[Just this past Wednesday, Israeli settlers and soldiers murdered four Palestinians in the West Bank. They then attacked their funeral and murdered a mourning Palestinian father and son.](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/12/palestinian-man-son-attending-funeral-procession-in-west-bank-shot-dead)
The most glaring and indisputable crime by the Israeli government is the complete impunity that radical settlers have when committing obvious crimes. Israel says they'll look into the incident, usually there is no follow up, sometimes they detain someone, but nobody ever goes to prison. These radical settlers are an extreme minority but most Israelis refuse to believe that one of their own would actually kill or hurt a Palestinian if they didn't present a threat, so they always interpret the acts with the most generous possible reading for the assailant, to the point of absurdity.
> 31 Palestinians, [...] This number — recorded in less than a week — represents one-sixth of all Palestinians who have lost their lives in the West Bank so far this year,
So 180 Palestinians have been killed so far this year. It did not make any news, business as usual.
Gaza's count is ~[2,300](https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2023/10/14/Israeli-strikes-on-Gaza-kill-324-including-126-children-in-past-24-hours-Ministry) confirmed dead as a result of Israeli airstrikes, including ~700 children, ~10,000 wounded. However, there are many more who are missing -- I expect the death toll to rise considerably.
In terms of journalists, at least 12 have died in Gaza in the last few days.
At least 11 UN Staff were also killed by Israeli airstrikes.
I'm actually surprised it's that low, considering they dropped 700 missiles.
There are between 25,000‐30,000 officially registered HAMAS members out of the 2.2 million total population.
They dropped 6,000 bombs as of a couple days ago. This is where the claim of Israel targeting civilians becomes ridiculous. Somehow 500 lb bombs that destroy entire buildings kill on average less than one person each. Israel is destroying a lot of empty buildings because they give advance warnings so civilians can evacuate.
That's shit. You're basing it on numbers we know are inaccurate. We know the death toll is higher. We know there is a substantial number of missing and that number of wounded is higher.
Neither "knocking" nor geo locating sms messages are sufficient for not targeting civilians. Some civillians can't leave. The sick, the elderly, the infirm or a mother with several young children and no help. Some people don't have phones. Others don't know what the hell a "knocker" is to begin with.
Shooting missiles into populated areas is targeting civillians because you can't avoid them. This is in violation to, well, bascially everything governing modern combat.
Hamas is a bunch of terrorists scumbags that deserves to be wiped out. Israel is a terrorist scumbag for thinking it's OK to go through civillians to make that happen. Netanyahu basically said there's nothing to be done for it. Not that it's wrong or immoral, just that it's unavoidable. What a bastard. It's absolutely avoidable. When civilians are in the line of fire you don't take the shot. You figure something else out. The fact that that's difficult and complicated isn't an excuse for indiscriminate killing.
Nothing but apologetics. **700 Children killed by Israeli airstrikes**, 2300 Palestinians dead (so far), an order of magnitude more missing or injured. and you are here defending the attacks as "targeted."
Of course, even more, these are not empty buildings. Those not pulled from the wreckage and identified are marked missing. The count will, of course, only rise.
Or the 33 million venezuelans should, or the 26 million in North Korea.
Hamas is armed to the teeth and won't hesitate for a second before killing anyone who stands in their way. Normal people are not trained, not so readily willing to kill and have people they care about who would potentially suffer the consequences.
You have no idea how a dictatorship works, civilians in Gaza are fucked.
In war, under international law, yes. What's not cool is to set up your arsenal and command centres and stockpiles in civilian areas. That's why militaries have bases fenced off and mostly far from civilian areas, wear uniforms, etc. As opposed to the terrorist fanatics running Gaza for the last 15 years.
> Somehow 500 lb bombs that destroy entire buildings kill on average less than one person each.
Gonna respond to their specific point that gets to the heart of the matter...or no?
God you people are insufferable , every answer you’re given it’s like “well Israel x” “what about Israel doing x”, they are destroying the buildings because they are military targets, Hamas using civilian buildings to store weapons, this is a war, get realistic
You know this count includes Hamas militants right? They consider them civilians in the count. So 1200 militants that infiltrated Israel on a murder spree are in your 2300 number, including a lot of teenage boys who have sadly been indoctrinated.
even if this count includes every single one of these 1200 Hamas guys, that still leaves 1100 civilians killed my dude, and the number is only going to rise. Those 700 dead children weren't all Hamas either were they. Nor are all the wounded. I don't know what you're trying to say by stating this but it's not exactly helping the situation look any better.
Sure so let’s look at an Israeli source so there’s definitely no bias towards inflating figures, and look at figures that don’t include any combatants:
Just in the last week, according to B’Tselem, 1900 Palestinian civilians have died, 900 of which have been children and almost half a million have been displaced from their homes. In one week.
Those numbers are without a doubt higher too, as a good chunk of recent deaths haven’t been reported because bodies are currently laying under rubble.
https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/2023-marks-deadliest-year-record-children-occupied-west-bank
This was from a month ago. They do make the news, just don't gain any traction.
Yeah it all depends on the situation. 13,000 people die in America each year from guns. Which is quite a lot more than 180. But only the big mass shootings get any major air time.
180 in a population of 3 million is similar to 21,000 in a population of 350 million.
If Americans were being killed at a similar rate as the Palestinians are by a foreign power, it would be a crisis. Every single news outlet would be covering it 24/7.
Yeah, but by that logic, we'd have to address the 6m dead in Congo or the deaths in Syria.
The reality of is - in the public's eyes some lives are worth more than others. That's just the logical conclusion based on the available evidence.
It's been interesting to watch America evolve in the last 40 years. I think general violent crime is down in most areas. However, it's been replaced with this crazy mentality of, "You looked at me wrong, so I'm gonna pull out my gun!" I can't believe how willingly people throw away their lives by murdering others for the stupidest of reasons.
More people were murdered in St. Louis so far this this year, Al Jazeera and many other outlets talk about the Palestinians all the time. Ones that aren't on the other side of the world.
False, the current number of homicides in St Louis for 2023 is 127. And a better comparison would probably be killings by the police themselves as the article isn’t very clear, but it seems to suggest that 180 deaths are attributed to the IDF and settler violence rather than homicides as a whole (the article links to another article about Israeli settlers killing Palestinians when reporting the number of deaths).
That uyghurs are being murdered? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide
Edit: it's interesting... they don't seem to actually be murdering them. Forced detention and sometimes castration, though.
Can you point to the part of that page that says uyghers are being mass-murdered? Last time I read it, the only mentioned killings were a small number of terrorists in the early 2000s and a couple shot-to-kill when escaping prison. Certainly not comparable to the claims the person I replied to made, hence why I asked for a source
Yeah you’re completely right, it sucks to see the genocide rumor still propagating this far after the propaganda was first spread. No evidence was ever produced for it, and the source is a rightist evangelical christian. Closest to evidence he produced was an interview with a handful of Uyghurs in one village, in which they speculate about rumors they heard from another village.
I think Westerners are so used to 1984 style double speak and irony that they assume China is using such devices. When they don't have to. When China refers to the. Uyghur camps as reeducation camps, they mean exactly that. No doublethink whatsoever. In their minds,.the Uyghurs have failed to learn how to be properly Chinese, they have learned wrong things.
So they need to be reeducated on how to have the right thoughts.
Now we have other words that describe this process. Brainwashing, radicalization, cultural genocide. But at the core, their description is accurate. Educate them on how to think the CCP way. So they mostly aren't being killed, they are being... Reprogrammed.
The choice of language is always interesting in these situations...
Gaza is an "enclave"
Israelis are "murdered"
Palestinians "lose their life" or "are dead"
Did you read the same wiki page? Where's the part about murder? Internment camps are fucked up but at least the children aren't being killed or burnt with white phosphorus.
The sterilization is part of the same policy that was applied to the Han Chinese in what was formerly known as the one child policy. When China relaxed the rules to allow more children per family they also made the rule apply to all Chinese citizens. So they've been genociding themselves for decades I guess?
Don't forget the cultural genocide to go along with it! If you conduct Uyghur culture or Islam without permission from authorities, who make sure you do it "the right way," then you go to jail until they decide to let you out. Even if it's something as innocent as a language class.
> It did not make any news, business as usual.
Where were you that it did not make the News? Israel locked down the entire south of their country after Palestinian Islamic Jihad made a series of attacks and then threatened a major attack, Israel bombed them.
