German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck on Israel and Antisemitism
German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck on Israel and Antisemitism
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Hamas is a symptom. They will always be there in one form or another as long as palestinians live under systemic oppression. Sure, you can take out hamas, kill as many civillians as you want in doing so, and you'll only create more extremists. The west bank is illegally occupied by israeli forces imposing apartheid like laws. You don't have to take that from me, take it from the UN. Palestinians live in a segregated society, having to drive on segregated roads, go through checkpoints, and so on. The western world just looks the other way but loves to virtue signal and wave fingers at other countries doing what Israel is doing (look at Russia invading Ukraine). Many palestinians feel that they've been let down by the world and the democratic world order we love to boast so much about, and thus they turn to extremist ideologies. So, as long as Israel's stance towards the palestinian question doesn't change, and as long as they keep ilegally occupying their territories (west bank and until 15 years ago Gaza which they then threw under a blockade that crippled the lives of millions), extremists will keep on breeding. These are very fertile grounds for extremist ideologies.
Sure, they could genocide all palestinians and that would probably solve the problem, but is that who you want to support?
Quit trying to contextualize the murder done by Hamas and quit trying to evade the question.
That „symptom“ is NOW killing innocent civilians, Palestinians and Israeli alike. And yes, Hamas is responsible for every civilian death in Palestine - because they started this war.
I want to hear from you, since you claim to know better than anyone else, what can get done NOW, not years from now. What would you personally do different NOW in regards to Hamas.
Didn't Israel start this war by creating an apartheid state and genocide by deporting non jews to a Ghetto and making their live so miserable that people decide to fight against their oppressors?
Didn't Israel create Hamas? And propped them up? Israel wanted what happened, now they can go in full force and most idiots even applaud them for manipulating a people into war.
They learned from the US, maniacs that start wars by lying about the enemy planning to use WMD. No nation can should trust a word coming out of their mouths.
Not a SINGLE word, what you would do differently.
ALL words excuses for Hamas murdering civilians.
Hamas doesn’t commit their terror attacks „for“ the Palestinians, they commit them, because they hate Israel and the Jews. If they would fight for the Palestinian civilians, they wouldn’t operate in or near civilian infrastructure, they wouldn’t wear civilian clothing and they would share their vast stockpiles with the Palestinian civilians.
Quit trying to contextualize the murder done by Hamas and quit trying to evade the question.
Contextualizing complex situations is very important if you are honestly, actually looking for solutions. This wasn't the first terrorist attack and won't be the last no matter how much wishful thinking you do on your side. Simplifying this and looking at one event in vacuum is a bastardization of history and the current problem, and does absolutely nothing to help the current situation.
Hamas is responsible for every civilian death in Palestine
That is a bastardization of the reality and reads like straight out propaganda to fuel even more innocent deaths. When a military force is butchering innocent civillians from the sky you can't just deflect the reality with a straight face while also claiming to have the moral high ground.
Every normal person can agree that the terrorist attack on October 7th was completely unjustified and an atrocity. At the same time, every normal person should also be able to agree that killing innocent civillians under collective punishment and painting them as collateral damage is an atrocity as well.
because they started this war.
This war hasn't started yesterday. Gaza has been under a military blockade for almost two decades now. The west bank has been under an apartheid military occupation for decades now. These hostilities might not amount to a formal declaration of war under your bureaucratic understanding of the world, but they are ineded hostile acts based on ethnicity.
I want to hear from you, since you claim to know better than anyone else, what can get done NOW, not years from now.
Well, besides the fact that I have never claimed such a thing, you should remember here that I am not going against "everyone else" on this one. You seem to be under the false impression that your opinion here is the mainstream one. The UN voted in an overwhelming majority for the cessation of the current hostilities in Gaza. They might not be all from the G7 nations that live under the impression that they have the moral high ground, but I'm sure they don't represent just a loud minority as you seem to believe. Anyway.
I am no diplomat. I can't say for sure what needs to be done right now, but I can recognize what is extremely wrong right now: and that is the butchering of innocent civillians under the pretext of collective punishment (which is illegal according to international humanitarian law). What I personally wish for is a two state solution where Israel stops illegally occupying lands and imposing an apartheid regime onto innocent civillians that have a right to live in the lands their ancestors lived in for centuries. That means removing all illegal settlements from said lands, pulling their military occupation out of said territory, and imposing normal borders (and protecting their borders) like every other nation does.
Hamas is a virus. They won't stop existing just because you kill the current hamas. They will keep popping up as long as the occupation and oppression continues to exist. If you want to heal a society from this extremism, you need to give them space, time, and the right to self determination. An oppressed people will never have inner peace.
