My last comment on this since it looks like we disagree on first principles. I can recognize the good in trying to maximize how many lives can be saved. Can you recognize that this situation (bombing out Gaza to make it uninhabitable and then move the Gazans by carrot or stick to another country) fits the definition of ethnic cleansing? Do you exemplify my theory that some people no longer buy the argument that there is something immoral about ethnic cleansing?
It's not irrelevant to people who live there. Militant groups like Hamas want Israel and the West Bank to be under their control with Israel as a political entity totally dissolved. Israel wants Gaza and West Bank to be under their control, with all Palestinian nationalist parties totally dissolved. If you were a random person living in that part of the world, which of those two outcomes would you prefer? To me, the answer is clear. If I have to be the one living under Hamas rule, I'm not going to be comforted by the idea that Hamas militants had a hard life.
Just so you understand, people who defended Aparthied South Africa used this exact line of reasoning to maintain Aparthied. The idea that the black population is inherently more savage like to where if the country goes a democratic elite of majority rule, the white population would be genocided. Now does your argument sound as appealing if say "which government do you prefer to live in? The Boer controlled Aparthied government or ANC controlled government? " Like I doubt you have the balls to say "I prefer the Aparthied government". You are too liberal coded for that. If you were a liberal in the 1980s you'd be comfortable saying it though. Overton window and stuff ....
While I recognize some parallels, from what I know of the ANC, they are far better than Hamas, and I prefer Israel's government to the Apartheid one. I don't think just because I prefer Israel to Hamas, it must mean that I would have preferred Apartheid government in South Africa to the ANC, whose prime operating principal was eliminating racial oppression. Hamas is not interested in eliminating oppression. They just want the Jews to be the ones that are oppressed. And as poorly as Israel treats non-Jews in Gaza and the West Bank due to hostile actors living those areas, non-Jewish Arabs in Israel still have far more liberties than the Jews (who are permitted to stay) would have under Hamas rule.
Nelson Mandala and ANC leaders have said multiple times that Israel settler colonialism and Aparthied are a different level of oppressive than Aparthied South Africa. They are literally telling you Palestinian oppression is worse than theirs. I trust their understanding of Aparthied and oppression of ethnic groups. Aparthied South Africa was closer to Jim Crow America where enforcement of racial hierarchies were enforced through a police state, wealth inequality between races and cultural norms. Aparthied Israel is a settler colonialism system where the oppressed group has experience multiple mass displacement campaigns and are controlled through military rule and sanctions. Black South Africans weren't experiencing 2000 lb ordinance drops on their neighborhoods. So ya the outcomes of what resistance will look like for each respective group will differ.
I am sad you think this way. You remove the ability for Palestinians to be violent through a desire for liberation and project that when Palestinians do violence it is only though an ideological extremist religious fanaticism of Jew hatred. I know you base this understanding why Palestinians do violence on extremist rhetoric like the 1987 charter that was just authored by a single person and was no where as formal as the 2017 charter. You can paint the Israeli government as genocidal if you concentrate on the words of some of the most powerful figures in Israel like Ben Gvir. And like the Israeli government, the front facing pr friendly version of their rhetoric suggests they want a one state solution where Muslims and Jews have the same rights: Here are all the references to Jews in the 2017 charter: Both sides have a front facing more pr friendly way to express their desires.
I'm speaking of Hamas, specifically. Their views with regards to Jews have been spelled out over and over. I don't think it's an unfair projection to suggestion that their movement is ideologically based on religious fanaticism with antisemitism being a prominent part of it. I'm familiar with the differences in the original charter and the revised one. The revised charter strikes me as an attempt to project a more moderate, democratic-friendly view to attract Western sympathy. Given how Hamas talks about Jews when addressing an Arab audience, I'm deeply skeptical that they wouldn't impose massive oppression over a Jewish population should they assume power over them. With regards to Israel, it's clear that non-Jews in Gaza and the West Bank are treated horribly. But at least the citizens of Israel, Jews and non-Jews, are treated pretty well and given substantial political rights compared to other people in the region. On the other side, Hamas treats the people it governs terribly so they can foolishly hold out hope of somehow defeating Israel militarily. Again, I make no inferences from this about the intrinsic goodness of the Israeli people versus the Gazan people. I just have nothing good to say about Hamas as a religious/political movement and governing body.
Honestly don't know another country in the region that has highways segregated by ethnicity. All the countries in the region are American backed anyways so whatever regime you think is not deniliating rights well enough is the first of American actions to have those regimes installed. The idea of non Jews having the same rights as Jews in Israel proper is the same line of argument Jim Crow advocates used. "Nothing legally on paper suggests we oppress black people". But you see the same signal indicators of oppression. Israel doesn't track median wealth much but they track median income and the median Jewish Israeli has a income nearly twice that of a median Arab Israeli. And given the massive disproportionately in property and land ownership you can imagine the median wealth gap being astronomically higher.l than the income gap.
