There is a fine line, however, restricting the ability to criticize genocide is not a good thing— unless people consider Palestinians as subhuman, subanimal, which we acknowledge some do.
40,000 confirmed civilian deaths in 3 months isnt genocide? Israeli’s are openly murdering anyone who looks even vaguely Palestinian in Gaza and the West Bank
The only reason Gaza isn’t being called a concentration camp with a theoretical government at this point is because the west largely aren’t aware that Israel subjects holocaust survivor families to abject poverty and being called Soap People.
They were literally caught stealing the reparation payments intended for the victims and their families, so much so that a NGO is now the responsible party for distributing the remaining survivor payments.
They openly cooperate with neo nazi and neo nazi associated movements in the west because the more hostile westerners are to jews the more settlers they can claim need to he housed by evicting and killing Palestinians.
These guys sure are doing a fucking lot of nazi shit for how offensive everyone seems to think pointing out they’re doing stuff the Nazis did is.
genocide is what some people on both sides want to do and it’s sad that they are influential enough that no resolution of this conflict is in sight in my lifetime -.-
There is a documentary called roadmap to apartheid that compares side by side what happened in south Africa and what continues to happen everyday to the Palestinians.
As much as I agree, Chomsky is no trustworthy source on what is or isn’t a genocide
The man has bent himself in so many knots denying what happened in the yugoslav wars that I’m pretty sure Bosnia would actively refuse to prosecute if someone shot the bastard in broad daylight in the middle of Sarajevo.
And no i don’t think Israel did nothing wrong, its not apartheid however.
“Broadly speaking, apartheid was delineated into petty apartheid, which entailed the segregation of public facilities and social events, and grand apartheid, which dictated housing and employment opportunities by race.”
How is it not apartheid?
Edit: wait a minute, why am I arguing with two cookie-based accounts that are pro-Israel and less than a week old on this thread…
Edit: wait a minute, why am I arguing with two cookie-based accounts that are pro-Israel and less than a week old on this thread…
Maybe stop arguing or something? Who doesn’t like Cookies? Like whats your problem?
Anyway, where is apartheid in Israel? Have you been there? Have you seen any? Or are you just against a two state solution? I don’t really see your point in just putting in the definition of apartheid and believing that proves your point?
Im definitely not in favor of ho Israel does it but criticism of that was never forbidden, forbidden was to “question” Israels right to exist as a country. And doing that is indeed antisemitism
Oh and im anti theist in general. I want to abolish all religions because you can see what they do.
Both the wording of the rule and the use of the rule was very clear that this was about all criticism of Israel unless it's "criticism" like "Israel doesn't do enough to protect itself".
That "guideline" is hate-speech and genocide-apologism in it's most cynical form because it is disguised as anti-discrimination. The people who proposed and implemented it should be ostracized.
Even if you believe Israel to be completely justified in everything they do, there should never be a blanket ban on criticizing the methods of a country at war.
The ban wasn’t on criticism it was on their blunt antisemitism and terrorism support. There has been lost of criticism in Germany about Israels methods.
It is, its idiotic and they stole the land as well.
I know you and your ilk don't care about that, but no they didn't. The Palestinians of today are the same Palestinians of 2000 years ago. Palestine wasn't only Jews.
And yet they killed all the jews and whats before that? Our history is a little longer than 2000 years… About 12000 years to be specific. (if we take the first city as the start of human civilization)
Also Judaism is a lot older than Islam, wich is even younger than Christianity, wich itself is based on Judaism.
And yet they killed all the jews and whats before that?
No they... didn't? I'm not even sure what you're talking about. Zionists tend to refer to some nonexistent Arab genocide of all inhabitants of Palestine so they can conveniently claim that the people currently living there "stole" it; is that what you mean?
And yet they killed all the jews and whats before that? Our history is a little longer than 2000 years… About 12000 years to be specific. (if we take the first city as the start of human civilization)
Also Judaism is a lot older than Islam, wich is even younger than Christianity, wich itself is based on Judaism.
