Angry Israel/Palestine Ranting Thread.

But you're looking at this as though Hamas is the only thing that matters. "Maybe they shouldn't be lobbing blah blah blah?" Pretty cold comfort to the civilians that get killed. Or should they have just not lived in Gaza, since that's where Hamas also lives?

Talk about strawmen...you got a whole field of 'em with that one.

I love now how the Palestinian people are somehow now not responsible for electing/empowering/protecting their own terrorist groups.

I think this is the third time I'm saying this: Hamas is not an "elected terrorist group," because there is no such thing. They execute terror attacks separate and apart from their capacity as the ruling party in the Palestinian parliament, as evidenced by the fact that they did nothing but carry out terror attacks for many years before assuming power. You're acting like the PA has a constitution that says that the parliament is allowed to carry out terror attacks if they want. It makes no sense; terror attacks are not a function of the PA, they have nothing to do with who is elected to parliament, and people are not voting for them to continue because they couldn't if they wanted to, as it is not subject to a vote.

The Palestinians are actually far less responsible for the continued rocket attacks in the sense that the first thing destroyed in every invasion of Gaza are the police stations (because they have guns and a defensible position), and then we promptly complain that Gaza's police won't stop the various rocket/mortar groups. Hamas being elected didn't start the violence, so don't act like this is somehow all the fault of the election of Hamas. What people are trying to explain to you is that Hamas was elected because of the violence, not to start it.

What we're saying is that the IDF has far more capability to control all military action against Gaza than the PA has to control all military action against Israel. So basically, I'd expect the cease fire to come from the people with a functional military command structure first.

Since that's basically what this thread has devolved to: which side should stop shooting first.

edit: as a side note, killing people for how they voted (directly for that, not as a side effect) is Collective Punishment, which is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Soooo what you're saying is the only difference between pre-election Hamas and post-election Hamas is that now they blow up innocent civilians AND make sure the Gaza buses are on time?

I did not say that the Gaza buses were on time. Don't quote me on that.

Did the Palestinians participate in the Six-day war? Yes, you're still that fucking ignorant, and you should still go read a fucking book.

This is exactly what I say to military families who lost people in Iraq and voted for Bush. It's clearly their fault.

And if that happens, Israel stopping any attacks or retaliation, and Hamas keeps shelling Israeli border towns, what then?

Pre election Hamas did rebuild destroyed infrastructure, though. It's part of why the Lebanon campaign didn't go as planned with people being liberated from the terrible Hamas: Hamas is smart and as a PR wing that builds roads and such. The IDF has no apparent interest in a hearts and minds campaign, and that's why Hamas got elected. They didn't win on a platform of "We'll bomb Israel more!", they won on a platform of "Holy shit look at all this corruption! We're going to rebuild our cities and help the people", and continue to be popular because they can point to rubble and go "See?! The IDF destroys the things you built!" and have plenty of supporting evidence to make a persuasive case.

Is it fair? Nope! Is it how politics works? Yup!

We put UN troops on the border and start legitimate peace talks again.

(you seem to be under the impression that peace can be obtained without having to weather the lashing out of a dying party propped up entirely by the cycle of violence)

edit: in your version, Hamas stops shelling Israel, and what happens next? Settlers kick the Palestinians out of all their land without retaliation? In that version the UN would need to roll in and evict all the settlers by force.

What's funny is that this is the part of Israeli/Palestinian politics that most frequently gets glossed over here, but it's actually the one part that should be pretty familiar to people in the US. How many Congressmen and state legislators continue to get reelected year after year despite their record on high-level issues based on fixing potholes and sorting out problems with peoples' mail?

That's why the US should hand the country over to the remaining native tribes and deport everyone back to where they came from, right?

And how much money they bring to their district, and etc etc local bullshit. Israel has a defense industry that is also very fond of this not being settled peacefully because they can build awesome defense weapons for shitloads of money.

