by YZF | 2025-07-31 02:36:43+00:00
At some point I'll give up on this thread but you're wrong.

The only reason I'm arguing the historical context is to counter the ridiculous argument of colonialism or the equally ridiculous revisionism about the connection of the Jewish people (ethnically and religiously) to the land.

Go back and check the history prior to 47-48. The migrants, and the native Jewish population, were under constant attack by Arabs. Not because the Jews "stole" anything. Simply because they are Jews. The "Yeshuv" back then, and now, acted in self defense. The security organizations that were formed were formed as a result of attacks on Jewish people. Attacks (read as massacres and ethnic cleansing) on Jews (native Jews who lives there forever, and migrants) predate Zionism. Jewish people either have been there forever, or were migrants that bought property, often developing areas nobody wanted to live in (due to swamps, Malaria etc.). The area was not as desirable as it is now, it was a disease ridden sh*thole which the Jewish people turned into an amazing modern country (compare to the surrounding countries).

The story of the peaceful native Arabs that somehow got forcibly displaced through some "occupation" is bogus. Never happened. The Arabs that got displaced got displaced during a war they started after they rejected the partition plan (that gave them like 98% of the land in the middle east and like 75% of the original "British Mandate" land that included Jordan). Because Jews and Arabs apparently can't live together (not because of the Jews) then the reasonable solution at the time was to create different political entities for those groups. The partition plan left a tiny sliver of the Levant to be a primarily Jewish state (that guaranteed the rights of minorities, and still does, unlike any Arab country) and a vast middle east to the Arabs. The Arabs wouldn't have that and decided they were going to just kill the Jews and take all the land. This is how we got here. Now the people that ended up as refugees in that war (and their descendant) still want to kill the Jews and take the land.

So sure, some Palestinian, who maybe has ancient Israelite blood in his veins, needs to live somewhere else because of this. If his people actually wanted to make this a win/win and cared about things like human rights and freedom maybe this wouldn't be the outcome. But he's not "rejected" from Israel because of his faith or ethnicity.

Re: Genocide. The word has become meaningless. According to the anti-Israeli killing a single Palestinian can constitute a "genocide" as per their interpretation of the legal definition. The simple truth is that Israel is not killing all Palestinians because of them being Palestinians. Or all Gazans for any reason. I.e. there is no genocide. There might be war crimes in Gaza but those are not comparable to what most people would consider genocide and particularly not comparable to the Nazis systemic murder of six million Jews in Europe. There was no war in Europe between the Jews and the Germans. There were no military targets. There were no Jews that were not a target because they lived somewhere else. If you seriously can not see the difference then you need to read more about the Holocaust. Assuming 60,000 Gazans have been killed (which we don't know but that's the number Hamas publishes more or less) that number is perfectly in line with what you would expect in this kind of war, about half or 30% being combatants is also expected. If we didn't have a war, there wouldn't be civilian casualties. If we didn't have a war we wouldn't see the scale of destruction we see in Gaza. A war has two parties and Israeli soldiers are dying and getting wounded every day and Israel proper is still occasionally getting attacked by mortars and rockets.

Take a look at what Russia did to Checnya, or to Mariupol, or with Assad to Aleppo and other Syrian cities. Take a look at what western countries did in places like Mosul. In terms of brutality and impact to population Gaza is far from the worse war we've seen even in recent decades. It's certainly the war with the most media focus though. Never has a terrorist organization gotten so much positive media in the west. Uninvolved civilians shouldn't need to suffer like this, but it's a reality of war, a war that the Palestinians decided to start on Oct 7th and are still insisting on continuing to fight. There is a fine line- If Israel does change course towards murdering the entire population of Gaza then that's a different story. So far this has not been the story - far from it. Israel is mostly applying the same standard of care as any other western nation, and way above that of non-western nations. Russia leveled Grozny to the ground and 80k people were killed in that war ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War#Siege_of_Gr... ) and nobody said the g word.

EDIT: Also worth adding the word genocide was being thrown around from about Oct 8th without much relationship to Israel's actions. The dilution of this word is doing a disservice to humanity. It is weaponized as part the war as a tool for Palestinians against Israel. I have to admit this is working very well. The various forces here that are pushing narratives seem to have been very well prepared for the Oct 7th attack. I'm not sure if the word genocide has been used previously in the conflict - that's also possible. Using the word is a lot more effective than trying to have a more nuanced debate ratios between civilians and combatants and what is legal use of force in war and what isn't and comparing to other conflicts. Hamas must have known Israel would respond with a heavy hand and that would result in large scale destruction and civilian casualties. They obviously understood the consequences of using civilian infrastructure and tunneling under civilians.