While the president has stood strongly behind Israel since Hamas attacked, he said on “60 Minutes” that a new occupation of Gaza would “be a big mistake.”
So many empty hateful comments here miss the fact that 70 years ago was 70 years ago, and since then a whole new generation of people are living in the region. Israelies who don't feel obligated to have Israel but don't want anti-Semitism abroad, and palestinians who don't mind staying where they were born, inside the 48 borders, but want a decent live inside of it.
No leader from any place on earth is working towards them.
Israeli leaders want the whole country for themselves, and Palestinian leaders also want the whole land for themselves.
Neither is plausible without serious loss of life.
So stop being so one-sided and actually acknowledge there are two sides to this conflict, and that all parties are reaponsible. Israel would give anything in the world to have peaceful rulers in Gaza.
I was with them until that comment. Israeli people might want that, but the action of the Israeli government has been the opposite. Funny they say 'stop being so one-sided' and say Israel wants peaceful rulers, like Palestinians don't want that also.
Exactly. This fiction that Palestinians all want Hamas to murder Israelis, or even want them to stay in charge is dangerous, because they open the door to even more moderate people buying the idea that the only thing preventing peace is Palestinians wanting it.
While the majority of Gazans (65%) did think it likely that there would be “a large military conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza” this year, a similar percentage (62%) supported Hamas maintaining a ceasefire with Israel. Moreover, half (50%) agreed with the following proposal: “Hamas should stop calling for Israel’s destruction, and instead accept a permanent two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.”
Moreover, across the region, Hamas has lost popularity over time among many Arab publics. This decline in popularity may have been one of the motivating factors behind the group’s decision to attack.
In fact, Gazan frustration with Hamas governance is clear; most Gazans expressed a preference for PA administration and security officials over Hamas—the majority of Gazans (70%) supported a proposal of the PA sending “officials and security officers to Gaza to take over the administration there, with Hamas giving up separate armed units,” including 47% who strongly agreed. Nor is this a new view—this proposal has had majority support in Gaza since first polled by The Washington Institute in 2014.
So stop being so one-sided and actually acknowledge there are two sides to this conflict, and that all parties are reaponsible.
I find comments like this frustrating.
There may be two sides, but there's only one side with an actual military and nukes and only one side running an apartheid. The only reason people aren't referring to Israel as a terrorist state (which they are) is that they're destroying hospitals with bombs dropped from planes and shooting news reporters with guns held by soldiers in military uniforms.
The other side has no military, has been blockaded for sixteen years, is terrorized and killed at will without recourse, and isn't actually allowed to leave.
What makes Israel the criminal here is the power they wield and how they've chosen to use it.
So sure, yeah, there are two sides, yes, but the two sides are very, very different.
You could have said the same thing 70 years ago about the leader if mandatory Palestine who was appointed by the British colonizers and collaborated with Nazis, and that a group like Irgun bravely fought against them. The same Irgun that carried out the Deir Yassin massacre.
What Israel's government is doing is wrong, and they should pay for it. And Israel should pay reparations. But the majority of Israeli's, Palestinians, and American Jews and Muslims just want peace man. This whole thing about who colonized who is silly.
The difference is Israel still exists, holding Palestine back, it's not even about reparations but stopping the actions on-going today, not just about righting wrongs from the past.
Reparations are crucial in stopping current unjust policies. That is something I believe anyway. A government can't actively acknowledge the existence of injustice as simultaneously support policy that perpetuates it. That is one of the reasons why governments are so reluctant to pay reparations in the first place.
For Israel's continued existence as a state, it is crucial that they pay reparations. This might mean that a few Jewish American young adults might not get to go on a free vacation to Israel, but so be it.
Oh so because the other side is weak they're supposed to just sit idle when they murder pillage and rape?
You're disregarding all the brutal fights Israel has fought against its neighbours as "they're strong so boo hoo". They also have thousands dead. They're also terrorized daily. Just because they're stronger doesn't make them less right.
Again, they of course have a responsibility in this situation, but come on. Please tell me of any rocket launchers hidden inside a hospital Israel has. Blaming solely israel for the palestinian miserable lives is half the story. A big part of it is their terrorist leadership who take advantage of their poverty to promote a gruesome war they started (not talking about these days, talking about 48, where all the UN agreed on something and they chose to invade. Since then both sides are fully taking part in this war.).
