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An Open Letter to Trevor Noah | AJC

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“Actually, the British took the land from the Ottoman Turks, who had ruled there for centuries. Palestinians never had a sovereign state of their own. The Jews did, by the way, though that was vanquished by the Romans nearly 2,000 years ago.”

Okay, I stopped reading here. The Palestinians never had a sovereign state, but the Jews did 2,000 years ago? What the heck kind of point is that? What he seems to be saying is that since the Palestinians have always been oppressed, but at one time, the Jews weren’t, that should continue on?

Can you explain that to me? Is that relevant to this conversation?

“You even try to offer a rationale for the Hamas actions by referring to threatened evictions of four Palestinian families in Jerusalem, failing to note that this is a longstanding legal issue in the Israeli court system.”

On Monday, the Israeli Supreme Court is set to decide whether to uphold the eviction of six families from the neighborhood in favor of Jewish settlers. The decades-old legal battle over the fate of a few dozen Palestinians, which Israeli officials dismiss as “a real estate dispute,” has become emblematic of a wider effort to remove thousands of Palestinians from strategic areas in East Jerusalem and a stand-in for the whole decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“They don’t want Arabs here, or across East Jerusalem,” said Abdelfatah Skafi, 71, one of the Palestinians facing eviction, during a protest this week. “They want to expel the Arabs, and that way they will be able to surround the Old City,” the contested ancient core of Jerusalem that contains sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians.

Battles erupted on Friday night inside the iconic Aqsa mosque compound, as thousands of worshipers leaving Friday Prayer threw stones at Israeli police officers, who threw stun grenades and fired rubber-coated bullets, wounding more than 150 people. Video showed stun grenades landing inside prayer rooms.

The Israeli government has tried to play down the conflict, describing the case as a private matter between the Arab families who moved to the neighborhood in the 1950s, and the settler groups whom Israeli courts have ruled are the legal owners of the families’ homes.

An Israeli Court has decided that settlers own the land after it has been occupied by Arab Families for over 60 years. Yeah, that seems like a fair and just ruling… /s

But of course, this all comes to when you start. And obviously, this guy starts his Grievance politics over 2,000 years ago, with the Roman Empire. Maybe he should bring his complaint up with the Italian Government.

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Clealry there’s no route to a 2 state solution as long as nationalists rule Israel and religious fanatics and Iranian proxies dominate Palestinian politics.

So the question is, given a hypothetical future non-evil Israeli government, how do they address the latter issue?

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Regardless of what he says, the CURRENT Israeli regime–headed for how long now by Netanyahu?–has had no interest in peace negotiations or settlements, and has had an aggressive policy of driving Palestinians out, creating new settlements as quickly as possible, and basically establishing a situation on the ground that makes a 2-party state impossible.

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I feel like there’s no peace possible until both sides prefer peace over what they have now. And one side has little to no incentive to prefer peace, so, good luck with that?

And I’m not sure I’d like to see what it would take for the side that has no incentive for peace to gain that incentive, because I imagine it won’t be at all nice.

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Several other posts after this one.

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I think if you are able to get past the initial OMG NAZIS impact, the suggestion that a military commander would study past situations, even ones involving bad guys, is entirely reasonable.

I do not see anything in the 2002 article that indicates the guy was suggesting that they embrace tactics used by Nazis to exterminate Jews, merely that they would study what happened in the situation in Warsaw.

And again, if you can get past the initial emotional response, it seems like that’s a smart thing to do. Why wouldn’t you study those events?

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In fact, that officer was trying to do the opposite:

if the commander’s obligation is to try to execute the mission without casualties on either side, then he must first analyze and internalize the lessons of earlier battles - even, however shocking it may sound, even how the German army fought in the Warsaw ghetto

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Ya, I think folks need to keep in mind that sometimes, you want to study stuff that was done WRONG, so you can avoid making those mistakes.

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Well the military can, but I wish Israeli Government had taken a moment to study the history of the US and South Africa and tried to learn how to avoid some of the Political and Societal Mistakes that these countries have made (and are currently still making) and used them to avoid the oppression of parts of their population.

Heck, they could have looked at the history of German, pre-World War 2, and looked at that as well.

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But the seizing land and forcing them into slums thing is what the Nazis did to the Jewish population.

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True, but apples and oranges here. Militaries have always learned from their enemies. It’s one of the main commandments of battlefield leadership, really. It’s just that in this case there is a lot of baggage being carried along.

Now, if it was doctors saying they needed to look at what Mengele and other Nazi doctors did, to learn from them, that would be a bit different.

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image

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Is imposible to know whats going on on there. But it appears to me that Isreal activelly remove people from their houses or let paramilitar groups do it. This is a big no-no.

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IGN isn’t owned by News Corp anymore, but it’s still surprising.

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That seems unlikely that was caused by an Israeli air strike.

Edit:
Ah, apparently Hamas had put their intelligence facility inside that building, specifically to try and use the media offices for cover.

Israel gave the media organizations an hour notice prior to destroying the facility.

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Nothing says informed reader like not even daring to read the first sentence in the article.

A Gaza tower block housing the offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera collapsed on Saturday after being struck by Israeli missiles, a Reuters witness said.