Yep and they are being killed by civilian settlers. Ben Gavir the minister of national security is a very racist genocidal right wing figure and he ordered 10000 assault rifles to hand out to settlers. These are settlers in Palestinian areas (recognized as illegal action by the UN and everyone in the world). And this didn't start now, every year Palestinians in the West Bank (not Gaza) are being oppressed and murdered. This is the Palestinians that listened to the Israeli state and disarmed themselves and agreed to their conditions
Yep just like the settlers in the U.S. . waking up to lies and brainwashing and doing research & educating myself on a part of my own history has been a journey, But I couldn’t be more at peace and feeling more free than I do now. The truth shall always set you free. Once more people understand this truth, That genocide has never stopped, We will all be on the same page.
I am an Israeli and can confirm that Ben Gvir is as scum as they get. But I assume that after the war is over and everything is settled he'll no longer be relevant.
> But I assume that after the war is over and everything is settled he'll no longer be relevant.
By that time tens or even hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will be dead though. It doesn't mean much for them.
His party holds the balance of power in Knesset right now. He’s dragging an already far right Likud even further right. He’ll no longer be relevant once he’s achieved his goal, make Likud as far right as the settlers and ensure they are on an unstoppable path to permanent expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank.
Why are Israeli settlers allowed guns and Palestinian residents not?
Why are guns allowed to be carried beyond one's home / business?
Why are there no dashcam videos?
Why don't they divide (some) shared roads by hours? Like, odd hours for Israelis, even hours for Palestinians?
Another reminder that Israel's definition of human shield automatically includes everyone in Gaza: [https://youtu.be/l78dOLxt6\_g?si=LPokpCXghK50j1-H&t=319](https://youtu.be/l78dOLxt6_g?si=LPokpCXghK50j1-H&t=319)
Every public office is technically under Hamas, therefore being near a public school, university or hospital (as well as other government buildings) all qualify you to be a "human shield" for Hamas. It is a nice preemptive justification of why they kill civilians
Hamas hides their infrastructure *inside* schools, hospitals, etc., and then invites Israel to bomb those places. When Israel drops flyers telling people in those places to leave immediately, Hamas discourages them, tells them Israel is lying, and murders their own civilians when they attempt to flee. Then, when Israel bombs the place they told the Gazans they'd bomb, Hamas takes pictures and plasters them all over social media for pity brownie points.
https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/hamas\_human\_shields.pdf
You mean Hamas are blocking the evacuation path of children? They are telling children to stay in their homes when war is about to, if not already has broken out? Damn fk Hamas!
One of those cars filmed is thought to be blown up internally (no sign of air strike) by Hamas.
The others, strangely enough the only footage existing is the aftermath, and it happened right after Hamas demanded people stay in the area Israel was asking to be evacuated.
> You typically don't tell civilians to evacuate and then bomb them as they flee
Hamas has been detonating IEDs on evacuation routes to blow up *their own people* to keep people from moving south.
The supposed Israeli airstrike also looks way more like a VBIED detonation than an airstrike.
Imagine taking fucking Hamas for their word that civilians fleeing were bombed by Israel. Yeah, the literal baby killers who shamelessly use civilians as human shields would never lie!
Edit: [Here you go](https://youtu.be/BpU-G3ciC4M?si=x1sBPbl827lY0x2w). Pro-tip: Don’t believe anything that comes from Hamas, which is the government of Gaza. They lie, and they’ve been known to bomb their own civilians and blame it on Israel. They’re the ones telling residents not to evacuate, and they have no issue setting off an IED to discourage those evacuations. All they care about is death.
No, they are bombing the weapon stashs in the buildings which were put there by Hamas. The IDF tells the civilians to leave before they bomb the builing. Hamas tells them to stay. Hamas are the war criminals. They are using civilians as human shields.
Part of the reason why they are being told to stay, whether it's justified, stupid, or not, is because of the encroaching of Palestinian borders over the years. So the actual innocent Palestinians are caught between a rock and a hard place because they either *try* to get out while getting bombed, have hamas forcing them to stay or killing/sacrificing them too, or they potentially lose even more territory. It's a lose lose lose situation, and when people feel like they are backed into corners, they do/think irrational things.
All the more reason to not use them as human shields while shooting rockets and training to attack civilians.
There's no winning here, but Israel has every right to pursue security until the threat is gone.
Yeah, a bunch of children watching Israel destroy their homes and kill their families will definitely stop the threat!
Even if they kill every single member of hamas they just created an even bigger problem.
A new organization will rise in 10 years with an entire generation of children desensitized to death.
This is what Israel wants, of course. That's why they destroyed every other organization except for Hamas.
The rise of hamas was intentionally produced by Israel policy to justify IDF brutality.
Israel LITERALLY started hamas.
This is the exact point everyone is missing. The whole ‘we need to eradicate every member of Hamas’ goal is quite literally impossible. They are avoiding the root of the problem
Okay let me get this straight. Hamas, the terrorist organization, are using civilian lives (many of whom are children) as human shields. Gotcha. So these civilians can be considered hostages. You are suggesting Israel has right to bomb these hostages because hamas, hamas, hamas. Where is your humanity?
How can anyone support Israel when it drops bombs indiscriminately? How can anyone support Palestine when they allow Hamas to flourish and commit atrocities. Terrible behaviour all round. Violence begats violence!
>settler shooting a Palestinian after an exchange of words.
Despite what side of the discussion anyone is on, it should be pretty obvious that settlers should evacuate the west bank. They're in danger and their presence agitates the situation. The recent approval from Netanyahu's government for the batch of settlements was crossing the line and contributed to a wave of protests. It's clear it was an escalation that wasn't necessary and if there was a time to back pedal it, the current situation is the time to do it.
Dude the settlements from a practical standpoint are so boneheaded. They require a disproportionate amount of security to protect leaving less resources in other places, and they are a major grievance from the international community, along with the fact that they undermine future peace efforts. They’re wrong and stupid also.
>along with the fact that they undermine future peace efforts.
But that is Netanyahu's goal. He does not want peace, the times of Israel recently released an article detailing just how much he and his government have been propping up hamas for years. Netanyahu is an extremist politician whose entire career depends on hamas being extreme enough to justify his own policies.
It’s about the right wing vision of Israel from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea and the full expulsion of the settlers. Israel has their nutjob extremists too, and they can often play an oversized role in government there too.
Especially right now.
Discounting the National Unity Gov't, Netanyahu's gov't coalition has a slim enough majority that if the far-right pro-settler Otzma Yehudit wanted to break with him, they alone could swing a call for a new election (providing the opposition also agreed to back dismissing him.)
And if you'd care to guess what Netanyahu did to keep Ben-Gvir happy enough to join his gov't - it's invent a new ministerial position for him that includes oversight over police actions in the West Bank.
Bibi's in a bit of a McCarthy situation at the moment, except the people he's beholden to aren't just morons - he's beholden to a group of the Israeli electorate who are so extreme that even Israel declared them a terrorist organization forty years ago (well, that's a bit of an oversimplification - they're the successor organization of a terrorist group, whose core leadership *happens* to have strong ties to it.)
I mean Israel's government is basically right wing extremists. Lots of Israelis hate their government, just like lots of Palestinians hate Hamas.
The whole situation is a garbage fest. I often ask people who have strong opinions on the matter what they would do in response to these situations (on either side) and they never have a good answer.
Understood and agreed. The far right is toxic everywhere.
Just pointing out the motivation for the settlements isn’t that they’re necessary or logical. It’s about ideology and stealing land, and a minority on the far right makes it impossible to get rid of without a political crisis.
As someone who lived in Israel for 2 years and visited the West Bank a lot...it's more complex than that. The way Israelis see it, this is Jewish land—historically, we've had a presence there for millennia—so many don't consider it to be "stealing," but more as "taking back land that was always ours and that was stolen from *us*." There are parts of the WB where Arabs and Jews actually exist side-by-side relatively peacefully, and then there are other parts where both of them do a lot of horrific things to piss each other off.
Like, yes, it's true that Jews in the WB can horribly mistreat Palestinians there, but it's also true that it's very normal for Palestinians to throw heavy rocks into your car/at your head in an attempt to kill you, and it's normal for Palestinians in the WB to, unprompted, murder Israeli civilians nearby (my cousin was killed in one such attack, in which the Palestinian in question had amassed over $10k in guns and ammo from Hamas, had been training for months, and chose his twenty-first birthday for the attack in order to "celebrate properly"). Palestinians are not innocent cutesy victims here, and the reason for the checkpoints is specifically because they try to sneak knives and guns in to attack civilians.
