This is Israel's "business as usual" stuff. Mowing the lawn, fake ceasefire, distraction, expansion and greater Israel project let's go! stuff. Stretch goal is to make Iran a failed state. Primary goal is distraction from the very real annexation of Palestinian and Lebanese territories, one war crime at a time.
If it is to recover what Israel occupied illegally, good. If Palestine did what Israel is doing, that would be bad. What happened in October the 7th was also horrible and condemned. We really need to deescalate the whole situation and stop the violence. Every one of these violent actions (in which Israel is the main perpetrator by far), not only create suffering and deaths in the short term, but makes a possible solution harder and harder.
Problem is solved for Israel, right. Gaza is still in ruins, cut off from everything, there is a massive humanitarian crisis, the systematic dispossession campaign in the West Bank is accelerating, but I guess all of that just affects Palestinians, so it doesn't count...
Problem here is that first and foremost, Gaza needs two things to fix their housing stock: cement and pipes... And they aren't getting either because cement immediately goes into building tunnels, and pipes into producing rockets. No way Israel will be fooled that way again - and now they control what goes in or not because of buffer zone.
Yeah no. The current "debate" from what I understand is about mobile homes and any kind of temporary shelter that is more durable than a tent. The Israeli government straight up said "no, mobile homes count as 'reconstruction' for us and reconstruction in any form is forbidden until Hamas is disarmed. So tents is all they get".
This is Palestine, not Minnesota :) I live right next to it. It never gets below zero. No snow.
And yes that's what was the condition of ceasefire. Of course Israel knew Hamas won't yield power. They are made so that Hamas can be now blamed for the plight of Palestinians. Question is, who elected Hamas to power?
Things were calm until Israel attacked Lebanon. They did it, after Israel and America started an illegal war against Iran.
At this point, everyone knows Israel is the aggressor.
One of the first acts of Operation Epstein's Fury was to attack a girls school and murder over 170 kids with a Tomahawk. Why?
I have two girls myself. I’d want to know exactly what happened and why, and to hold whoever made this deplorable mistake accountable. So I’d want to know this. Wouldn’t you? I think the AI targeting aspect of this is very disturbing.
Sorry, I misread your comment as a justification the first time. The US and Iseael are involved in war crimes and I am so tired of people justifying it.
This is so unhelpful. What has happened in the last 5 weeks has hugely escalated the violence in an already difficult situation. It's not wishful thinking or naive to think that deliberately inflaming a difficult situation is a bad idea.
I am not justifying them as inevitable. I am justifying them as beneficial for us, even if the means they employ are morally questionable at times (even if they happen to be that way for the lack of choices).
I support Israel because it is a no-brainer who to support between them and so-called "Palestine" (which in practice means Hamas), and there is no practical way to be neutral because Hamas will never accept existence of Israel and thorough genocide of Israelis is only acceptable option for them.
> even if the means they employ are morally questionable at times
> [...]
> thorough genocide of Israelis is only acceptable option for them
What a sickening double-standard. I hope you understand why the majority of Americans disagree with this perspective, and have no interest in dying for Israel's expansionist escalation policy. Hamas is not a threat to America, Israel is.
It's possible you haven't visited America recently and experienced this firsthand, so I'll excuse you for thinking you have a populist stance. Even the Christian Zionists are getting sick and tired of dealing with the Liability in the Levant right now, I think you'll be shocked how fast the GOP abandons Likud when the ceasefire inevitably snaps.
I'm not at all an American and have never been to the US, and don't give a flying fuck about it. "Beneficial for us" - for the whole white, Christian (i am an atheist), civilised world.
Big difference in Israeli and Palestinian stance is that Israel is fine with the existence of Palestine. They never had a policy goal to destroy Gaza/West Bank or exile entirety of their population. Hamas does have a goal of doing the same to Israeli.
If Israel is fine with the existence of Palestina, why is it occupying the West Bank with illegal settlements? There is no Hamas in the West Bank, not any threat whatsoever and the policy is ethnic cleansing, as in Gaza. Do you know the current stance of the far-right Israeli government?
"The white, civilized world". There is not such a thing outside the mind of a white-supremacist, which you seem to be by this comments.
I think the alternative he was alluding to was that Iran is the project of ultra-religious hostile expansion. Which of course they would do if they could. Pick your poison - nationalist fanaticism or religious fanaticism.
Obviously neither would be best but that isn't a realistic possibility. I think I'd probably rather Israel conquered the Middle East than Iran.
Iran "would" expand (and citation needed) is very different than Israel "is in the process of" expanding, invading, suppressing peoples of different cultures within and without the borders of its state.
> I think I'd probably rather Israel conquered the Middle East than Iran.