Do you mean to say that non-Jews in Israel proper are currently living under a kind of Jim Crow system of segregation? I'm not aware of that happening today. I'm not surprised that disparities in wealth or land ownership exists, just as they do in the US.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelPalestine/s/nduzouq0u7 Long read and am time constrained to go point by point and explain all the components of inequality in Israel proper that the US State department found over the past few decades. But give it a read.
I'm not surprised at all. I just understand that actions have consequences. You seem to think expanding settlements was the start of things, for some reason. I don't know why you would start there, as if the Israelis and Palestinians were living in harmony until the year 2000 or whenever. They have been at war since before there was an Israel and before there were Palestinians. They were each offered a state in 1948. The Israelis said yes and declared independence. The Arabs said no, and a coalition of Arab states attacked the fledgeling Israel and tried to eliminate it. Israel won. Then all the local Arabs that had backed the attack on Israel and stood out of the way wanted to come back and be in Israel, and the Israelis of course said no, so they had to stay in Egypt (Gaza) and Jordan (the West Bank). Then they tried two more times to wipe out Israel with multinational coalitions in 1967 and 1973. They lost again and again. Israel grew to include the West Bank and Gaza and the Golan Heights and the Sinai peninsula. Then they traded the Sinai back to Egypt for a peace deal, but Egypt left some Egyptians in Gaza (who are now called Palestinians, because they adopted that name as a marketing ploy under Arafat). Jordan left some Jordanians in the West Bank (same deal on now being called Palestinians). They all wanted to wipe out the Jews (just like they did in their home countries, which gets conveniently glossed over in the retelling by the Pro-Palestinian camp) and they tried over and over again, and they failed. Israel was stupid to just let them keep trying. They have their chance now to correct that error. Yes, just like the criminals hate law enforcement and cry about being arrested and shot, and the people who support the criminals cry about law enforcement arresting and shooting the criminals, Hamas cries about the IDF and the Hamas supporters cry about the IDF. It turns out that the bad guys don't like it when the enforcement arm of the good guys cracks down on them. The easy way to avoid that is to not be one of the bad guys and to not support the bad guys. I have no race-based animosity to anyone. I look down on terrorism and believe that yes, Israel is superior to Hamas. Anyone that doesn't is kind of an idiot. I don't buy the argument "ethnic cleansing" is always immoral. When there is a war, total victory is the surest way for the war to not repeat. The people arguing with me have literally said over and over again that Hamas will have a surge in recruitment and be rearmed and continue attacking. The immoral thing would be allowing that to happen. Hamas themselves have said that is what they will do. They have said there will be a thousand October 7ths. No, relocating the people in Gaza and the West Bank to have free and prosperous lives in other places and make clear that the war is over, they lost, and there will be no repeat is not immoral, it is the right thing to do. The alternative is to just repeat the cycle again. That is unless everyone is lying, and this time even though they have said the fight against Israel will continue, they have actually decided to just live in peace. Is that what you expect will happen? I don't give it good odds.
So we know the conflict with the Jews. So they still kept the Thais hostage who have the least to do with the conflict we should trade the woke purple hair kids from America for the rest of the hostages they think Gaza is some woke rainbow paradise so let them go there @Salvy @basso @tallanvor @CrixusTheUndefeatedGaul
link will work for everyone Arab States Wake Up to Fact That Trump Means What He Says on Gaza Egypt leads race for alternative to Trump plan it fears could destabilize the Middle East https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-ea...3?st=e1wqWj&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Trump is always playing chess with these Arab clowns. He called them out so they have no choice but to respond with their bullshiit. They never give a damn to the Palestinians before. I’d already got myself a reservation for a 5 star resort on the Gaza Strip built by Trump himself over looking the Mediterranean Sea.
Thanks for your response. I agree with you that if they remain, the likeliest outcome will be more strife and killing. For my part, I don't think that means removing the loser is the most moral outcome. What I would most like to see is for Israel to stop the killing, rebuild Gaza, apologize for the half-century of persecution that has perpetuated Palestinian resistance, make Palestinians full citizens and make Israel a secular country in which both Jews and Gentiles can be equal citizens. For their part, the Palestinians would need to stop the terrorism and violence if they get those concessions. Plenty of mistrust would linger and it would be generations repairing this relationship. The US has been working on its relationship with African Americans for 150 years and there is still some division. Our rapprochement with the remaining Native Americans is in probably worse shape. But we made a start by acknowledging that our behavior in the past was wrong, armed and bloody resistance of slave rebellions and Indian Wars notwithstanding. But that's a zillion miles away from happening. Even if the US was on board with that happening, it wouldn't happen in Israel's political environment. So probably holding out and insisting that Israel do something they would never do is also immoral because it would only perpetuate suffering. Even so, embracing the realpolitik answer of genocide as the utilitarian solution to minimize suffering isn't the answer either, in my view. It causes a different suffering. And it gives Israel and other oppressors a perverse incentive to do more of it. Where that leaves me is that I want nothing at all to do with Israel. I don't want to destroy them but neither do I want to help them, talk to them, or trade with them. If they want to run an apartheid state and engage in genocide, they're no friend of mine. So I've been frustrated with US' long history of supporting Israel but now I'm disgusted and aggrieved that our policy now is going to be active direct participants in Israel's crimes. I'll leave it there (yeah, I know I promised my last post was going to be the last). Though I disagree, I think I at least understand you.
