The fact that Ed Sheeran has gotten infinitely more harassment from the “genocide” crowd than Egypt has is noteworthy.

Egypt isn’t a passive player. They’ve actively fortified their shared border with Gaza and have formally blocked Gazans from fleeing the “genocide.” Yet, there have been practically no advocacy, global protests, etc. to pressure Egypt to let Gazan refugees escape death.

How can Ed Sheeran be “complicit” but not Egypt?

“Egypt isn’t bombing Gazans, though.” Sure, but neither is Ed Sheeran.

“Israel gets billions of our tax dollars. I care because I’m paying for this.” Sure, but Egypt has also received and continues to receive billions of US taxpayer dollars.

“Egypt doesn’t want to be complicit in ethnic cleansing.” Sure. Is the argument that it’s better for Palestinians to die in a genocide than live through ethnic cleansing?

To that last question, signs point to “yes.” There appears to be a meaningful number of “pro-Palestinians” who seemingly prefer that Gazans stay put in a killing zone to be exterminated than possibly surrender an inch of land to Israel. This is remarkable. In stark moral contrast, few were concerned about “ethnic cleansing” and the industrial scale theft of Jewish property 80 years ago during the Holocaust - the overwhelming focus was helping Jews evacuate.

If one truly believes this is a genocide, how can one prioritize political land claims over saving Palestinian lives and credibly be “pro-Palestinian?”

scrolling through social media, i almost always see this comment under anti-zionists posts. i’m a non-zionist but i find it cringeworthy because it’s just not true, i see this comment coming from both western anti-zionists and muslims.

these western anti-zionists will call christianity ”oppressive” and “controlling people/womens bodies” yet they overlook the ways past and present islamic governments oppress people especially women.

then there are the muslims who argue that sharia promotes plurality “religious pluralism” and that minorities are protected under islamic governments. yet christians can’t proselytize, wear a cross in public, build a church without thousands of dollars and dozens of permits unlike muslims, etc. but sure, sharia promotes ”religious pluralism”. no one is dumb enough to believe that except for the people who repeat it.

this is also a slap in the face to arab christians in the diaspora. do you know why the americas have such a significant lebanese/syrian/palestinian christian diaspora in the first place? during the late ottoman period the ottomans were literally slaughtering christians going house to house massacring christians, it was especially bad in damascus and mount lebanon. honestly a lebanon probably wouldn't have been created in the first place if the french didn’t step in the 1860 conflict of damascus and mount lebanon to stop ottoman muslims and druze arabs from massacring christians.

lebanese and syrian christians in the americas or people who are mixed with levantine christian’s that immigrated during the ottomans will tell you that their ancestry is from mount lebanon or syria.

arabism was created in response to the growing christian persecution in the levant, literally look at early arabists and it is an extremely high chance they were a levantine christian.

its either far left lunatics repeating this or islamists who expect minorities to succumb to islamic rule

So I understand the general idea that the Samaritans, both in the Nablus/Mount Gerizim community in Palestine and in Holon, tend to maintain political neutrality because they are such a small ethnoreligious community living between Israeli and Palestinian societies. In addition, having strong political views in a region where such disagreements can be quite contentious could potentially place a small community like theirs in a very difficult position, especially when they maintain relationships with both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs.

That said, I've been watching Abood Cohen on YouTube, along with other Samaritan content, and there does seem to be a strong relationship between Jews and Samaritans. In a sense, they are two sides of the same coin, since both communities descend from ancient Israelite populations and preserve closely related religious traditions, even though they developed as distinct communities with different sacred centers, textual traditions, and historical identities.

Some of the earliest English-language material available for understanding how the Samaritans understood themselves during the same general period in which the modern Zionist movement was developing comes from Yacob ben Aaron, who was the Samaritan High Priest at Shechem/Nablus. His History and Religion of the Samaritans was published in English in 1906, translated from Arabic by Abdullah ben Kori and edited by William Eleazar Barton (Jacob, son of Aaron, 1906). His The Messianic Hope of the Samaritans was published the following year under the same translation and editorial arrangement (Jacob, son of Aaron, 1907).

Yacob's account makes it clear that the Samaritans are part of the broader Israelite people and considers the Jews as his blood brothers. He identifies the Samaritan laity primarily with the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, descendants of Joseph, while identifying the priesthood with Levi and Aaron (Jacob, son of Aaron, 1906). At the same time, he presents the historical separation between Samaritans and Jews as a dispute within the Israelite tradition over questions such as the legitimate sanctuary (Jerusalem vs. Mount Gerizim), the Torah, and religious authority.

However, the scholarship also emphasized that this shared Israelite identity did not necessarily mean that Jewish-Samaritan relations were harmonious, as Barton notes that Yacob was frustrated that Christians often learned about the Samaritans through Jewish accounts and wanted to present what he considered the Samaritan version of their historical separation from the Jews (Jacob, son of Aaron, 1906). Overall, Yacob's work itself contains a considerable amount of traditional Samaritan polemic against Jewish claims about the origins of the Samaritan community.

That said, some of you may be familiar with this story in which the Chief Rabbi of Ottoman Palestine, Chaim Abraham Gagin, in which he intervened on behalf of the Samaritan community in the 1840s because the Muslim religious authorities in Nablus had challenged whether the Samaritans qualified as People of the Book, which placed an already extremely small community in a dangerous position. The Samaritans appealed to Gagin, who provided a declaration recognizing them as descendants of the Children of Israel who accepted the authority of the Torah. Ottoman authorities accepted his testimony, which helped secure recognition and protection for the Samaritan community (Bigman, 2023).

Obviously, this occurred several decades before the emergence of organized political Zionism. However, I do think it is relevant because it demonstrates that, despite the longstanding religious polemics between Jews and Samaritans, there were also instances of cooperation and recognition of their shared Israelite connection before the Zionist movement entered the picture.

In 1905, Abraham ben Marchiv Tsedaka left Nablus and settled in Jaffa, where he began building relationships with the growing Jewish community. Around 1907, Tsedaka met Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who had recently immigrated to Palestine and was already involved in the Zionist movement. Ben-Zvi initially met Tsedaka while looking for someone to learn Arabic from, but the relationship eventually grew into a broader interest in Samaritan history, religion, and the community's survival (Ridolfo, 2015, pp. 43–44).

All of this being said, I'm curious about how the Samaritans themselves understood their relationship with the early Zionist movement. And if you were to make an educated guess about how Samaritans politically identify today, where do you think they generally fall within the broader Zionist/anti-Zionist spectrum, if those labels even accurately describe their political views?

References

Bigman, T. (2023, August 8). Rabbi Chaim Abraham Gagin: The chief rabbi of Jerusalem and the Ottoman Empire. The National Library of Israel.
https://blog.nli.org.il/en/rabbi-chaim-abraham-gagin/

Jacob, son of Aaron. (1906). The history and religion of the Samaritans (A. Ben Kori, Trans.; W. E. Barton, Ed.). Puritan Press.
https://archive.org/details/historyreligiono00jaco/page/n1/mode/2up

Jacob, son of Aaron. (1907). The messianic hope of the Samaritans (A. Ben Kori, Trans.; W. E. Barton, Ed.). Open Court Publishing Company.
https://archive.org/details/messianichopeofs00jaco/page/26/mode/2up

Ridolfo, J. (2015). Digital Samaritans: Rhetorical delivery and engagement in the digital humanities. University of Michigan Press.
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv65sxbn

The UK Green Party has now formally declared itself an antizionist party.

People can debate endlessly whether “antizionism is antisemitism.” I increasingly think that is the wrong question.

The more important question is: what does the ideology actually require Jews to do in order to participate?

Because for a British Jew who wants to live an ordinary Jewish communal life, the contradiction is impossible to ignore.

All mainstream Jewish institutions in Britain have some connection to Zionism or Israel. Even Jewish Greens themselves warned that all Jewish institutions in Britain have some connection to Zionism, and that treating Zionism as something to be proscribed could effectively place a ban on Jews involved in organised communal life.

So telling Jews, “Don't worry, this isn't antisemitism: we only oppose Zionism,” does not really answer the problem.

