Israel and Ukraine and Political Correctness
photo by President.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0
The situation in Israel is horrible. As Steve Berman described over the weekend, early Saturday morning, Hamas terrorists launched an abrupt and unanticipated attack on southern Israel. The attack consisted of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli cities and Hamas fighters streaming across the border from Gaza to attack settlements. At least 700 Israelis are reported dead and others have been taken hostage. Among the dead are young revelers at a dance party where 260 bodieswere found. There are reports of both military personnel and civilians being beheaded by Hamas fighters. In Gaza, at least 300 people have been killed in retaliatory strikes.
The Middle East has been quiet in recent years. The attack seems to have taken Israel and the rest of the world by surprise. The last time Israel’s enemies achieved such complete surprise was the Yom Kippur War of 1973. In that conflict, Israel was fighting for its very existence against a coalition of Arab nations. This war is a much smaller scale, but that is little comfort to the dying, the wounded, the captives, and those who mourn.
In the United States, the attack has brought a measure of confusion to the political situation. Prepare for a fruit basket turnover as Republicans who have been opposing foreign aid in general and military aid to Ukraine in particular begin to call for aid to Israel.
It has only been a little more than a month since Vivek Ramaswamy was calling for an end to aid to Israel, now he’s tweeting in support of Israel and saying, “It could happen here.”
Spoiler alert: It won’t. The idea that terrorists could cross the southern border has been around since September 11, but there has yet to be a single attack connected to illegal immigration despite the fact that Republicans claim the border is wide open. There are easier ways to infiltrate the US than walking across a highly-patrolled desert border, and if such a plot was in the cards, it probably would have been tried in the 20 years that we’ve been debating border security and immigration reform. The September 11 hijackers immigrated legally, by the way. Having said that, I do believe that we need enhanced border security as a part of comprehensive immigration reform.
For his part, Mike Pence unloaded on the Republican isolationists and President Biden in a single Tweet, saying, “This is what happens when @POTUS projects weakness on the world stage, kowtows to the mullahs in Iran with a $6 Billion ransom, and leaders in the Republican Party signal American retreat as Leader of the Free World. Weakness arouses Evil.”
Both charges are fair. Both parties are complicit underwhelming foreign policy decisions such the retreats from Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Syria and Iraq. And that’s just Obama, Trump, and Biden.
I seriously doubt that Biden’s deal with Iran precipitated the attack. Planning and preparation were probably going on for a long time before the deal was made a few weeks ago. That still doesn’t mean it’s good policy to send money to a country that is supplying enemies of both Israel and Ukraine, however.
And the similarities with Ukraine don’t stop there. Both Israel and Ukraine were the victims of unprovoked aggression at the hands of their neighbors. Civilians of both countries have been intentionally targeted with both murders and kidnappings. And like the old saw about Israel, if the Russians stopped fighting, there would be peace in Ukraine. If the Ukrainians stopped fighting, there would be a massacre.
The truth of that axiom has never been more true than this weekend. There was nothing to trigger the Hamas invasion. There had been relative peace for years, yet Hamas threw it all away, including the wellbeing of Gaza residents who are now subject to Israeli attacks and blockades, for a very limited series of attacks that are doomed to fail in the end.
This ain’t the Yom Kippur War. This is a large series of raids designed to inflict pain and exact revenge, not destroy Israel.
In fact, the biggest difference between Ukraine and Israel may be scale of the attack. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine was intended to end Ukraine’s existence as an independent nation. For Hamas, the small scale of their effort is more a matter of means than motive. If Hamas had the ability to try to flatten Israel with tanks, they would certainly try.
And it’s not just Republicans who are inconsistent. While President Biden has been strong on both Ukraine and Israel, the same cannot be said of all Democrats. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), whose name autocorrects to “Taliban” on my iPad, failed to condemn the Hamas attack and may be the most high-profile Democrat to be sympathetic to Hamas. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) likewise used the opportunity to criticize Israel, but even AOC condemned the invasion.
What is missed by many is that there is a strong, axis-of-evil pattern emerging in both invasions. Iran, whose fingerprints are all over the Hamas attack, is also supplying weapons to Russia for the war in Ukraine.
Russia may be involved with Hamas directly since the country’s support for Islamic terror goes back to the days of the Cold War. When the Arabs invaded Israel in 1973 (and before), it was with Soviet weapons. This time the Center for European Policy Analysis notes that Hamas delegations have been welcomed in Putin’s Russia and that Russian television has celebrated Israeli misfortune this weekend.
One possible motive that I’ve heard for the Hamas attack is that Iran might be trying to undermine Israel’s pending treaty with Saudi Arabia. Perhaps presciently, Foreign Policy said in August when the deal was announced that it would mean war with Iran.
For now, the bottom line is that Israel was the victim of unprovoked and brutal aggression. We can and should aid them as they fight off bloodthirsty terrorists. The same applies to Ukraine, which is even more in need of our help.
It’s like the classic meme from “The Office.” When we look at the twin invasions of friendly democratic nations, “They’re the same picture.”
Those who would split hairs and support one but not the other are engaging in political correctness. They ignore the outrageousness of invading a country and murdering its citizens for political expediency. That’s true on both the left and right. Right-wing “non-interventionism” is no less a politically correct position than leftist anti-Zionism.
The correct position for lovers of peace, freedom, and liberty is to oppose Hamas, Iran, and Russia. That opposition should be put into practice by rendering aid to Israel and Ukraine as well as other beleaguered countries who are willing to put our aid to good – and just – use. Sending American aid now may prevent the need to send American boots later.
Pretty much my only comment on these current events is: heavy f*cking sigh. Like a sigh of existential weariness.Report
same, very same. every time I think I can’t get more disappointed in humans, we one-up ourselves.Report
Those who would split hairs and support one but not the other are engaging in political correctness.
Ought implies can.Report
The US has sent about $77B to Ukraine since they were invaded by Russia. And they will no doubt continue to be funded.
The US sends about $3B to Israel each year. The US will certainly bump that up now. How much? No idea.
One can “support” each of these nations and reasonably conclude one is getting too much aid and the other not enough.
To assert that such opinion is”splitting hairs” and attribute such thinking to political correctness is silly.Report
Israel has been getting US aid for decades. For longer than Ukraine has been an independent nation in its current iteration. Add up the total and then get back to us on whether they are underfunded.Report
What a useless, silly comment.Report
Really? Because out here in the real world a response to
pointing out decades of support for Israel (which in total is far more then $77Billion) should be framed how, exactly, to be considered “serious?”Report
No, it’s a ridiculous point you’re making. The US is making decisions on what to spend – and where – right now “here in the real world”. Factoring in the inflation-adjusted dollar amount the US sent from 1948 through 2022 is completely irrelevant.Report
I’m sure IDF would disagree.Report
A lot of that $77B is out of date military equipment stored to give to our allies if need be. The alternative is destroying it.