I'd rather that whomever pursues a project of Lebensraum (that includes Russia) to be reminded of its place in the world, one way or another.
This is absurd. Iran hasn't done hostile expansion during its entire history as a modern state. Meanwhile the Greater Israel project is being aggressively pursued, with Israel currently (as in today, Wednesday April 8th) ethnically cleansing South Lebanon for indefinite occupation, as well as annexing the West Bank.
But Iran was involved in war abroad, trained militias and send weapons to Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, Lebanon, .. and also had personal on the ground.
They even try to enforce a death sentence worldwide and allmost succeded against a author who never even has been in Iran for writing a fantasy book (Salmom Rushdi).
It is absurd claiming they are peaceful. None of this justifies what Israel religious and nationalists are doing, but this black and white painting is not what is solving the conflict.
Or else they'll eventually alienate a majority of their patron state's voting population, and finally get hemmed in / risk losing your military (and other) funding that their state is dependent on.
We can reverse the whole thing -- lift sancions on Iran, sell them weapons, let them have their bomb and impose embargo on Israel. That should cool tbe delusions of grandeur pretty quick.
It was upvoted by so many people actually because of reason and evidence.
Also, please stop using race card, no one is blaming a race, people are pointing out to the country who is carrying out these cruelties and majority of government supporting it and majority of army is executing the commands
You .
The links you said are very misleading when looking at reality and the whole picture.
So the fact you chose these hilariously misleading links means you are misled.
Where did that misleading come from? You have to be fueled with emotions to get to that incorrect conclusion of yours (again, only based on your links).
So I am assuming you hate the jews/zionism/israel/something related and that hate fueled your failed journey at reaching the truth.
"Israel should extend its border with Lebanon up to the Litani River deep inside the country's south, Israel's finance minister said on Monday as Israeli troops bombed bridges and destroyed homes in an escalating military assault.
The comments by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich were the most explicit yet by a senior Israeli official on seizing Lebanese territory in a fight Israel says targets Iran-backed Hezbollah militants."
Yes, a lot of context.
Otherwise your linked article would indeed favor your argument. But given without enough context this article is a pure backwards nonsense that can and does confuse uninformed people like yourself.
I see this claim repeated over and over. You should be aware that it is false. As far as I am aware, Israel never funded Hamas. Israel allowed Qatari money to the Gaza authority to pay for civil servants, humanitarian aid and basic services, while it was run by Hamas.
> Only a Zionist would call equal rights and the right to self-determination a "maximalist" position
They had equal rights and self-determination in Gaza. For decades. They never built a society from it, instead begging the international community for food, and then starting a war they knew they would lose, only for the PR points of losing badly.
Where's a blockaded tiny slice of coastal land no more than a few miles wide with no water and no arable land supposed to even get food? Nobody is convinced by the "they're just beggars" racist stuff, man. Those poor people were actively expelled from their homes and continuously oppressed and have had their new homes flattened countless times. The fact those poor people still survive and try to rebuild each and every time shows that those people work hard.
It's physically impossible for land that small to grow enough food to provide for their population. Those people were driven from their land and forced into an incredibly tiny and unsustainable space. And the whole "They never built a society from it" thing is what the most extreme racists and slave traffickers said about Africans so they could justify their treatment of them. It's dehumanizing and absolutely disgusting way to talk about a group of human beings and people should be shamed for saying such things.
I wasn't saying they had to be self sufficient. I don't think Israel is either. You do have to have something though.
You're trying to argue from rage instead of facts and I'm not buying it. You can be as angry and insulting as you want, but it doesn't change the fact that the reason is that you jump to insults is that you don't have a point.
We DO need to free palestine. But from Hamas. From jihadism. That's what's killing them. Blaming Israel guarantees the kind of dysfunction that allowed Hamas to fester and jihadist nazism to be taught in UN funded schools.
You might want to point out something specific. And why are people just blaming Israel when Gaza has a border with Egypt? The answer is obvious isn't it?
Israel are unwilling or unable to hold to agreements and that makes them an unreliable partner. The same has been true of America with Iran.
Both Iran and America also have a maximalist approach in terms of use of remote weapons and reluctance to accept casualties. That limits the effectiveness of "might makes right". Massively more so in the larger Iran.
And whilst Gaza might seem like a collosal defeat it could be seen in a more positive light in a culture that views sacrifice as noble. Again same could be true of Iran.
Not true. Hamas wanted to do hostage exchange for Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons and truce within the first week. Israel refused.
Ridiculous take. Israel wants a secular Iran, not a failed state. Most Iranians don’t hate Israel. They hate the Islamic regime. But westerners just looove to support all Iranian proxies these days.
