Israeli society’s dehumanization of Palestinians is now absolute
Israeli society’s dehumanization of Palestinians is now absolute
In the past, Israel’s moral debate about its military actions may have been narrow and hypocritical, but at least it existed. Not this time.
At 5:40 a.m. on Aug. 10, the IDF Spokesperson sent a message to reporters informing them of an Israeli airstrike on a “military headquarters located in Al-Taba’een school compound near a mosque in the Daraj [and] Tuffah area, which serves as a shelter for residents of Gaza City.”
Shortly after this announcement, shocking images from Al-Taba’een school circulated around the world, showing piles of dismembered flesh and body parts being removed in plastic bags. The images were accompanied by reports that around 100 Palestinians had been killed in the Israeli attack, with many more hospitalized. Most of those killed were in the middle of fajr, or dawn prayers, at a designated space inside the school compound.
The IDF announcement explicitly stated that the school “serves as a shelter for residents of Gaza City,” meaning that the IDF knew refugees had fled there in fear of the army’s own bombings. The statement did not claim that there was any gunfire or rocket attacks from the school, but that “Hamas terrorists … planned and promoted … terrorist acts” from it. Nor did it claim that the civilians who took refuge in the school were given any warning, only that the army had used “precision weapons” and “intelligence.” In other words, the army bombed a populated shelter knowing full well the deadly repercussions its assault would inflict.
This dehumanization has reached new heights in recent weeks with the debate over the legitimacy of raping Palestinian prisoners. In a discussion on the mainstream TV network Channel 12, Yehuda Shlezinger, a “commentator” from the right-wing daily Israel Hayom, called for institutionalizing rape of prisoners as part of military practice. At least three Knesset members from the ruling Likud party also argued that Israeli soldiers should be allowed to do anything, including rape.
But the biggest trophy goes to Israel’s Finance Minister and Defense Ministry deputy, Bezalel Smotrich. The world “won’t let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned,” he lamented at an Israel Hayom conference earlier this month.
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I didn't want to paint all Israelis with the same brush, but Jesus Christ, the people they allow in their government are indescribably vile.
The problem with Israel is that its leader was a bit too vile. About half of the elected knesset refused to form a coalition government with Netenyahu, resulting in years of failing to form a governing coalition.
Eventually, the path out of the stalemate ended up being forming a coalition with far right members of the knesset that had previously been political pariahs; including appointing a convicted terrorist to the role of minister of national security.
Prior to October 7, this was an extremely tenous political position. The coalition was hanging on by a thread. The attempted judicial
coupreform was stopped by massive public backlash. And the politian whose divisiveness was central to the political crises that enabled the far right to join the coalition was in the middle of defending himself in a criminal trial. However, when a crisis like October 7 happens, you are stuck with the leaders you have. And Israeli leadership at the time was possibly the worst in the history of the country for handling it (unless you agree with their manifest destiny version of Zionism, in which case I think they are doing quite well).The hamas attack was a godsend for the Israeli government. They couldn't have done better themselves.
There are lots of dissenting Israelis... but the overwhelming majority of the country is in favor of genocide. The country was founded by colonizing settlers. They went there to steal land and drive out the native peoples living there. Stands to reason colonial racism is a very prominent and popular idea in public opinion.
The country was not 'founded'. It was given to the Jewish people as reparation for what the Nazis had done (and the world ignored).
The problem is that Palestinians had lived there for 2000 years (since the Diaspora by Rome).
The zionist project began long before WW2. It was not given to them. Palestinians never agreed to giving away their home. The Europeans just did not care if they colonized Palestine or not.
ZiOnIsT pRoJeCt
Riiiight. So because Jewish people wanted, and were pushing for, a homeland before WW2 began you think it was all planned they would be given the land before the war even started?
White supremacists want a "homeland" too. Do you think they would be justified in carrying out a genocide to get one? Israel was created through colonialism and terrorism, and is maintained through apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and outright genocide. Is this "homeland" worth the bloodshed?
Your argument would make tons of sense theoretically if there wasn't a long history of real discrimination and pogroms in Europe and also Muslim societies (e.g. jizya) against jews that justify wanting a haven state where the laws and the people will never turn against them.
And so just because there existed discrimination against Jewish people that justifies stealing the land of Palestinian to give them their own state? Why wasn't one founded anywhere else? Why not colonize somewhere in the middle of Europe? Why not somewhere with sparse population? Why is it fine for them to take Palestinian land and homes and drive them out?