Better to pay for transportation than for disposal. Ukraine will dispose of it by using it.Report
True and, frankly, with regards to the mountains of old cluster munitions we sent over there it probably saved us money having the Ukrainians shoot it off than what it’d cost to dispose of it at home. Even before we factor in the Russian assets blown to fish the US probably turned a profit handing that stuff over to Ukraine.Report
It’s like we can’t afford not to send $77B to Ukraine, amirite?
This sounds like a talking point from a BAE powerpoint deck.Report
Do you want Russia to feel free to invade other sovereign nations – one we have mutual defense pacts with that require American soldiers be sent into harms way? Seems to me $77B is a small price to pay (relative to the $1 Trillion we spent in Afghanistan and Iraq) to keep Russia in check and thus more American soldiers safe.Report
Do you really think the Russians feel free to invade Poland?Report
Yes. Yes I do. And Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Which would allow Putin to put his empire back together. And do remember that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are NATO members too.Report
It’s less “not like we can’t afford it” and more like giving $67B of worthless junk (by our standards) to screw over the Russians and protect our Nato allies is a great deal.Report
It may not be direct aid, but “being allowed to buy things restricted by ITAR” and “being allowed to buy high-end military equipment like F-15 jet planes” is a strong statement of support that not many other countries get.Report
There are a bunch of things going on here:
1. The history of anti-Semitism and Zionism is long and complicated. There has always been a Jewish presence one way or another in Israel/Palestine even after various diasporas but for a good chunk of modern history, it was pretty small.
2. Both sides have religious fanatics and it often just becomes a matter of soft peddling those you perceive on your side.
3. Israeli’s right-wing did spent the majority of the 21st century squandering good will and international support for the cause of Israel through aggressive actions.
4. I don’t think it is quite registering to ardent Palestinian supporters how Hamas’ actions on Saturday managed to largely erase #3 over night.Report
I wouldn’t say that #3 is being erased by Hamas, but people are being reminded how bad the actors on the Palestinian side are . That doesn’t undo #3- instead it makes disengagement from the whole affair and “to hell with them both” attitudes more likely.Report
Israel seemed to have turned from Prussia into Brave Little Belgium overnight despite the fact that Netanyahu is the Prime Minister. Lots of displays of Israeli flags in capitals around the West including the Brandenberg Gates in Berlin. People putting up Israeli flags on their Facebook profile pictures.Report
In the short term I have no doubt but none of the underlying issues are going to evaporate.Report
The ardent Palestinian supporters only talk to themselves and are entirely convinced of their righteousness and believe everybody is like them but is just being polite about it.Report
I won’t pretend to know what we should do about the bloodshed in and around Israel. My heart goes out to all impacted.
That said, I have to quibble with this: “Both Israel and Ukraine were the victims of unprovoked aggression at the hands of their neighbors” because it ignores who those neighbors are. Russia:Ukraine::Gaza:Israel is simply an analogy that does not hold. Meaning we have to consider the very different context when comparing/contrasting the broader situations.
That doesn’t mean we should come to a different conclusion about what to do (again, I really have no F’ing clue at this point) but to say the situations are analogous implies that Gaza/Hamas and Russia are analogous and they are simply not.Report
True. Ukraine’s government seems to have provoked Russia’s invasion by merely existing. And contra the OP – Israel as a secular nation has done a lot to provoke the Palestinians. Or are we now counting illegal settlements as defensive in nature?Report
Terrorism and attacks on Israel long predate the settlements. They don’t help the cause of peace, but without them we would be seeing attacks on Israel because it exists.Report
No they don’t. You…really don’t know of the history of Israel, do you?
Settlements started being built in Palestine territory about three months after Israel first occupied all of Palestine, back in September 1967. (And before June 1967, they couldn’t have built any settlements, because that territory was controlled by other governments. So they don’t get any props for that. And considering the planning time, we can basically say Israel started settlements literally as soon as possible.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlement#History
The entire history of Israel since 1967 is slow annexation of Palestine, mostly via ‘settlements’. These settlements have been rolled slightly back a few times, specifically to normalize the Golan Heights and the 2005 withdraw from the Gaza Strip, but a huge chunk of what they have now they just took.
But…what happened before that? Did the terrorism start before that? And if so, who started it? Let me make another post.Report
So there was no terrorism or attacks on Israel before the Six-Day War?Report
Imagine killing 2700 civilians and displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians, and then attempting to claim that them sneaking back in three years later and killing civilians back is terrorism.
But I made a post below pointing out that…Israelis, pretty objectively, started the actual cycle of terrorism also, with Beit Jala.Report
There is no cycle.
If you’re determined to make an Islamic state and view Jews being in charge as unacceptable, then that’s the source of the problem right there.
Everything else is marketing. You publicly blame them for whatever they’ve done to you lately but without that you’d still view the presence of Jews as unacceptable.
If that’s your world view then you probably also view leaving Islam as worth the death penalty (like about 89% of the Arabs in the area) and so on.
That’s why Arafat couldn’t make a counter offer in 2000. He couldn’t say he’d accept “X” land instead of “Y” because Israel might accept and his followers would kill him.Report
…as opposed to Israel, which is making a Jewish state and views Muslims being in charge as unacceptable? To the point that they literally forced 700,000 of Muslim out so Muslims _wouldn’t_ have the majority.
No one is worried about any sort of free country existing with Jews in charge, they are worried about a _small minority controlling the government_.
The thing is, Jews actually currently outnumber Muslims in the entire area, if there was some sort of magical unity government created tomorrow Jews would end up in charge.
However, the far-right government fronted by Netanyahu, would lose power. It’s held on by the slimmest majority…or not even that, really. It’s why Netanyahu is constantly provoking them. In fact, the government would probably end up being pretty secular.
Far right governments need enemies. And the current situation is what happens when two of them manage to latch together and create perpetual war.
I really feel that people here would benefit from reading _Israeli_ publications about this, because a huge amount of them are pointing out this is Netanyahu’s doing…because they actually understand the situation better than we do. They’ve watched this build up and happen.
Leaving Islam is not subject to the death penalty in Palestine.
If we’re going to pretend that’s a major concern, maybe we should stop helping Saudi Arabia, you know, one of the few countries that actually _enforces_ that. There are about ten countries with such laws, but only three that enforce it…and Pakistan mostly enforced is against Muslims that switch between Islam sects. And Afghanistan does it under the Taliban, but we at least are not allies with them, and do publicly criticize them.
