Remind me how many peace offers Israel made and how many Palestine accepted again. It sucks but you can’t negotiate with an outfit that prefers mutual destruction to coexistence and sadly hamas does just that.

Not saying Israel and the idf are always or always do the right thing but right now it’s protecting it’s citizens and I can’t blame them for that.

Yeah not all of them.

Having security at an event doesn't make it not be a primarily civilian target. It's especially ironic that hamas targeted a peace festival that was sympathetic to their cause. I imagine it's because they don't want peace

There are plenty of examples. Tel Aviv has dozens of military bases near dense residential areas and even hospitals.

These are not hospitals and elementary schools from which rockets are being launched. They are based near a hospital which eminently sensible for any military that values its soldiers.

Gaza is the 2nd - 3rd most densely populated area in the world, only 12 km in width. It is a concentration camp.

Auschwitz, a famously prolific and reasonably large camp was less than half a kilometer in width. Please don't cheapen the experience of those rounded up at gunpoint and forced into cattlecars by comparing it to that of people who moved into an area whose inhabitants were forcefully evacuated (Israel forced its own citizens out at gunpoint in 2005. If hamas had any interest in Israel continuing to give them the land they wouldn't use the land given to them to pull this kind of crap)

And literally nothing of that has anything to do with waht you wrote before.

Correct. It has to do with the thing that I quoted from your comment just before writing it

Again, you are unable or unwilling to accept, that "your side" can also be bad.

Not at all. I'm not a fan of the idf or Israeli government at all. The problem is that despite the fact that they do a lot of bad stuff they're at least wouldn't exterminate the other side of they (the other side) laid their weapons down tomorrow. If the idf laid their weapons down we would see more slaughter like October 7th followed by the forces and complete dissolution of the state of Israel. It doesn't excuse some of the things the idf does but it's what makes the idf the better of the two for whatever that's worth.

The Holocaust doesn't justify violence today, just as the Naqba doens't justifiy violence today.

The correct. What justifies violence is a valid argument that it's being done in self defense. And right now Israel definitely has that.

Oh so all those people at the peace rally were not civilians. Cool. I'd also love to know which elementary schools and hospitals Israel is using as a base to launch rockets into … anywhere really. At least now others will see how deluded you are and know not to take anything you say at face value.

your white narrative

Tell the Nazis my narrative is white. Tell the country clubs that banned dogs, blacks, and jews as recently as 60 years ago that my narrative is white. Tell the guy who shot up a synagogue in Pittsburgh and thought Trump was bad because he wasn't tough on Jews that my narrative isn't white. It's amazing how we are somehow both nonwhite outsiders looking to destroy the fabric of society or European imperialists looking to uphold it and it's whichever one the person viewing us thinks is bad.

noone actually excused those terrorist acts.

In Professor Joseph Massad’s newest article on The Electronic Intifada, he wrote that the attack that occurred in Israel on October 7th was a “stunning victory” and that Hamas' actions were “astounding,” “awesome,” and “incredible.”

And he doesn't teach at some no name place either. Dude teaches at Columbia

The one where specifically civilians are targets. The one that that uses hospitals and elementary schools and civilian apartments as rocket launch sites. The one that explicitly calls for the complete destruction of the other state in its charter. Need I go on?

I'm glad we can agree that hamas are terrorists and not an actual military at least

Tbf the idf says they can't confirm it because the bodies are so thoroughly mangled they couldn't tell what happened to them

Because the terrorists are specifically targeting civilians whereas Israel is targeting military targets that the terrorists put a bunch of human shields around

But even unjust violence on the part of the Palestinians does not change the position of victim and aggressor here, any more than the brutality that some Native American tribes exhibited against European colonists did.

I disagree. When the migrants are refugees you definitely become the aggressor when you start campaigns that explicitly call for their extermination.

And what do the actions of surrounding nations have to do with Palestinians?

because the palestinians supported these military campaigns

Besides, I’d say the oppression of Palestinians goes far beyond what anyone could possibly consider reasonable safety measures.

I disagree. What would you do when the enemy is indiscriminately firing rockets into civilian centers and fields of crops from hospitals, schoolyards, and apartment buildings? Let them keep at it and just call the occasional wildfire or dead civilian the cost of doing the right thing or bomb the launch site? If you bomb it do you do so without warning or give a 2-3 minute heads up that you’re going to do so? When people are constantly climbing the fence to commit terroristic acts on civilians do you just shrug or build a wall? That wall by the way has cut such events by over 80% and been lauded by analysts as a highly effective security measure.

Frankly, you sound like an American conservative talking about the “invasion” at the southern border.

except that there have not been multiple terrorist campaigns endorsed by the mexican government encouraging terrorism on US soil with the explicit goal of the extermination or eviction of every single american from the land. If that were the case I’d agree with them about what we should do.