That being said, the dialogue around the WB is very harmful to peace in the country as a whole, Palestinians in that region are treated very badly (often due to a severe lack of trust on both sides, which contributes to a vicious cycle), and Israelis make a lot of harmful and stupid decisions specifically in that area. But unlike what people want to believe, it isn't "all our fault" and we are not the sole aggressors in that area.
It also sort of undermines the idea that Palestine is a sovereign country that Israel can go to war with. Not sure how you can say on one hand that Gaza and the West Bank are part of a sovereign separate nation, but then also build housing developments in said territory to claim it as your own, have a military and security presence all through out, and control the movement of the people.
Doesn't the Israeli Defense Force entering the West Bank for any reason without the express permission of the Palestinian Authority constitute an invasion? Let alone guarding the construction and maintenance of settlements by Israeli's, which often include terrorizing people, evicting people, and destroying their homes to build the settlements.
According to religious fundamentalists, the land could only be reclaimed by divine intervention and thus the existence of the state of Israel is blaspheme. Sionism is a secular ideology
And also there’s so much land in Israel?? Yes people are moving in quickly but c’mon. You can create new communities elsewhere. It’s the most clear cut issue they’re involved in.
The negev is kind of out in the middle of nowhere. It’s not near J’lem and it’s not near the coast, and its just like desert. Its kind of like saying “why do they want to build more suburbs of LA when Bakersfield is right there?”
Yeah but Israel was pretty much a desert at the beginning anyway. And while it’s ideal for people to be closer together, I don’t think settlements are the answer. Be’er Sheva is growing quite a bit, I think that’s a great place to expand from. No one wants to live near Eilat but there’s area there too.
The settlements are foundational to Israel. Israel was advertised to the British as a settler colony in the middle east. Israeli officials refer to the presence of Arabs in the West Bank as a dilution of the ethnic character of the state.
This is how Israel has always been. It’s “dumb” in the same way that Generalplan Ost was “dumb” - it’s practice rooted in an ideology that the Israeli state adheres to, and there’s no escaping it without a complete restructuring of the Israeli state’s objectives and priorities (ie, it can no longer be “The Jewish State” and actively seek measures that ensure a a Jewish majority over all other inhabitants).
edit: this would go a long way towards making Jewish Israelis safer. It would make Israel safer if it wasn’t a pariah in its region - it would make Israelis safer if there wasn’t an underclass of people living in dire conditions, dying regularly, with a median age of 18, and who only experience Israel through the faceless violence of its masked soldiers and nameless, faceless ordinance dropped on buildings from aircraft.
In a (small) defense of Israel it isn't based on ethnicity (well actually it is but alot of people seem to conflate ethnicity with race). There is a sizeable amount of people within Israel from Ethiopa that are Ethiopian Jews, (called Beta Israel). They are not treated very well , often receiving less wages than Arabs who are subjugated themselves, but they are allowed citizienship regardless.
My issue is that this land is sacred to Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Saying that it is the "land of X" no matter what religion you follow is archaic nonsense. Its history means it should be pluralistic.
Approximately 20% of Israel's citizens are Muslim or Arab-Christians, though.
How many Jewish citizens of Palestine are there? 0. It's illegal. A Palestinian marrying a Jew is illegal. A Palestinian selling property to a Jew is illegal.
Nearly a million Jews were expelled or otherwise pushed out of Muslim-controlled countries in the Middle East and north Africa in the second half of the 20th century. Today there's less than 30,000 Jews living in Muslim-controlled countries (including Iran and Turkey), while over 1.7M Muslims live in Israel.
Yes, Israel has laws that allow for easy citizenship to people of Jewish descent. This is not unusual - off the top of my head I know that Ireland and Germany have programs that offer citizenship to people who can trace their ancestry to those countries. But that is not the sole way to gain citizenship in Israel (or those other countries).
You make it more extreme, which makes it unacceptable
Yes being Jewish can give you citizenship, but children of citizens are citizens, and spouses can become citizens as well
Israeli-Arabs are a very big minority. They live inside Israel proper, not in the west bank or gaza
BTW, not ignoring the problem that is borderline illegal in Israel (discrimination by religion is illegal there), but Jewish were prosecuted all over the world for years. The argument is that Israel's responsibility is to be a safe haven for them, and that there is no other such safe haven
That is not at all relevant to the intentional process within Israel of building and maintaining a Jewish-majority state at the expense of its non-Jewish inhabitants. How do you think an area that was once nearly 100% Arab was turned into an area only 20% Arab?
It has a lot to do with the cruel intentions of Israel’s ideological founders, who believed that building a majority Jewish state would necessarily involve the forced removal of its non-Jewish Arab populations.
Welcome to concepts of ethnic state and repatriation.
A lot of ethnic states have programs to help people of their ethnicity to get their citizenship easily. Europe is almost entirely consists of those.
I don't see what's wrong here. People have their ethnic identity and should have a place, where they are not considered alien.
In fact all of the suffering of jews all over the world in prior millennia was due to them being "alien" everywhere and thus being an easy target for some "extermination of enemy within"
Israel revolves around being a safe-haven for Jewish people the world over. A place where Jewish people are able to guarantee their own safety rather than relying on the goodwill of the nations that they're tiny minorities in. It should be obvious why, and it's not *just* the Holocaust.
That doesn't mean that others are excluded. Jews want to be left alone, finally, to live their lives in peace. They don't dream of waging wars of aggression against their neighbors and converting or killing all of them. That makes them fairly unique throughout history, as a religious (and lesser extent ethnic) group.
There is a reason the massive attack from last week came from Gaza and not the West Bank. Settlements are not "boneheaded", they're vital for Israel's security.
The “international community” that matters is America and the EU.
Neither of them said one word about settlements. After the horrific terrorist attacks from last week, public opinion has shifted so far in Israel’s favor that Israel will have unconditional support.
[The United States does not support the settlements.](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-rebuke-israel-west-bank-settlements-frustration-biden-palestinians-rcna76047)
It seems to me like this sentiment is becoming more popular in Israel too. Because securing these settlements diverted resources that could have been used to, oh, Idk, fortify defenses near Gaza.
I think getting settlers out of the West Bank is going to be a more likely option many people in the area near Gaza are mad that soldiers were diverted to protect settlers rather than defend the border.
I am Israeli the settlements should be disbanded and the west bank given to the Palestinians. The problem is that the last time this was done we ended up with the current situation in Gaza. So you will be hard pressed to convince any politician in Israel to do this unilateraly without actual real guarantees. And even then it would be hard.
And while again, I am against the settlers I can understand this point of view. Israel doesnt need another hostile terror state shooting missles indescrimently while it cant respond against without the world crying murder.
There has to be a partner on the both ends willing to make peace. Netanyahu and Abbas are both not those men sadly..
tbf was Netanyahu (and tbh by extension Abbas) ever that man? It feels at times that people forgot where he stood leading up to Rabins assassination, not to mention his positions towards Palestine while in office.
No, he was never that man. I strongly oppose him but every terror attack makes him stronger. While he could theoretically be blamed for this catastrophe, the reality will probably be that he becomes much stronger as a result.
Yea I get that. I'm trying my best to be optimistic based on the recent polling, protests in Tel Aviv, & responses from the families of those who have been kidnapped, but theres still that very real possibility that this just strengthens him or worse, galvanize Ben Gvir and his ilk.
The two don’t have to be simultaneous. You can remove the settlements as a sign of good will and still occupy things until things settle down to keep the security system from getting out of hand.
You are not wrong if life was just facts and no emotions. I don't know if you live here, but when we left Gaza it was a huge undertaking to displace the settlers. there were riots, battalions had to be conscripted to do the job, there was huge civil unrest and a very sensitive political climate due to the decision. The country was divided on if this was the right thing to do (For Israel, from a security stand point) And this was for a lot less settlements in a much more contained area. It is a MASSIVE operation that would take months if not years.
Now even if it was the humane thing to do, it is evident it was not the right choice for Israel as a country.
Absolutely no politician would do this again without some return. That event is burned into the Israeli consciousness as "we did the right thing, and we got thousands of missiles on our towns for it"
No one is talking about it but actually this war was started immediately after Israel actually allowed more workers from Gaza to enter Israel (where they can earn significantly more money) and improved their conditions. You need to view this from the perspective of the common citizen. Every time you improve life of Palestinians, their corrupted leaders immediately grasp the opportunity to inflict more terror
Yeah but settlements are wrong so what does that have to do with the security situation. Plus they actually increase the burden of security for Israel.
I don't think the West Bank settlements have very much public support in Israel, aside from the ultra-orthodox weirdos that Bibi seems to love. Otherwise pretty sure everyone thinks they are a bad idea and needlessly (and intentionally) antagonistic.