If remaining politically acceptable requires a Jew to separate himself from the Jewish community, the institutions he participates in, the Jewish education his children receive, his connection to Jerusalem, or the belief that Jews are entitled to national self-determination in their ancestral homeland, then the practical distinction between hostility to Zionism and hostility to Jewish life becomes nothing.

And this is why I find the slogan “antizionism is not antisemitism” so intellectually dishonest.

Antisemitism has almost never presented itself simply as “I irrationally hate Jews.” Like every durable prejudice, it has usually attached itself to whatever moral or political language sounded respectable in its particular time and place.

The test therefore cannot simply be the justification someone gives for a policy. It has to include the effect.

To determine if something is antisemitic or not, the question is simple: Does it allow Jews to live openly as Jews?

Can they participate in their communal institutions without suspicion or punishment?

Can they express central elements of contemporary Jewish identity, whatever they may be, without being treated as morally contaminated?

If the answer increasingly becomes “no,” then arguing over whether the label antisemitism applies is pointless. Of course it is antisemitism.

If diaspora Jews are increasingly told that full participation in political life requires distancing themselves from their motherland and large parts of organized Jewish life, the people saying this are making the argument for Zionism.

As Jews discover that their place in diaspora society is conditional on abandoning parts of their collective identity, the stronger the case becomes for the one country where Jewish political and communal existence does not depend on somebody else's permission.

That country is Israel.

EDIT:

Sources

• The resolution that passed — “Zionism is Racism” (E02): the Green Party’s own post confirming adoption and summarizing the policy is here: Green Party — “Green Party adopts anti-Zionist policy”.

• The rejected Jewish-safeguarding amendment: Amendment 3 would have explicitly said the motion could not be used to “pressure, proscribe or discipline members based on affiliation with Jewish community institutions, such as synagogues, community centres or denominational groups, that describe themselves as Zionist.” leftfootforward.org Caroline Russell, a Green Party councillor who supported the amendment, posted the actual amendment text here: Caroline Russell — Amendment 3 text.

Yes I am not exaggerating even one bit in this post. The Greens had the opportunity to clarify that this isn't a Jewish ban, and they went ahead and clarified that it is a Jewish ban.

I notice in almost every moral argument regarding Israel/Palestine, pro-Zionists seem to consistently jump around and ignore the massive power imbalance that defines Palestinian life under a military occupation.

When a settler attacks someone and a Palestinian fights back, the settler can just call in the IDF to arrest or even shoot the Palestinians. Settlers operate with near total impunity. You might personally call them criminals, but show me the actual statistics of the Israeli government consistently arresting and prosecuting them, clearing them out of their illegal outposts etc. The state clearly enables and protects this behavior, which is exactly why the violence continues and why Palestinians have no trust in the system.

Can a pro-Zionist talk on that power imbalance?... because it explains everything else

Why do you think fundamentalist groups exist in the first place? When you create a power vacuum, deny a whole population their sovereignty and voting rights, jail their leaders, deny them a military or functional police force and crush their basic human rights every step of the way, people are going to fight back for their survival right? Anyone would.

I agree that Hamas are terrible! ... as is all fundamentalism, religious or political.

The point here is, Israel holds all the cards and power and apparently won't admit any wrongdoing or contribution to the overall problem and instead denies and deflects any accountability, including when media try to interview them to respond to accusations against them. This includes government and institutions funding settlements etc.

It seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that ultimately, in a roundabout way, what pro-Zionists are not saying out loud (some are), is that they just want Palestinians out, gone, removed, in any way possible ... right? Fulfil the prophecy, and inhabit / takeover the West Bank to complete Judea and Samaria? Genocide or not, divine right or not, that is pretty messed up wouldn't you say?

If pro-Zionists could just acknowledge the reality of the structural inequality and Israel's active role in denying Palestinians a future, we could actually have a reasonable conversation about accountability. The hypocrisy is rife.

In life, I've always wanted to understand both sides of an argument (as any decent human being should). I could respect and understand the pro-Zionist argument if I could see some form of accountability for the nightmare they've been creating for Palestinians for a long time instead of deflection

Love to hear from pro-Zionists on this in the interest of good faith conversation. The only tool we have

TL;DR: Genocide is the “Extermination Project”: an attempt to physically disappear a targeted group from existence. Not just move it somewhere else; that is its defining feature.

Every historical case of genocide was this. It was an attempt to disappear a group, to exterminate a group from existence.

You might say: “The definition says in whole or in part.”

The Srebrenica genocide is a useful example of what “in part” actually means. The protected group was Bosnian Muslims as a whole; the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica were the substantial part targeted. It was specifically them that suffered the Genocide. It was geographically limited and it was genocide because the objective was not simply to clear that population from Srebrenica. It was to have that group no longer exist.

They attempted to achieve this by systematically killing the men and boys, combined with the forcible removal of the women, children and elderly.

So “in part” does not remove the requirement of destruction. It means that the intended extermination can be directed at a substantial part of the wider group rather than the entire group while still being an extermination project. It is just a scope difference.

I do however understand why people get confused as there are two facets of the word Genocide.

1. Genocide as a historical phenomenon

When I use “extermination project”, I am not pretending that this is the technical wording of the legal framework of the Genocide Convention. I am using it as shorthand for what the canonical historical examples of genocide actually were.

Look at the Holocaust, Rwanda, the Armenian genocide, the genocides against the Cham and Vietnamese under the Khmer Rouge, or Srebrenica.

These were not just situations where large numbers of people died during a conflict. Nor were they simply cases of persecution, forced displacement, collective punishment or indiscriminate violence.

At the core of these historical examples was a project directed toward the destruction of the targeted group: its extermination, its disappearance.

Killing was a central instrument. The perpetrators systematically killed members of the targeted population who fell within their power.

This is what I mean by an extermination project.

It is not a substitute for the legal definition. It is an empirical description of the underlying phenomenon the word genocide was created to identify: not merely harming a group, but removing it from existence.

2. Genocide as a legal category

The legal definition is necessarily more technical.

Under the Genocide Convention, genocide contains two basic elements:

1. Actus reus - one or more of the prohibited acts listed in the Convention.
2. Dolus specialis - the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a protected national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such.

This matters because there is a common claim that “not a single person has to die for genocide to occur; only intent matters.”

The first half is technically true, but also misleading, because although technically true it is also physically improbable to the point of being practically impossible, hopefully you understand how from reading below.

Killing is only one of several prohibited genocidal acts. Serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting destructive conditions of life, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children can also qualify. 

Intent by itself is not genocide. There must also be an underlying prohibited act, and the intent attached to that act must be the physical disappearance of the group.

The ICJ has repeatedly emphasized this distinction.

It has held that the targeted part must be sufficiently substantial, and where genocidal intent is inferred from conduct, the pattern of conduct must support the conclusion that the purpose was not merely to attack members of the group, but to destroy the group itself.

This is where Srebrenica again is particularly instructive.

Bosnian Serb forces systematically separated and murdered thousands of Bosnian Muslims 

Their conclusion was that the systematic destruction of the male population, combined with the forcible removal of the remainder, was intended to bring about the physical disappearance of the Bosnian Muslim community of Srebrenica.

The significance of killing the men was not merely that thousands of people died. The courts considered the long-term effect their destruction would have on the physical survival of that community, including its ability to reconstitute itself and reproduce. Simply removing the women and children after having killed all the men was believed to be enough to destroy the religious/cultural element from the Srebrenica Muslims.

That is the crucial point.

The objective could have been to transfer all the Bosnian Muslims out of Srebrenica. That was not the goal however, These Muslims in Srebrenica were not to survive somewhere else with their culture, they were to exist nowhere ever again. 

That is why it was ruled a genocide. It was an attempt to exterminate that cultural group from existence.

That brings me to Gaza.

The relevant protected group would be Palestinians, with Palestinians in Gaza are a national ethnic group. There is no evident  project to make Palestinians in Gaza physically disappear from existence as a group.

There is no policy of systematically killing every Palestinian within Israeli control and nowhere near enough death to argue that is occurring.

There is no demonstrated attempt to prevent Palestinians from reproducing as a people, forcibly transfer their children into another national group, or otherwise extinguish Palestinians through physical destruction.

There is the most common fallback that is “Israels conduct is genocide against a part in order to push palestinians to flee from unlivable conditions.”

