Due to the severity of the situation and the fast flowing news cycle, we have decided to create a general megathread for discussion regarding the conflict.
Informal/Satirical news sources are not allowed on the main feed of the community but you are free to post them in this thread.
Please remember that all community and instance rules apply to this thread hence keep is civil.
Hmm, why would Palestinians hate European settlers that stole their land via the imperial edict of Britain? 🙄
And Israelis hate Palestinians because, in their desperation Palestinians turned to terrorism, also Palestinians are in their way.
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No, we can’t… because it’s not. It’s only “complicated” due to pro-Israeli propaganda and nothing else - it’s no more “complicated” than Apartheid South Africa was.
There’s only two teams. The imaginary side you made up in your head doesn’t exist.
It’s Hamas or Israel. Pick one.
People don’t have to pick one or the other at all. I despise the Israeli government for their genocidal actions. I despise Hamas for terror attacks on innocent civilians.
The Israeli government is disgusting in their actions, and I very much hope for the freedom of the Palestinians, but fuck Hamas. You can support the Palestinians and their plight while condemning the people in charge.
I have support for any Israeli or Palestinian citizen that does not commit or advocate for senseless violence. Fuck the people in power in both places.
By not picking a side you become invisible and irrelevant. If you don’t want to pick a side, just tune out and go play video games or something because it’s basically the same thing.
No shit that I am irrelevant to the war in Gaza. I live on the other side of the world and dont have any political power. The most I could do is try to send some money to aid the Palestinian refugees, and I still would be invisible and irrelevant to it. Are you sending money, supplies, armaments, or fighting for Hamas? If not you are invisible and irrelevant to this conflict yourself. Just like 99.999% of the world’s population.
Vocal support matters in democracies. If Western governments stopped supporting Israel this war would be very different.
By not even vocally supporting anything you have taken away your own voice. You’ve silenced yourself.
I am saying something. I wholeheartedly condemn the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza, even before this conflict began. I also wholeheartedly condemn the actions of Hamas against innocent civilians. Fuck the extremists on both sides.
What a Moronic take. Both sides bad so pick one!
No, stop putting up shit and you’ll get support from non insane people. They’re both being shitbirds, there’s no reason to approve of either behavior
When Palestinians held peaceful marches for freedom, Israel blew their knees out. Pacifism doesn’t work when one side thinks you’re animals.
Also, by choosing to not pick a side, you’re just tacitly siding with the winning side. Which side do your tax dollars go to?
Almost a troll-like insistence on lack of nuance to an extremely complex situation
The invocation of nuance is a trick to get you to not take a stance that matters and to stay trapped in your own head cooking up imaginary solutions that can never and will never happen.
The actually nuanced position is to support Hamas despite its flaws, because they’re the only material force that is fighting for Gaza.
The actually nuanced position is to be opposed to the bloodshed and race/religion-based tribalism happening with both the Israeli government AND Hamas, and to do more than just “tut tut” Israel’s recent activities in the West Bank and the virtual prison they’ve turned Gaza into.
The current Israeli government is committed to eradicating Islam from within the borders of Israel. The current Hamas leadership is committed to eradicating Jewish people from the face of the earth and setting up an Islamic state where Israel currently stands.
Despite these two diametrically opposed positions, the majority of Palestinian and Jewish Israelis are secular and just want to live their lives while being afforded basic human rights.
And this goes back further than 80 years; both groups tend to have last names based on bloodlines, and those last names invariably trace themselves back to people living and worshiping on the same physical land, often repeatedly.
The stance that matters is to be vocally opposed to ALL genocide; right now, that means being opposed to the actions of the Israeli government; it also means being opposed to the claimed goals of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian government.
It also leaves room for celebrating legitimate overtures of peace and the thousands of people of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds who are currently putting their lives at risk to provide food, water and basic medical assistance to all the Israelis/Palestinians currently affected by this battle waged by hardliners and extremists.
Hamas is resisting Zionism, not Jews. They’re pretty explicit about that.
So if you oppose race/religion-based tribalism you support Hamas, because they’re the ones opposing it.