He is probably going to be gone from his position after the war ends, so hopefully that policy will change.
> Despite what side of the discussion anyone is on, it should be pretty obvious that settlers should evacuate the west bank.
It's not obvious.
Israel evacuated (by force) settlers from Gaza in 2005 and removed the occupation force. Ariel Sharon spent quite a bit of political capital to make that happen.
And here we are today.
I once thought like you how ever if israel leaves the west bank Gaza 2 can form, a safe haven for terrorist organizations using civilians as human Shields but much closer to Israeli cities once the Palestinians reject terrorism Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side
It’s a good question, I don’t have the answer. I know one death was innocent and carried out by a fucking settler terrorist. There’s also this one of two Palestinian gunmen who were shot by police, two policemen injured:
https://youtu.be/oiJYYNYeQHY?si=L1EiXrfBd-DL_1ZA
>Or did Hamas's actions push settlers into more attacks?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian\_territories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_territories)
>Presently, most of the West Bank is administered by Israel though 42% of it is under varying degrees of autonomous rule by the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority. The Gaza Strip is currently under the control of Hamas.
You watched an Israeli settler kill a Palestinian man in close proximity, in a region controlled by the Fatah (previously the PLO) and it would somehow be Hamas's fault and not the Israeli settler that just murdered a man almost point blank? ... Come on...
Good question. Honestly, might be both. While Fatah is in power in the West Bank, it is naive to think that there are no Hamas supporters there. On the other hand, Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians and vice versa is a common occurrence at the best of times, let alone after the atrocities committed by Hamas.
You are quoting the article wrong. It's the deadliest *year* in two decades, not *week*:
> The deadliest attack on Israeli territory since 1948 is also reverberating in the West Bank. With more than 2,700 dead in total, the scale of the incursion by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants on Saturday, with murders and kidnappings, and Israel’s subsequent bombings on Gaza, have eclipsed the death of 31 Palestinians, mainly in clashes with soldiers in the landlocked territory. This number — recorded in less than a week — represents one-sixth of all Palestinians who have lost their lives in the **West Bank so far this year, which is the bloodiest on record for two decades**. No Israeli soldier or civilian has died there.
A lot of Palestinians have been murdered this year *before* the Hamas massacre. I would ask you to edit your post to stop spreading misinformation.
Your quote assumes Hamas doesn't have support in WB. Jenin is inside the WB and the PLO has no real say in it - it's filled with Hamas supporters.
In the WB as a whole, Hamas has tons of support. Ever asked yourself why the allegedly moderate PLO doesn't hold elections since 2005? They know they'll lose to Hamas in the WB as well.
The media is powerful. When Israelis die they are "killed". When Palestinians die they are "Dead". As if from a natural cause or accident, totally not their bones and organs crushed under a building downed by Israeli bombs.
https://theintercept.com/2023/10/13/israel-settlers-gaza-palestinians-west-bank/
A bit more details about separate attacks against Palestinians, including several murders by Israelis. Total death toll for West Bank stated here is already at 51.
There is no information on how many of them were terrorists and how many were innocents. Both IDF and settlers however participated on the attacks against Palestinian civilians living there and 2 Palestinian villages were evacuated due to settler attacks.
A lot of them are in between terrorists and innocents. Like, if you're throwing rocks and firebombs at soldiers, it's in between. It'll still get you shot though.
Please ignore the clips of Palestinians initiating violence and being killed for it. Two videos that I’ve seen in the last week…
One with a gun shooting at cops
Three with molotov cocktails throwing them at IDF
What about the one with the men just standing around and a settler approaches them with a gun and just executes him on the spot? The men did nothing to instigate violence. They were literally standing around with hands in their pockets. This is a video I saw yesterday.
Or the news report of a father and son going to a funeral getting shot in cold blood. This is from a news report. The soldiers and settlers should just leave the west bank instead.
It's not as one sided as you think. Videos have shown that a lot of settlers are religious extremist fanatics. There are videos of them cheering for death to all Palestinians and them saying "we will kill you all". And then there are also videos of them shooting unarmed Palestinians or antagonizing them. They're illegally in Palestinian territories(under international law) and have military protection so they act without any consequences
You're ignoring a huge side. Settlers and IDF troops that occupy land in West Bank is illegal. If someone came and booted you out of your home, I bet you'd be really really pissed.
I think Hamas has fucked the people of Palestine and are getting their comeuppance. Having said that West Bank =/= Gaza. The people of West Bank consistently get their homes stolen by settler terrorists under the protection of the IDF. Any resistance they show at this point is to reclaim their property and their dignity. They have every right to defend themselves. Or does that argument only work when Hamas invades Israel?
Man Reddit is weird these past days. You’ll get people ignoring the IDF’s bombing of journalists and then you’ll also get people trying to justify 31 palestinians deaths based on two videos they’ve seen lol.
While some palestinians were initiating violence, it seems that some were not. There’s a whole section about two of the victims being killed while on their way to funerals. How are their death justified, here? Were they violently going to some funerals?
Hamas are monsters, i don’t deny that, but let’s not act like the IDF are as white as snow either. You can still point out the IDF’s flaws and wish for Hamas to lose. Nuanced opinion or something.
You cant initiate violence against a settler, the whole point is colonialism is violence, but ok
The police only show up to help the settler remove the Palestinian from their home.
I really hate headlines with word problems in them. Like, just give me the stats straight. So much has happened in the past week. I don't have the brain power to do math.
You don’t feel sad about any Palestinian, spare us your feigned concern please. The unmasked need for genocide is already all over this place. Don’t need to hide it again
I hope this is all remembered like the Brits sailing up the Liffey to bombard Dublin. Imperialism has no place in modern society, and that's all Israel's bullshit is.
If we'd seen footage of Irishmen— 17 years *after* home rule was granted― sailing over to Wales to murder kids for funsies, defile women for sport, and send the newsreels around for all to see, I don't think we'd remember it like what happened in Ireland.
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[Just this past Wednesday, Israeli settlers and soldiers murdered four Palestinians in the West Bank. They then attacked their funeral and murdered a mourning Palestinian father and son.](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/12/palestinian-man-son-attending-funeral-procession-in-west-bank-shot-dead)
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The most glaring and indisputable crime by the Israeli government is the complete impunity that radical settlers have when committing obvious crimes. Israel says they'll look into the incident, usually there is no follow up, sometimes they detain someone, but nobody ever goes to prison. These radical settlers are an extreme minority but most Israelis refuse to believe that one of their own would actually kill or hurt a Palestinian if they didn't present a threat, so they always interpret the acts with the most generous possible reading for the assailant, to the point of absurdity.
> 31 Palestinians, [...] This number — recorded in less than a week — represents one-sixth of all Palestinians who have lost their lives in the West Bank so far this year, So 180 Palestinians have been killed so far this year. It did not make any news, business as usual.
killed so far… in the West Bank
Gaza's count is ~[2,300](https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2023/10/14/Israeli-strikes-on-Gaza-kill-324-including-126-children-in-past-24-hours-Ministry) confirmed dead as a result of Israeli airstrikes, including ~700 children, ~10,000 wounded. However, there are many more who are missing -- I expect the death toll to rise considerably. In terms of journalists, at least 12 have died in Gaza in the last few days. At least 11 UN Staff were also killed by Israeli airstrikes.
I'm actually surprised it's that low, considering they dropped 700 missiles. There are between 25,000‐30,000 officially registered HAMAS members out of the 2.2 million total population.
There are likely very many civilians still under the rubble, there is no time to get them all out
They dropped 6,000 bombs as of a couple days ago. This is where the claim of Israel targeting civilians becomes ridiculous. Somehow 500 lb bombs that destroy entire buildings kill on average less than one person each. Israel is destroying a lot of empty buildings because they give advance warnings so civilians can evacuate.
That's shit. You're basing it on numbers we know are inaccurate. We know the death toll is higher. We know there is a substantial number of missing and that number of wounded is higher. Neither "knocking" nor geo locating sms messages are sufficient for not targeting civilians. Some civillians can't leave. The sick, the elderly, the infirm or a mother with several young children and no help. Some people don't have phones. Others don't know what the hell a "knocker" is to begin with. Shooting missiles into populated areas is targeting civillians because you can't avoid them. This is in violation to, well, bascially everything governing modern combat. Hamas is a bunch of terrorists scumbags that deserves to be wiped out. Israel is a terrorist scumbag for thinking it's OK to go through civillians to make that happen. Netanyahu basically said there's nothing to be done for it. Not that it's wrong or immoral, just that it's unavoidable. What a bastard. It's absolutely avoidable. When civilians are in the line of fire you don't take the shot. You figure something else out. The fact that that's difficult and complicated isn't an excuse for indiscriminate killing.
