excuse for Oct 7 though? ‘Yes it’s wrong, but Israel..’

I'm not defending it.

What I am saying, is that you can't single Israel out for it because you want to suggest that the foundation of Israel was illegitimate and expect not to be pulled up on that.

People who want to deny Israel's legitimacy as a state are heading towards calling it the Zionist Entity (which I have also seen on MN) which is Hamas territory.

No and I don’t think anyone has made an excuse for October 7th that I have seen- that was a horrific crime. What people have said is that the conflict didn’t start on October 7th, that Palestinians were being murdered, forcibly detained, raped, and mutilated for decades. People have said denying people their human rights helps Hamas because traumatised people are easier to recruit into a terrorist organisation. No one has said Oct 7th was in anyway acceptable, they have said giving the Palestinians equal rights, treating them as human beings and stopping the land theft would be the best way to stop Hamas recruitment and to stop terrorist attacks. Giving catholics rights in Northern Ireland stopped IRA terrorist attacks - happy people who live without fear of persecution are much less likely to pick up arms against you!

You haven't been paying attention if you don't think anyone tried to justify October 7th.

What about the slogan 'Resistance is justified when you're occupied'?

It's 100% true that people hold Israel to an entirely different standard than other countries because of the obvious reason.

It's also 100% true that (if in the UK - or indeed in the USA), we are living in a Christian country and there are many other countries who also have a religious basis so Israel is also not unique in that respect. It's just unique regarding which religion is at its centre.

Hamas was originally elected, and then took over Gaza very quickly. Their ethos is all about destruction of Israel (and disdain for women) and they absolutely did cross the border to attack, rape and murder on the 7th October. If you think about how many people they murdered as a proportion of the population of Israel, (roughly 10 million people in Israel compared with roughly 70 million in the UK), it would be like if France showed up in southern England and murdered 7,500 people and kidnapped another 1700 (very, very rough calculations). What would the UK do next?

The entire thing - from 2000 years ago to today is heartbreaking but obviously we can't fix any of the past. I have yet to see any sort of answer about where to go from here. No country could ever allow that sort of thing to happen without responding, Hamas is a reign of terror for everyone around them, there's no 2-state solution that either side can live with as there is 0 trust at all, and at the core of it, is an entire generation of people (on both sides) growing up in this terrible time and bringing this into the next 50 years.

I am sure there must be something to suggest - it's mind blowing when you think about how we holiday in Germany and Japan today. That would have been impossible to imagine at one point and now here we are. So it must be possible. I just can't see it at all just now.

I'm still waiting patiently but strangely, no-one has. I wonder what the problem is there.

There are so many historical documents along with newspaper adverts from the 20’s and 30’s about the zionist project. Are you saying the creation of Israel was not a zionist project?

Your current government are self professed Zionists who talk openly about creating greater Israel and many key members of the current government are openly calling for the West Bank and Gaza to be Annexed and all Arabs dispelled. I don’t think it shows any affiliation with Hamas to link the creation of Israel to Zionism - it’s a historical fact.

Why are you making assumptions about which governments people have?

Lots of pro Israel supporters on this board live in the UK, myself for example.