“European settlers” in the sense that they hadn’t been in Israel since the Romans kicked them out in '65 for causing too much trouble with all their messiahs and religious zealotry.
2000 years!
They hadn’t ever been in Israel, they were born and raised in Europe by parents that were born and raised in Europe by grandparents that were born and raise in Europe etc. etc. They were Europeans, complete with white skin and European culture and European language.
This wasn’t refugees returning to their home. It was settlers invading nonwhite people’s land and stealing it for themselves.
The only Israeli citizen I know was born in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Yeah, if we stretch this logic even further down, we all get to claim our ancestral land in Africa from 200 millennia ago.
The Netherlands had better watch out… my ancestors came from there about 300 years ago, and that automatically gives me the right to rape, torture and murder my way through Antwerp!
Every Russian in Lithuania better pack their bags. I’m tearing up my Pennsylvania birth certificate and returning home! I can’t wait to open the first Primanti Bro’s in Vilnius.
Anrwerp is Belgium, though ;)
Pshhh… there’s a difference?
They speak more elegant… or French
After I pull an Israel on them, it won’t matter… they won’t be allowed to speak either French or Dutch in the small ghetto I’ll be forcing them into.
Yes, all ancestral land claims are ultimately at least a little bit silly.
Yes, the vague equivalent would be for the Native Americans to reclaim the United States via superior force ~1800 years from now.
Not even Native Americans!
It would be the equivalent of people with extremely diluted ancestry and no connection to any tribe, white people who practice a Native religion and speak an extremely deformed English dialect of some Native language but are otherwise just US Americans.
A third of Israelis are (family of) refugees/emigrants from the middle-east or north Africa.
It’s not a ‘white european’ country, which you’d know just looking at them.
Imposing simplistic American notions of race on a complicated conflict is stupid and embarrassing.
Yeah, now. That’s because they imported Jews from everywhere they could to become Israeli. It started as a European settler project.
But if you look at the positions of power, the government and businesses and celebrities, you’ll see mostly white faces. Israel definitely has a white supremacist bent to it - you don’t think an Ethiopian Jew will ever be the prime minister do you?
America’s white majority is going to disappear too, but you don’t think that will actually end American white supremacy right?
It is always interesting seeing a person be so blatantly racist and not realize it.
Jews have had people there pretty much that entire time. Under the Roman empire, under the Byzantine, under Arabs, under the Ottoman empire, under the British empire.
You seem to know very little about the region. The way you speak of race is certainly American. Not sure how you think the Polish, much less Polish Jews, were treated in the past, but I can assure you it wasn’t as a white person.
Further, the Sephardi chief rabbi is middle eastern by any definition (born in Israel, parents born in Iraq). The Ashkenazi chief rabbi is the son of a polish born Holocaust survivor.
There are at least 3.2 Mizrahi Jews in Israel although recent studies suggest around 44% of the population. That means Jews from Israel or the surround middle eastern areas. Are middle easterners white now?
Jews might be considered white in America (sometimes). But what is white in America does not apply to the rest of the world. Even Europe doesn’t share the same attitude, I assure you.
It didn’t start as a European settler project. Europe was in control of the region post WWI so Jews lobbied in Europe and in the US. Many of which were Mizrahi and/or already having lived in mandate Palestine.
I’m sure you don’t even realize what you’re saying is racist, but it is. If a person with black parent(s) can pass as white, are they also white? Is their a paper bag test for Jews too? What about one drop? Are all Africans black? Do you know what an average person from Yemen looks like? Egypt? Why didn’t Polish and German Jews just be pretend not to be Jewish during the Holocaust since they are white?
Since the human population shares at least two common areas that all current humans came from, how many generations must a group of people exist in a place to say they are descendants of that place? If a person is a jew by birth through European heritage, but is blacker than Obama, and moves to Israel are they a white European Jew or a black minority? Is Bashar al-assad white? Viktor Orban? Gabriel Boric?
Please, can you answer those questions?
You still see white faces in high places. That’s why Europe and America are Israel’s greatest supporters - they want an ethnosate in the middle east.