Genuine question, because I literally don’t know this: Is the green in Israeli-occupied territory natural green that comes from good tending, or is it artificial green like all the grass in Las Vegas?

the former

Should it be there or is it a massive waste of water turning a desert into an unnatural and unsustainable oasis?

the former

And if it’s the former, could the lack of green on Palestinian soil be because of the bombings and destruction of infrastructure/social frameworks that could support greenery?

it’s possible although then I would blame the terrorists who destroy infrastructure and revel in their brethren’s suffering as they exploit it to demonize Israel rather than Israel themselves who, as I stated, actually left all of the infrastructure for the gaza strip intact when they pulled out.

Nor do any of those points matter to innocents stabbed to death in a synagogue or blown up trying to buy some pizza. The issue is that Israel tried just existing but literally the day it was established it was attacked in an extermination attempts by literally every country surrounding it. Being oppressed doesn’t make it ok to turn around and oppress others but being under a constant state of siege does make it ok to take actions to ensure your safety as well as that of your citizens. Would you say that literal thousands of rocket attacks, hundreds of suicide bombings, bouts of stabbings, bouts of shootings, and more in addition to at least 3 military actions jointly taken by surrounding nations doesn’t count as a state of siege? If not what does?

regarding recency, we absolutely can make the argument of environmental importance to the land. See what twain wrote of it in our absence. Even now there is a literal green line separating land under our control vs under palestinian control. And I can tell you the green is definitely not on the palestinian side.

And I never said nobody is calling for native americans to be exterminated (although I do believe that it is true that there is nobody around today so bold as to outright say their continued existence here is intolerable in the literal sense that they should be rounded up and killed if they don’t leave and the dissolution of reservations is an absolute condition of their policy that they refuse to revise in any way despite the government of the gaza strip saying just that about israel) I said america’s leaders are not calling for their complete removal or extermination which is currently has been so for a while (~20 years) albeit not nearly as long as it should have been(~200 yrs).

Why does the fact that Jews have not been safe in any society on the planet in the past 2000 years matter? Why does it matter that they were forced off the land? Why does it matter that this bothered us and we’ve been demonstrably hoping and trying to return for the past two millenia? Because if any of those weren’t true I might cede that in some capacity we gave lost our claim to it. However the fact remains that we were forcibly dispossessed of our land and have a right to go back. Of course not at the expense of entirely uprooting those who moved in after us but enough that they and we really should share the land nicely.

If I could ask my own question in return I’d ask why recency of claim matters more than any of the factors I mentioned above. And for the record I agree that native Americans should have far more land rights than they do today. But at the very least they can dwell in a portion of their homeland without the leaders of the rest of those who reside who openly calling for their complete removal and/or extermination and that’s more than can be said for today’s Jews in Israel.

How much Palestinian propaganda have you been reading? Americans weren’t forcibly expelled to begin with and even if they were they haven’t been actively demonstrably yearning and attempting to return ever since so the analogy fails on two counts. A third count as well actually because Americans haven’t had bigotry, prosecution, and murder sprees and mobs and pogroms constantly plaguing them everywhere they’ve been since they left europe.

Regarding the downvotes- good to know although ironically you are the person who would uld be least wrong to downvote me. You’re at least articulating what you disagree with than giving a cowardly anonymous thumbs down like those who have been downvoting.

Israel are not colonizers though. Israel is one of the indigenous people finally returning to their homeland. You can say they should share and I agree but the immediate attempt at their annihilation right when they were established definitely indicated that many of their neighbors were not keen on sharing nicely. It’s awful that the children in Gaza are suffering but the blame for that lies with the terrorists who use those children as human shields, tore down the infrastructure, and diverted construction materials meant for humanitarian aid to be used to enable further terrorist attacks, not the country that forced it’s own citizens out and left a fully functioning set of infrastructure for the new inhabitants.

Edit- I was hoping to get away from Reddit culture of disagree=downvote and was looking forward to productive respectful discussions here. So far it seems not to be working out but maybe we can still turn it around

Have you ever been there? Do you know what apartheid actually means? Every single Palestinian without citizenship doesn’t have it only because they refused. And furthermore, in 2005 Israel actually forced its own citizens out of the Gaza strip, whole family’s dislocated at gunpoint by their own government. And when the Palestinians moved in, the terrorists among them tore down the infrastructure and somehow convinced their brethren that the Israelis were to blame. Israel is not the one who’s indiscriminately shooting rockets from hospitals and schoolyards. Israel is not the one encouraging citizens to enter houses of worship and go on killing sprees. Israel is not the one who is encouraging and applauding suicide bombers attacking bus stops and pizza shops. Israel is the one who is sending out texts and dropping leaflets warning people to get out of buildings that they suspect are housing military equipment used to attack them before bombing said buildings. It is easily within Israel’s capability set to kill every last Palestinian and I imagine just about any other country put through what Israel’s been put through would be a lot more aggressive. They aren’t always in the right. There are things they have done wrong. But an apartheid state they are not.

Forgot to mention, the terrorists in charge of the Gaza strip also diverted equipment meant to be used for construction and instead chose to use it to dig tunnels to get through to Israel to carry out attacks and kidnappings.

Straight up. Israel and Ukraine are under constant attack these days and absolutely not be criticized for defending themselves even if they don’t always go about it exactly the right way.