My great great grandparents were sent to a jewish ghetto in the part of Romania where I'm from. The biggest jewish ghetto out of what is now considered Romania. They were romanian jews. They lived through some horrible times because of genocidal maniacs. They were pushed out of their homes, killed in the streets, treated as foreigners in their own land. My great great grandmother died in the holocaust. My great great grandfather disappeared. My great grandfather grew up as an orphan and never met his parents.
Gazans have gone through a very similar situation. They've been pushed out of their homes, oppressed, treated as lesser, cast aside. 70% of Gazans are refugees that fled their ancestral homes. They live in a ghetto with no rights to self determination. The walls around this enclosure are controlled by a regime that despises them and are the ones that take the decisions of what they get and when they get it. You can't tell me with a straight face that after decades of living in such dire conditions you are somehow surprised that extremism has found fertile grounds there.
So again, I ask you to have some sympathy here with the innocents being butchered daily by aistrikes of a regime that has always treated them as lesser individuals. And I do that as a part jew that sympathises with jewish history quite a lot.
Butchering civillians won't get you less hamas. It will just breed more extremism.
A lot of words that are obviously meant to disguise the fact, that you still say NOTHING about what you would do differently. This is not how this works.
So again, I ask you to have some sympathy here with the innocents being butchered daily by aistrikes of a regime that has always treated them as lesser individuals. And I do that as a part jew that sympathises with jewish history quite a lot.
Butchering civillians won’t get you less hamas. It will just breed more extremism.
Why are you insinuating that I have no sympathy with the Palestinian civilians? Of course I do. But you have proven by now yourself, that there isn’t an alternative to the way Israel is reacting. Hamas in its current form has to get destroyed.
But as you like to talk about the Second World War so much: Was it wrong by the allied Forces to bombard German cities in WW2 and thereby also killing German civilians? Quite lots of them actually?
that you still say NOTHING about what you would do differently.
I just told you what I would do, you just fail to listen.
If you're looking for a straight up recipe chewed for you by a guy on the internet, here you go:
- recognize Palestinian statehood as have done 138 of the 193 United Nations [1]
- remove all illegal settlements that are recognized as a flagrant violation of international law [2]
- dismantling of the Israeli apartheid system as recognized by UN [3] [4]
- create an international tribunal led by the UN for all crimes against humanity commited by people on both sides [5]
- enforce the borders of the two countries, including with UN peacekeepers if strictly necessary
- ensure that both countries make amendments to their constitutions that won't allow any further hostilities
- introduce a marshall plan equivalent for palestine to take it out of the dire and crippling financial situation it is in [6]
- create programs that facilitate conversation on both sides, cultural exchange programs, etc. (wishful thinking here; I think the resentment is too big but it would be a good long-term solution)
- create programs to financially help the victims of attacks on both sides (dead relatives, injuries, etc.) after taking the perpetrators to trial and sentencing them of course
- create a financial program to repay all the palestinians that have been forcefully displaced from their homes [7]
After all of that is settled and both countries are on equal footing, if any further hostilities arise from either side, these should be handled by the UN without any kind of bias.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Palestine#International_recognition
[2] https://press.un.org/en/2016/sc12657.doc.htm
You are completely ignoring the fact that a fucking WAR is going on at the moment.
Are you really not able to understand that NOTHING you have posted, is going to happen for the foreseeable future? That the terror attack even made them next to impossible in a foreseeable future?
Chill, dude. Stop chosing and posting hate. There's enough of that in the world. Are you really going to blame a random person on the internet for not magically creating peace in a bloody century-old conflict?
A war has been going on for decades now. I know it's convenient to assume that the "WAR" has only started now because Israel said so and you seem to live only by your bureaucratic process, but the hostilities have started much earlier than four weeks ago.
You wanted me to give you a list of things I'd do, yet you simply ignore them, yet again.
De facto, a war has been going on for decades. The military blockade of Gaza can be considered an open act of war. The illegal occupation of palestinian territories can be considered an act of war. The military incursion in palestinian territories can be considered an act of war, and would be by any other country on this planet that has had foreign militaries suddenly spawn in their territories.
It's extremely rich of you to claim that a war has now suddenly popped out of nowhere in vacuum without taking a look at the long history of conflict and acts of war and hostility in the area just because it suits your narrative. This sudden, out-of-nowhere "WAR" is a farce. It's been going on for much longer than you'd like to admit.
And all of this time, I have never claimed that palestinian militants were right to kill civillians even though they have been submitted to acts of war many times before. Yet you seem to argue that it is okay for Israel to kill civillians in Gaza because a war is now suddenly going on since the terrorist attacks of October 7th are considered an open act of war.