This conflict has quite a few parallels to "how do we stop this war on drugs bullshit" as far as the idea that all sides are interested in keeping it going because it's worth money or power to do so.

Is there evidence that Hamas rockets have led to a reduction or slowing of growth in the settlements? I'm asking, I don't know. It is my general impression that they have not.

hamas the horse shit

— The Iron Sheik (@the_ironsheik) November 15, 2012

There, that says it all. Sheikie Baby has spoken.

It’s not like Hamas is some kind of monolithic force, you know. They’re really just the big guy on the block in Gaza. There are other players too, not just their enemies in the old PA but also rival militant groups. Hamas might declare a truce today while Islamic Jihad and other factions keep on lobbing rockets. There are also regional players with a big stake in this. It’s probably in Egypt’s best interest to keep things quiet on the Israeli front while they deal with their own issues, but this is a godsend for the Syrian regime. Nothing would help Assad more than another flare up in the territories, taking attention away from his own atrocities. I’m sure they and their Iranian friends will use whatever leverage they have left, either directly or through Hezbollah, to stoke the fires. It’s a scary situation, with too many people who see a benefit to themselves in each new attack.

The various groups in Gaza managed to get all Gaza settlements dismantled. The issue is that in the West Bank settlement populations have been increasing steadily. The West Bank being the version of Gaza if they put down their weapons. So, pro economy and less IDF retaliation, but rapidly losing their land and living under a very fucked legal system that gives them little recourse against settlers.

edit: fixed bad quote tree.

The twisted irony being that the settler movement is poisoning Israel as much as it is the territories themselves. It's dominated by extremists, costs enormous amounts of money to maintain and the political compromises forced by it in the Knesset have led to a steady erosion of secular, democratic values. A disaster from the start.

And they're hostile to peace negotiations, and cause a dickload of drama with the Palestinians. In a just world, Israel and Palestine would come together in harmony to hate on the settlers.

Another intellectually dishonest statement. First, your logic is wrong. Second, no one here has advocated the "eternal occupation" of a subject colony.

You're usually better than this, Lum. That's something brett would say. Shame.

Hold on, are you claiming they didn't? Seriously? Really? *chuckle*

The Syrian-funded Palestinian fedayeen attacks were a major cause of the war. Oh, and the Palestinian Division was deployed on the first line in Gaza. Nah, no Palestinian involvement there!

Please do continue to subscribe to your Israel = Bad, Palestinians = Good world view. It's mighty amusing.

You know what, you're right. I honestly did not think the Palestinians were involved in the actual fighting and after a brief search of the history of the war I realised I was wrong.

So, apologies. For what it's worth.

I subscribe to the worldview that faced with a massive imbalance of power I'm not going to judge the weaker party as harshly as the stronger party, because the weaker party is a lot more constrained in what it can do.

You seem to subscribe to a very brett-like worldview of false equivalence where every Palestinian action is equal to an Israeli action, and vice versa. A view that does not map to reality.

Accepted.

Not really - see the quote below. For example, I don't think what Hamas does today in any way justifies Israel's actions today. But that doesn't justify Hamas' actions either.

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People think it's so fucking simple and it's not. For example, Lum's "let the UN guard 'em" is an absolute shit suggestion to the Israelis. Why? Because in 1967, the UN was supposed to be guarding the Israelis and FRIGGING LEFT when Egypt told them to prior to the attack. The UN has doing the bidding of the anti-Semites since Israel was founded. So why would the Israelis ever think that they'd get a fair shake by the UN? They're not being unreasonable there - they have no reason to trust anything from the UN. I wouldn't let them anywhere near me if I were running Israel. How do you get around that Israel wants nothing to do with the UN because they've been nothing but a bunch of backstabbing dicks to Israel for 50 years? Are you going to put NATO forces on the ground? The arabs won't accept that. I certainly don't support putting US troops in yet another Middle Eastern quagmire. So now who safeguards all this? There's no one out there to do it that both sides can remotely trust. As I said, it's just not that simple.