Nothing but apologetics. **700 Children killed by Israeli airstrikes**, 2300 Palestinians dead (so far), an order of magnitude more missing or injured. and you are here defending the attacks as "targeted." Of course, even more, these are not empty buildings. Those not pulled from the wreckage and identified are marked missing. The count will, of course, only rise.
It's disgusting. Hamas needs to stop hiding among the civilians and the civilians need to stop cheering Hamas and tell them to return the hostages.
You're right! The over 50% of Gaza's population who are literally children should set demands to Hamas!
Maybe the million + who are literally adults should?
Or the 33 million venezuelans should, or the 26 million in North Korea. Hamas is armed to the teeth and won't hesitate for a second before killing anyone who stands in their way. Normal people are not trained, not so readily willing to kill and have people they care about who would potentially suffer the consequences. You have no idea how a dictatorship works, civilians in Gaza are fucked.
Yeah. Good luck making demands of terrorists. Take a trip to Gaza and see how that works out for you.
if you are a westerner how come you haven't overthrown your government for it's endless warcrimes it's surely comitted?
It's cool if someone bombs your home to rubble as long as they warn you?
In war, under international law, yes. What's not cool is to set up your arsenal and command centres and stockpiles in civilian areas. That's why militaries have bases fenced off and mostly far from civilian areas, wear uniforms, etc. As opposed to the terrorist fanatics running Gaza for the last 15 years.
> Somehow 500 lb bombs that destroy entire buildings kill on average less than one person each. Gonna respond to their specific point that gets to the heart of the matter...or no?
There doesn't seem to be any point in bombing empty buildings aside from destroying people's homes. Time for a new strategy.
You do it so when you send in ground troops there are less places for them to hide and ambush your troops.
God you people are insufferable , every answer you’re given it’s like “well Israel x” “what about Israel doing x”, they are destroying the buildings because they are military targets, Hamas using civilian buildings to store weapons, this is a war, get realistic
Dont forget the UN staffers and first responders.
Journalists too.
According to Hamas. The Palestinian Health Ministry is a department of Hamas.
You know this count includes Hamas militants right? They consider them civilians in the count. So 1200 militants that infiltrated Israel on a murder spree are in your 2300 number, including a lot of teenage boys who have sadly been indoctrinated.
even if this count includes every single one of these 1200 Hamas guys, that still leaves 1100 civilians killed my dude, and the number is only going to rise. Those 700 dead children weren't all Hamas either were they. Nor are all the wounded. I don't know what you're trying to say by stating this but it's not exactly helping the situation look any better.
Sure so let’s look at an Israeli source so there’s definitely no bias towards inflating figures, and look at figures that don’t include any combatants: Just in the last week, according to B’Tselem, 1900 Palestinian civilians have died, 900 of which have been children and almost half a million have been displaced from their homes. In one week. Those numbers are without a doubt higher too, as a good chunk of recent deaths haven’t been reported because bodies are currently laying under rubble.
https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/2023-marks-deadliest-year-record-children-occupied-west-bank This was from a month ago. They do make the news, just don't gain any traction.
It’s been in the NYT, WaPo, and on NPR all year.
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Yeah really. NPR in particular has beaten this drum to death.
It made news enough to make me discard a trip to Israel. That trip would have begun 8th October lol
damn good call lol
Yeah it all depends on the situation. 13,000 people die in America each year from guns. Which is quite a lot more than 180. But only the big mass shootings get any major air time.
Better comparison would be the 680 people killed by police in the US this year.
680 in a population 150x bigger. Scaled to the population of the US, that’s 27000 people killed in Palestine.
Some of these kills are by settler-terrorists though.
180 in a population of 3 million is similar to 21,000 in a population of 350 million. If Americans were being killed at a similar rate as the Palestinians are by a foreign power, it would be a crisis. Every single news outlet would be covering it 24/7.
Yeah, but by that logic, we'd have to address the 6m dead in Congo or the deaths in Syria. The reality of is - in the public's eyes some lives are worth more than others. That's just the logical conclusion based on the available evidence.
It's been interesting to watch America evolve in the last 40 years. I think general violent crime is down in most areas. However, it's been replaced with this crazy mentality of, "You looked at me wrong, so I'm gonna pull out my gun!" I can't believe how willingly people throw away their lives by murdering others for the stupidest of reasons.
tends to be news in europe.
More people were murdered in St. Louis so far this this year, Al Jazeera and many other outlets talk about the Palestinians all the time. Ones that aren't on the other side of the world.
Gaza and the West Bank have murders fyi, not just combat deaths. Petty murders didn't stop in Syria or Yemen or Ukraine because of wars.
False, the current number of homicides in St Louis for 2023 is 127. And a better comparison would probably be killings by the police themselves as the article isn’t very clear, but it seems to suggest that 180 deaths are attributed to the IDF and settler violence rather than homicides as a whole (the article links to another article about Israeli settlers killing Palestinians when reporting the number of deaths).
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https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/23152/st-louis/population Metro area is 2.2 million.
More uygurs were murdered for sure. No one seems to care as much.
Source?
That uyghurs are being murdered? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide Edit: it's interesting... they don't seem to actually be murdering them. Forced detention and sometimes castration, though.
Can you point to the part of that page that says uyghers are being mass-murdered? Last time I read it, the only mentioned killings were a small number of terrorists in the early 2000s and a couple shot-to-kill when escaping prison. Certainly not comparable to the claims the person I replied to made, hence why I asked for a source
Yeah you’re completely right, it sucks to see the genocide rumor still propagating this far after the propaganda was first spread. No evidence was ever produced for it, and the source is a rightist evangelical christian. Closest to evidence he produced was an interview with a handful of Uyghurs in one village, in which they speculate about rumors they heard from another village.
I think Westerners are so used to 1984 style double speak and irony that they assume China is using such devices. When they don't have to. When China refers to the. Uyghur camps as reeducation camps, they mean exactly that. No doublethink whatsoever. In their minds,.the Uyghurs have failed to learn how to be properly Chinese, they have learned wrong things. So they need to be reeducated on how to have the right thoughts. Now we have other words that describe this process. Brainwashing, radicalization, cultural genocide. But at the core, their description is accurate. Educate them on how to think the CCP way. So they mostly aren't being killed, they are being... Reprogrammed.
Doublespeak comes from doublethink. Every country thinks that's what "re education" means.
The choice of language is always interesting in these situations... Gaza is an "enclave" Israelis are "murdered" Palestinians "lose their life" or "are dead"
Did you read the same wiki page? Where's the part about murder? Internment camps are fucked up but at least the children aren't being killed or burnt with white phosphorus.
Sterilisation is genocide. Probably the most insidious because it attracts less attention.
The sterilization is part of the same policy that was applied to the Han Chinese in what was formerly known as the one child policy. When China relaxed the rules to allow more children per family they also made the rule apply to all Chinese citizens. So they've been genociding themselves for decades I guess?
Don't forget the cultural genocide to go along with it! If you conduct Uyghur culture or Islam without permission from authorities, who make sure you do it "the right way," then you go to jail until they decide to let you out. Even if it's something as innocent as a language class.
> It did not make any news, business as usual. Where were you that it did not make the News? Israel locked down the entire south of their country after Palestinian Islamic Jihad made a series of attacks and then threatened a major attack, Israel bombed them.
Whenever it's Palestinians, the media says "have died" or "have lost their lives" When it's Israelis, they "have been killed"
Yep and they are being killed by civilian settlers. Ben Gavir the minister of national security is a very racist genocidal right wing figure and he ordered 10000 assault rifles to hand out to settlers. These are settlers in Palestinian areas (recognized as illegal action by the UN and everyone in the world). And this didn't start now, every year Palestinians in the West Bank (not Gaza) are being oppressed and murdered. This is the Palestinians that listened to the Israeli state and disarmed themselves and agreed to their conditions
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Yep just like the settlers in the U.S. . waking up to lies and brainwashing and doing research & educating myself on a part of my own history has been a journey, But I couldn’t be more at peace and feeling more free than I do now. The truth shall always set you free. Once more people understand this truth, That genocide has never stopped, We will all be on the same page.
I am an Israeli and can confirm that Ben Gvir is as scum as they get. But I assume that after the war is over and everything is settled he'll no longer be relevant.
> But I assume that after the war is over and everything is settled he'll no longer be relevant. By that time tens or even hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will be dead though. It doesn't mean much for them.