If you want a real look at what happened there, here: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2002/04/was-arafat-the-problem.html
Basically the problem was that Israel created an unfixable situation with prior settlements, and it would have been politically unfeasable for them to give them up. So…they offered Palestine a fairly bad trade.
Note this article is way back in 2002, so doesn’t talk about what happened after, which is that Ehud Barak, having made the offer to give up parts of Jerulseum, then lost to Ari Sharon, and then Sharon lost to Netanyahu. And this was become that even giving up _any_ ground was unacceptable.
So if you want to pretend it’s horrible for Palestinians to not be willing to give up any land, (Which itself is an odd premise), be aware that Israel voters massively punished Ehud Barak for trying to give up any land.
The voters also punished Ari Sharon, for what he did in 2005, when he gave up settlements in Gaza.
The problem is, and has always been, settlements. They create flashpoints, they require massive amounts of policing and thus deaths to control, and people are not willing to give them up and it becomes a political impossibility on one side and an immovable political demand on the other. If it had not been for settlements, and Israel’s leader’s desperate political need to keep some of that land, the deal with Arafat would have worked.
And literally all it would have required is for Israel to _actually not commit war crimes by trying to steal territory it was merely administrator for_. That’s it.
Well, that and turning over Temple Mount to some third party, which neither side wanted to do, but could have been worked out. If that had been the actual sticking point it would have been an entirely different discussion.Report
And the Arabs forced 900k Jews out of their lands after 1949.
And you’re once again pointing to crimes created by the creation of Israel. You’re not the only one who does that, it’s a huge part of all this.
So if the Arabs weren’t openly genocidal, a one state solution might be interesting.
Assuming of course Hamas and it’s supporters would be willing to join a Jewish state as minority citizens.
The massive flaw in this look at history is Arafat refused to point out any problems in the proposals much less make any counter proposals.
The peace proposal was ugly because of X,Y, and Z… so why was it impossible for him to suggest 3X, 3Y, and Z^2? The moment we open the door for 1:1 land rather than X:1, or “money for land”, then he’s accepting there will be a Jewish state.
You keep bringing up crimes from 1949. Assume he had the same hang ups. How does he resolve those in a peace plan without saying “the existence of Israel is unacceptable”?
We never found out whether he could have sold land for peace to the public because he never got the chance.
Barak went to a bargaining table telling the Israeli public he’d get peace and instead got terror attacks.
So Israel started electing leaders to manage the conflict rather than resolve it.
This is like claiming Hamas’ genocidal ways has nothing to do with No Jews in Gaza.
They are very open about what they want to do and why. From their statements and actions I’d say they’re not going to be bought off with anything less than the destruction of Israel.Report
So now we’re just openly pretending the act of other governments are somehow the fault of Palestinians?
Yes, the inciting war crime that caused all this is, in fact, a huge part of this. (?)
Yes, which is exactly why the Israeli far-right has worked as hard as possible to make sure ‘the Arabs’ (Or, rather, Hamas, an illegitimate government) sounds as genocidal as possible by constantly provoking them as much as possible. It’s why they keep doing settlements, it’s why they do provocative stuff at Temple Mount, it’s why they let Israel settlers openly attack Palestinians, etc.
Otherwise people might start asking question.
Hamas’s ‘supporters’ are mostly other countries at this point. (As, indeed, so is Netanyahu’s. It’s interesting how much of the war, and the people determined to fight it, are being propped up by outside forces.)
But we could actually answer this question pretty easily, because all Israel would have to do is allow migration into Israel from Palestine. And before you go ‘That’s not safe’, I point out that something like 20,000 Palestinians had _work permits_ in Israel, which meant they were allowed to commute into it.
But not live in it.
That’s because the thing Arafat actually demanded was placed off the table by the premise of the setup.
Specifically, he wanted a Palestinian Right of Return. Aka, letting the Palestinians that had been kicked of the land that was taken to become Israel…back onto their land.
Hey, wasn’t that the thing I just said above?
Hey, isn’t that the opposite of the thing people _actually_ mean when they say Israel has a ‘right to exist’…because what they actually mean is ‘Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state instead of what it would look like if they somehow undid their war crimes during creation and let people back in’. (Which, now that they have bunch of Jewish refugees from elsewhere, means Jews wouldn’t even be outnumbered…they just wouldn’t be _almost entirely_ Jewish, and the resulting government would probably be secular.)
Dark, it’s not _Palestine_ who don’t want one state. In fact, they keep calling for it via the ‘destruction of Israel’, it’s what the media keeps pretending means ‘kills all Jews’ as opposed to ‘Everyone who is here gets to still be here and we create a government that represents us all instead of Israel being imposed by a minority.’, which is what is often meant and even explained, but everyone just snips out that part and pretends it’s genocidal.
It’s _Israel_ that has a problem with that. Because the resulting state would no longer be Jewish.Report
At the time, the neighboring governments represented the Palestinians. Further those governments (actually the people, a ton of this was just popular will) were behaving then like the Palestinians behave now.
More importantly, normal countries are forgiven the crime of their own creation. With the exception of South Sudan, the creation of every country is a crime. Claiming that Israel’s creation was a crime so needs to be undone is just saying “Jews can’t have a country because they’re Jews”.
Illegitimate? They won an election. If we believe the polls, they represent the popular will of the people.
Yes, they prioritize killing Jews over protecting or helping their own people. But if that’s what the people want then that’s on them.
Normal countries are allowed to control their own migration policies.
If a “right to return” means “a Palestinian homeland where the Palestinian refugees could go and live”, then he was offered that.
If “right to return” has to include “undoing the war of 1949 so the grandchildren of the owners of a house can go kick out the current owners of a house”, then that destroys Israel.
Which means they’re still fighting over whether or not the Jews get a state.Report
In the defense of Gaza, when they voted for Hamas in 2006, the other option on the ballot was Fatah which had proven to be magnificently corrupt to that point.
They threw the bums out.
There hasn’t been an election since.
Would Hamas win the election today?
I don’t know. Haven’t seen any polls.
But we shouldn’t pretend that Gaza voted for Hamas last year or something like that.Report
As of 2021 (most recent poll I see off hand)…
In the poll, 53% of the 1,200 Palestinians surveyed said they believed Hamas is “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people.” By contrast, just 14% said the same of Fatah.
Hamas is stunningly popular and could trivially win a two party race.