So now they only way to do that is to trust each other. And they're not going to do that. As Lum pointed out (and with this I agree), the leaders of both sides are using these attacks to pander to their constituencies. There's no real interest in solving the problem. While Israel has the power, in my view the only way this gets solved is the more impacted group - the Palestinians - are going to have to move substantially forward first. Israel can deal with the status quo for a long damn time and they have a bunker mentality. If the Palestinians are able to put forth a strong leader who can put forth a real plan that he can execute AND stop the terror attacks, then the US will put so much pressure on Israel that they'll have to come to the table. Until then, Israel will use the rocket attacks as an excuse for inertia.

I'm not going to tell you whether that's right or wrong, but that's the way it is. But so long as the elected leadership of both groups acts like complete dicks and continue to get elected, I can't muster any sympathy for anyone on either side.

I didn't mean my post in an esoteric sense. The war in 1948 did not begin with an Arab invasion of Israel. It began in an immediate sense with a UN declaration proposing the division of the country which led to escalating violence and eventually civil war. Only then did the Arab League enter the picture as an invading force.

While I suspect the main thrust of your point was "LOL FRANCE SURRENDERED!!1", you have raised an interesting point. The actions of the franc-tireurs of 1870 was seen by the German army as being contrary to the laws of war. During the First World War the German army in Belgium and France responded to the problem of informal armed opposition to their occupation by rounding up large numbers of hostages, including priests. These hostages were executed when the Germans heard reports (accurate or not) that their columns were under fire from civilian snipers. Yet, somehow, mass executions only made the problem worse!

So, rather than deal with your hypothetical regarding ongoing German rocket attacks, let's ask some questions about the Franco-German relationship that have more historic grounding:

1) Was it appropriate for French or Belgian civilians to take up arms in defense of their homelands? Was it understandable?

2) Is collective punishment an appropriate response to terrorism?

3) Is it possible for two peoples who have fought three massive and bloody wars in a 70 year period to ever experience peace as equals? Or is extermination / domination the only solution?

4) If peace is possible, is it best achieved by having the victor seizing land and imposing massive economic sanctions upon the vanquished?

The problem is that it's impossible for such a leader to come to the fore so long as the current situation exists. That's why we have Hamas in power in Gaza. You say that it has to be Palestine that makes the first move; I say 'bullshit': so long as the power balance is shifted so much in Israel's favour, Israel has to be the one that makes the first good faith gesture. As I pointed out before, doing so would undermine Hamas far more effectively than assassinating some ten-a-penny commander.

The war began well before the invasion of the Arab states' armies (and before the UN partition took effect) but even in the civil war phase it began with a (mostly Palestinian) Arab "offensive phase." There was also the declared certainty of state-level invasions that were to take effect in May 1948 (months after the fighting started) and the Arab Liberation Army, which was effectively a proxy force - ostensibly for Arab states generally, effectively for Syria.

TL;DR, while the war didn't start with the invasion of the neighbouring Arab states' armies, the actual nuanced narrative doesn't leave you with that different of a "who struck first" bottom line.

That's not to dip my toe into the Angry Israel Palestine Ranting du jour, just an historical sidebar.

To keep going with the French as an example, it's too bad they didn't learn those lessons for themselves when it came to Algeria. Years of mass executions, torture of civilians and general brutality in what they saw as defense of a part of France did nothing but inflame Algerian nationalism. It took the collapse of the Fourth Republic and a quasi-dictatorship under De Gaulle for them to pull out.

I like this take on the civilian casualties.

I think it makes a big difference, actually. If you ignore the immediate cause of the 1948 war, the picture painted is one where Israel was merely defending itself and the Palestinians and Arab states are genocidal aggressors. If you accept that the true source of the conflict was a plan of foreign powers to divide a country that did not "belong" to those powers in any conventional moral or legal sense and which was proposed despite the opposition of the majority of that country's inhabitants, then the war takes on a different complexion. In other words, slicing up the country without the consent of that country can itself be understood as an act of aggression. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians were acting in self-defence from their respective points of view, and a narrative that blames the war in 1948 solely on an Arab invasion leaves that out, which makes fairly understanding the conflict impossible.