That’s why you aren’t going to ever see an Ethiopian Prime Minister. Now you’re right, race isn’t exactly like it is in the US. It actually reminds me more of colorismo in Latin America, where racial prejudice is based more on how dark your skin is than being clear cut along racial lines. Light skinned Asians get to have this privilege in the racial majority.
But there is a racial component to Israel’s apartheid regime and its unlimited support from Europe and America, and you have to acknowledge this.
Out of interest, would you describe Romani people (pejorative ‘gypsy’) as being white?
I’ll be honest. Most Americans don’t even realize Roma are a real group of people. They hear gypsy and think crystal balls and magic. The population is much smaller and more integrated in the US than in Europe so many have never met someone from that group. But I mean if you want the honest answer, a person that looks white in America is considered white until a reason is given otherwise. Maybe a name. Maybe a symbol. Maybe they say something. My youngest son can pass for white easily. Asheknazi jews are white by current american standards, but I don’t see white southern baptists churches needing armed security during service. And I’m one generation shy of when Jews weren’t allowed in to certain places.
Race is weird in America. And Americans are very touchy about it on both sides. I think it’s because it’s built on a house of cards, but so many fundamental things revolve around it. Racial justice on the left. Umm… other things on the right. Like racism is definitely real. I can make it through police checkpoints without getting stopped, while my wife gets stopped every time. But Americans like to pretend there is some true hard standard when it is all a wobbly social construct.
If they were given their own settler colony and started being treated as an equal by all the other white countries? Yes.
I wouldn’t consider a European Jew before the formation of Israel to be white, but they’re sure as fuck white now.
If someone of white European heritage burns down a synagogue frequented by what you consider people of white European heritage, would you still consider that racist given they’re the same race? Or would you consider that less racist than someone burning down a church frequented by black people?
The Jews exist in a superposition of races until you burn down the synagogue and collapse the waveform.
It is almost like Jewish people have a conditional relationship with whiteness. The idf soldiers bombing children’s hospitals certainly are capital W White.
Individual people can be racist in all sorts of kooky ways, like there’s certainty individuals racist against white Irish people and against white people from Mediterranean countries. So, yeah, it’s possible for a kooky individual to be racist against Jewish white people.
But that’s not reflective of society, of systems of social or political power, or of the current cultural epoch. That’s just a freak.
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HMM WHY DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR?!
History repeats, I guess.
Keep screeching for nuance while Israel bombs evacuation routes and refugee camps with the full throated support of Europe and America.
It was their turn to be the boot. /s
While I won’t argue in support of the amount of force Israel is using, I am curious what you believe they should do. For this current situation and the whole situation at large.
Return the land they stole and reform the single Palestinian state so they can peacefully coexist within Palestine.
And who is responsible for that, eh? The same “western civilization” that is now using Israel as a kapo state to do it’s dirty work in the middle-east, perhaps?
Its almost like you want to collapse all Jews and the settler colonial state of Israel into one group to fit a simpler narrative of what’s happening.
So all of Israel is a colonial state? What should happen with it and it’s over 9 million people? Of which almost half are middle eastern (I’m only including several generations middle eastern here, obviously we have people that are 3 or 4th generation Israeli, but I am not sure what your threshold is for being considered a native of an area). Then another 2.5 percent are beta Israel. So let’s just say half are middle eastern or African. What should happen with this colonial state?
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-- Atallah Abu Al-Subh, former Hamas minister of culture
--Sheikh Dr. Ahmad Bahar, acting Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council
-- Abdel Aziz Rantisi, Hamas leader
--Hamas communiqué
Individual people having backwards views stemming from generations of impoverishment doesn’t justify imprisoning and exterminating an entire indigenous population. That population has an unconditional right to resist their colonization using whatever means are available to them.
I’m stating a moral position here, not trying to argue with you, because you don’t actually care about some unique technical specifics in this one situation. You’d be saying the same thing about “this civil rights leader said all white people or bad”, or “that escaped slave hurt that poor white family”, or “those Indian savages beheaded 100 settler babies” as though any of that justified the generations of colonial extraction that you benefit from. Whatever helps you sleep at night.