The reason they’re stunningly popular is because they kill Jews.Report
The U.S.’ involvement in how Hamas came to power is worth noting: First, we pressured Gaza into holding elections, assuming Fatah would win. Hamas won (unsurprising, given that they’d effectively been operating as a dual power organization with large and effective aid programs, schools, etc., for a while, while Fatah had been just corrupt and incompetent), so we backed a coup, which failed, and resulted in a civil war within Gaza that ended with Hamas in complete control and Fatah effectively nonexistent in the territory.
I believe most people in Gaza disagree with their version of Islamism, but from both a governing and a resistance standpoint, they are the only game in town (and have worked directly and indirectly with the Israeli government to remain so), so there’s not a lot of choice, and holding an election today without even the possibility of a coherent opposition would be pointless.
It’s probably also worth noting that pretty much anyone who did replace them would have to be pretty serious about resistance, which Fatah is not, unless Israel decided to dramatically alter the way they treat Gaza (end the blockade, end the separation of Gaza and WB, allow freedom of movement, etc.).
A good quick read on Hamas today: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/where-the-palestinian-political-project-goes-from-hereReport
I don’t blame them for voting for Hamas in 2006.
I mean, I’m not *THRILLED* with it but it’s not like there was a reasonable third party to go to.
I think that the failure to have any elections since is kinda telling, though.Report
I don’t think it makes sense to treat it as a failure entirely of the Palestinians making, though. The 2006 elections were possible only because Israel and the U.S. said they could hold them. That has not happened since. That’s not to excuse Hamas: it has enough power to hold elections anytime it wants, and in fact knows that it would almost certainly win any elections due to the lack of a coherent opposition, but for whatever reason it has not chosen to do so.Report
It’s not! There is *PLENTY* of failure to go around. Slather it on everybody.
THAT SAID.
The failure to have elections, even fake elections where they win with 98% of the vote, is telling.Report
Hamas has a charity wing devoted to helping people. They have an educational wing devoted to education.
Last time they won, Western Govs lined up to offer them support to help the people of Gaza. Of course this was contingent on them becoming a normal gov and stopping terrorism.
My impression at the time was they had serious internal divisions. Their military wing (i.e. the guys with guns) eventually said “no”, but their other wings liked the idea a lot.
Another issue is if the people get in the habit of voting then that’s a bad thing long term from their point of view.
It might also showcase that some of their financial backers don’t allow serious elections.
Palestinians’ opposition to Israel plays well in the Arabic world so they get a lot of financial support.Report
…also, like, you do understand that _Israel_ didn’t allow Jews to move to Gaza, right? They forcibly removed all of them back in 2005 before they withdrew, and don’t allow any back in.
Not that any would move there, because NO ONE moves there.
Moreover, Palestinian law forbids selling property to Israeli Jews (Which is more relevant in the West Bank than Gaza), which sounds like horrific discrimination until you realize the repeated outcome of ‘selling Palestinian property to Israel Jews’ has been ‘Eventually Israel bulldozes everything nearby and annexes that part of Palestine into Israel’. (Which, in a way, is the entire history of Israel.)
This is a really dumb hypothetical that you seem to think is important.Report
If Arab Muslims consider the presence of Jews to be intrinsically unacceptable, then how were 900,000 Jews living on Arab-controlled lands in 1949?
When Hitler took power in 1933, there were about 500,000 German Jews. By 1943, there were about 20,000. That’s what genocide looks like.Report
What do you think would have happened to the Jews if they’d lost in 1949? Or for that matter, the war of 1936?
Genocidal is an intention, not an accomplishment.
That they haven’t managed to do what they want doesn’t subtract from the intention, nor the attempt.Report
The fighting you speak of was confined to the territory of Palestine. Moroccan Jews and Iraqi Jews, for examples, were not fighting battles of survival with their local governments.
If Arab Muslims consider the presence of Jews to be intrinsically unacceptable, then how had so many Jews lived for centuries in Arab countries before 1949 without suffering the genocide that Germany needed only a decade to inflict?Report
What’s probably unwarranted is for us Americans to just assume that things in the Mideast, or anywhere, are the way they have always been.
In the same way that European Catholics and Protestants have different attitudes towards each other today than they did in 1923, or 1823, the relationship of the Jews and Muslims in that part of the world has probably evolved in different ways.Report
I agree that we should not presume that the way things are is the way they have always been. People can change their perspectives based on events. Groups of human beings are not locked into unchangeable mindsets, generation after generation, immune to external influences.
If the Arab Muslim attitude towards Jews changed in and after 1949 from what it had been before 1949, why?Report
Religion.
Israel existing is really outrageous and offensive from the stand point of a true believer. God has told them they’re supposed to be in charge, especially of their own holy lands.
Now taking that outrage out on your local Jews who had nothing to do with Israel is special.
It’s like the US being angry at some African strongman and deciding to punish all blacks in the US because of that.Report
Yes. In centuries past there have been times when the Muslim run countries were progressive and enlightened of their era.Report
This is like claiming that since the Na.zis didn’t kill the Jews in Sweden, they weren’t Genocidal if we look at Europe as a whole.
Your experience can vary wildly depending on which region you’re in. But pointing to a few places which weren’t genocidally anti-Semetic doesn’t subtract from the places that were.
It especially doesn’t change that after Israel was created the level of anti-Semetism increased so much that the bulk of the Jews in Arabic states had to flee.Report
Do you want a summary of who killed whom, when? here it is.
Let’s skip over the ‘displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians at gunpoint, to create Israel, which resulted somewhere between 2700-5000 dead Palestinians’. That’s not terrorism, I guess (?). Let’s start after the country was established:
February 1951 – Jamil Muhammad Mujarrab, a member of a Jordanian armed group, raped and murdered an Israeli girl in Jerusalem’s Katamon neighborhood.
Jan 1, 1952 – Seven gunmen attacked and killed a nineteen-year-old girl in her home, in the neighborhood of Beit Yisrael, in Jerusalem. On investigation, the Mixed Armistice Commission found that the case against Jordanian infiltrators could not be substantiated.
December 31, 1951/ Jan 1 1952 – a rape-murder occurred. The MAC investigating officer, Major Loreaux, reported that the body of the girl, Leah Feistinger, had been found hidden in a cave about a mile from the Jordan border, the girl had been raped, murdered, and her face had been mutilated. While it was believed by Israeli police that this atrocity had been committed by Jordanians, they did not find evidence of an infiltration.
In case the term ‘Jordanian infiltrators’ is confusing, what they mean, at least in 1951, are ‘displaced Palestinian refugees who have snuck back into the country’, which Israel had a rather massive problem with at the start, but almost all of them were not violent at that point in time, and snuck back in to recover things or try to continue to live secretly in their old houses. They were forced to leave, but the border was pourous, so they…came back. (Later, these ‘infiltrators’ generally stopped coming for non-violent reasons, but in 1951 there were just a whole lot of them, often causing problems in ways that weren’t violent, like…stealing stuff they used to own before being displaced.)