E: this is why I personally lay the blame for 1948 on Britain and the other Great Powers. Like many or most of the wars of the last 50 years, the war in 1948 was a direct result of imperialism and colonialism.

We're going to disagree because I don't believe that an olive branch extended by Israel undermines Hamas in the least. If anything, they'll be strengthened. Israel would have to extend an olive branch to someone, but there's no one in the Palestinian government who has the power to receive it. There's a vacuum of power. When that happens, history has shown time and time again that the most radical candidates tend to fill it. Even if it was presented to someone else, Hamas would simply claim that their attacks forced Israel's hand and many Palestinians would believe it. As such, Hamas is then empowered not only externally with more public acceptance, but internally to escalate things.

As such, there's a high degree of probability that you would end up strengthening Hamas by an Israeli first move. It's not a certainty, but it's very likely. Israel is the more stable country and therefore can deal with internal politics much better - a weaker leader may have a chance of still surviving a peace process (though unlikely). But given how fractured the Palestinians are, until they have a strong leader there's no way to enforce a peace. When you look at most major successful civil uprisings or civil disobedience actions, it was only after the development of a strong leader was the action successful. Washington...Ghandi...MLK...Castro...Mandela. The Palestinians have to coalesce around someone to give Israel someone to work with. If Israel tries to act as kingmaker, he won't have any legitimacy among his own people.

Don't agree, and I know the history of '46, '47, '48 fairly well. Indeed one really has to go back to the Peel commission, the White Paper, the Arab revolt, and earlier. Probably the largest fact you're leaving out here is the great misfortune of the Palestinian Arabs in having jackasses like Haj Amin al-Husseini and kin as their preeminent political leadership in the interwar period (reduced to an extra-useless shambles with equally odious leadership after the Revolt) aggressively throwing away the moral high ground which might've naturally redounded to the Palestinian Arabs otherwise.

Britain shat the bed a number of times throughout the process, but the above is really not a very nuanced narrative of what happened. However much schadenfreude one might have about this, Britain's role was a miserable no-win situation in the interwar period, desperately to placate irreconcilable forces.

*hand-wobble*

Too pat a summary in terms of excusing the local actors imo.

Israel can't extend the direct olive branch to Hamas or any other Gaza group as well as any outside group could. For the same reason that Hamas extending an olive branch to Israel would be seen as a plot to destroy Israel.

My problem with all the "well, Hamas just needs to surrender" stuff is that it's running on the same theory that if we just bomb the Taliban enough a purely military approach to the problem will solve Afghanistan as well. A purely military approach is failure, because the objective is not military. You cannot crush an opposing ideology by killing it's adherents. This is why Hamas's approach is a failure as well: lobbing rockets at Israel isn't going to convince them to surrender to Hamas and leave the region. The only solution is a third party building up Gaza (poverty increases violence, dur. This issue cannot be solved as long as Gaza is a wreck) while throwing a ton of support behind an alternative government party that wants to build the country economically. And said third party and everyone nearby would need to be ready for and accepting of the violent outbreaks of the current militant people seeing their power slip away as someone else becomes both the provider of services and offering peace.

We're talking decades of this shit. Because none of this shit can be solved quickly or without a lot of blood spilled once it becomes ideological. We're dealing with a generation or two that only knows militant hate. I had someone at work today telling me the solution was to wipe Gaza off the map because they're all lazy and don't want to build their country up anyways, and he firmly believed that every Palestinian was a lazy violent subhuman. This is the sort of thing we need to deal with on both sides (Palestinians who are convinced every Israeli is a jack booted thug, etc) and will take a very long time of a neutral party weathering the storm.

It's not like this is a new concept. Racial integration wasn't exactly a smooth road, either. But I cannot see any end goal to a purely military strategy that succeeds.