You realize both the Palestinian and Jewish people are descendants from the people that lived on the land back then, right? We literally have evidence of that.
Like, just because your RELIGION is Islam or Christianity, that doesn’t mean you can’t be GENETICALLY Jewish. In fact there’s this whole thing WITHIN Judaism regarding ethnic Jews vs non-ethnic Jews…
You seem to be arguing about the Jews rights as a race, but conflating it to religion. Because if it was about “race”, then Palestinians are entitled to the same land as Israel claims.
No they didn’t. Even the christian crusaders, who where happy to commit pogroms against jews in Europe as a sort of “motivational entertainment” had to note the peaceful coexistence of jews, christians and muslims under islamic rule.
The Palestinians of today are the descendants of the biblical abrahamic tribes. White european, often secular, jews, who now control Israel are killing the people whose lineage is closer to David and Abraham, than theirs could ever be.
Bro you come with David and Abraham when in reality it’s about the right for Israel to exist. And that right is granted. There is no legitimate discussion about it everyone thinking Israel shouldn’t exists is antisemitic and a idiot.
This place of land has been inhabited for almost the entire human history and pre-history. It had many rulers. Now its Israel and thats it.
Arguing what was left of Palestine before the Six Days War has the right to exist without occupation, homes and crops seized and burnt, being bombed relentlessly, being kidnapped, held and tortured is in no way arguing Israel has no right to exist.
Stop justifying genocide. This is a repetitively grossly disproportionate retaliation, gaslighting to hide genocide. Period. Hasbara/IDF are fascist apologists, full stop. “Never again” applies to all or none.
No need to move the goal posts; am not a fan of Bibi either. Hamas certainly played into his hands. I don’t think he really cared about tripping hippies.
I was addressing what you said.
There is a tiresome campaign to try to not even mention October 7; even pretending Hamas didn’t do all the killing, as if the IDF also killed many of their own citizens on the day. Now that is gaslighting.
You claimed that the land was stolen from the jewish people who were there first, which is the main historical argument, as to why israel has a right to exist, despite the basis for that being the mass displacement and killing of the Palestinians during the Nakba and the subsequent occupation.
But the land was never “stolen” from the jewish people. Most of the Palestinians simply becamse christians and muslims over time. The whole “the state has a right to exist”, which is very different from “the people have a right to exist”, is a western construct, to justify pushing the jews, who survived the holocaust to Israel and to channel the western countries “redemption” from commiting, being complicit in, or being inactive about the holocaust.
In international law there is no concept of a states “right to exist”. People have a right to exist and they have the right to sovereignity, for which a state is a way to express it. But it is not bound to this state of Israel in this constitution and with this government and with this genocide against the Palestinians.
This right to sovereignity is equally maintained in a two state solution, or a one state solution, where Israelis and Palestinians have equal political participation and equal rights as citizens. That was even one of the main ideas of the early zionists. But the later radicalization of zionism after Israel was founded, led them to believe, they could take it all. And that is why they reduced Gaza to rubbles. That is why they tried to displace the people into Egypt. That is why they talk about deporting or murdering all the Palestinians in the Israeli government. And that is why they need to be criticized and they need to be stopped.
This is also what progressive jews demand. And these progressive jews are equally affected by being excluded from public discourse in Germany, being excluded from cultural events and being denied formerly sheduled awards, and being taken into police custody for demonstrating and denied their right to demonstrations. So in alledgedly fighting against antisemitism, Germany commits antisemitism on a huge scale.
You’re welcome. It should be added that there is a right of a state to defend itself from military agression. So of course Israel does have the right to defend itself from Hamas or other attacks on its people. This is relevant in the scope of conflicting rights, as Hamas has no right to attack civillians.
So this is not what the “state x has a right to exist” argument is about. It is used and needed to justify the continued denial of the rights of the Palestinians.