I want to point out some things here about these incidents: 1) rape and murder of individual women, while horrific, are not really terrorism per se, things can’t really be terrorism without someone taking credit in some way. This actually feels more like opportunism than terrorism. Even if it was by Palestinians and deliberately directed at an Israeli, it’s…a hate crime, not terrorism, 2) we are talking about three instances over a year, which…really doesn’t feel like a lot, and 3) only one of those are we even sure was not done by locals.
And this is the point where we stop, because Leah Feistinger’s rape and murder caused something: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_raid_on_Beit_Jala
Now, to be fair, the Israeli government denied they did this attack, and I’ll believe them, for some reason. Okay. But…wait, we’re talking about terrorism and violence in general, so, this not being done by the government would…make it terrorism, right? By Israelis sneaking across the border, everyone seems to be pretty sure. That killed seven civilians. Whoops. Somehow the Israel side ended up _ahead_ in terrorism, with seven, whereas we _maybe_ have three from the Palestine side, and that’s unclear.
Let’s continue for slightly less than two years, where about seven more Israelis get killed by possibly Palestinians, including a women and two children. These act are clearly just straight up murders, more like what you would except terrorism to look like.
And…we get the Qibya massacre, where 69 civilians were killed in a cross-border incursion by Israel. And that one isn’t disputed, the government did it. (This is why it’s hard to believe them about not doing Beit Jala) But…is it terrorism? Who knows. It’s probably just…every war crime at once, but not terrorism.
And wow, does Israeli jump ahead in the body count.
Please, tell me how the violence was started by Palestinians, who…occasionally wandered across the border into their own homeland they had been forced out of a few years earlier, and killed the people who had stolen all their stuff. Or…you know…the actual government of Israel doing…that. (And, again, this is literally 5 years after…2700-5000 Palestinians getting killed as hundreds of thousands of them were driven from their homes. There’s not actually an logical reason to start in 1951.)Report
My comment really had nothing to do with Israel directly. Rather, Russia is an independent country with a fully functioning government and a large standing army. They have diplomatic relations with other countries, a seat at the UN (SECURITY COUNCIL, no less!), control their own borders, and all the other hallmarks of a country.
How many of those things does Gaza have?
I am not excusing, justifying, defending, or criticizing Hamas’ actions.
I am not excusing, justifying, defending, or criticizing Israel’s actions.
But to treat Gaza and Russia as equivalents just ignores basic and important facts.Report
It’s worth pointing out, as Israel continues to justify murdering Palestinian civilians, that the Palestinians there have not actually had a chance to vote in almost two decades, and Hamas was actually supposed to transition to a power sharing agreement in 2011 or so and failed to do so. It really can’t be considered legitimate representative government in any way.
Another interesting fact is that more than half of the people in the Gaza strip are children, under 18, which actually means more than half of them didn’t even exist when there were last elections.
But even the civilian adults there (The ones Israel is justifying murdering) haven’t really chosen this course of action via anything that can vaguely be called representation.Report
…a recent survey indicates that 58% of the population in the Gaza Strip stands with Hamas.
https://coopwb.in/info/how-many-palestinians-support-hamas/
So they would trivially win elections if any were held. Unclear whether that’s before or after they started murdering Jewish civilians.
My guess is 58% means the poll was done “before” because that’s very popular there and a strong military “success” should invoke a large rally around the flag effect.Report
That poll, as far as I can tell (They didn’t bother to link) is not only before the current attack, it’s before the 2021 attack. There are newer polls from the same people, like this one from September: https://pcpsr.org/en/node/955
If new parliamentary elections were held today with the participation of all political forces that participated in the 2006 elections, 64% say they would participate in them, and among these participants, Fateh receives 36%, Hamas’ Change and Reform 34%, all other lists combined 9%, and 21% say they have not yet decided whom they will vote for. Three months ago, vote for Hamas stood at 34% and Fatah at 33%. Vote for Hamas in the Gaza Strip stands today at 44% (compared to 44% three months ago) and for Fateh at 32% (compared to 28% three months ago). In the West Bank, vote for Hamas stands at 24% (compared to 25% three months ago) and Fatah at 40% (compared to 34% three months ago).
So at the start of these hostility, 44% of…the 64% people who would vote in Gaza, which…only includes the less than half that are of voting age…of Palestinians would vote for Hamas, I guess.
But I find it kinda weird how this culpability for the actions of their government only applies to Palestinian civilians and not Israel citizens.
But I think a more relevant part is: A little over a quarter (27%) believe that Hamas is the most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people today while 24% believe that Fateh under the leadership of Abbas is more deserving; 44% believe both are unworthy of representation and leadership.
Almost half of them don’t like either party, and that’s because Fateh, the only alternative to Hamas, and in control of the West Bank (And in charge of the Palestinian Authority itself), has notably has cracked down on dissent. Palestinians are being presented with a choice between an armed militia that generally directs its ire at Israel, vs. a repressive regime that has murdered opposition candidates and is complicit in Israel violence against Palestinians…and also isn’t holding elections.
No one is holding elections, no one is actually voting on anything or selecting any sort of governmental policy positions.Report
All hail President Kang!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRdNOQcfp-8Report
The word “unprovoked” has appeared in many discussions of the latest Israeli-Palestinian battle, including by the OP.
Had Hamas sent fighters to attack downtown Bangkok and kill hundreds of Thais, THAT would have been unprovoked.Report
I know I shouldn’t engage with trolls that just appear but nearly all evidence shows that this attack was basically because Hamas wanted derail the diplomatic negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Maybe or maybe not Iran was evolved. But the Pro-Palestinian activists in the West keep to the script that it was about colonialism, despite Hamas higher ups living in luxuury in Qatar and Turkey, and misread the room by great amounts. The celebrate Hamas at its most monstrous and don’t realize how nearly all the normies just see them as advocating for the reprehensible. With advocates like this, the Palestinians do not need enemies.Report
No need to worry: Your post did not engage with my post at all, so even if I were a troll, you have remained true to your principles.Report
Steve Casburn is a real person and not one of the ghosts that haunts us.Report
Steve Casburn had the temerity to disagree with Jaybird about a video game once.
ONCE.Report
“Unprovoked” is, to be fair to the author, how most Americans see it, because the American media only ever shows violence in the Middle East when it is directed at Israel and Israelis, ignoring entirely the daily violence, displacement, and repression of people in the occupied territories by Israelis and the state of Israel itself.