I don't often venture into threads on this topic, anywhere, because the Israeli-Palestine conflict is an enormous mess from which I see little chance of a happy ending for anyone. And I am interested in getting a better handle on the issue than I have now, but I have to admit I'm a bit discomfited by the widespread blanket refusal to assign any blame to Palestinian terrorists for murder, and nothing I've seen from people issuing blanket condemnations of Israel suggests to me that I should expect accurate information from them. (Which is one of the problems with trying to understand the situation better: everyone has an axe to grind. You often get conflicting information from different sources, and it's not clear whom, if anyone, you should believe.) I'm not trying to pick a fight about scale or appropriate response (at least not yet!), but I would hope we can all agree on these assertions:

1. Continued Israeli settlement is a waving a big red flag in front of Palestinians.

2. Palestinian terrorists, including Hamas, fire rockets at Israelis with frequency, and this is a Bad Thing. If you disagree with this statement, independent of what you think about Israeli response, then you need to be upfront and admit that you support terrorism, and while I think that's pretty gross, it's at least coherent.

3. Israel is, reasonably, not pleased about this. Often their responses are wildly inappropriate in method (e.g., white phosphorus) and/or scale, but it is not abnormal that they should want people trying to kill their citizens to themselves be killed.

My opinion on Israeli policy in this area boils down to: one part "I understand why the Palestinians are upset and that they do not appreciate something like a 400% collateral damage rate"* plus one part "I understand why the Israelis eventually get fed up with their citizens being rocketed and so forth and turn around and say 'no, fuck YOU'" plus one part "fuck, this is a mess."

Unless you advocate the complete destruction of the State of Israel (serious reform doesn't count as "complete destruction") or the mass genocide of Palestinians, there's not a real obvious way out of the situation. (If you do advocate one or both of those things, well, you should be clear about that, but I probably also don't want to talk to you.)


* Yes, yes, you don't like the phrase "collateral damage" because you think it's dehumanizing. Look how anti-war you are! Well done you. Moving right along.


One of the problems presented by the extremely strong mapping between "Israeli people" and "Jewish people" is that you never really know the motivations of the people you talk to. On the Palestinian-leaning side, there's no way to tell if someone thinks Israel's done something bad because it's a bad policy or because "fuck the Jews." I'm Jewish, and growing up I kind of assumed antisemitism was a solved problem. And let me tell you, it's not. This uncertainty of motive is particularly problematic because you see it in people with whom you've previously spoken with about unrelated issues and come away thinking they were reasonable, thoughtful, unprejudiced people. And then Israel comes up and out OUT COME THE BEES. On the Israeli-leaning side, well, I'm Jewish and I'm pretty sure I have relatives who would support Israel no matter what they did. Judaism tends to be pretty insular, maybe because we have a long history of getting collectively assfucked from every corner but our own.

As an aside, as everyone is so fond of lecturing the Israelis about pursuing policy based on outcomes only: antisemitic rhetoric makes us identify much more strongly as Jews. Most of us aren't very religious. Personally I identify mainly as an American. But nothing makes me identify as Jewish more strongly than antisemitism. So if you hate us, maybe you should tone that shit down. Sometimes I think if people just left us alone we'd be gone as a religion within a few generations by way of assimilation. Look at most of us here in the U.S. We mostly intermarry freely, and a lot of us put on funny hats a couple times a year and call it a day.

I have two large areas of concern with anti-Israel rhetoric:

A. There's a pretty big double standard at play. As noted, everyone likes to lecture Israel about outcome-based policy, e.g., "Yes, it would be very satisfying to hit back, but it would be an inferior outcome even for you in the long run." No one ever seems to want to hold Palestinians to the same standard. Palestinians get a pass for stirring the pot. Israel gets yelled at if they retaliate. Everyone says "Oh, yes, the Palestinians shouldn't be doing that, but it's understandable!" Why isn't Israel's response "understandable," even if you think it's unwise? I think it's very understandable that they would want to shoot back.