It remains an argument of might makes right. Imagine the US would say that the native Americans wanting their land back would be an attack on the US right to existence.
The main reason the jews under the Ottoman empire started the Yishuv and congregated in Palestine hoping to get their own country was that they were seriously discriminated against under islamic rule. They had to pay more taxes, were restricted in what clothing they could wear, were not allowed to build or maintain houses of worship, ride horses, carry weapons, … and were generally valued as less than muslims wrt legal rulings. This wasn’t enforced everywhere throughout the entire history of the empire, but I don’t think anyone would be happy in that situation.
Currently, less than half the Israelis are descendent from ‘white European’ immigrants
Historian Martin Gilbert writes that it was in the 19th century that the position of Jews worsened in Muslim countries.[38] According to Mark Cohen in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, most scholars conclude that Arab anti-Semitism in the modern world arose in the nineteenth century, against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab nationalism, and was imported into the Arab world primarily by nationalistically minded Christian Arabs (and only subsequently was it “Islamized”)
1865, when the equality of all subjects of the Ottoman Empire was proclaimed, Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, a high-ranking official observed, “whereas in former times, in the Ottoman State, the communities were ranked, with the Muslims first, then the Greeks, then the Armenians, then the Jews, now all of them were put on the same level. Some Greeks objected to this, saying: ‘The government has put us together with the Jews. We were content with the supremacy of Islam.’”
That seems to me, as a result of the general nationalism that emerged and specifically the long lasting antisemitic tradition of the Christians to take influence with the decline of the Ottoman empire.
Meanwhile there are extensive links between zionism and anti-semitism, where secular zionists often worked together with anti-semitists to push for the zionist project as a mean to remove jews from western countries.
Cherrypicking aside, the worsening situation coinciding with the crumbling of the Ottoman empire further supports my point. Larger nationalists groups were going to carve up the territories for themselfves and the jews were so dispersed that they would remain small minorities everywhere. But facing nationalists and religious extremists while losing the ‘umbrella’ of the Ottomans (which was already discriminatory at best).
You cite the reforms under the tanzimat period but very conveniently forget what followed: a return to a monarchist caliphate with a sultan that abandoned the millet system for the ideal of a united people under islam.
It is not my intend to cherrypick. The notion of “islamic rule” by itself could create the idea that islam is monocausal in this, because western history education generally lacks in covering the Ottoman empire, or anything that isn’t eurocentric. In school i learned almost nothing about the Ottoman empire, the Mauretanian empire, Persia, China or other important empires in global history aside from the notion of “In those years they lead conquest into Europe and in those years they were kicked out again. And in these other years Europeans were there and colonized.”
Meanwhile the ruling class in Israel is predominantly of european descent. So the fair idea of the Mizrahi and Sephardi to have a state with a strong enough jewish population to enjoy and protect equal rights for them was still taken over and led to their discrimination by the later european settlers, who enjoyed stronger support from the european countries and US.
I cannot judge if they were tricked into migrating, but they were and are subject to discrimination in todays Israel.
I think this is important to note in the discussion, where from westeren countries the current state of Israel is often painted as the only and therefore righteous way, to grant jewish people sovereignity. When seeing the origin of the current state of Israel in the context of european and american antisemitism, nationalism and post-colonialism it becomes more clear, that the underlying motives were not to genuinly prevent further anti-semitism and it did not arise from a genuine care for the jewish people.
So the ethnic discrimination inside Israel, already starting from the beginning, is an indicator for colonial motivations in establishing a state run predominantly by Europeans in the heart of the Middle East and in control of one of the holiest sites of all abrahamic religions. In terms of geopolitics Israel has been very useful to the West, to destabilize and divide the Middle East, and in the competition of reordering the world after WW2 it must have been an important project, to prevent the emergence of an Arab power bloc that could have been more powerful than the EU is today.