To be clear, the fact that the attacks were extremely provoked does not excuse the attacking of civilians. I’m just noting that the OP’s ignorance is standard issue American ignorance, of the sort always well represented on this blog anytime the issue has come up for the last 14 years.
I will quickly note that it’s quite amusing to see Israel compared to Ukraine, as though a short incursion into Israeli territory from the Palestinian territories negated the fact that it is the Palestinians whose territories are occupied by a militarily-superior power. The propaganda is strong with this one.Report
For Americans, a lot of the religious issues for “X inch of land” are obscure to the point of non-existence. Two people who both want the same house is a local issue. Different groups who both want to worship the same rock should be resolved by just ignoring the other side or, at worst, using alternate days.
Gaza being run as an open air prison seems justified when the popular government is openly genocidal and murders civilians as a matter of course.
Spinning that so it’s Israel’s fault requires logic that amounts to “there aren’t supposed to be Jews there”.Report
Americans debating the actions of peoples and issues far away in foreign countries they barely understand is par for the course. Frankly it’s a testament to our freedom that asinine conversations can happen any time, any where in America. That’s a feature not a bug.
The pertinent question is really limited to what we get in exchange for our military and diplomatic support. Maybe in the Cold War it made sense to have Israel to act as a counter weight to Soviet influence in the region. However that time is passed. Now it seems our largesse is rewarded with nothing but ingratitude and embarrassments. No one can ever explain to me what we get in exchange.
Say what you will about the Ukranians, at least they are severely wounding a geopolitical adversary and want to officially join the Western alliance. Some might say it isn’t worth the price or the risk but at least there’s something to quantity.Report
I wish we’d talk about Israel-Palestine, and several other conflicts, a lot more, because as a nation we tend to be pretty involved, but as individuals, we tend to be extremely ignorant of them. This effectively means that we don’t have much of a say in what our government does, and don’t fully understand the consequences, for the people over there, and for ourselves, of our government’s actions.Report
Gaza being run as an open air prison seems justified when the popular government is openly genocidal and murders civilians as a matter of course.
Alexa, describe for me a vicious cycle.Report
Intuitively that makes sense.
However that suggests Israel could break the cycle by treating people better… and I see no evidence of that.
If they’re that nasty simply because Israel exists then it’s not a cycle. Worse, this sort of thing predates Israel.
The word “genocide” was invented to talk about this region of the world back in the 1920s. That was also a case of a group not being Islamic enough and the locals deciding that wasn’t acceptable.Report
Pro-Palestinian supporters in the West have no idea what to do when the Palestinian leadership says very hardline things and that the only solution is No Jews. Plus the status of non-Muslim in most Muslim majority countries isn’t great and there is no reason to believe that the Palestinians would have the same political pathologies.Report
There would be barely a murmer about the issue in the West if Israel withdrew from the West Bank the way it did from Gaza. That’s probably also true even if Israel kept the settlements that hug the internationally recognized border and East Jerusalem.
Would that mean Israel was never attacked again? No. But it would mean the only people who gave a damn about Israeli retaliation no matter how harsh would be the folks North references below, whose opinion means diddly squat.Report
That’s one heck of a trade off.
They’d be turning the West Bank into a Gaza-like terror state so the West would feel better about it.
I suspect Gaza’s result is why Israel hasn’t done that for the West Bank.Report
Why would they care if it becomes that? The Israelis colonizing it would no longer be there, and the Palestinians would have no more excuses about their own conduct.
The reason they haven’t done it is because of the political power of the settlers and other Israelis who think it should be permanently annexed.Report
Given how poorly Gaza has worked out for Israel, they might reasonably not want to repeat that with the West Bank purely from a security standpoint.
We might see Israel decide that Gaza was such a big failure that not only do they need to go back, but they need to stay there.Report
The reason you don’t go back is because you don’t want to own it, and the reason you get rid of the West Bank is because owning it is more trouble than its worth. But if you decide to own it then you have to accept the difficulties and consequences that come with it, which is a whole bunch of violent, impoverished people lashing out at you. All your argument here is that the Israelis should both get to own it but be thought victims when they suffer the negative trade offs. That’s nonsensical, and they are the ones with the choice.
Now for me personally I stop giving a damn the second we stop sending Israel weapons and making asses of ourselves carrying water for them for nothing in return. However even if it was for some reason worth it I find it baffling that people think the Israelis need to be able to have this both ways. No one has it both ways, ever.Report
We are in “what is the least bad choice” territory.
What I push back on, strongly, is the idea that things would be happiness and light if Israel would just stop repressing the genocidal terrorists.Report
I don’t think it would be happiness and light and anyone who does is being pretty unrealistic.Report
It’s literally a clear shot from the West Bank to Jerusalem. That shot was taken a lot before the Six-Day War.Report
Look if that’s the calculus, that they need a buffer zone, then that’s also a choice they can make. But like I said above there are trade offs, and if you do that you forfeit the right to be seen as a victim.
On the practicalities while I’m sure reasonable minds can disagree I would think it is also relevant how much circumstances have changed since the 60s, from the peace treaties to the greatly diminished capabilities of its neighbors.Report
When I look at what an ideal peace would look like, and then how to get there, I go back to the whole “forced population transfers” thing.
Then I wonder if that’s the least ugly solution.
If we go for “ethical” then we need to pretend that various groups can be niced into not being genocidal.Report
This is probably correct but my guess is that there would still be a lot of people who would argue that this wasn’t a real withdrawal like they did with Gaza or want the conflict to go totally away.Report
However that suggests Israel could break the cycle by treating people better… and I see no evidence of that.
You would, if you were familiar with what is happening now, and what has happened historically, in the region. To start, I recommend looking at a map of Israel and the occupied territories, and seeing if there are any other occupied territories besides Gaza, and then thinking about how Israel behaves there (still not very good, but…) and how that has affected the politics and radicalism in those other places.Report
These places were genocidally anti-Semitic before Israel had control of them.
That’s why people who want to blame Israel back things up to before 1949. Which means it’s totally unacceptable for there to be Jews in the Middle East.
And if we go back to the 1920s then we saw the same sort of behavior directed to organized non-Muslims.
The Palestinians don’t want peace. They want victory were they establish an Islamic state. At that point they treat the non-Muslims as you’d expect.Report
These places were genocidally anti-Semitic before Israel had control of them
This is a vast oversimplification of the history of the region.Report
If we’re looking for an alternate universe where the Jews didn’t do anything and aren’t powerful to check how bad things would be for them, I’d think we could look at how atheists fare now.
Far as I can tell in Israel atheists are fine and everywhere else in that region they argue over the death penalty.Report
‘genocidally’?