Oh right, it's not like gaza had a democratic elections where Hamas won... (And then ran a coup murdering the opposition).
Israel chose the (what seemed then) less of two greater evil. Clearly they were wrong, and they faced the consequences on saturday.
I don't have a row to hoe in any of this but that alone tells me you're full of shit and apologizing for some evil asshole somewhere in the conflict. The past is always gonna matter whether you want it to or not.
Clearly you don't understand what I mean, since you're not that knowledgeable in this conflict.
Palestinians' leaders final goal is to get the 48 borders back. Nothing less and nothing more. And to that I said that it's been 70 years, and you'll need to grab it by conquest to get it, since the people lived there an entire life, and will never give it up. The leaders from both sides need to understand that any further border change between them will only make things worse, and the ones who started wanting to conquer was Palestinians. Now Israel is doing the same, but after many years, in which they got more right wing and more national, because of course they will when their busses are bombed by terrorists on the other side. I'm not saying Israel is clear of charge, I just say that they started better than Palestinians, then got more national as time went, because obviously - their enemies are murdering rapists. Palestinians are consistent with their desire to destroy Israel, Israelies have been building up to it (talking about each of their leaders, a.k.a the ones who matter).
*The distant past. A.k.a, the 48 past.
So much has changed since then, including the people themselves. People should act based on how to improve their present and future, not how to improve (avenge) their past.
Right now? Yeah, definitely they're violating human rights. But what are they supposed to do given their history? Every Palestinian leadership ever called out for civilians to be "jihad"s (terrorists) and kill as many as possible.
I was simplistic because everyone here on lemmy also talks simplisticly. Talk of no nuance and no faults on both sides, mainly say "israel bad", "israel apartheid", "israel should stop existing" - all while forgetting this conflict has two sides. Yes, one side is poorer, but that doesn't make them more just. Both are wrong, but arguably palestinian leadership are the worst here. Being at a huge disadvantage and still choosing to fight a war they'll lose, while in the process keeping their citizens poor. At least Israel evacuated the cities near Gaza, while Hamas blocked people evacuating outside of a warzone.
Palestine denies the existence of Israel, even stated by the symbols of Hamas and the PLO, coloring the entire state of Israel as their territory. Now, who actually has the right to that land? The ones who bought those lands in the early 20th century and got a majority vote of the U.N to their creation alongside their neighbours? Or is it the ones who objected since the beginning up until today that no jew can rule any part of that land? The biggest diners of the other side's existence are the Palestinians. They have since the beginning denied the right for a jewish state to exist. Israel started to deny a Palestinian state to exist only after the arabs started an all-out war on Israel.
Terrorist state? What does that even mean considering they Palestinians aren't their citizens? They're a state who has very hostile neighbours right next to them, and that acts with aggression to aggression. No act of violence against civilians has been started by the IDF, while hundreds of acts of violence have started against civilians by Hamas (the PLO don't directly do terrorism, but they pay terrorist jihad's families for killing innocents).
Can you really say that Israel wishes for Hamas? Even after 7/10 can you seriously say that Israel wishes for such a violent terrorist organization to exist right next to their borders?
If so then that's some severe case of Stockholm syndrome.
Yes, Hamas is simpler to deal with politically, but it's so much more threatening and hard to deal with militarily. How are they supposed to fight people who hide amongst innocents? Hamas is probably the biggest headache to Israel ever. They ruin their relations with Suni arab countries, they make them look bad to the western world by making them bomb civilian infrastructure, and they actively pillage their villages for terror's sake. Seriously, how can Israel wish for that.
Also let's be clear, what Israel wants is the entire land of Israel, including the west bank, all under jewish control. That's obviously their best scenario. Do they get what they wish? No. Do they work for it? Yeah. Can you blame them? Idk. Probably. They really should work more towards creating a Palestinian state in the west bank/gaza, but that could be said for the Palestinian leaders as well, who are still advocating for the entire annexation of Palestinians over the entire land of Israel ("from the river to the sea...").
In reality, there are far more than two sides. At least we should look at four groups: Israel and Palestine, crossed with militant and non-militant.
Thinking in terms of only two sides is a trap, because it invites people (not you, but others who have the same starting point) to justify mass killing in the name of revenge or justice or deterrence whatever label they prefer.