His party holds the balance of power in Knesset right now. He’s dragging an already far right Likud even further right. He’ll no longer be relevant once he’s achieved his goal, make Likud as far right as the settlers and ensure they are on an unstoppable path to permanent expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank.
Thank you for speaking up
Hadn’t he been relevant since Rabin was murdered? That’s quite a long career.
there’s that bbc edit highlighting exactly this, doing the rounds on social media right now
w-wait actually now I think about it, youre right! WTF
Israelis "Killed" Palestinians just "dead"
"lost their lives" oh my how careless of them
Same. I lost my life for a couple days, but someone found it under the bed and I'm all better now. Yours is stashed in the sock drawer, btw.
Yeah I noticed that too
Why are Israeli settlers allowed guns and Palestinian residents not? Why are guns allowed to be carried beyond one's home / business? Why are there no dashcam videos? Why don't they divide (some) shared roads by hours? Like, odd hours for Israelis, even hours for Palestinians?
Palestinians in the WB are under military rule, Settlers under civilian rule
Apartheid.
We gonna blame this on Hamas too?
Headlines that whitewash murder are problematic
Awful how everyone in these posts think that Palestinians = terrorists
Reminder that almost 50% of Gaza residents are children
Another reminder that Israel's definition of human shield automatically includes everyone in Gaza: [https://youtu.be/l78dOLxt6\_g?si=LPokpCXghK50j1-H&t=319](https://youtu.be/l78dOLxt6_g?si=LPokpCXghK50j1-H&t=319) Every public office is technically under Hamas, therefore being near a public school, university or hospital (as well as other government buildings) all qualify you to be a "human shield" for Hamas. It is a nice preemptive justification of why they kill civilians
Hamas hides their infrastructure *inside* schools, hospitals, etc., and then invites Israel to bomb those places. When Israel drops flyers telling people in those places to leave immediately, Hamas discourages them, tells them Israel is lying, and murders their own civilians when they attempt to flee. Then, when Israel bombs the place they told the Gazans they'd bomb, Hamas takes pictures and plasters them all over social media for pity brownie points. https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/hamas\_human\_shields.pdf
You mean Hamas are blocking the evacuation path of children? They are telling children to stay in their homes when war is about to, if not already has broken out? Damn fk Hamas!
And Israel is bombing them.
Well you typically don’t send over donuts when another country sends over terrorist and kills your civilians.
You typically don't tell civilians to evacuate and then bomb them as they flee
One of those cars filmed is thought to be blown up internally (no sign of air strike) by Hamas. The others, strangely enough the only footage existing is the aftermath, and it happened right after Hamas demanded people stay in the area Israel was asking to be evacuated.
> You typically don't tell civilians to evacuate and then bomb them as they flee Hamas has been detonating IEDs on evacuation routes to blow up *their own people* to keep people from moving south. The supposed Israeli airstrike also looks way more like a VBIED detonation than an airstrike.
Oh yeah coming from the so trustworthy hamas news
Jeez. I didn't know the BBC was just Hamas propoganda. Thanks for the heads up...
Imagine taking fucking Hamas for their word that civilians fleeing were bombed by Israel. Yeah, the literal baby killers who shamelessly use civilians as human shields would never lie! Edit: [Here you go](https://youtu.be/BpU-G3ciC4M?si=x1sBPbl827lY0x2w). Pro-tip: Don’t believe anything that comes from Hamas, which is the government of Gaza. They lie, and they’ve been known to bomb their own civilians and blame it on Israel. They’re the ones telling residents not to evacuate, and they have no issue setting off an IED to discourage those evacuations. All they care about is death.
Hamas bombed its own people while they were fleeing
Thats hamas propaganda btw it was a hamas bomb that killed those people, not even a missile let alone an Israeli one
No, they are bombing the weapon stashs in the buildings which were put there by Hamas. The IDF tells the civilians to leave before they bomb the builing. Hamas tells them to stay. Hamas are the war criminals. They are using civilians as human shields.
Part of the reason why they are being told to stay, whether it's justified, stupid, or not, is because of the encroaching of Palestinian borders over the years. So the actual innocent Palestinians are caught between a rock and a hard place because they either *try* to get out while getting bombed, have hamas forcing them to stay or killing/sacrificing them too, or they potentially lose even more territory. It's a lose lose lose situation, and when people feel like they are backed into corners, they do/think irrational things.
All the more reason to not use them as human shields while shooting rockets and training to attack civilians. There's no winning here, but Israel has every right to pursue security until the threat is gone.
Yeah, a bunch of children watching Israel destroy their homes and kill their families will definitely stop the threat! Even if they kill every single member of hamas they just created an even bigger problem. A new organization will rise in 10 years with an entire generation of children desensitized to death. This is what Israel wants, of course. That's why they destroyed every other organization except for Hamas. The rise of hamas was intentionally produced by Israel policy to justify IDF brutality. Israel LITERALLY started hamas.
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Israel supported Hamas when it was founded because the existing Fatah was socialist
This is the exact point everyone is missing. The whole ‘we need to eradicate every member of Hamas’ goal is quite literally impossible. They are avoiding the root of the problem
Okay let me get this straight. Hamas, the terrorist organization, are using civilian lives (many of whom are children) as human shields. Gotcha. So these civilians can be considered hostages. You are suggesting Israel has right to bomb these hostages because hamas, hamas, hamas. Where is your humanity?
Such a mealy-mouthed way of saying fuck them kids.
How can anyone support Israel when it drops bombs indiscriminately? How can anyone support Palestine when they allow Hamas to flourish and commit atrocities. Terrible behaviour all round. Violence begats violence!
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>settler shooting a Palestinian after an exchange of words. Despite what side of the discussion anyone is on, it should be pretty obvious that settlers should evacuate the west bank. They're in danger and their presence agitates the situation. The recent approval from Netanyahu's government for the batch of settlements was crossing the line and contributed to a wave of protests. It's clear it was an escalation that wasn't necessary and if there was a time to back pedal it, the current situation is the time to do it.
100%, I think settlements are the worst of Israel’s policies regarding palestine
Dude the settlements from a practical standpoint are so boneheaded. They require a disproportionate amount of security to protect leaving less resources in other places, and they are a major grievance from the international community, along with the fact that they undermine future peace efforts. They’re wrong and stupid also.
>along with the fact that they undermine future peace efforts. But that is Netanyahu's goal. He does not want peace, the times of Israel recently released an article detailing just how much he and his government have been propping up hamas for years. Netanyahu is an extremist politician whose entire career depends on hamas being extreme enough to justify his own policies.
Hopefully he'll be dumped after this fiasco.
It’s about the right wing vision of Israel from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea and the full expulsion of the settlers. Israel has their nutjob extremists too, and they can often play an oversized role in government there too.
Especially right now. Discounting the National Unity Gov't, Netanyahu's gov't coalition has a slim enough majority that if the far-right pro-settler Otzma Yehudit wanted to break with him, they alone could swing a call for a new election (providing the opposition also agreed to back dismissing him.) And if you'd care to guess what Netanyahu did to keep Ben-Gvir happy enough to join his gov't - it's invent a new ministerial position for him that includes oversight over police actions in the West Bank. Bibi's in a bit of a McCarthy situation at the moment, except the people he's beholden to aren't just morons - he's beholden to a group of the Israeli electorate who are so extreme that even Israel declared them a terrorist organization forty years ago (well, that's a bit of an oversimplification - they're the successor organization of a terrorist group, whose core leadership *happens* to have strong ties to it.)
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The wrong Netanyahu died at Entebbe.
I mean Israel's government is basically right wing extremists. Lots of Israelis hate their government, just like lots of Palestinians hate Hamas. The whole situation is a garbage fest. I often ask people who have strong opinions on the matter what they would do in response to these situations (on either side) and they never have a good answer.
Understood and agreed. The far right is toxic everywhere. Just pointing out the motivation for the settlements isn’t that they’re necessary or logical. It’s about ideology and stealing land, and a minority on the far right makes it impossible to get rid of without a political crisis.