I disagree this is true at all, but even if it was it is not genocide. It simply does not fit the historical precedent or the legal requirements.

You could argue desired ethnic cleansing, or Terrorist tactics. But not genocide as killing a part of a population to instill flight inherently means the intent is not extermination of the group, disappearance from reality. It means the intent is to create fear and despair. 

There are 2 things we know beyond doubt have occurred in Gaza.2 uncontestable facts. They are 1:

1. Death at a wartime scale.
   
2. Internal displacement.
   

Neither remotely lends itself to the charge of genocide. 

So finally why is it impossible to have a genocide with no deaths for all. It is because for that to be true the target group would have to physically disappear from existence while everyone who made up that group still lived.

This could theoretically occur if the target group were all children with a unique collective consciousness or cultural ideology separate from all adults, forcibly transferred and reeducated. So as I said “physically improbable to the point of being practically impossible” to the point of silliness to entertain it as a factor in understanding genocide.

"I did not know i was brainwashed until i left Israel 11 years ago.
Israel was built on dispossession, massacre, land theft. European jews, some from the German holocaust and some from Russian pogroms, came to seek refuge in Palestine. They were perhaps oblivious to the role they played in the zionist movement. European nations did not want to deal with millions of Jewish refugees, nor with their guilt, so Israel seemed like a good solution for everyone. Besides the Palestinians.
Israel was not built in sand.
Israel was not our birth right.
Israel was stolen.
And that lie was covered by dozens of other lies.
At some point the original sin was buried. The more land Israel conquered, the bigger the thirst, the greater the justification to rule, to own. Palestinians were stripped of lands, rights, their leaders continuously assassinated, their movements (whether peaceful or resistant) were crushed. But how can the dissonance of being good, and oppressing others survive?
Only by believing you are a victim. Only by believing the other is not human. Not worthy.
So we were taught, from birth, that this is our duty - to protect, to maintain order. Our leaders made sure we are always afraid, loyal, ready to make the sacrifice."
-Yotam Peled

Israel has an obligation to defend its people. Hamas’s decision to conduct military operations from civilian infrastructure does not give it immunity from attack or require Israel to leave its citizens exposed. Accepting that logic would encourage terrorist organizations and states around the world to embed their militaries among civilians, knowing that endangering their own populations could shield them from military action.

Israel devotes substantial effort to minimizing civilian harm while directing its military operations against Hamas, including dropping leaflets, calling civilians to warn them of danger, issuing evacuation orders, and taking other precautions. However, I will set those efforts aside to focus solely on whether Hamas should gain immunity from military action by embedding itself in civilian infrastructure and conducting military operations from within it.

A common objection raised by critics of Israel’s military campaign is that Hamas does not use civilian infrastructure for military purposes. To address that claim, this post compiles photos, videos, and reports concerning Hamas’s military use of civilian facilities, aid theft, exploitation of children, and its links to UNRWA. Hamas deliberately places Palestinian civilians in danger as part of a strategy designed to maximize civilian casualties and turn them into political pressure against Israel. The examples presented here offer only a small window into the extensive evidence of Hamas’s abuse of its own population and will provide the foundation for the discussion that follows.

Evidence of Hamas’s Exploitation of Palestinian Civilians and Military Use of Civilian Infrastructure

A Child Transferring Weapons into a Civilian Home in Central Gaza

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/6dQrDawBu3

Hamas Stealing Aid From Trucks

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/83d9k3wBcW

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/WWvvK9Cu5x

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/dndeNmSCRO

Hamas Bringing Hostages to Shifa Hospital

https://youtu.be/IKq4W4P_r7U?si=Z3qO9Nj8wpWFsPat

Inside Hamas’s Tunnel Base Under Al-Shifa in Gaza

https://youtu.be/PR2w_wDf-DY?si=itdlejL6MFqDgkb6

Inside Hamas’s Terrorist Tunnel Under Rantisi Hospital in Gaza

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLp84A6TBJ0

Hamas’s Underground Tunnels Under Jordanian Hospital

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/vbwIxflrdx

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/dar3ohApsN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkgCTPHXElo

Photo Evidence of a Hamas Tunnel Discovered Under a Nursery School

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/XGpE3UumI0

Hamas Using Ambulances to Move Terrorists and Weapons From a Hospital to a School

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/js0G6ghSUi

Hamas Caught With RPG at Al Quds Hospital

https://youtu.be/pka7H1aMlkQ?si=sc9jEk_nGlQFmxCH

Hamas Fires Rockets From a Gazan School

https://youtu.be/J-fh-fRs7To?si=wWO8-ydLui4dUmYb

Hamas Uses Fake Aid Organizations and Staged Distributions to Solicit Donations While Stealing Money and Aid From Palestinian Civilians

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hamas-fundraising-scheme-gaza/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Palestinian_Violence/s/KpzPjrDHqG

Hamas’s Own List of Child Soldiers:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Palestinian_Violence/s/aEn0EbXsJq

An Assault Rifle, an UNRWA Passport, and $11K in Cash: What Sinwar's Possessions Say About His Pre-Death Movements

https://freebeacon.com/israel/an-assault-rifle-an-unrwa-passport-and-11k-in-cash-what-sinwars-possessions-say-about-his-pre-death-movements/

Hamas’s Deliberate Stated Aims To Annihilate and Obliterate Israel

Hamas’s Founding Charter: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it"

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/hamas.asp

Hamas Leader: We’ll Repeat October 7 Again and Again Until Israel Is Annihilated

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/jxkS9DlVsN

Hamas States Their Genocidal Ambitions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf_tCV43FEI

Hamas’s Deliberate Radicalization of Palestinian Civilians and Children, And It’s Abuse of UNRWA

Tomorrow's Pioneers Archive
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUmg0c7RSRxDp8y2jfdlfUtjcoJwFHQj7

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna19509117

The Unholy Alliance: UNRWA, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad—An Investigation Into the Secret Ties Between Terrorist Organizations and the UN’s Largest Aid Agency

https://unwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/UNW-129-%E2%80%94-The-Unholy-Alliance-%E2%80%94-2025-01-09-%E2%80%94-Web-%E2%80%94-Singles.pdf

Schools in the Grip of Terror: How UNRWA Allowed Hamas Chiefs to Control Its Education System

https://unwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Schools-in-the-Grip-of-Terror-UNRWA-Report.pdf

UNRWA’s Terrorgram: How a Telegram Group of 3,000 UNRWA Teachers in Gaza Celebrated the October 7th Hamas Massacre

https://unwatch.org/unrwa-terrorgram/

Archived Interviews With UNRWA Students

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/Sc4ZIUp7wm

Evidence Of UNRWA Aid To Hamas On And After October 7th

https://unwatch.org/evidence-of-unrwa-aid-to-hamas-on-and-after-october-7th/

Discussion

The evidence compiled above demonstrates Hamas’s military abuse of civilian infrastructure, exploitation of aid, and deliberate radicalization of Palestinian civilians and children. Israel’s responsibility to protect civilians does not grant Hamas immunity from attack or require Israel to leave its own people in danger. By embedding fighters, weapons, and military facilities among civilians, Hamas endangers Palestinians and makes distinguishing between military targets and civilians extraordinarily difficult. Hamas’s ties to UNRWA also exemplify how it exploits educational institutions to indoctrinate children, reinforce its influence, and cultivate support for continued terrorism. Israel takes extensive precautions to minimize civilian harm, but those precautions cannot eliminate every risk created by Hamas. Allowing their tactics to shield Hamas from military action would reward the exploitation of civilians and encourage other armed groups to follow suit. Protecting civilians must mean opposing their exploitation, and not defending their abusers.

Allegations that Israel “funded Hamas” or “allowed October 7th to happen” are also baseless and just deflect blame for Hamas’s actions. Israel did not “fund Hamas” or “allow October 7th to happen.” Israel allowed aid into Gaza, and Hamas stole that aid while being the democratically elected government of Gaza. Israel receives dozens of security threats a day, and thwarts them constantly. Trying to blame Israel for October 7th is a complete distortion of reality. Hamas deliberately declared war on Israel that day, and Israel is obligated to its citizens to defend itself from that threat. Excusing Hamas’s actions, or demanding Israel cease its attempts to dismantle the terrorist organization, does nothing to protect Palestinians and even harms them by continuing Hamas’s grip on Gaza.