gift link https://www.wsj.com/opinion/if-indi...c?st=hZVRno&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink If Indians and Pakistanis Can Relocate, Why Can’t Gazans? Population transfers aren’t a Trump innovation. There are plenty of examples from the 20th century. By Sadanand Dhume Feb. 12, 2025 at 4:45 pm ET President Trump’s idea that the U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and relocate two million Palestinians has elicited outrage and derision. But even if the idea never comes to fruition, it has this virtue: It puts a spotlight on the world’s double standard toward Israel. Many population transfers have taken place over the past century. In the 1920s, Greece and Turkey agreed to a forced population swap: Greek Orthodox Christians in Turkey moved to Greece, while Muslims in Greece moved to Turkey. After World War II, millions of Indians and Pakistanis were forced to find new homes, as were ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. In the 1970s, Uganda expelled Indians. Only in the Palestinian case has the refugee question festered endlessly. Mr. Trump’s idea involves transferring Gazans to other nations and turning the Gaza Strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Where would the Gazans go? “It could be Jordan, and it could be Egypt, it could be other countries,” Mr. Trump told reporters last week. In a Truth Social post, he elaborated that Palestinians would be resettled “in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes.” It’s easy to see why many people find this off-putting. We aren’t used to viewing knotty geopolitical problems through a real-estate development lens. The Egyptians, Jordanians and Saudis all appear less than enthusiastic at the prospect of an influx of Palestinians. Longtime U.S. allies, including the U.K. and France, have also criticized the idea. Nonetheless, the discussion highlights a double standard. Following the creation of Israel in 1948 and the first Arab-Israeli war, some 600,000 to 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes. Yet the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East today supports nearly six million Palestinian “refugees.” That’s because the U.N. counts not only displaced Palestinians but also their descendants as refugees. “A great-grandchild of Palestinian refugees born in Damascus today is considered a Palestinian refugee,” Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, said in a phone interview. Contrast this with other countries. In the turmoil following Israel’s creation, some 800,000 Jews fled or were expelled from their homes in North Africa and the Middle East. Today the descendants of these Mizrahi Jews make up about half of Israel’s population. Israel never stuck them in permanent refugee camps or used them as a geopolitical bargaining chip. Or take the partition of India. In 1947 the departing British carved out Pakistan from Muslim-majority areas of India. The bloodshed that followed—with Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other—led to some two million deaths and uprooted 18 million people, according to estimates from a 2008 Harvard study. Both India and Pakistan worked hard to integrate the new arrivals. Two Indian prime ministers (Inder Kumar Gujral and Manmohan Singh) were partition refugees, as were two Pakistani military rulers (Zia ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf). Had the U.N. set up a special agency to look after the Indian and Pakistani refugees’ descendants, it would be responsible for tens of millions of people today. No one expects Pakistan to transform its religious demography by offering a “right of return” to descendants of Hindu and Sikh refugees. Why should it be any different for Israel? Arab states deserve blame for the plight of Palestinians. “The ironic thing about Palestinians in Arab countries is that their cause is sacrosanct, but the people themselves are treated badly,” said Mr. Pipes. Jordan, unlike most Arab states, has extended citizenship to most Palestinian refugees within its borders, yet about 160,000 of them—mostly those displaced from Gaza—remain stateless. Lebanon, meantime, houses some 250,000 stateless Palestinians, nearly half in refugee camps. Across the region, Palestinians face discrimination in access to employment, government services and property ownership. The Census Bureau estimates that the U.S. houses 172,000 Palestinians. That’s more than the Palestinian population in many Arab countries. “In the last 100 years, populations have moved repeatedly,” David Friedman, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said in a phone interview. “Sometimes it’s not fair. Sometimes it’s justified from a humanitarian perspective. But whatever happens, when it’s over, it’s over. This is the only place where it’s weaponized.” No one knows if Mr. Trump’s plan will succeed. Removing Gazans by force would create a humanitarian crisis, but it’s not unreasonable to believe that the majority would leave if given the chance to build a better life elsewhere. Either way, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if Arab states had welcomed Palestinian Arabs the way many other countries around the world have welcomed refugees. Appeared in the February 13, 2025, print edition as 'If Indians and Pakistanis Can Relocate, Why Can’t Gazans?'.
Yeah if a Mexican moves to Canada , he becomes Canadian, that's not ethnic cleansing @Tomstro @JuanValdez @Salvy @tallanvor @CrixusTheUndefeatedGaul
Thank you for your reasoned response. I wanted to address this one point specifically. Why would Israel apologizing and allowing right of return and making the Palestinians full citizens and paying reparations and rebuilding Gaza not give Palestinians and other terrorists a perverse incentive to do more of it?