Jewish people are not the same as Israelis. Most Israelis are Jewish, but there are many jewish people who are not Israelis and who are anti-zionist. Colonialism isn't fine because the colonizers were facing discrimination. That doesn't justify them committing atrocities and stealing the land of others.
Who is Israel a colony of? And what would the decolonization you want look like?
Zionists? It was zionists who colonized. They did so with the intention of creating a Jewish state.
Decolonization would be... decolonization. Return Palestinian land to the Palestinians. There are still plenty of people alive from the first Nakba. They all deserve their land back. A dissolution of the Israeli state and the creation of a new state of Palestine. Which would necessitate a total dismantling and withdrawal of the entirety of the Israeli state. An international criminal Court to prosecute all crimes against humanity that have ever been committed by the Israeli state. Redistribution of wealth from the Israeli state. How to handle things from there should be up to the new state of Palestine. They have a right to self-determination. Through mediation, but still it should be up to them. It was their land. They have the right to decide what happens with it.
I'd say at the very least the Zionists should go. The entire Israeli state is not composed of zionists. But the entirety of anyone who has ever served in the IDF or the Israeli government should at the least be sent back to the countries they or their fathers came from. Anyone who has participated in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Anyone who has murdered Palestinians. They don't have a right to be there. But, like I said that's just what I would think is just. It shouldn't be up to western white people to decide. Palestinians deserve the right to choose what happens with their homes.
I would say the same thing about America or Canada, to be clear. That decolonizing them would be to return land to the Natives and allow them to form their own states and determine what happens with their land. It's a more complex question of what they should do from there, but it was always their land and they deserve the power to say what happens with it.
And, to be clear, I'm not saying I believe this is what will happen. Merely what I'm saying ought to happen. What actual justice would look like.
Actual justice to you is deporting all people without sufficient/correct bloodline from Israel to Europe, and the Americas back to Europe, Africa, and Asia, to return those lands to their "correct" ethno states? I assume you would include Australia and New Zealand, and Africa as well. Very "sins of the father to the third and fourth generations".
This "solution" makes about as much sense as shipping all black Americans to Africa.
Yea, that was tried before and is the origin of Liberia. Not recommended. But now you can't simply undo it.
The country was not 'founded'. It was given to the Jewish people as reparation for what the Nazis had done (and the world ignored).
That's not true. Zionism as a political movement started with Theodore Herzl in the 1880s as a 'modern' way to 'solve' the 'Jewish Question' of Europe. Since at least the 1860's, Europe was increasingly antisemitic and hostile to Jewish people. Zionism was explicitly a Setter Colonialist movement and the native Palestinians were not considered People but Savages by the Europeans. While Zionist Colonization began before it, the Balfor Declaration is when Britain gave it's backing of the movement in order to 'solve' the 'Jewish Question' while also creating a Colony in the newly conquered Middle East after WWI in order to exhibit military force in the region and extract natural resources. That's when Zionist immigration started to pick up, out of necessity for most as Europe became more hostile and antisemitic. That continued into and during WWII, European countries and even the US refused to expand immigration quotas for Jewish people seeking asylum. The idea that the creation of Israel is a reparation for Jewish people is an after-the-fact justification. While most Jewish immigrants had no choice and just wanted a place to live in peace, it was the Zionist Leadership that developed and implemented the forced transfer, ethnic cleansing, of the native population, Palestinians.
Zionism’s aims in Palestine, its deeply-held conviction that the Land of Israel belonged exclusively to the Jewish people as a whole, and the idea of Palestine’s “civilizational barrenness" or “emptiness” against the background of Euro pean imperialist ideologies all converged in the logical conclusion that the native population should make way for the newcomers. The idea that the Palestinian Arabs must find a place for themselves elsewhere was articulated early on. indeed, the founder of the movement, Theodor Herzl, provided an early reference to transfer even before he formally outlined his theory of Zionist rebirth in his Judenstat. An 1895 entry in his diary provides in embryonic form many of the elements that were to be demonstrated repeatedly in the Zionist quest for solutions to the “Arab problem ”-the idea of dealing with state governments over the heads of the indigenous population, Jewish acquisition of property that would be inalienable, “Hebrew Land" and “Hebrew Labor,” and the removal of the native population.
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10 myths of Israel by Ilan Pappe, summerized and full book
Transfer Committee and the JNF led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate.