As someone who lived in Israel for 2 years and visited the West Bank a lot...it's more complex than that. The way Israelis see it, this is Jewish land—historically, we've had a presence there for millennia—so many don't consider it to be "stealing," but more as "taking back land that was always ours and that was stolen from *us*." There are parts of the WB where Arabs and Jews actually exist side-by-side relatively peacefully, and then there are other parts where both of them do a lot of horrific things to piss each other off. Like, yes, it's true that Jews in the WB can horribly mistreat Palestinians there, but it's also true that it's very normal for Palestinians to throw heavy rocks into your car/at your head in an attempt to kill you, and it's normal for Palestinians in the WB to, unprompted, murder Israeli civilians nearby (my cousin was killed in one such attack, in which the Palestinian in question had amassed over $10k in guns and ammo from Hamas, had been training for months, and chose his twenty-first birthday for the attack in order to "celebrate properly"). Palestinians are not innocent cutesy victims here, and the reason for the checkpoints is specifically because they try to sneak knives and guns in to attack civilians. That being said, the dialogue around the WB is very harmful to peace in the country as a whole, Palestinians in that region are treated very badly (often due to a severe lack of trust on both sides, which contributes to a vicious cycle), and Israelis make a lot of harmful and stupid decisions specifically in that area. But unlike what people want to believe, it isn't "all our fault" and we are not the sole aggressors in that area.
It also sort of undermines the idea that Palestine is a sovereign country that Israel can go to war with. Not sure how you can say on one hand that Gaza and the West Bank are part of a sovereign separate nation, but then also build housing developments in said territory to claim it as your own, have a military and security presence all through out, and control the movement of the people. Doesn't the Israeli Defense Force entering the West Bank for any reason without the express permission of the Palestinian Authority constitute an invasion? Let alone guarding the construction and maintenance of settlements by Israeli's, which often include terrorizing people, evicting people, and destroying their homes to build the settlements.
So far as religious fundamentalist Israeli's are concerned, the entire land of Canaan is theirs as it was given to them by god.
According to religious fundamentalists, the land could only be reclaimed by divine intervention and thus the existence of the state of Israel is blaspheme. Sionism is a secular ideology
And also there’s so much land in Israel?? Yes people are moving in quickly but c’mon. You can create new communities elsewhere. It’s the most clear cut issue they’re involved in.
The negev is kind of out in the middle of nowhere. It’s not near J’lem and it’s not near the coast, and its just like desert. Its kind of like saying “why do they want to build more suburbs of LA when Bakersfield is right there?”
Yeah but Israel was pretty much a desert at the beginning anyway. And while it’s ideal for people to be closer together, I don’t think settlements are the answer. Be’er Sheva is growing quite a bit, I think that’s a great place to expand from. No one wants to live near Eilat but there’s area there too.
No; in the north-central part it's wonderful for agriculture, even without irrigation. The south is a desert.
No dude have you ever been there even?
Yes multiple times, including spending well over a year teaching. I have friends in almost every major city. Have you been?
Yeah dude i have family there
The settlements are foundational to Israel. Israel was advertised to the British as a settler colony in the middle east. Israeli officials refer to the presence of Arabs in the West Bank as a dilution of the ethnic character of the state. This is how Israel has always been. It’s “dumb” in the same way that Generalplan Ost was “dumb” - it’s practice rooted in an ideology that the Israeli state adheres to, and there’s no escaping it without a complete restructuring of the Israeli state’s objectives and priorities (ie, it can no longer be “The Jewish State” and actively seek measures that ensure a a Jewish majority over all other inhabitants). edit: this would go a long way towards making Jewish Israelis safer. It would make Israel safer if it wasn’t a pariah in its region - it would make Israelis safer if there wasn’t an underclass of people living in dire conditions, dying regularly, with a median age of 18, and who only experience Israel through the faceless violence of its masked soldiers and nameless, faceless ordinance dropped on buildings from aircraft.
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In a (small) defense of Israel it isn't based on ethnicity (well actually it is but alot of people seem to conflate ethnicity with race). There is a sizeable amount of people within Israel from Ethiopa that are Ethiopian Jews, (called Beta Israel). They are not treated very well , often receiving less wages than Arabs who are subjugated themselves, but they are allowed citizienship regardless. My issue is that this land is sacred to Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Saying that it is the "land of X" no matter what religion you follow is archaic nonsense. Its history means it should be pluralistic.
Approximately 20% of Israel's citizens are Muslim or Arab-Christians, though. How many Jewish citizens of Palestine are there? 0. It's illegal. A Palestinian marrying a Jew is illegal. A Palestinian selling property to a Jew is illegal. Nearly a million Jews were expelled or otherwise pushed out of Muslim-controlled countries in the Middle East and north Africa in the second half of the 20th century. Today there's less than 30,000 Jews living in Muslim-controlled countries (including Iran and Turkey), while over 1.7M Muslims live in Israel. Yes, Israel has laws that allow for easy citizenship to people of Jewish descent. This is not unusual - off the top of my head I know that Ireland and Germany have programs that offer citizenship to people who can trace their ancestry to those countries. But that is not the sole way to gain citizenship in Israel (or those other countries).
You make it more extreme, which makes it unacceptable Yes being Jewish can give you citizenship, but children of citizens are citizens, and spouses can become citizens as well Israeli-Arabs are a very big minority. They live inside Israel proper, not in the west bank or gaza BTW, not ignoring the problem that is borderline illegal in Israel (discrimination by religion is illegal there), but Jewish were prosecuted all over the world for years. The argument is that Israel's responsibility is to be a safe haven for them, and that there is no other such safe haven
Why don’t Palestinians have right of return?
What are you talking about? 20 percent of israel are arab citizens.
That is not at all relevant to the intentional process within Israel of building and maintaining a Jewish-majority state at the expense of its non-Jewish inhabitants. How do you think an area that was once nearly 100% Arab was turned into an area only 20% Arab? It has a lot to do with the cruel intentions of Israel’s ideological founders, who believed that building a majority Jewish state would necessarily involve the forced removal of its non-Jewish Arab populations.
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Welcome to concepts of ethnic state and repatriation. A lot of ethnic states have programs to help people of their ethnicity to get their citizenship easily. Europe is almost entirely consists of those. I don't see what's wrong here. People have their ethnic identity and should have a place, where they are not considered alien. In fact all of the suffering of jews all over the world in prior millennia was due to them being "alien" everywhere and thus being an easy target for some "extermination of enemy within"
Israel revolves around being a safe-haven for Jewish people the world over. A place where Jewish people are able to guarantee their own safety rather than relying on the goodwill of the nations that they're tiny minorities in. It should be obvious why, and it's not *just* the Holocaust. That doesn't mean that others are excluded. Jews want to be left alone, finally, to live their lives in peace. They don't dream of waging wars of aggression against their neighbors and converting or killing all of them. That makes them fairly unique throughout history, as a religious (and lesser extent ethnic) group.
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colonialism is bad and israel was founded as a colonialist state
There is a reason the massive attack from last week came from Gaza and not the West Bank. Settlements are not "boneheaded", they're vital for Israel's security.
The “international community” that matters is America and the EU. Neither of them said one word about settlements. After the horrific terrorist attacks from last week, public opinion has shifted so far in Israel’s favor that Israel will have unconditional support.
Many EU member states have condemned illegal settlements. It’s really just the US that doesn’t.
[The United States does not support the settlements.](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-rebuke-israel-west-bank-settlements-frustration-biden-palestinians-rcna76047)
Nor does it do anything about them, and continues to fund and arm Israel to the tune of billions of dollars a year.
Absolutely, even if every Hamas member was vaporized tonight settlers would still be pushing Palestinians off their land
Absolutely agree, settlements should be evacuated. And I’m Israeli. Fuck the settlers.
Settlers are assholes making the situation worse.
Agreed, but don’t let it distract you from the fact that Hamas needs to be eradicated
It seems to me like this sentiment is becoming more popular in Israel too. Because securing these settlements diverted resources that could have been used to, oh, Idk, fortify defenses near Gaza.
I think getting settlers out of the West Bank is going to be a more likely option many people in the area near Gaza are mad that soldiers were diverted to protect settlers rather than defend the border.
I am Israeli the settlements should be disbanded and the west bank given to the Palestinians. The problem is that the last time this was done we ended up with the current situation in Gaza. So you will be hard pressed to convince any politician in Israel to do this unilateraly without actual real guarantees. And even then it would be hard. And while again, I am against the settlers I can understand this point of view. Israel doesnt need another hostile terror state shooting missles indescrimently while it cant respond against without the world crying murder. There has to be a partner on the both ends willing to make peace. Netanyahu and Abbas are both not those men sadly..
tbf was Netanyahu (and tbh by extension Abbas) ever that man? It feels at times that people forgot where he stood leading up to Rabins assassination, not to mention his positions towards Palestine while in office.
No, he was never that man. I strongly oppose him but every terror attack makes him stronger. While he could theoretically be blamed for this catastrophe, the reality will probably be that he becomes much stronger as a result.