Israel does want a failed state - they want to balkanise Iran, letting their ISIS head-choppers, the Uigher terrorists etc at it. See Syria and how that's going.
Of course, Israel is a pure white dove. For instance, they have rallies for "the right to rape prisoners" (and recently to kill them) [0]. Or to willingly mutilate peaceful protesters presenting no risk[1].
The problem is that the total lack of moral limits in Israel only forces their opponents to escalate, or accept to be treated like animals (in the case of the West Bank Palestinians). It also affects the US, since that they have to follow along with Israel' way of doing the war (mainly, war crimes).
The problem is that once a party starts to commit atrocities, all others tend to do it. Atrocities by Israel are not new, and Israel has a long history about it, since its inception:
That is the consequence of a long-term policy. Israel made sure the Palestinian authority was sidelined and helped Hamas get full control of the Gaza Strip. History did not start in October 2023.
> was the Nova music festival massacre justified resistance
Intentionally killing civilians is never justified. But this still makes Palestine/Hamas the (much) smaller genocidal terrorist in this conflict. Free people don't need freedom fighters ;).
Now, I have no horse in this race, I am not related to any of the peoples involved, and live far away. I'm just the voice that finds genocide wrong. You on the other hand look like you're happily riding the terrorist, genocidal horse. I don't expect anything from you in terms of quality debate.
no massacre is justified, but can you remind us how and where did Hamas get helicopters and tanks and all of a sudden all cars were smashed? maybe Hannibal directive handed them over their tanks
As a first step they could give back some of their illegal settlements. Then over time give back more, until they are back in UN recognized borders. That would be a start. They could also start to persecute violent mobs that chased people out of their own homes and the people in the military covering them. They could also release unjustifiably imprisoned people.
You know, things that basic human decency would demand of them.
The war started by Israel, ostensibly as a retaliation for a dispute about a bit of water, which Israel used as a pretext to invade the West Bank? What about it?
The 'both sides' thing when one side is occupying the other is pathetic.
There's only one side that needs to stop the occupation immediately, the Israeli one.
We can go from there.
This is preposterous revisionism - Israel didn't just leave Gaza alone, they turned it into an open air concentration camp, controlling everything going in and out. And they were utter bastards about it too, literally counting calories going into Gaza, and classing just about anything as "dual use" so not allowed (e.g. tent poles could be used to hit someone).
Israel has never stopped being the aggressor. Maybe if they stopped occupying, stealing, raping, murdering and massacring, the entire region might be more peaceful. Not likely for a genocidal, apartheid state filled with religious supremacist fanatics though.
Translation: Israel is always the victim, even if the whole world outside it sees it as the aggressor.
I guess illegal settlement in the West Bank is the result of a Nintendo console not being launched the same day in Israel as in Japan? Or any other made up thing that shifts the blame from Israel to a 3rd party?
This comment is exactly why there is no hope out there. Literally zero understanding of middle-Eastern geopolitics other than trite slogans.
Come on. Do you think everyone is going to suddenly start holding hands and singing kumbaya? Or more realistically, like nearly every other surrounding state it'll be the elimination and exodus of Jews and Israelis?
Hamas didn't have prior knowledge of the festival, and partygoers were also murdered by the Israeli army. And in general flattening entire cities don't leave their habitants very keen toward Israel either. It just reinforces the cycle of aggression, which allows Israel to take more land.
No it's not ok, if the goal is peace and not the achievement of the "Greater Israel" that the current religious far-right in power is pursuing, with the support of the zionist christians in the US.
That's a crazy way to defend an ongoing genocide. The scale is so different that the only way to miss it is willful bad faith.
How long and how far do you go with that justification? Does it work the other way too? Are "their" actions justified forever because of something wrong that was done to them? Can anyone in the world do to you anything and everything forever if they were ever wronged by someone born in the same general geographic area as you?
Whenever you find yourself defending any genocide, under any excuse, defending the killing of innocent children because some other guys from the same general area also killed people, you are the bigger problem and no amount of fresh accounts justifying it makes you better.
I didn't defend. I just pointed out that the "freedom fighters" in everyone's minds are raping murdering bastards and I refuse to take a moral position and support or defend them for it.
That in itself is an abhorrent position and I am disgusted at anyone who takes it.
And further extrapolation as you edited it, if a child has a gun pointing at your head and has been trained to fire it at you, which is exactly what they have been doing, then they are legally combatants. But it makes a good statistical and PR job which is just as abhorrent. Legally and statistically speakingh, children... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD2FezhJgqA
That sure sounds like defending the killing of children because for sure they were all holding a gun and trying to kill you. Including the babies.