The problem is that Palestinians had lived there for 2000 years (since the Diaspora by Rome).
The label of Palestinians, or People of Palestine, was in use even 3000 years ago to refer to the people as a whole that inhabited the levant. At the time, even the Israelites were Palestinian. From at least the 10th century to the 19th century, Palestine was normally a place Jewish people could go to seek asylum from persecution.
sigh...look up Sephardi and Mizrahi
Jewish people have always existed in region, yes. You'll note that Israel has not always existed in the region. Being Jewish is not synonymous with being an Israeli. The millions of settlers who came to the area to create a Jewish state on Palestinian land were definitionally colonizers. They literally went somewhere that they did not live, somewhere no one in their family had lived, and drove out the people who were already living there. They literally stole homes and stole land from Palestinians living there.
Israel is a post-Ottoman state. The Ottoman empire had 1.5% jews and 15-20% arabs. It is...expectable... for jews to also claim a small bit of what was left of the Ottoman empire for them to manage as they wish as did arabs in Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine (if Israel respected its founding document).
Both Arabs and Jews fought the Ottomans on the side of the allies in WW1. Why is Israel less legitimate than Syria or Lebanon?
Once that is established, you can discuss the Nakba, right to return, Palestinian statehood, kicking out settlers from the West Bank, etc.
Again, Jewish people are not synonymous with Israelis. Those 1.5% Jewish people were not the zionist colonizers. They had existed there prior to Israel. Israel was created by colonizers who espoused the ideology of zionism, that the Jewish religion had a right to it's own state and that it had the right to take land away from other people to make that state. This ideology is still in practice today. They are slowly committing ethnic cleansing to expand their state. They believe they have a right to significantly more than just Gaza or the West Bank. Which they never had the right to begin with. They displaced millions of people from their homes that had been there for centuries. Millenia in some cases. It is colonization.
Was manifest destiny wrong? Was it wrong for the American settlers to displace native Americans, to steal their land and ethnically cleanse them? Then it is absolutely unequivocally necessarily wrong for the Israelis to do the same to Palestinians.
It seems that you are arguing that only the Jewish people who stayed or managed to return to the region prior to the 18 or 1900s count as "real" Jews, and those that came after the foundation of Israel are Europeans faking being Jews for the purpose of colonizing the middle east?
I never made any statement on the legitimacy of anyone's identity as Jewish. Israel is a country. Israelis are citizens of that country. Jewish people are Jewish people. Israelis are not one and the same with Jewish people.
Jewish people who existed in the region prior to the nakba and the colonization of Palestine were not Israelis. They were not zionists. They coexisted with Muslims in Palestine. Israel was conceived by zionists in Europe. It was a deliberate colonization effort. It didn't just naturally occur amongst people already living there. Europeans traveled to the region and colonized it, much the same as other Europeans did to North America, Australia, South Asia, etc.
We see all those other colonization efforts as evil and genocidal, which they were. It is much the same with colonization of Palestine. Palestinians should always have had their own nation. They have been told multiple times throughout history both before and after the nakba that they would have their own nation. Israel colonized Palestine and evicted Palestinians from their homes, stole their land from them. They didn't immigrate to the region to coexist with Palestinians. They came to steal their land, get rid of them, and make their own state on that stolen land.
Because there was no Jewish successor state. There wasn't a Jewish state until Jewish settlers committed ethnic cleansing.
When was Syria last a state before 1918? I agree that the Israeli government should not have stopped anyone from returning to their homes in the Nakba and that should have been fixed since, but the region made that hard to negotiate.
But I do not see a problem with a government by jewish leadership reviving historic Israel any more than by Hashemite Arab kings reviving historic Syria, Iraq, Arabia.
Those were based on people and cultures that were already there. They were not imported from Europe.
You keep pushing this narrative that's only half complete and hoping nobody notices. It's ridiculous.
Ah, so as long as you push a people/culture out of a region long enough, they no longer count as having been there. Or are you saying that the Jewish people interbred with Europeans too much after the Roman diaspora and thus Jews are no longer of middle eastern descent? Is there an argument that the Jews originated in Europe or elsewhere and not from the region surrounding Jerusalem?
I am ignoring the entire subject of the state of Israel, I'm just trying to understand the logic on the Jewish people and culture not being "already there" in the region.
Yes, 2000 years means you're not from a place anymore.
And don't bring Arab Jews into this like they aren't discriminated against.