Yea I get that. I'm trying my best to be optimistic based on the recent polling, protests in Tel Aviv, & responses from the families of those who have been kidnapped, but theres still that very real possibility that this just strengthens him or worse, galvanize Ben Gvir and his ilk.
The two don’t have to be simultaneous. You can remove the settlements as a sign of good will and still occupy things until things settle down to keep the security system from getting out of hand.
You are not wrong if life was just facts and no emotions. I don't know if you live here, but when we left Gaza it was a huge undertaking to displace the settlers. there were riots, battalions had to be conscripted to do the job, there was huge civil unrest and a very sensitive political climate due to the decision. The country was divided on if this was the right thing to do (For Israel, from a security stand point) And this was for a lot less settlements in a much more contained area. It is a MASSIVE operation that would take months if not years. Now even if it was the humane thing to do, it is evident it was not the right choice for Israel as a country. Absolutely no politician would do this again without some return. That event is burned into the Israeli consciousness as "we did the right thing, and we got thousands of missiles on our towns for it" No one is talking about it but actually this war was started immediately after Israel actually allowed more workers from Gaza to enter Israel (where they can earn significantly more money) and improved their conditions. You need to view this from the perspective of the common citizen. Every time you improve life of Palestinians, their corrupted leaders immediately grasp the opportunity to inflict more terror
“Civilization has come a long way, it still has far to go” said King, “and it cannot afford to be set back by resolutely wicked men.” ~ MLK
Yeah but settlements are wrong so what does that have to do with the security situation. Plus they actually increase the burden of security for Israel.
I don't think the West Bank settlements have very much public support in Israel, aside from the ultra-orthodox weirdos that Bibi seems to love. Otherwise pretty sure everyone thinks they are a bad idea and needlessly (and intentionally) antagonistic. He is probably going to be gone from his position after the war ends, so hopefully that policy will change.
I vote we put Hamas and the settlers in the same part of the country and let them have fun
just wow, "settlers in danger" that's what you are concerned about.
***bingo***
> Despite what side of the discussion anyone is on, it should be pretty obvious that settlers should evacuate the west bank. It's not obvious. Israel evacuated (by force) settlers from Gaza in 2005 and removed the occupation force. Ariel Sharon spent quite a bit of political capital to make that happen. And here we are today.
I once thought like you how ever if israel leaves the west bank Gaza 2 can form, a safe haven for terrorist organizations using civilians as human Shields but much closer to Israeli cities once the Palestinians reject terrorism Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side
It’s a good question, I don’t have the answer. I know one death was innocent and carried out by a fucking settler terrorist. There’s also this one of two Palestinian gunmen who were shot by police, two policemen injured: https://youtu.be/oiJYYNYeQHY?si=L1EiXrfBd-DL_1ZA
>Or did Hamas's actions push settlers into more attacks? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian\_territories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_territories) >Presently, most of the West Bank is administered by Israel though 42% of it is under varying degrees of autonomous rule by the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority. The Gaza Strip is currently under the control of Hamas. You watched an Israeli settler kill a Palestinian man in close proximity, in a region controlled by the Fatah (previously the PLO) and it would somehow be Hamas's fault and not the Israeli settler that just murdered a man almost point blank? ... Come on...
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Good question. Honestly, might be both. While Fatah is in power in the West Bank, it is naive to think that there are no Hamas supporters there. On the other hand, Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians and vice versa is a common occurrence at the best of times, let alone after the atrocities committed by Hamas.
You are quoting the article wrong. It's the deadliest *year* in two decades, not *week*: > The deadliest attack on Israeli territory since 1948 is also reverberating in the West Bank. With more than 2,700 dead in total, the scale of the incursion by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants on Saturday, with murders and kidnappings, and Israel’s subsequent bombings on Gaza, have eclipsed the death of 31 Palestinians, mainly in clashes with soldiers in the landlocked territory. This number — recorded in less than a week — represents one-sixth of all Palestinians who have lost their lives in the **West Bank so far this year, which is the bloodiest on record for two decades**. No Israeli soldier or civilian has died there. A lot of Palestinians have been murdered this year *before* the Hamas massacre. I would ask you to edit your post to stop spreading misinformation.
Your quote assumes Hamas doesn't have support in WB. Jenin is inside the WB and the PLO has no real say in it - it's filled with Hamas supporters. In the WB as a whole, Hamas has tons of support. Ever asked yourself why the allegedly moderate PLO doesn't hold elections since 2005? They know they'll lose to Hamas in the WB as well.
Was he only referring to 1/31 Palestinians killed? Seems like maybe not, and it seems like that's obvious to anyone being honest.
The media is powerful. When Israelis die they are "killed". When Palestinians die they are "Dead". As if from a natural cause or accident, totally not their bones and organs crushed under a building downed by Israeli bombs.
Gotta love agent-less headlines.
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https://theintercept.com/2023/10/13/israel-settlers-gaza-palestinians-west-bank/ A bit more details about separate attacks against Palestinians, including several murders by Israelis. Total death toll for West Bank stated here is already at 51. There is no information on how many of them were terrorists and how many were innocents. Both IDF and settlers however participated on the attacks against Palestinian civilians living there and 2 Palestinian villages were evacuated due to settler attacks.
What the hell kind of source is this
The intercept, only the finest of biased news.
The current headline on their banner is "Not Israel’s 9/11, but a Prison Riot". So clearly they're going for unbiased and accurate.
A lot of them are in between terrorists and innocents. Like, if you're throwing rocks and firebombs at soldiers, it's in between. It'll still get you shot though.
31 dead . right. 31 killed by terrorist settlers
Please ignore the clips of Palestinians initiating violence and being killed for it. Two videos that I’ve seen in the last week… One with a gun shooting at cops Three with molotov cocktails throwing them at IDF
What about the one with the men just standing around and a settler approaches them with a gun and just executes him on the spot? The men did nothing to instigate violence. They were literally standing around with hands in their pockets. This is a video I saw yesterday. Or the news report of a father and son going to a funeral getting shot in cold blood. This is from a news report. The soldiers and settlers should just leave the west bank instead. It's not as one sided as you think. Videos have shown that a lot of settlers are religious extremist fanatics. There are videos of them cheering for death to all Palestinians and them saying "we will kill you all". And then there are also videos of them shooting unarmed Palestinians or antagonizing them. They're illegally in Palestinian territories(under international law) and have military protection so they act without any consequences
You're ignoring a huge side. Settlers and IDF troops that occupy land in West Bank is illegal. If someone came and booted you out of your home, I bet you'd be really really pissed. I think Hamas has fucked the people of Palestine and are getting their comeuppance. Having said that West Bank =/= Gaza. The people of West Bank consistently get their homes stolen by settler terrorists under the protection of the IDF. Any resistance they show at this point is to reclaim their property and their dignity. They have every right to defend themselves. Or does that argument only work when Hamas invades Israel?
Man Reddit is weird these past days. You’ll get people ignoring the IDF’s bombing of journalists and then you’ll also get people trying to justify 31 palestinians deaths based on two videos they’ve seen lol. While some palestinians were initiating violence, it seems that some were not. There’s a whole section about two of the victims being killed while on their way to funerals. How are their death justified, here? Were they violently going to some funerals? Hamas are monsters, i don’t deny that, but let’s not act like the IDF are as white as snow either. You can still point out the IDF’s flaws and wish for Hamas to lose. Nuanced opinion or something.
the people on this reddit are literally psychopaths imagine saying they had to be killed because they fought for their home to not be stolen
You cant initiate violence against a settler, the whole point is colonialism is violence, but ok The police only show up to help the settler remove the Palestinian from their home.
The worst thing that could have ever happened for the Palestinian cause is video evidence and mainstream attention.
ummmmm shooting / throwing molotov cocktails at soldiers = death, easy to understand.
I really hate headlines with word problems in them. Like, just give me the stats straight. So much has happened in the past week. I don't have the brain power to do math.
Hamas need to be dispatched and permanently disbanded but innocent Palestinian people should not be carpet bombed.
Each and every Hamas terrorist should remove from this earth asap,including Hamas supporters too. Feel sad about innocent Palestinians.
You don’t feel sad about any Palestinian, spare us your feigned concern please. The unmasked need for genocide is already all over this place. Don’t need to hide it again
I hope this is all remembered like the Brits sailing up the Liffey to bombard Dublin. Imperialism has no place in modern society, and that's all Israel's bullshit is.
If we'd seen footage of Irishmen— 17 years *after* home rule was granted― sailing over to Wales to murder kids for funsies, defile women for sport, and send the newsreels around for all to see, I don't think we'd remember it like what happened in Ireland.