Let's talk about Israel

Politics and religion
1

Yesterday Israel massacred 60 people and injured 1400 when they opened fire into an unarmed crowd. The world has condemned them (except the US of course) and they just don’t care.

I have been thinking about this issue for years. It’s very complex with a lot of history, violence on all sides, terrorism on both sides, displacement of families so other families can move in, almost $100 billion in aid from the US, it just goes on. The Palestinians are thrown off their land, have no support from anyone, and are rejected by the entire world except for aid groups.

Yet no one does anything. War crime after war crime. Massacre after massacre. The people that Israel displaced to form their nation state are defacto refugees and have been for years.

When you talk to most Israelis (in my limited experience, of course), the average viewpoint is that the “Arabs” as they call them, are little more than animals. Their opinion seems to be Palestinians are unwashed masses that are intent on “breeding us out” or out to get them. They are looked at as subhuman, so the world watches and does nothing, and says nothing to Israel. And if you criticize them at all, they throw your own history, 200+ years ago, in your face. “Who are you to lecture is when you killed off the Native Americans” they retort. That ends the discussion for them.

My personal opinion, and you may diagree, the Holocaust is responsible for this. I think the European Holocaust in the early 1940s left such a emotional scar on European Judism that it made the state of Israel what it is today. No matter what they do, how many children they gun down, how many crowds they machine gun, the world says nothing because of the very real horror of the Holocaust. Yet there have been many terrible things happen to many peoples and it doesn’t turn the entirety of the people into a bunch f scumbag war criminals. What particular irks me is if you bring any of this up in any conversation, you are labelled anti semetic, anti Jewish, and generally dismissed.

Is there any hope of this situation improving? Will Israel always be war criminals? And why are we still giving them $6 billion a year? The general consensus is that it’s to appease “the Jewish vote” but in 2018 there are less than 6 million Jewish people in the US, mostly concentrated in the New York area and Florida. That can’t be the reason anymore, they are statistically insignificant.

Is it possible to have a discussion about this?

2

Nikki Haley is at the UN right now blaming the Palestinians and praising Israel for being restrained. What a terrible travesty. She is also blaming this all on Iran, which is a bald faced lie, Iran doesn’t support Palestine at all. No one does.

3

I think unconditional support for Israel is more important for the Evangelical vote than the Jewish vote these days.

4

Man, that’s an interesting thought. You may be right.

5

Hasn’t Israel/Saudi Arabia/USA been the unholy geopolitical alliance post WW2? There may be realpolitik reasons divorced from morality and domestic politics.

(Personally I find the state of Israel distasteful. They were the bullied in WW2 but now they are the bullies. Maybe in the realm of states it’s all about who bullies who.)

6

Yes, that’s a good analogy, the bullies one. I’ve also heard it said the state of Israel has come full circle and they are now the Nazis of the middle East.

7

I absolutely agree with everything you’ve said. What disgusts me about Israel right now is they’re doing the very thing to Palestinians that Germany did to them before they were shipped out to camps. And now, they are killing innocent people, gunning them down, and it’s almost like when Nazi’s would line up people in a ditch and shoot them all.

In addition, Israel is doing “resettlements”. Taking away prime Palestinian land to move Israels into, further displacing Palestinian people.

8

That’s who Hamas always shoots rockets at, the settlements that are fresh off Israel occupation from Palestinians. I think if an invadng army stole my house I’d attack them too with whatever I could.

9

I think there is blame on both sides. You had a group on one side that was bad. You had a group on the other side that was also very violent. Nobody wants to say that. I’ll say it right now.

There was no way of making a correct statement that early. I had to see the facts, unlike a lot of reporters.

You look at both sides. I think there’s blame on both sides and I have no doubt about it and you don’t have any doubt about it either and- and- and- and if you reported it accurately, you would say it.

You also had some very fine people on both sides.

10

And you have the US throwing gasoline in the fire. And while I might tend to agree on the “blame on both sides” to a degree, only one side was specifically targeting medical personnel - which, by the way, is as war crime as it gets.

https://twitter.com/evanchill/status/996122021548437505

11

I yelled fuck. Lol.

Yeah, war crime right there. The Jewish state and community made a huge deal of prosecuting the Germans for war crimes, and rightly so. Yet they won’t even address or consider their own war crimes. They appear to have become what they hate, the experience with the Nazis turned them INTO Nazis. As Nietsche might put it, they stared too long into the abyss.

12

If POTUS says it, it must be true :)

13

Those were all Trump quotes, LOL.

That guy is totally a crisis actor! His dad is probably a former FBI agent.

14

Half of evangelicals support Israel because they believe it is important for fulfilling end-times prophecy:

“The tenet of Christian Zionism is that God’s promise of the Holy Land to the Jews is eternal. It’s not just something in antiquity,” Oldmixon said. “When we talk about the Holy Land, God’s promise of the Holy Land, we’re talking about real estate on both sides of the Jordan River. So the sense of a greater Israel and expansionism is really important to this community. Jerusalem is just central to that. It’s viewed as a historical and biblical capital.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/Po4Qcy6rCdrGK6IAowjVLhd0IzA=/1484x0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/U6IW2J7NLA4WXHPHQK6XQAOO24.jpg

All of this stuff makes me feel better about the future of humanity…

15

Ah. Of course. ;)

16

Not our fault, really!
“Those who suggest the Gaza violence has anything do with the location of the American embassy are sorely mistaken”

17

You are correct. It’s sad that many alleged US Christians either don’t know or don’t care about the plight that US policies cause for Palestinian Christians.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/23/evangelicals-side-with-israel-thats-hurting-palestinian-christians/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b9ee096f6ede

18

Absolutely. Sadly this is a poisoned well politically. In the eyes of the US Evangelical community the Israeli government can do no wrong, and criticizing their actions is tantamount to supporting terrorism.

It is imperative that sanity regain, because the Netanyahu government is, if not fully evil, at least evil adjacent. The Jewish people of the middle east and Israel absolutely have a right to exist as a state, but the US has to long aided and abetted their worst impulses. Unfortunately, for the reasons brought up earlier vis a vis evangelicals and their religious fervor for blind support of Israel as a de facto moral requirement, attempting to ease tensions and curb their bad behavior is political suicide. Criticizing Israel publically? You might as well resign.

It’s insane, and sad.

19

Look at this photo of a Palestinian youth using a sling. It reminds me of the story in the Torah about David and Goliath. How ironic that the Palestinians are David and Israel Goliath.

20

A few points:

  • The US exacerbated the ongoing conflict, we didn’t cause it. Still, responsibility is certainly there … not that the administration will ever acknowledge it.

  • Yes, the government of Iran does support the Palestinians when it’s convenient to them. Still, Iran is not to blame for the conflict, regardless of what arms they may or may not smuggle through. They’re just opportunistic with an axe to grind.

  • Netanyahu has been struggling through corruption charges and challenges to his own authority from within, making him need “wins” more than he ever has. The relocation of the US embassy (and our backing out of the JCPOA) is one, and apparently the action against protestors will get him another with a segment of hard liners. Unsurprisingly, support for a two-state solution has been wavering on both sides, as Netanyahu continues to push harsher policies toward Palestinians while beating the nationalistic drum. I wonder what will happen when he finally leaves office.