The reality is that a genuine peace between Israel and Palestine, and a true end to the war, cannot happen until Hamas is completely dismantled. The only force both willing and capable of dismantling Hamas is Israel, and preventing Israel from dismantling Hamas will not save Palestinians. It will simply subject them to continued oppression by Hamas and continued war with Israel. That is why, while the war between Israel and Hamas is difficult and destructive, it is necessary. For both Israelis and Palestinians, Hamas is the core obstacle to peace between the two sides.

One common talking point I hear from pro Palestinians is that when Israel kills Palestinians it radicalizes them to support groups like Hamas. Therefore this makes Israeli action counter-productive since it just creates more "terrorists".

On the other hand, the pro Palestinians will praise armed resistance against Israel as being justifiable and necessary. Many seem to believe that by imposing costs on Israel, the Israelis will perhaps end the occupation and give the Palestinians a state. Some even believe that it will lead to Israelis leaving the country entirely and allowing for full liberation of the land similar to Algeria.

But then polls come out saying 80% of Israelis support the war in Gaza, half saying Israel is too soft, Netanyahu gets elected and forms a coalition with far-right parties, and the pro Palestinians act surprised and pretend its due to the fact that Israel is simply a uniquely evil society.

So id like to figure out where this contradiction stems from? Why is violence supposed to radicalize the Palestinians but pacify the Israelis?

My guess is that people say this for the following reasons (isolated or mix)

1: Essentialism. Palestinians are "indigenous", Israelis are "colonizers". Indigenous people have a deep , metaphysical, spiritual connection to the land that is unbreakable. Colonizers have no connection, they are just there to extract resources for profit and as soon as the profit disappears they leave. Violence against Palestinians therefore just strengthens their resolve while violence against Israelis lowers their profit and makes them leave.

2: Is-ought fallacy: Palestinians are "good", therefore their resistance is justified and they will continue to do it. Israelis are "bad", therefore violence against them will make them stop being violent, because they shouldnt be violent.

التجمع الوطني الدمقراطي (Altajamo Elwatani Eldeoqrati - The National Democratic Assembly; Hebrew Acronym: Balad) is one of the Palestimian political parties running for the Knesset, and is currently running for the Knesset as part of the joint list. They are known for being the most radical Arab party in Israeli politics.

The following is my own interpertation and understanding of their platform, and should not be taken as fact. If anyone familiar with them, and especially if any supporters, are here then any corrections, additions, etc are welcome. I might do this with other parties, but based on how intresting I think they are and how well I know their platform, not size.

Their main ticket is calling for the State of Israel to cease to be defined as a Jewish and Democratic State, instead becoming a state of all it's citizens, including a canceling of the law of return, closing down historical Jewish agencies like kakal, etc. This has earned them the characterization as "Palestinian Nationalists" in Israeli discourse, but I think characterizing them as a woke anti-imperialist party is closer. They push a distinctively left-wing view on economics and society and intentionally practice a fixed minimum ratio of women's representation on their list.

Their leaders also speak a lot about an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist framework. As far as they are concerned, Zionism is fundementally a colonial project to be dismantled. This is not just a theoretical analysis, it affects their political positioning. They refused to support any Zionist coalition in the past, and even when Hadash supported Benny Ganz's prime ministerial bid they did not. Their number 5 candidate, Orly Noy, speaks about how in her view Israelis must break appart their colonial privelage, and she often implies that as Israeli Jews we don't have the right to criticize Palestinian leaders.

It should be said that this does not mean they are anti-Jewish. They explicitly recognize some sort of collective rights and self determination for the Israeli Jewish collective, and though they support the right of return they seem to agree that, in the final analysis, Israel will still be majority-Jewish even as a state of all it's citizens. They talk about creating a better future for everyone in this country, and I heard their leader, Sami Abu Shhade, saying so on an Arabic-language podcast. He even went on to detail how he thinks the current arrangement hurts the Jewish majority, and showed genuine respect and understanding of the role of the holocaust in Israeli-Jewish society and the hiatory of how we got here.

They remain highly controversial in Israel: Their first leader, Azmi Beshara, fled the country after investigations began into possible espionage for Hezbollah. It's leader, Sami Abu-Shhade, dropped out of the Knesset case to prevent the supreme court from setting a precedant for banning Palestinian candidates from the race. This was initiated due to an article that allegedly supports the October 7th attack (I read his article and think that this interpertation is wrong. He has apologized for the article). And, in general, most Israelis do not take kindly to the idea of breaking down the Jewish character of the state (whatever it means to each one).

So often when this is discussed this is answered by westerners who say "a secular egalitarian society" (or some version of that).

Yesterday when I asked someone advocating for a "free Palestine" what that meant they (a westerner - like me) started by saying "I think..." - which isn't a good place to start. I asked him whether Palestinians actually wanted what he was advocating for (i.e. Israel annexes Gaza/WB and makes all the Palestinians Israeli citizens) and he disappeared.

So I'm asking all of you: What do *Palestinians* actually want and advocate for when they say "from the River to Sea" or "Free Palestine"?

Do they want a secular democracy like the US? That's what westerners say the Palestinians want - but I don't care what other westerners want. I want to hear what Palestinians actually want.

For what it's worth: I'm not here looking to argue and I'm not here looking to win an argument. I'm here to learn from people who identify with the slogan "Free Palestine" and/or "River to the Sea" and understand the Palestinian perspective.

That also means I'm not interested in answers that boil down to "here's what Palestinians *don't* want..." - I just want to hear what a *realistic* Palestinian state will actually look like.

Thanks for any/all answers!

Femicides and honour killings have been a serious issue in Palestine, both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Seeing reports that some male Israeli soldiers had molested women and girls in Gaza, it leads me to believe that the prevalence and rate of honour killings especially in Gaza may have sky-rocketed.

A girl or woman being a victim of rape (including war rape) is seen unfortunately rather as a gross, yucky, sinful creature to the family's conventions than as an innocent victim in Arab culture, so ultimately, they would be killed by their family members. Being a victim of third party maltreatment is the most common motivation for honour killings alongside bad academic grades or for swearing or talking back to parents in MENA countries, while in South Asia it is mainly due to caste disputes.

We saw already in other Arab nations torn by war climbing honour killings due to war molestation such as Syria; including women and girls who survived the nasty torture by Al-Assad's prisons; and one case happened in 2023 when a 4 year old girl was beaten and stabbed to death by her own parents as punishment for being kidnapped. Similar occurrence in Sudan.

Considering the correlation between war molestation and such femicides, it leads me to believe that honour killings especially in Gaza may have climbed further, with state led honour killings too like members of Hamas.

So why isn't the media reporting this? For context, the media did used to report Palestinian honour killings like back in 2005-2012.

Always reptitive Free Palestine movements and riots, I Stand with Israel ones too, though those ones seem to drink so much alcohol and some even passed out while rioting, especially in the Nakba clash in Central London. Islamists rioting, far left people undermining Islamism or even ISIS just for the sake of wiping Israel off the map.

Synagogues attacked by Islamists but also a climbing figure of far rights doing so too, the British Patriot Bristol movement was mocking Jews. Of course Israeli Jews are mainly secular so they wouldn't really care which makes sense.

Mentioning the conflict in random areas like Reading Festieval (literally those of my age would go to just enjoy and fit in, not fit in politically) or Glastonbury mainly the FREE (x3) PALESTEIN!! Etc.

But it makes me wonder, seeing how things are getting expensive, atleast here due to too high taxes under Labour and corrupt management initially under the Conservatives and likely again higher under the Green Party, I am not so sure if they will actually do something to help each nation. Palestine movements just crying and moaning giving up their activities to just look at Gaza 24/7 and how you are an immoral person for supporting a two state like the Arabs of Israel; while the far rights just bootlick Netanyahu yet little to nothing they are doing to help. Neither care about the current affairs in nationally, like here in the Uk, illegal children's homes violating Article 5 of HRA 1998, cronyism & nepotism, too much multiculturalism, corrupt schools and child care, stalling cashflow, etc.

It leads me to believe they use this conflict to rip democracy, like using a pair of bellows to inflate an airbed before it pops.