When looking at the way that still anti-zionism or even just general criticism of Israel is shunned as being anti-semitic in Germany, it is important to see it as the deflection that it is. The goal of this is to prevent a discussion about the actions of Israel and the current way it conducts itself. This is not to say, that there is no anti-semitism amongst anti-zionists, or also that some are merely using anti-zionism as a vehicle for anti-semitism. There is certainly both. But in Germany for the past month many jews were shunned for criticising Israel. When looking at the historical context, this conduct of German government and mainstream society becomes even more absurd.
The primary question flowing from the earlier posts is brushed aside in half a sentence and flooded with all the sins of Israel, Europe, and the world :-)
It’s actually a very essential question to answer, whether they ‘deserved’ their own country out of the ruins of the Ottoman empire instead of facing the discrimination as a minority in the hardening sectarian climate of the region. Was the UN ‘right’ in their decision to grant them a piece? Were the Arab states ‘right’ that there shouldn’t be a piece with a jewish majority?
I’d gladly discuss the other points you touch but I’m afraid they’re just added to the soup to distract from having to think about the above.
I mean to this question the answer is very simple on one side and very complicated on the other.
On the one side every human, every group of human, be it by ethnic, religious, cultural or other metric has the right to live in safety, dignity and with the ability to self develop and participate politically.
If there was a land, where any such group is settled as significant majority, they deserve to have sovereignity over their affairs, be it in a nation state or a federal state.
Founding todays Israel in the way it was founded. Without hearing the Palestinians on the matter and with the Nakba was a grave mistake. It is the root of the subsequent violence and injustice that we still see today. I believe that having a longer UN mandate, maybe taken from the British and instead given to an international coalition, would have helped in finding a diplomatic solution that could have resulted in one nation state that grants the aforementioned rights equally to the people, irrespective of their religion or ethnicity.
Given that today there is about 7 Million Palestinians and about 7 Million Israeli Jews in the area i would see a historic chance to put the area back under UN control and work towards forming a new state for everyone currently living in the area. Such a process would take decades though.
Instead of creating a nation where one group has the majority over the other, creating a state where all groups have about the same power and are forced to work together diplomatically could have been the greatest story of integration in history. I believe that it still can be, if the world decides to think in terms of working together, instead of sowing division again. However there we are back to the geopolitical goals of the global player. In so far i also see it as a great test of humanity, if we manage to solve global issues together again.
Last thought, knowing it goes beyond your question: The reason why i believe in a one state solution is, that a two state solution would on the one hand split the Palestinian state in two parts, which is pracitically impossible to govern or on the other hand deny one side access either to the sea or the Jordan. The sea is crucial for trade and development, as every landlocked country in the world can attest to. The Jordan is crucial for the water supply in this otherwise arid region. Any way to split the land between two nations will disadvantage the other on either of these key ressources.
But this is just gravely incorrect. The Palestinians were heard on the matter. They disagreed. The UN voted for a partitition regardless. Then they were invited in the committee that ‘drew the lines’. But their position was the following (quote from the first article):
“The Arab Higher Committee rejected both the majority and minority recommendations within the UNSCOP report. They “concluded from a survey of Palestine history that Zionist claims to that country had no legal or moral basis”. The Arab Higher Committee argued that only an Arab State in the whole of Palestine would be consistent with the UN Charter.”
and with the Nakba a was a grave mistake. It is the root of the subsequent violence and injustice that we still see today.