Jews purchased, owned, and lived in vast areas of Palestine before 1949. It’s called the Zionist movement. Hell, the Jews moving there were often doing it to _escape_ antisemitism, both before and after WWII.
Were there problems and violence against Jews? Sure, some, especially towards the ends, but that was mostly not antisemitism, that was anti-colonialism towards the British government. Here’s a good example of that sort of thing, and while neither is side is great, it doesn’t actually sound like antisemitism, it sounds like a general colonial conflict:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936%E2%80%931939_Arab_revolt_in_Palestine
Palestinians were well aware that the Zionist movement was fully intending, with the clear consent of the British, to seize Palestine from them. Everyone knew that was the goal, everyone knew that was what was being worked towards.
And yet…Jews lived freely there. mostly in their own created communities, but that was as much by their choice as the natives.
Did some Palestinians probably say some bad things about Jews in general? Sure, I guess, but…sometimes people say shitty things about groups that are literally openly planning to take over their country.
Incidentally, I’m in moderations, and I suspect the reason is I said ‘Zionism’, which…yes, I am aware that word is often used by antisemities, but it is literally the name of the actual political movement that seized control of Palestine from the natives and create a state of Israel. And the fact that (I suspect due to WordPress filters) it can’t be talked about without going into moderation sorta…makes an interesting point about how hard it is to talk about the bad things that Israel does.Report
From your own link, the first anti-Jew war was in 1936 and “the cycle of violence” started in 1920.
From 1920 to 1949 land was being purchased, not stolen, and the issue was “Jews in the Middle East”.
There’s an argument for the locals getting all spun up over outsiders doing this, although the locals didn’t have their own country since the Brits were in charge.
However what actually happened was all Arabs, even countries away, got spun up. And that’s in the context of viewing the Palestinians as we did the blacks in the 1950s.
(great link btw).Report
If the residents of Palestine were “genocidally anti-Semitic before Israel had control of them”, then how were so many Zionists able to emigrate to Palestine over the course of decades that they were able to take that control?Report
Not sure I understand the question.
Tens of thousands of Jews fled Europe after WW2 and tried to set up a country.
The UN tried to settle the issue with a peace agreement.
Instead there was a war because a Jewish country was unacceptable.
After that we have vast population and land transfers.
On a side note, I’m not claiming that Israel and it’s actions don’t make things worse. Gaza has good reason to hate Israel beyond the religious aspects.
However Hamas was able to win a popular election before Gaza became an open air prison. Various anti-Jew genocidal wars predate the West Bank.
The concept that there can’t be a Jewish state, i.e. that Jews need to be, at best, a rare repressed minority, predates the creation of Israel. This makes the idea of a “cycle” of violence some what nonsensical.
If Israel dropped the level of repression down to zero, we’d still have lots of Palestinians engaged in terrorism because God has insisted that this is Arab land so it’s their holy duty. They’d also be funded by non-local interests.Report
There were already 650,000 Jews in Israel/Palestine by the mid-1940s. They were 1/3 of the population. They didn’t materialize out of nowhere.Report
Well, no, they didn’t materialize out of nowhere, they had moved there as part of the Zionist movement since ~1880. 4% of the area was Jewish in 1850.
It’s not particularly well know by the general public, but Zionism started out in the 1880s, in response to Russian pogram and was…pretty different at the start.
Basically, the initial premise was ‘Move to our old homeland within the Ottoman Empire’, and there was no attempt to actually create a nation…the Ottoman Empire had already had the largest populations of Jews in the world at several point sin history, and traditionally providing a safe space for Jewish refugees. The Ottoman Empire had even officially declared Jews (and everyone) officially equal to each other under the law in 1865.
Which is, of course, absurd, because we Know for a Fact that Muslims and Jews in That Area were always at each other throats, that’s Official History, it’s what a lot of people here think. Weird how Jews all over seemed to think that an explicitly Muslim Empire, the place generally considering as the caliphate of Islam at the time, was the safest place in the world to be.
Of course, they weren’t wrong. The Ottoman Empire never turned on the Jews. There were some minor incidents against Jews, ironically almost always caused by Christians, but nothing major. Hell, they prohibited Jewish blood libel in 1840, after a bunch of Christians in Damascus did a bunch of antisemitism in the Damascus Affair. When the Ottomans got Syria back, they said ‘Hell no, we aren’t doing this. Christians, stop making up nonsense about Jews, or we will literally put you in prison.’
The original history of Zionism, what it started out as, and what it became, is kinda interesting, in fact. It was ‘Jews should come home to a Jewish Homeland where we will be safe’, but not ‘and Jews must run it’. They were completely fine with the Ottoman Empire running it, with general autonomy for Jews just like it had for Christians as ‘people of the pact’. (Aka, followers of the Abrahamic God, as opposed to all those weird pagans in India and China.)
‘And Jews must also run this homeland’ didn’t really start until the Ottoman Empire came apart at the end of WWI and that area was placed under British control for being divided up, and some Zionists said ‘Wait, if it’s being divided up, can we have some of it?’, despite not actually being a majority anywhere.
And that…pissed off Muslims living there, who were, indeed, still the majority.Report
How do you fit Israel being at peace with Egypt since 1979 and with Jordan since 1994 into this interpretation of the Arab Middle East?
(Also, the word “genocide” was coined to describe what the Germans did to the Poles during World War II. It was later retroactively applied to what the Turks did to the Armenians in the 1910s.)Report
1) Their governments can do things their people don’t like. Going to war with Israel is very expensive and not very useful.
2) There is always dancing in the streets every time a Jew is killed.
3) If you’re a non-Jew non-Muslim, what would it be like living there? For that matter, what would it be like to be a Jew living there?
Interesting. Wiki says you’re correct. I’d swear that’s changed.Report
Egypt and Jordan are defined nation states with accepted borders and standing armies – plus functional economies and diplomatic corps. Its a lot easier for states to agree not to attack other states, especially when those states gain economic and political benefit from acting like actual nations. This is, in part, why the Saudis and Israelis were stating to normalize relations.
The Palestinians are occupied, entirely surrounded by their occupier, with their economic success “granted” to them by their occupiers. They have no defined borders (as Israeli settlers seem to have noticed), no standing army and no real diplomatic corps. They haven’t even been allowed an election in over a decade. They are not a nation state, and other then suppressing their own terrorist organizations, have nothing to really offer Israel.