B. Most people who are down on Israel seem to want to Israel to turn the other cheek. Well, they've done quite a lot of that. This does not strike me as a plan with an end. For how long are they supposed to turn the other cheek? The argument seems to go essentially like this:

1. Israel should do nothing about rocket attacks and bombs deployed against their citizens.
   
2. ?????
   
3. Peace

I am not at all clear about where the leap to step 3 comes from. And, unfortunately, the problem of motivation that I mentioned earlier makes it hard to tell if any given person really thinks that this path will lead to a mutually beneficial outcome, or if they really just want Israel fuck off and die.

Moving on: a question. It was my understanding -- and I may be wrong about this, read on -- that somewhere around 2004 or 2005 the Israelis reached an agreement that looked promising, and that involved Israeli land concessions, which does not happen often. And that the Palestinians then reneged on the deal.** Is this accurate or am I misremembering? I asked a friend and he said he thought there was no agreement and Israel just gave up land (West Bank? Can't remember) as a good faith gesture.

If my recollection is correct: What incentive is there for Israel to continue negotiations with people who are not negotiating in good faith?

If it was just a gesture of good faith: then it seems that the thing people want Israel to do, which is this

then Israel's already done that and it's gotten them fuckall in terms of results.

If none of this is accurate and land concessions didn't happen: Please say so. I really am interested in improving my handle on the situation.


** I recognize that Israel is an actual state with the necessary infrastructure to implement something like that and that it's rather harder to rein in individual crazies armed with rockets over whom you have no control. I am not sure what the point is in negotiating with someone who is powerless to deliver the things you want and that they've promised, however.


IN CONCLUSION: Fuck this is a horrible situation. Ugh. I hate people. To be clear, I think Netanyahu and his political allies are insane and dangerous and they scare me quite a bit. I'm just not also willing to let the other side off the hook.

I'll state up front that any "if you think Israel has the stronger hand here" stuff isn't anti-semitic, and that's part of the reason the ADL doesn't help the conversation in the states. Not that I think you're saying that, just that it's a strong undercurrent in US political discussion that if you don't 100% think Israel is in the right at all times, you hate the Jews and not just Israel's current government's bullshit. That said: I don't think anyone in this thread is saying Hamas is awesome. They're dickish terrorists with the smarts to have a PR wing that causes the IDF to look like cartoon villains to the people in Gaza. Most of the criticism about the IDF's behavior is that if you have to compare yourself tit for tat with Hamas' behavior.. you're doing something deeply wrong. See the whole Human Shield thing where saying "but Hamas does it!" is not justification for doing it yourselves.

I'm unaware of any strong 2004/2005ish peace deal. What did happen then was Israel dismantled the Gaza settlements and pulled out/told them to govern their damned selves. Good move, and there's actually a sharp decline in mortar and rocket fire in 2006/2007. 2008 had a cease fire going that was shockingly successful during the summer months. The question depending on your views is why it was broken. Israel went over the border to find a tunnel they thought was going to be used to kidnap people, and killed a few Hamas troops. Shit broke the hell down when Hamas viewed it as a breach of the cease fire. So, depending if you think there was a tunnel or it was bad intel your opinion on that will change. But it was a very successful temporary peace and with some hope it would have lasted beyond it's 6 month trial period. Naturally it wasn't complete, but 220 attacks/month down to 11 from non-government groups(meaning not Hamas, just random douchey terrorists) is pretty great progress.

That whole thing broke down pretty hard core, and lead to the Gaza War in 2008. Which is sad, since it was the most progress anyone had managed in a long assed time.

The Palestinian Papers from 2007 seem to imply that 2006-2008 was actually a really ripe time for peace negotiations, as the Palestinians appeared willing to completely give up Jerusalem in exchange for a 1:1 land swap for settlements (Israel could keep most of the settlements if they gave them equally valuable land) and were pretty much entirely about the idea of stopping this mess. It's distressing that minor incidents over a two month period completely fucked the situation.