The article mentions some colorful quotes from the Arabs regarding the two state solution:
“A few weeks after UNSCOP released its report, Azzam Pasha, the General Secretary of the Arab League, told an Egyptian newspaper “Personally I hope the Jews do not force us into this war because it will be a war of elimination and it will be a dangerous massacre which history will record similarly to the Mongol massacre or the wars of the Crusades.”[133] (This statement from October 1947 has often been incorrectly reported as having been made much later on 15 May 1948.)[134] Azzam told Alec Kirkbride “We will sweep them [the Jews] into the sea.” Syrian president Shukri al-Quwatli told his people: “We shall eradicate Zionism.”[135]
King Farouk of Egypt told the American ambassador to Egypt that in the long run the Arabs would soundly defeat the Jews and drive them out of Palestine.[136]
Haj Amin al-Husseini said in March 1948 to an interviewer from the Jaffa daily Al Sarih that the Arabs did not intend merely to prevent partition but “would continue fighting until the Zionists were annihilated.”[135]
The Arab Higher Committee demanded that in a Palestinian Arab state, the majority of the Jews should not be citizens (those who had not lived in Palestine before the British Mandate).[108]”
And the day after the British left, they attacked. And when they lost, they rebuilt their armies and attacked again. And then again. The attacks by their neighbour states only stopped after Israel credibly threatened to retaliate with nuclear weapons.
So with this kind of mindsets (on both sides, I’m leaving out all the evils of zionistst here), do you believe a single state solution would have been viable? Which countries would have sourced the UN peacekeeping force you propose? Would they have been willing to fight off the Arab armies on day one? Would they be willing to stay indefinitely?
I think that the people that believed or still believe in a single state solution with equal rights are naive to the reality that there are just way too much religious extremists willing to inflict atrocities to ensure their place in heaven. On both sides.
But this is just gravely incorrect. The Palestinians were heard on the matter. They disagreed. The UN voted for a partitition regardless. Then they were invited in the committee that ‘drew the lines’. But their position was the following (quote from the first article):
Which is the same as your boss asking you for your opinion, only to reject it, if it doesn’t align. Moving on with this proposal, showed that from the beginning their was no equal regard for the Palestinians.
If we look at the Background part, we can already see, how the British and zionists approached the whole thing:
In 1937, following a six-month-long Arab General Strike and armed insurrection which aimed to pursue national independence and secure the country from foreign control, the British established the Peel Commission.The Commission concluded that the Mandate had become unworkable, and recommended Partition into an Arab state linked to Transjordan; a small Jewish state; and a mandatory zone. To address problems arising from the presence of national minorities in each area, it suggested a land and population transfer[33] involving the transfer of some 225,000 Arabs living in the envisaged Jewish state and 1,250 Jews living in a future Arab state, a measure deemed compulsory “in the last resort”. […] In a letter to his son in October 1937, Ben-Gurion explained that partition would be a first step to “possession of the land as a whole” The same sentiment, that acceptance of partition was a temporary measure beyond which the Palestine would be “redeemed . . in its entirety,” was recorded by Ben-Gurion on other occasions, such as at a meeting of the Jewish Agency executive in June 1938, as well as by Chaim Weizmann.
So of course the Arabs would not agree. Forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians was already part of this plan from the beginning. And to think of the larger context. The Arab nations were looking to free themselves from colonial rule, but as the British would slowly loose power, another European people should sweep in, right at the heart of the region?
For the context of the first Israel-Arab war you need to also put in between the fact, that with the end of the mandate Israel declared itself as a state and only then the Arab nations declared war. Imagine today China would funnel hundreds of thousands of people into say Belgium, then declare a new state there and take Brussels under control. Would the other EU countries just stand by?
I believe that a one state solution takes a much longer path, but ultimately is the only way, to really get peace in the area and move past the conflict. If you have two states, either side can give rise to power of war hawks. In this regard it would be very much like the status now. If you have two states, it can always be used to ignite tensions and destablize the region, whenever it is desired by other geopolitical players, as is the case currently too. Giving either side the full control over the area, will just lead to it trying to displace or exterminate the other. Having two seperate states, will always mean that whatever injustice is unresolved or commited in the future will be difficult to legally solve, as either side would not give proper access to courts of the other. If a two state solutions was to be enforced now, Israel would not be willing to make any concessions and unless the West would force them in a war to do so, i don’t see them currently being willing to leave a single illegal settlement. The last Israel political leader who wanted to move towards a diplomatic solution, Jitzak Rabin, was depicted as Hitler and murdered, for saying Israel needs to be able to make compromises to ever achieve peace. Since Israel is currently in a position of power, they will simply not be willing to negotiate anything towards a two state solution, and i doubt the Palestinians to accept it, as it would always be deominated by Israel.