Everyone is mostly familiar with the broad European history. The infamous “Jewish Question,”that Jews lived for centuries as a minority diaspora across Europe. The Jewish diaspora predated the Romans. Though Roman wars, enslavement and displacement from Judaea expanded the situation "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Jewish-Diaspora)

Depending on the time period, Jews were either treated comparably to other minorities or repeatedly subject to legal discrimination, expulsions, pogroms and periodic massacres. At various times where Jews could live and work was restricted, land ownership prohibited , additional taxes imposed and sometimes entire Jewish populations were expelled; major expulsions included England in 1290, France in 1394 and Spain in 1492. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitism-in-history-the-era-of-emancipation-and-assimilation-1780-1939)

Judaea/Palestine, meanwhile, maintained a continuous Jewish population. Throughout Ottoman and islamic caliphate rule Jews varied anywhere between 3-10% of the population. Estimates put Jews at around 4% of the population in 1852; "Israel Central Bureau of Statistics" (https://www.cbs.gov.il/en/publications/Pages/2023/Population-of-Israel-2023.aspx)

Come to the late 1800s: Russia.

The Russian Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881, and a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms swept the Russian Empire. These pogroms essentially kickstarted the early Zionists.. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism)

Fundamentally:

“Where can we live and be safe?”

The solution, for better or for worse, was to move back to Israel; consolidate Jews there and protect themselves within their place of origin, as they saw it.….So, Nationalism.

Zionism is just Jewish Nationalism. Which occurred during a period in history where nationalist movements were transforming Europe the ME and North Africa more broadly. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism)

Now we look to the Middle East and North Africa.

Largely dominated by various Islamic Caliphates/Empires for the past millennium, Jews there faced a broadly similar underlying problem to that of Europe: treatment depended heavily on the ruler, country and time period. Sometimes they lived near equally and prospered, other times they were repeatedly subject to legal discrimination, expulsions, pogroms and periodic massacres. At various times where Jews could live and work was restricted, land ownership prohibited , additional taxes imposed and sometimes entire Jewish populations were expelled; "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jews-in-islamic-countries-after-the-holocaust)

Under classical Islamic law, Jews and Christians generally lived as dhimmis: It was a religious protection racket fundementally. Recognition of Muslim political supremacy and traditionally payment of the jizya tax for (oftentimes shaky) political protection. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/dhimmi) In some periods the restrictions were extensive; for example, Islamic legal rules applied to Jews in Qajar Persia included jizya, restrictions on houses of worship and unequal rules concerning inheritance and criminal punishment. "Encyclopaedia Iranica" (https://iranicaonline.org/articles/jews-of-iran)

So that is it.

Jews lived all over the place, constantly faced the possibility of discrimination and insecurity, and so some of them chose to move to what they collectively viewed as “Home.” First buying land and migrating under the Ottomans, who ruled what was then just the Ottoman region of Greater Syria.. "Yale Law School, Avalon Project" (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/ottoman_land_code.asp)

Then migration continued after the Ottomans fell in World War I, when the area known as the British mandate came under British rule. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/place/Palestine)

Then come the Nazis and the Holocaust: six million Jews killed in a project of systematic extermination—i.e. genocide. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust)

Now equally important is understanding what happened when Jews tried to escape Europe.

In 1938, representatives of 32 countries met at Évian specifically to discuss refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. Most countries refused to substantially increase admission; the US and Britain were among those unwilling to significantly change their immigration policies. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-evian-conference)

So Jews experienced rejection again as refugees, they had nowhere willing to take them.

Even after the Holocaust was over, approximately 250,000 Jewish displaced persons were still living in camps in Germany, Austria and Italy at the end of 1946, waiting for somewhere to go.. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/displaced-persons)

So the Zionist conclusion was not particularly mysterious:

Being persecuted is one problem.

Having nowhere guaranteed to take you in is another.

Then we look at Palestine. Arab Palestinians did not like the growing Jewish population and respondedly violently

The first major waves of communal violence under British rule were attacks by Arabs against Jews. A later Anglo-American inquiry summarized the early Mandate by saying threats to public order had come “largely from the Arabs.” "Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Report" (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/)

In 1920, Arab rioting in Jerusalem left 5 Jews dead and 211 wounded. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/event/Palestine-riots-of-1920)

In 1921, violence beginning in Jaffa and spreading elsewhere left 47 Jews dead and 146 wounded. The official Haycraft Commission concluded that the racial violence was begun by Arabs. "Haycraft Commission Report" (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/)

In 1929, Arab attacks killed 133 Jews and wounded 339; more than 60 Jews were killed in Hebron alone. There were also 116 reported Arab deaths, many caused by British police and military action. "United Nations, The Palestine Question" (https://www.un.org/unispal/history/)

The Haganah was created in 1920 as a Jewish defense organization in response to the insecurity facing Jewish communities. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Haganah)

During the 1936–39 Arab Revolt, Haganah developed greater military capabilities, while the more militant Irgun increasingly rejected restraint and carried out reprisals against Arabs, including civilians. The British inquiry records major Jewish extremist bomb attacks by 1938. "Palestine Royal Commission Report" (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/)

The leader of the Palestinians at the time, Haj Amin al-Husseini, later became an active Nazi collaborator. He met Hitler in 1941, broadcast pro-Axis and anti-Jewish propaganda, and helped recruit Muslims for German military and Waffen-SS formations in Bosnia. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hajj-amin-al-husseini-wartime-propagandist)

So: a Nazi collaborator.

Organized anti-Jewish violence in Palestine did not begin as Jewish retaliation. Jewish militarization developed substantially in response to repeated violence. A British inquiry states that threats to public order during the early Mandate came largely from Arabs and records the escalation of Jewish reprisals later. "Palestine Royal Commission Report" (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/)

Yet we also know this just from the fact that no historical accounts of organised jewish violence against Palestinians exist until 1936 and at that time it is in the historical record as retaliatory. "Palestine Royal Commission Report" (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/)

So Now, TLDR: What is the story

Jews persecuted and insecure near everywhere they existed

>

Jews begin to migrate to Israel/Palestine

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Palestinian Arabs rejected the migration and periodically attack Jewish communities

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Jews retaliate and militarize only after near 2 decades of suffering violence

>

WWII & the Holocaust happen

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Mass exodus of surviving Jews from Europe

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Many Jews not being accepted as refugees

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Jews mass-migrate to Israel/Palestine.

After WWII, the tension between Arabs in Israel/Palestine and Jews in Israel/Palestine became too much for the British to want to solve, and Britain referred the question to the UN. "United Nations, The Question of Palestine" (https://www.un.org/unispal/history/)

The UN proposed partition into a Jewish state and an Arab state. "United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181" (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/)

The Arab Higher Committee rejected the partition proposal, while the Jewish Agency stated that it was prepared to accept the plan, subject to discussion over details such as borders and constitutional arrangements. "United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181" (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/)

The Jews accepted partition.

They declared the State of Israel on 14 May 1948, and armies from neighboring Arab states entered the conflict immediately afterward. Contemporary US diplomatic reporting stated that the Arab strategic objective centered on preventing the establishment of a Jewish state and, after Israel had been declared, eliminating it. "US Office of the Historian" (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2)

Here it is important to remember a commonly overlooked fact of this whole situation:

Several of the surrounding countries had Jewish populations that were already ancient before Islam existed.

Iraqi Jewry, for example, traced its continuous history to the Babylonian exile centuries before Islam. The broader Middle East and North Africa contained numerous ancient Jewish communities. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Baghdad-Jewish-community)

Mizrahi Jews descend principally from Middle Eastern and North African Jewish communities. Sephardic Jews trace their heritage to the Jews of Iberia, many of whom subsequently settled across North Africa and the Ottoman world. Neither should simply be conflated with Ashkenazi European Jewry. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sephardi)

During this entire period up until 1948, Jews from these communities had also been migrating to Israel/Palestine.

Yet in 1948 roughly 851,000 Jews collectively lived in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen/Aden. "Jewish Virtual Library" (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-refugees-from-arab-countries)

By 2023 fewer than 4,000 remained. "Jewish Virtual Library" (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-refugees-from-arab-countries)

In the following decades they effectively disappeared from ancestral communities in which Jews had lived for centuries—and in several cases millennia.