That's an extremely cherry picked narrative. I think we should all agree that killing civillians is never right. Sadly I believe that disagreeing with that just shows your true colours, in that you consider one life more valuable than the other. Picking when the killing of innocents is right and when it isn't means that it has never been about protecting life and innocents, but about weighing whose life is worth more and whose less.
At the same time I think we should agree that the acts of war have been going on for much longer than four weeks now.
Israel has been comitting open acts of war for a long time now. They were never right in doing so. Palestinian militants were never justified in killing civillians, and still aren't.
Palestinian militants have likewise committed acts of war for a long time now. They, likewise, were never right in doing so. Israeli forces weren't justified in killing civillians either, and still aren't.
It's extremely convenient to be the one who picks when a war officially starts and who starts it by what act of war. But as is the case with international politics, that too is corrupted by biases and political alliances. If you ask 193 countries of the UN when the war has started, you'll probably get 193 different answers. But again, the acts of war have been going on for much longer than just the last month.
Now all of a sudden solutions are no longer convenient. Now the killing of civillians is justifiable. This just sickens me. We should all condemn the atrocities committed by hamas islamists on october 7th and many times before by many terrorist organizations. We should all condemn the atrocities commited by Israel over the same timespan.
Yes. Killing civillians is always wrong. Especially children. Be it the firebombing of Dresden or using weapons of mass destruction against japanese civillian populations.
But for the sake of the argument, let's say it's fine to kill a ton of innocent people. Maybe it is for you and we just have different moral perspectives on this issue. What do you do after destroying Hamas? You have a ton of dead civillians, mourning families, and a completely destroyed country with no future in sight. Would you support the formation of a sovereign democratic internationally recognized palestinian state? Would you support a marshall plan for Palestine?
Would you support the formation of a sovereign democratic internationally recognized palestinian state?
Me personally? Yes, of course. If the Palestinians are actually going to agree to the borders that were set in 1948 as an example … but until now the Palestinians have rejected every attempt that was made for a two state solution. What makes you think, that they will accept borders now, that they have rejected before?
Would you support a marshall plan for Palestine?
Yes, I would.
My personal opinion is probably best represented by Harari Yuval Noah - English - with German Subtitles
I am sorry to tell you this, but you definitely ought look deeper into the peace accords as they were discussed at the time. Especially the ones at Camp David which were supposed to be the most fruitious and the ones Palestinians "threw out the door". The Oslo accords were more of a guideline than a clear set of instructions.
Palestinians were supposed to:
- be completely demilitarized
- give Israel the right to send troops to Palestine in case of any emergency (what constitutes as an emergency was never defined)
- ask Israel for approval for every diplomatic alliance Palestine would ever make
- have military bases installed in Palestinian territory
- give the Israeli military complete control of their airspace
- have israeli military outposts be installed on the border between Palestine and Jordan
- give Israel temporary control over Palestinian border crossings
- give up 10% of the West Bank, the most fertile land in the West Bank, for 1% territorial gains of desert land near the Gaza strip (the land that would be conceded included symbolic and cultural territories such as the Al-Aqsa Mosque, whereas the Israeli land conceded was unspecified)
- Israel would keep parts of the West Bank under temporary occupation, without a timespan being given
- What constitutes the West Bank was to be defined by Israel and not by international law. Israel defined West Bank as being the internationally recognized West Bank minus all the settlements.
As you can see, all of these concessions would never amount to a completely sovereign Palestinian state, and as a result of that these talks failed in the end. Nonetheless, they did spawn new discussions and as a result of said discussion the Taba negotiations were born. With that being said, these concessions were in no way, shape, or form popular in Israel (only 25% of the Israeli public thought his positions on Camp David were just right as opposed to 58% of the public that thought Barak compromised too much). The Israeli prime minister at the time, Barak, facing elections, suspended the talks since it greatly affected his popularity in Israel. As a result of trying to broker a peace deal with Palestine, even a very bad one that was meant to fail as it was, he failed to get re-elected. The highly unbalanced concessions were already considered to be too much by Israelis.
Trying to paint Israel here as the ones willing to make concessions and the Palestinians as the ones throwing everything out the door is a highly cherry picked narrative that doesn't represent the reality at all.
I fully support a two-state solution, if and only if both states are treated as equals. The conditions listed above clearly do not create two equal states that both have full rights to self determination.
The discussions were doomed to fail from the get-go. You can read more on that on Wikipedia if you're interested in all the details. If wikipedia isn't a good enough source, there is a great book on this subject by a german professor specializing on the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Harari Yuval Noah - English - with German Subtitles
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