I believe that a one state solution ultimately is the only way, because it is the only context in which everyone can be given an actually fair chance and political participation, that could form the justice necessary to achieve acceptance.
Finally about the religious extremists, I think that these will continue to be huge destabilizing factor, as the religious extremism is the vehicle of political extremism. In reestablishing a mandate it would be possible to seek out and bring everyone to justice, who has been commiting war crimes or crimes against humanity. By holding violent Israeli and Palestinian criminals accountable these dangerous elements can be removed from both societies, but more importantly it can create a symbol of justice returning to the region.
Which is the same as your boss asking you for your opinion, only to reject it, if it doesn’t align
If your boss first asked for your opinion and later came back and said “well, the result from the democratic vote went the other way, and we have to follow it”, would you go around telling everybody that he refused to hear your opinion on the matter? Why? Do you think that’s an honest take on what happened?
By holding violent Israeli and Palestinian criminals accountable these dangerous elements can be removed from both societies
How are you going to hold someone accountable that is willing to martyr themselves in order to help their religion ‘win’?
Jewish Voice for Peace is guided by a vision of justice, equality and freedom for all people. We unequivocally oppose Zionism because it is counter to those ideals.
(...)
Palestinian dispossession and occupation are by design. Zionism has meant profound trauma for generations, systematically separating Palestinians from their homes, land, and each other. Zionism, in practice, has resulted in massacres of Palestinian people, ancient villages and olive groves destroyed, families who live just a mile away from each other separated by checkpoints and walls, and children holding onto the keys of the homes from which their grandparents were forcibly exiled.
(...)
Keep saying this. Every time you do Israel loses more public support.
The shield has been used up and is no longer valid. The general public no longer accepts you zealots calling every criticism of Israel antisemitism.
So fuck you and fuck Israel. Yes Israel has a right to exist, but they do not have a right to illegally steal land. Palestine has a right to exist also.
And that is why Vice is a trash publication. Here is the correct text:
„Alle potenziellen Zuwendungsempfängerinnen und –empfänger bekennen sich damit zu einer vielfältigen Gesellschaft und gegen jede Form von Antisemitismus gemäß der Antisemitismus-Definition der International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) und ihrer Erweiterung durch die Bundesregierung. Sie verpflichten sich dazu, alles Notwendige zu veranlassen, um sicherzustellen, dass die gewährten Fördergelder keinen Vereinigungen zugutekommen, die als terroristisch und/oder extremistisch eingestuft werden.“ “All potential grant recipients are thus committed to a diverse society and against all forms of antisemitism in accordance with the definition of antisemitism of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and its extension by the German government. They undertake to take all necessary steps to ensure that the funding granted does not benefit associations that are classified as terrorist and/or extremist.”
“Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews that can be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Anti-Semitism is directed in word or deed against Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property as well as against Jewish community institutions or religious institutions. In addition, the state of Israel, which is understood as a Jewish collective, can also be the target of such attacks.”
There’s nothing in there about “criticising the countries occupation of Palestinian lands”. You just can’t fucking mask your antisemitism by raging against Israel.
That is some valuable context, thank you. Definitely seems like skewed reporting from Vice. The definition as you posted it definitely seems better than what Vice reported, though its last sentence is so vague that it could easily be used to silence criticism, whether it was meant to do that or not.
aka a definition being used currently to silence free speech. If you’re using it to silence critisism of israel you are weaponizing it against one of the original drafter’s intentions.
So why not consider silence yourself? I’ve had quite enough of this ridiculous tantrum you call a point
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