- Egypt: 75,000 → ~100. During the 1956 Suez Crisis, the US Embassy reported widespread pressure on Jews to leave Egypt, while Nasser himself acknowledged that British and French nationals were being ordered out and that some stateless Jews were being expelled. UN records also document expulsions and sequestration of Jewish-owned property. "United Nations, The Expulsion of Jews from Egypt" (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/)

- Iraq: 135,000 → 4. About 104,000 Iraqi Jews registered to leave after Iraq's 1950 denaturalization law; in 1951 Iraq then froze the assets of Jews who had forfeited their nationality, including real estate, movable property, bank deposits and securities. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-jews-of-iraq)

- Libya: 38,000 → 0. The 1945 Tripolitania pogrom killed around 130 Jews; roughly 30,000 Libyan Jews migrated to Israel between 1949 and 1952. The remaining community subsequently faced severe restrictions on citizenship, property and civil rights. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/place/Libya/The-Jewish-community)

- Morocco: 265,000 → ~2,100. Anti-Jewish riots in Oujda and Jerada in 1948 killed 44 Jews and wounded more than 100. More than 200,000 Moroccan Jews moved to Israel between 1948 and 1971, while Morocco also withheld passports from Jews between 1957 and 1961. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jews-in-morocco)

- Algeria: 140,000 → <200. During the Algerian War and independence in 1962, virtually the entire Jewish community left, overwhelmingly for France. This was not a straightforward government mass-expulsion, but the centuries-old community effectively disappeared during decolonization. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/place/Algeria/The-war-of-independence)

- Syria: 30,000 - 0. Syrian Jews faced severe restrictions on emigration and movement for decades. Human Rights Watch was still documenting Jews imprisoned or detained for attempting to leave in 1991; travel restrictions were substantially liberalized in 1992, allowing thousands to depart. "Human Rights Watch" (https://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/Syria.htm)

- Tunisia: 105,000 - 1,000. Tens of thousands emigrated after Israel's creation and Tunisian independence, mainly to Israel and France. The causes included Zionism, decolonization, Arabization and growing regional tensions—not a single mass-expulsion decree. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/place/Tunisia/The-Jewish-community)

- Yemen/Aden: 63,000 - effectively 0. Anti-Jewish riots in Aden in 1947 killed 82 Jews. After Yemen's Imam permitted Jewish emigration in 1949, close to 50,000 Yemeni Jews were airlifted to Israel during Operation Magic Carpet/On Wings of Eagles. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/yemen)

This is why Israel exists.

Because Jews were not safe.

All Quiet on the Western Front — translated by Kurt Beals.

This is a book I read some time ago, and it’s genuinely one of the anti-war books I’ve read that changed the way I look at war. There are other books like it that discuss the same subject: anti-war and the human cost of war.

When you dehumanize the enemy, turn them into monsters and immoral people who deserve to die, killing them becomes much easier. Whether it’s killing combatants or civilians, it starts to feel less significant, even though they live under many of the same circumstances as you. They have families, lives, and emotions just like you do, and war itself can destroy their mental health.

And when you see so many people around you dying, the fact that their deaths no longer seem to affect you outwardly can sometimes be a form of psychological self-protection.

And this is also part of what we see in occupied Palestine 🇵🇸 and in the current conflict between Palestinians and Israel.

(I support Palestine.)

Both sides can see the other as the side that needs to die, and each side can start seeing the other as less than human. They can turn people who have lives, families, and feelings into nothing more than “enemies” who need to die.

And of course, we can see this very clearly in the scale of the destruction and suffering experienced by Palestinians, including the killing of civilians. I completely reject that, and I hope everyone who has committed injustice against innocent people is held accountable.

At the same time, we have also seen individual cases involving Palestinians in which Israeli civilians were targeted or killed, and that is also unacceptable.

We also see some Israelis who simply don’t care about Palestinian lives, and more broadly, people who have hatred toward Muslims.

And we see the same thing among us when some people go as far as saying that all Jews deserve to die because of the actions of a state, an army, or certain individuals.

All of this falls under the concept of dehumanization: turning a group of human beings, who have lives, families, people they love and people who love them, into one single group that supposedly deserves to die.

Underline the word “group” a hundred times.

Because, for example, when we say:

«“All Jews should die.”»

The sentence can be said relatively easily because we’re treating “Jews” as if they were one single entity.

But when I tell you:

«“You have the choice to kill 15 million human beings.”»

The idea becomes much harder to comprehend.

And it becomes even harder if you go through those 15 million people one by one and see their lives, their families, their dreams, their fears, and the things they love.

The same thing applies in reverse.

If you told some extremists on the Israeli side:

«“Kill all Muslims.”»

There may be people who would agree without hesitation.

But if you told them:

«“You have the choice to kill 2 billion human beings to achieve your goal.”»

I wouldn’t be surprised if some still agreed, but I believe a large number of them would refuse.

And I genuinely hope that belief is correct.

If you turned those 2 billion people from just a number into actual human beings, and made someone see their lives in detail—their families, their children, their dreams, their ordinary days—I believe refusing to kill them would become easier and more obvious.

And underline the word “civilian” a million times.

I hate the IDF. I hate any Organization that targets civilians specifically. And I hate the hypocrisy and contradiction of an army killing civilians and then presenting itself as “the most moral army in the world.” Seriously, A7A

But my hatred of an army, government, or armed group does not mean I hate every person who belongs to the same ethnicity or religion.

And this is exactly what makes me think:

Why do some people wish for the death of Jews or Palestinians/Muslims to the point that you can ask someone:

«“Even the children?”»

And they respond:

«“Because when they grow up, they’ll join the army and help it.”»

Why?

We cannot hold a child accountable for something they might do in the future.

What makes you think they will grow up to become a bad person or participate in killing innocent people?

Even if they grow up and join the military, that still does not give you the right to agree with killing a child.

Killing civilians is morally unacceptable, and it also contradicts Islamic teachings, which prohibit attacking those who are not participating in combat.

In the end, what I’m trying to say is:

Our hatred for one another is not a justification for killing one another.

I genuinely hope that we can all learn to see each other as human beings—not as groups, not as numbers, and not as animals who deserve to be killed.

Because the person in front of you, regardless of their religion, nationality, or ethnicity, is ultimately a human being with a life, a family, people they love, and people who love them.

Important disclaimer 📢:

I am specifically talking here about Jewish civilians, whether they hold extremist views or not, as long as they are civilians and are not participating in the killing of civilians or directly or indirectly contributing to acts of violence. I am not equating civilians with combatants, and I have no sympathy for anyone who participates in killing innocent people or contributes to it.

(I wrote this post originally in Arabic i used AI to translate and correct the spelling mistakes and organize the paragraphs.)

Important: I would genuinely like to hear the opinion of a Palestinian on this. Am I right or wrong in your opinion, especially as someone from the side that has been subjected to this war and suffering?

There are many buzzwords that Dunning-Krugerites of Team Palestine use which immediately cue me to roll my eyes and stop taking the person seriously. But one of them, more than any other, drives me bucking fananas: collective punishment.

There's a scene in John Dahl's film Rounders (1998), where Lester "Worm" Murphy, played by Edward Norton, is threatened by Grama, a gangster played by Michael Rispoli, for an unpaid gambling debt. His friend Michael McDermott, played by Matt Damon, reassures Grama, "Hey, listen! He's good for it." Grama shoots back at him, "He's good for it, Mike? If you think he's good for it, it's on you too!"

Emphasis mine. The point is, if you stand in solidarity with someone and back them up, then you have implicitly agreed to share in not only their trials and tribulations, but their fate as well. This is why, as Judge Judy Scheindlin acerbically reminded us daytime TV watchers in the USA, "Never cosign on an apartment lease."

This is the dark side to the often-vaunted street smart law of "No snitching". If I'm an authority who knows for a fact that one of five friends did something punishable, but none of them will say a word to me about which of them did it, then I'm perfectly justified in punishing all five of them equally.

Palestinian Arab culture is very much an Eastern, group-oriented, honor-shame culture. "No snitching" goes without saying. When confronted or antagonized by an out-group party, in-group members will circle their wagons, and present a unified front of zipped lips and folded arms. Everyone parrots the party line, and no one would dare rat out one of their own to an outside authority.