So I’d say the comparison fails on its face.Report
My theory and it is mine is that Pro-Palestinian advocates in the West keeping missing up because they believe that everybody else has the same opinions about Israel or Jews as they do but are just being polite about it.Report
Only the worst people of an extreme view celebrate at times like this. The amount of sympathy isn’t necessarily a sign of a long-term change in thinking though. The extremists who are quiet today will probably return tomorrow, and the less-interested may only half-remember the attack in a year.Report
Huh. I thought I typed in a ETA for that comment, but it didn’t show up. I realized I didn’t connect what I was saying to Lee’s comment. I think there are plenty of people who have pro-Palestinian opinions and are either being polite today, or have misgivings today that they’ll get past after the next rough news. Opinions can change, but it’s way too early to tell if that’s meaningfully happening.Report
Well, to be fair to them, everyone at the vegan socialist cooperative cafeteria they go to agrees with them.Report
Those are the people that mattered. The propaganda war is starting with a big advantage to Israel. Based on Facebook, Israel and it’s advocates have the better advocacy tools. The main one right now are pictures of dead and wounded soldiers and civilians with biographies. Usually these are people in their twenties and thirties. Sometimes in uniform and sometime not. The Palestinian propaganda seems to be releasing misleading Mandate era maps and calling it historic Palestine or trying to convince people that victims of the Hamas atrocity were settlers or some other bold faced lie.Report
The other shoe will drop if/when the Israelis go into Gaza.Report
I kind of disagree. I think that a ground invasion is more likely to maintain the good will longer than aerial bombardment. Aerial bombardment has a very technologically advanced Goliath bombing poor little David. The optics of a ground invasion looks more equal.Report
I’d personally consider “going into Gaza” to be both ranged bombardment and physical invasion.Report
Israel has shut off water, power, and food. It’s an obvious move, i.e. treating Gaza like a hostile state since it’s a hostile state.
If they keep it up we’re looking at a massive humanitarian disaster.Report
Here’s a thought – stop trying to make Palestinians anyone’s “subjects.”Report
‘
Vox and Slate seem to be attempting to do a whataboutism and make it all about the Occupation despite all evidence showing this was a realpolitik attack for the purposes of derailing the Israeli-Saudi negotiations. One Slate article, really missing the room, called for the International Community to stop atrocities, which I think means any military action, from happening. The inability for the Pro-Palestinian forces to come out and say “Hamas, you idiots” isn’t going to go well.Report
“The idea that terrorists could cross the southern border has been around since September 11, but there has yet to be a single attack connected to illegal immigration despite the fact that Republicans claim the border is wide open. There are easier ways to infiltrate the US than walking across a highly-patrolled desert border, and if such a plot was in the cards, it probably would have been tried in the 20 years that we’ve been debating border security and immigration reform. The September 11 hijackers immigrated legally, by the way. Having said that, I do believe that we need enhanced border security as a part of comprehensive immigration reform.”
I really had to take a seat after reading the single dumbest paragraph I have read since your last single dumbest paragraph. It basically admits that all of your right-wing scare tactics are pointless and couched in racism, but we should continue to advocate for the same pointless right-wing scare tactics couched in racism.Report
The best talk on the overall situation that I’ve seen on this. TED Talk too.
The Israel-Hamas War — and What It Means for the World | Ian Bremmer | TED
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQmBsbt9blgReport
At least one Hamas spokesman claims that they were planning this attack for two years, had the support of Russia, and expect Hamas prisoners in Europe and the United States to be part of any swap. If this is true, Hamas is extraordinarily delusional and doesn’t realize how much they screwed themselves and the other Palestinians. Russian support is incredibly more likely to piss off the West than Iranians support, especially with the entire invasion of Ukraine thing going on at the moment.
https://twitter.com/MEMRIReports/status/1712030588872351872?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1712030588872351872%7Ctwgr%5Ed3f9d7c6e0aa2fc864cd4ddf64d5837cce71ee6c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D13634720https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D136347t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20232F102Fbiden-is-donet_e%3DBiden20is20donet_d%3DBiden20is20done20-20Lawyers2C20Guns202620Moneyt_t%3DBiden20is20dones_o%3Ddescversion%3D4699de2a86f3c790aa59c8d1312129e4Report
This clearly was years of planning and the support of a nation state.
But, Russia doesn’t have the rep or motivation for this and Iran & Hezbollah do.Report
Another voice in the mix:
He hits on something I’ve noticed in this conflict – when the western media reports on Israeli burials or Israeli families weeping over the body of a slain relative, that media almost always uses names for the victims and for family members. “XXX, mother of YYY grieves as her son’s body is buried.” When Palestinians are photographed in a similar vein, the best we get is “A Father weeps over his daughter killed in Israeli shelling.” One of those things humanizes. One doesn’t.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/11/opinions/gaza-palestinian-israel-hamas-seige-ghraieb/index.htmlReport
There is a disconnect between “denouncing violence and pleading for a just peace” and electing an openly genocidal terror group as your official representatives and dancing in the streets when they kill civilians.Report
Do you similarly blame Germans in the 1930’s?Report
The Germans faced down their demons after the war and changed. A better comparison would be the Germans reelecting the National Socialists after the war still having the same platform.
Hamas in power has the problem that they’ve proclaimed they have a duty to kill all the Jews and that’s the source of their popularity. So even knowing that it’s going to be a mess, they have to do these sorts of things.
This is why various people have pointed out they can’t really be destroyed. Even if they’re all killed, Hamas-2 will pop up promising to kill all the Jews.
Hamas is popular. It’s activities are extremely popular. Their idea for peace is all the Jews are killed or forced to flee. The only reason that goal gets a fig-leaf of obscuring is because it doesn’t play well in the West.
That fig-leaf is phrases like “ending the occupation” and “just peace”. Their interpretation is very different from yours.Report
It’s hard for me to understand the author’s perspective. The American news and opinion writers have been more pro-Israel so far than usual, although I’m sure that’s going to drift the other direction as Israel’s response gets bloodier. But generally I’d say the press tries to present a very neutral take on the region. I guess if you’re strongly pro-Palestine that would seem biased?
What’s interesting is that this is the first major violence in the Holy Land since the birth of new media, and there’s been little sympathy for the Palestinian cause from the masses. Sympathy for the people and what they’re about to go through, sure, but not for the cause.Report
I don’t know about that, the Second Intifada took place from 2000-2004 roughly which is the era of the blogosphere.
Though, on the other hand, the Second Intifada and its interaction with the new media paradigm and also with the fact that it blew up Oslo* was basically the point where both the Israeli pro-peace left and sympathy for the Palestinian cause internationally went into a severe decline. So you may still have a point that the new, more interconnected less gate-kept media paradigm is just not congenial to the Palestinian cause as it operationally functions currently.
*And, of course, it happened in a world under the shadow of 9/11.Report