If you show all the YouTube videos in the world, the moment when you find a justification to kill any innocent children is when you become irreversibly the problem.
Your second point literally makes no sense and is based on the straw man that babies are holding guns where I made no point even related to that or collateral kills (which are unacceptable). Secondarily my point is based on internationally legal definitions of combatant and evidenced with a video of combatants being trained. Not like the UN and UNICEF haven't been all over this for decades.
Don't use child soldiers and you won't get statistically significant child casualties.
> I just pointed out that the "freedom fighters" in everyone's minds are raping murdering bastards
So, like Israeli soldiers?[0]
> if a child has a gun pointing at your head and has been trained to fire it at you, which is exactly what they have been doing
Israelis do exactly the same[1]
As long as Israelis rely on violence, war crimes and human rights violations, there can be no deescalation. We see it in the current ceasefire, where Israelis refused to stop their annexation war (and flattening) of Liban.
Genocide, apartheid, and 50 years of terrorism murder of children, destruction of hospitals, churches, schools, universities and imprisonment of a people’s in a Ghetto (yes, a fucking ghetto) is the moral bottom however. Israel is indefensible morally.
There is one other possibility: Finish the genocide. Finish ethnically cleansing the region and put the remaining Palestinians into reservations. After a while once the current threat is eliminated, Israel can become Greater Israel and the Israelis can do land acknowledgements while they enjoy their new Riviera and Gaza.
It's so sad to see this ridiculous argument every time. Israel is the aggressor, the murder and the main threat to the region's peace, not the victim. This, of course, does not mean that Iran is not another threat, but its actions seem like nothing compared to what Israel is doing.
The only endgame I see for the region is sadly the complete and utter annihilation of all civilizations there, possibly through nuclear means.
I do not say this lightly and I say it with a deep sadness in my heart for the people of the middle east, but also with the sober realization that this is the only end of the path that is currently walked.
There's a much less grim end, probably coming at short term:
If the US stop giving unconditional blank check support to Israel, then the nuisance power of the Jewish supremacists there disappears overnight. The US popular support for Israel is now at an all time low, and the recent war may be the straw that breaks the Camel's back.
All that's needed to stabilize the region is some amount of pushback to the destabilizing country here. Iran have been a destabilizing force for the past decade, but since 2023 Israel is by far the biggest threat to the region, and it's mostly due to Netanyahu's political survival relying on the state of perpetual war he's put the country in.
Should the US put even a modicum amount of pressure to Israel (or even just declare they wouldn't support them should the EU put economic sanctions on Israel), then the current cabinet collapse, Netanyahu ends up in prison for corruption and the middle east is stable for a decade.
All of this madness is happening because the US enables a madman to escape his own judicial system through foreign wars.
As an outsider here's the point of my fear . Looks at democratic countries and muslim unification during gaza issue, this is a threat but as far as Jews are concerned they don't have this type of threat to democracy
> Becker argues that a basic duality in human life exists between the physical world of objects and biology, and a symbolic world of human meaning. Thus, since humanity has a dualistic nature consisting of a physical self and a symbolic self, we are able to transcend the dilemma of mortality by focusing our attention mainly on our symbolic selves, i.e. our culturally based self esteem, which Becker calls "heroism": a "defiant creation of meaning" expressing "the myth of the significance of human life" as compared to other animals. This counters the personal insignificance and finitude that death represents in the human mind.
> Such symbolic self-focus takes the form of an individual's "causa sui project", (sometimes called an "immortality project", or a "heroism project"). A person's "causa sui project" acts as their immortality vessel, whereby they subscribe to a particular set of culturally-created meanings and through them gain personal significance beyond that afforded to other mortal animals. This enables the individual to imagine at least some vestige of those meanings continuing beyond their own life-span; thus avoiding the complete "self-negation" we perceive when other biological creatures die in nature.
You can find big similarities such as the promised land as the immortality vessel, heroism as a response to historical trauma and the ongoing attacks on their sovereignty, and the immortality project would be the nation-state. Becker goes on to categorize all of this similar to a mental illness. You can read the wikipedia page here, I find it very helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death
TL;DR: If you look through Becker's lens, you start to realize how stupid such wars and expansionist ideals seem. People should focus on what exists now and stop chasing projects that'd span beyond their lifetimes while making life today worse.
The book doesn't support anything in "their" favor. The idea boils down to nobody being "them".
Related part from Wikipedia:
> Becker argues that the conflict between contradictory immortality projects (particularly in religion) is a major source of the violence and misery in the world such as wars, genocide, racism, nationalism and so forth since immortality projects that contradict one another threaten one's core beliefs and sense of security