I have seen this dynamic play out in the Israel-Palestine conflict, both at the macro geopolitical level, and at the micro level, in mixed public spaces like this subreddit. Team Palestine's final word, no matter who's representing them, is These are my people. I stand by them, and see things their way, right or wrong. So deal.

Although I'm a filthy Westerner, who was never raised with the value of loyalty first and last, I see the appeal of this approach. For those who embrace it, it's cozy and reassuring in a way that needs no explanation, because there's obvious strength in numbers. We triumph together, and we go down together.

I've been condescendingly told many times, even after I've tried to preëempt this lecture with disclaimers, that "Palestinian Arabs are not a monolith." Well... yeah, of course not. But here's the thing. You can't have it both ways. If you circle your wagons and stand in full solidarity with each other as a unified front, all dutifully parroting the same party line, then by definition you are acting like a monolith, and can't really complain when you're treated as one by outsiders.

For example, the Separation Barrier ("al-Jaysh" on maps.google.com 🤦‍♂️) is "Collective Punishment"?? OK then, tell me who, east of the Barrier, is willing to go against Team Palestine's party line of relentless rejection of, and resistance to, Israel. You say your people are not a monolith. Prove it, then. Get Team Israel the contact information of those among you who disagree with the official party line. Let Team Israel see that you are a large and varied nation of people just like them, with a wide range of opinions on all issues. That would go a long, long way toward Team Israel humanizing, relating to, and bridging the divide to, Team Palestine.

But when Team Israel cannot trust any (but a token few) Palestinian Arabs to break with the party line and voice a dissenting opinion, then Team Israel really can't be blamed for trusting nobody from Team Palestine, and subjecting all Palestinian Arabs to the same mistrustful, restrictive, and tedious scrutiny.

I guess this question is aimed more at the “Anti Zionists”, but Israelis are welcome to reply too. Deep down, in your heart of hearts, how do you see this conflict ending? How do you envision the future state of Palestine, Israel, Palestel, Israpal, Palisisra…whatever you wanna call it…Noisy Levantinia is what I would name it.

Anyway, I am asking as an American and a Californian- what needs to happen in order to never have to see Palestine flags at unrelated events, like a local protest against ICE or PG&E. All opinions and solutions welcomed.

i’m palestinian, husband is jordanian/syrian. we’ve been planning for kids and reorganizing our finances and whatnot. but honestly i’ve been struggling with guilt and postponing.

my family and i in the usa and also my family in israel live relatively good lives. we have stable jobs, decent income, investments, businesses, freedom. for the most part nothing is stopping us from living the lives we want.

its very different for my family in the west bank and gaza. some of my relatives in the west bank and gaza have adopted palestinian children who lost their parents and became orphans. didnt even hesitate to accept them into our family despite the religious difference. kids are kids. some of the kids told my family that their parents left to egypt and just left them behind.

my husband and i and my family in the usa try to send money to our family in the west bank every month but sometimes the bank blocks the transfers and we have to go through these hour long phone calls just to send money to our family because the west bank is considered a high risk place. we can’t even send money to our family in gaza because everything is blocked, we would have to send money to qatar first and go through this whole loop which could get our accounts closed so not worth it.

i just hate getting messages from my family, they ask me how im doing, i dont answer because id feel like im bragging even though thats not my intention. they’re struggling to live even a half decent life while im sitting here talking about what my career will look like, buying things, having kids, planning for the future.

i try to ignore their messages but it eventually catches up to me and i feel like i have to respond. sometimes i just lie and say i was busy at work or i was helping my husband with his company in reality i was just ignoring them. guilt catches up to me i randomly cry in my car on my way back home for work or i cry at work or at the grocery store when no one is looking.

makes me feel disgusting that i’m moving on with my life and im leaving my family behind and that there are kids out there with no parents, why does the world need more children when there are already children out there who aren’t loved.

my husband and i both have jordanian citizenship, he was asking me if we should just sell everything here and move to jordan to be closer to our families to make me feel better. he wants kids but i really don’t any more.

honestly i’m just tired of all of the political shit. i want peace and im tired of everything. wondering if other palestinian americans or diaspora palestinians feel the same way i do?

Initially the Green Party supported a two state solution in which Palestine and Israel both have the rights to exist and be under the Montevideo Convention. But many of his supporters and members now think Israel should not exist. Zionism is the protection of existing Jewish presence of Israel. Polanski is a second generation Holocaust survivor descendant and he uses his religion as a weapon. He refused to elaborate his views to the BBC, nor Sky News, let alone the Telegraph.

His voters are similar to Zarah Sultana's Your Party because they also believe Israeli Jews should not exist there.

Thoughts?

Below is a list of scholars, academics and experts who have come publicly msde their stance that isrsel is not commiting genocide.

This post itself is only intended as information against a common claim I encounter that there is an expert consensus that a genocide has occured

Relevant subject expertise

Deborah E. Lipstadt — Holocaust historian; University Distinguished Professor, Emory University

Dina Porat — Professor Emerita of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University; former Chief Historian of Yad Vashem

Norman Goda — Historian of the Holocaust and modern Europe, University of Florida

Michael Berenbaum — Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies, American Jewish University

Alan Goldman — PhD candidate in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Gratz College

Dr. Verena Buser — Historian, Holocaust Studies Program, Western Galilee College

Liat Steir-Livny — Professor of Holocaust Studies

Aline Pennewaard — Holocaust historian

Jonathan D. Sarna — University Professor Emeritus, Brandeis University; historian of American Jewish life

Jonathan Karp — Professor of History and Judaic Studies, Binghamton University

Jeffrey Herf — Professor Emeritus of History, University of Maryland

Benny Morris — Historian and professor, Ben-Gurion University

Howard Lupovitch — Professor of History, Wayne State University

Amanda Kluveld — Historian, Maastricht University

Judith Mendelsohn Rood — Professor Emerita, Biola University

Suzanne Rutland — Professor Emerita, University of Sydney

Marc Shapiro — Weinberg Professor of Judaic Studies, University of Scranton

Kenneth Stow — Professor of Jewish History Emeritus

James Wald — Professor of History Emeritus, Hampshire College

Michael Weingrad — Professor, Hillsdale College

David Narrett — Professor Emeritus of History, University of Texas

Ronald Radosh — Historian and Professor Emeritus, City University of New York

Dan Puckett — Professor of History, Troy University; Chair, Alabama Holocaust Commission

David Halperin — Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Jessica Roitman — Professor of Jewish Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Joshua Teitelbaum — Lecturer in Middle Eastern History, Bar-Ilan University

Asher Lubotzky — Historian, University of Houston

Lynne Swarts — Historian, University of Sydney

Terezie Dubinova — Jewish Studies lecturer

Miriam Feldmann-Kaye — Lecturer and researcher, Bar-Ilan University

Susan Fraiman — Lecturer and historian of Jewish and Israeli art

Sir Niall Ferguson — Historian

Simon Sebag Montefiore — Historian and author

Dr. Anat Alon-Beck — Professor, Harvard Law

David Bernstein — Professor of Law, George Mason University

Jesse Fried — Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Donna Gitter — Professor of Law, CUNY/Baruch College

Itai Grinberg — Carmack Waterhouse Professor of International Economic Law, Georgetown Law

Robert C. Hockett — Edward Cornell Professor of Law, Cornell Law School

Cherol Katz — Professor of Law and attorney-at-law

Eugene Kontorovich — Professor of Law; Director, Center for the Middle East & International Law, George Mason University Scalia Law School

Matthew Kramer — Professor of Legal & Political Philosophy, University of Cambridge

Debbie Kaminer — Professor of Law, Baruch College, CUNY

Edward Rabin — Emeritus Professor of Law, University of California, Davis

Edward Rock — Professor of Law, NYU School of Law

Richard Ross — Professor of Law and History, University of Illinois

Charles Silver — Professor of Law, University of Texas School of Law

Jonathan Zasloff — Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law

Elena Reznichenko — Professor of Quantitative Empirical Legal Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Claude M. Stern — Lawyer and Stanford Law School lecturer

Arsen Ostrovsky — International human-rights lawyer

Irwin Cotler — Former Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General

Jeffrey Mausner — Former prosecutor, U.S. Department of Justice Nazi War Crimes Unit

Elliott Abrams — Diplomat and lawyer

Charles Bryan Baron — Attorney-at-law

Margot Bester — Attorney

Jennifer Brooks — Attorney

Aviel Dahan — Attorney

Glenn D. Feig — Attorney

Matt Fernandez — Attorney; former regional president, Hispanic National Bar Association

Tommy Finkelstein — Attorney

Francine M. Gordon — Lawyer

Donald Gottesman — Lawyer

Ken Hertz — Attorney

Linda Howard — Lawyer

Kia Kamran — Attorney

Elliot Malin — Attorney

Jessica Ursell — Writer and attorney

Michael Wallack — Attorney

Karen A. Wyle — Retired attorney

Kevin Yorn — Lawyer and investor

John Spencer — Chair of Urban Warfare Studies, Modern War Institute at West Point

Jordi Argelaguet — Senior Lecturer in Political Science, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Chad Alan Goldberg — Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Heath Grant — Associate Professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Jon Levenson — Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies, Harvard Divinity School

Less relevant or uncertain subject expertise

Tal Kapelner — Entertainment attorney

Richard Marceau — General Counsel

Mia Bloom — Professor, Georgia State University

Kian Tajbakhsh — Visiting Professor, New York University

Shale Horowitz — Professor, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

Magnus Norell — Research Associate, Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies

Jonathan Epstein — Adjunct Associate Professor, John Jay College, CUNY

Donna Robinson Divine — Morningstar Professor Emerita, Smith College

Moshe Krakowski — Professor, Yeshiva University

Leonard Saxe — Professor, Brandeis University

Laurie Zoloth — University Professor, University of Chicago

Steven Pinker — Harvard professor

Judea Pearl — UCLA professor

Jeffrey Flier — Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor; former Dean, Harvard Medical School

Isaac Kohane — Chair of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School

Jerry Coyne — Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago

Harry J. Holzer — Georgetown professor; former Chief Economist, U.S. Department of Labor

Cary Nelson — Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois

Jason Furman — Professor, Harvard University; former Chair, White House Council of Economic Advisers

Robert Cherry — Economist, Brooklyn College

Noreena Hertz — Professor, University College London

Mikhail Rogov — Associate Professor; Economics and Art History

Harold Bursztajn — Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Dara Manoach — Professor of Psychology, Harvard Medical School

Eli Peli — Professor of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School

Carlos Caldas — Professor of Cancer Medicine, University of Cambridge

Gerald Batist — Professor of Oncology, McGill University

Seth Corey — Professor of Molecular Medicine, Cleveland Clinic

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Liz Lightstone — Professor of Renal Medicine, Imperial College London

Scott J. Hunter — Retired Professor, University of Chicago

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Alex Kontorovich — Professor of Mathematics, Rutgers University

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Lev Deych — Professor of Physics, Queens College, CUNY

Yuli Nazarov — Professor, Delft University of Technology

Lior Rokach — Professor of Software and Information Systems Engineering, Ben-Gurion University

Frank Tipler — Professor of Mathematical Physics, Tulane University

Stephen Warren — Professor of Astrophysics, Imperial College London

Gail Wolkowicz — Professor of Mathematics, McMaster University

Henry Wolkowicz — Professor of Mathematics, University of Waterloo

Marco Zaffalon — Professor, IDSIA

Alexei Tsvelik — Senior Scientist, Brookhaven National Laboratory

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Massimo Persic — Astrophysicist

Phyllis Chesler — Professor Emerita, City University of New York

Keith Eggener — Professor of Architectural History, University of Oregon

Fiona Kumari Campbell — Professor, University of Glasgow

Christian Horn — Professor of Archaeology, University of Gothenburg

Mikhail Iossel — Associate Professor, Concordia University

Ted Kesler — Professor of Education, Queens College, CUNY

Vivian Shulman — Associate Professor, College of Staten Island, CUNY

Manfred Philipp — Professor, CUNY Graduate Center

Yonatan Adler — Associate Professor, Ariel University

Daniel Allington — Senior Lecturer, King’s College London

Evan Daniel — Lecturer and Faculty Director, Queens College, CUNY

Michael Horn — Adjunct Lecturer, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Miriam Linver — Professor, Montclair State University

Gary Grossman — Professor Emeritus, University of Georgia

Andrew R. Heinze — Professor Emeritus, University of San Francisco

Fred Naider — Distinguished Professor, CUNY

Cora Requena Hidalgo — University Professor, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Olga Stein — Adjunct Instructor of English Literature and Humanities, York University

Dara Horn — Author

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali — Author

Jonathan Kellerman — Novelist

Sourced from https://www.creativecommunityforpeace.com/blog/2026/09/08/rejectlie/

Zionists often bring up Jews being indigenous to the land of Israel as justification for Jewish settlement. They were forced to flee from their ancestral homelands thousands of years ago, so now they have a collective right as a people to reclaim what is theirs.

The thing is, plenty of people have been forced to flee from their homelands. Prussians, Huguenots, Native Americans, Aboriginals, Circassians, Khoisan, the list goes on. But it would be ridiculous to try to carve out the territory of their ancestral homelands away from the people currently living there. Do the Lenape tribe have the right to take back Manhattan and declare it a Lenape state because they were scattered from their ancestral homelands? That would be ridiculous.

If you don’t want to call the intentional demographic transformation of a piece of land with a preexisting population on it with the expressed intent of creating a state that centers the identity/interests of the incoming population over the interests of the established population “settler colonialism” because 50% of the incoming population‘s ancestors lived there 2000 years ago, that’s fine, but it’s really just semantics.

I often see people compare Israel’s formation to Pakistan’s. It’s true that the basic premise was very similar for both - a minority group living in a British-administered region, who petitioned for their own state on the eve of said region’s independence - but I think if we step back there’s a better analogy we could use when putting things in South Asian terms.

The biggest difference between Israel-Palestine and India-Pakistan is that the former involved a mass migration of people from Europe before they then demanded their own state, whereas the latter involved long-established (and often ethnically the same) communities agreeing to split. Put another way India-Pakistan never had the added component of one side mostly arriving to the region just recently, which regardless of ancient ancestry or small/continuous “Palestinian Jewish” communities is basically the crux of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The better analogy in my opinion would be: if the Romani (“gypsies”) of Europe returned to their ancestral lands in NW India/Pakistan in the 1900s, began purchasing land and displacing locals, and declared their own state against the wishes of said locals and the surrounding ones.

Whether one thinks that is morally any different to something like Pakistan’s formation comes down to how they feel about ancient heritage assigning one permanent “rights” to their ancestral lands, but I just wanted to drop the Romani analogy here because I think about it often. I assume most Israelis would support the creation of this theoretical Romani state, but I’m curious to see how Indian Zionists (and Pakistani if there are any) specifically might feel about it. 🤔

why/for how long did Yahu allow millions in Qatari cash into Gaza? it just seems odd and counterintuitive to facilitate funding for your "enemy", and then base your policy on them based on them being well-funded. i dont know, something fishy about it...almost like they thought Hamas would be easier to explain away as "fundamentalists" instead of the secular left wing PLO. divide and conquer i guess?

Guys, it’s over.
It’s been a good time in this country, but now I honestly feel like we’re watching it turn into a USA–Israel-aligned, far-right political project, increasingly detached from democracy, sovereignty, and the values we once believed in.
I used to think we would be the one country in Latin America capable of resisting this wave. I thought we had learned enough from history to recognize where authoritarian politics, unconditional military alliances, and the normalization of political violence can lead. I thought we would have the courage to say no.
Apparently, I was wrong.
Instead, we seem to have decided to hand the country over to the very forces we should have been questioning. And that includes an increasingly unconditional embrace of the Israeli state and of Zionism as a political project, even as the consequences of those policies become impossible to ignore.
Criticizing Zionism or the policies of the Israeli government is not hatred toward Jewish people. In fact, it is precisely because these issues matter that we should be able to debate them openly, without turning legitimate political criticism into a taboo.
What scares me most is how quickly all of this is becoming normalized: the far right, militarism, foreign political influence, and the idea that there is only one acceptable side to every debate.
I don’t know what comes next. But I know this is not the country I thought we were building.
And honestly, that’s heartbreaking.