Israel / Palestine News Thread

[Breakingthewall]

This one has a good approach too. The only solution are brave Palestinian like those 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKSVHu8s4eA/?igsh=MWF0eHZob2p1ZmtkbQ==

[Nivsch]

7 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

This one has a good approach too. The only solution are brave Palestinian like those 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKSVHu8s4eA/?igsh=MWF0eHZob2p1ZmtkbQ==

Another way to say Integrated (🌼🌻) Palestinians. Great one. We need more like him in both sides.

Edited October 6 by Nivsch

[Breakingthewall]

6 minutes ago, Raze said:

Palestine began terrorism in 1918."

❌ Highly misleading and reductionist.

 

The first major act of violence between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in the Land of Israel (then Palestine under the British Mandate) took place in April 1920, in what became known as the Nebi Musa riots.

Let me explain the context and the events clearly:

🔹 Background (1917–1920)

In 1917, the Balfour Declaration issued by the British government promised support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.

After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, Palestine came under British administration.

The Arab population (both Muslim and Christian) feared losing their land to the growing Jewish immigration and to Britain’s ambiguous promises.

🔹 Nebi Musa, April 1920

During the Muslim Nebi Musa festival (celebrated near Jerusalem), Arab nationalist leaders delivered inflammatory speeches against both Jews and the British.

Crowds soon turned violent:

Five Jews were killed and more than 200 wounded,

Jewish quarters in Jerusalem’s Old City were looted,

and dozens of shops and homes were destroyed.

The British police reacted too late, and the violence lasted several days.

🔹 Consequences

This was the first organized outbreak of Arab violence against the modern Jewish community.

In response, Jews founded the Haganah, a self-defense militia that would later become the core of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

This event marked the formal beginning of the modern Arab–Israeli conflict, nearly three decades before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

Later came other serious episodes:

1921, Jaffa: 47 Jews killed.

1929, Hebron: massacre of 67 Jews (the most brutal before 1948).

1936–1939: major Arab revolt against Jews and the British.

[Raze]

@Breakingthewall

Notice how

- that doesn’t contradict the point the AI made, you just cut out the context 

- you put in a biased prompt specifically asking about Palestinian violence, ignoring the unbiased result explained the violence committed by both groups

- you’re capable of using AI, yet instead of fact checking your own posts you choose to subject us to your garbage over and over

[Nivsch]

" My beloved friend, Livne Shalev, was killed today during a trip in the Golan Heights by a wasp sting, to which he was allergic.

Livne — a man of the outdoors and of education — was a true pioneer in deepening the public’s familiarity with the landscapes of the Golan and the Bashan. This was one of the great missions of his life (just two days ago, he was still recommending sites in the Golan to me and my team). And of course, it was second only to his most important mission — being a devoted and loving family man, so rare and special.

I was fortunate that Livne was the one who guided me through the desert trails of the Eilat Mountains and the southern Negev — always with extraordinary warmth, kindness, and a love for people and the land that is hard to find today.
I receive this message as I serve in the reserves in the buffer zone between the Bashan and the Golan — an area that Livne loved deeply.

Livne returned his soul on the trails of the Golan, where he grew up from childhood until his passing.
The soil of the Golan, and the countless people whose lives you touched, will never forget you.
Dear Hodayah and the children — I share your deep pain. "

Edited October 6 by Nivsch

[Breakingthewall]

17 minutes ago, Raze said:

@Breakingthewall

Notice how

- that doesn’t contradict the point the AI made, you just cut out the context 

- you put in a biased prompt specifically asking about Palestinian violence, ignoring the unbiased result explained the violence committed by both groups

- you’re capable of using AI, yet instead of fact checking your own posts you choose to subject us to your garbage over and over

This was my question: 

What was the first act of violence between Palestinians and Jews in Israel?

This guy explain it better.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPYeh56Dem8/?igsh=MXUxN3VqNDN5c2x3cQ==

[zazen]

7 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

This was my question: 

What was the first act of violence between Palestinians and Jews in Israel?

This guy explain it better.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPYeh56Dem8/?igsh=MXUxN3VqNDN5c2x3cQ==

AI:

“Zionism as a political movement started in the 1890s:
    •    First Zionist Congress: 1897 (Basel, Switzerland)
    •    Theodor Herzl published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State): 1896
    •    Zionist settlement in Palestine (the Yishuv) began ramping up in the early 1900s
By the 1920s, the Zionist project was well underway:
    •    The Balfour Declaration: 1917 (Britain promising a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine)
    •    Jewish immigration was increasing significantly
    •    Land purchases were displacing Palestinian farmers
    •    The explicit goal of creating a Jewish state was public and active

So the 1920s violence happened AFTER Zionist settlement had begun, not before.
The 1929 Hebron massacre, for example - horrific violence against Jewish civilians - happened in a context where:
    •    Zionist immigration had been increasing for decades
    •    Palestinian Arabs were seeing demographic change and land loss
    •    The British Mandate was actively facilitating Jewish settlement
    •    Palestinians correctly perceived this as a colonial project that would dispossess them

This doesn’t justify killing civilians - ever. But it means the violence wasn’t emerging from “ancient hatred” or religious antagonism during centuries of coexistence. It was a response to an active settler-colonial project that was already displacing people.

Compare the timeline:
    •    Pre-1890s: Centuries of relative coexistence (not perfect, but no systematic violence comparable to what came later)
    •    1890s-1920s: Zionist settlement begins and accelerates
    •    1920s-1940s: Violence increases as Palestinians realize they’re being dispossessed
    •    1948: Nakba - 750,000 Palestinians expelled, Israel created
    •    1948-present: Ongoing conflict

The violence tracks with the Zionist project, not with Jewish presence in the region.

Jews lived in Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Yemen for centuries without provoking mass violence. What changed wasn’t “Jews living there” - it was “a European colonial movement arriving to create an ethnostate on land where people already lived.”

So when people cite 1920s violence as proof of ancient hatred: They’re either ignorant of the timeline (Zionism was already active) or deliberately obscuring cause and effect.

By the 1920s, Palestinians were already being displaced. The violence was a response to colonization, not unprovoked religious hatred.

Does this justify attacking Jewish civilians? Absolutely not. But it explains the cause - and the cause wasn’t “Muslims hate Jews inherently.” It was “people resist being colonized.”

The same way Algerians violently resisted French colonization, Indians resisted British colonization, Vietnamese resisted French and American intervention. That doesn’t mean the violence against civilians was justified - but it means the cause was political displacement, not inherent ethnic or religious hatred.

So no - 1920s violence doesn’t undermine the coexistence argument.
It actually proves it. For centuries, coexistence was possible. Violence erupted when a settler-colonial project began actively dispossessing one population to make room for another. That’s not “ancient hatred” - that’s predictable resistance to colonization.
And frankly, if Zionism had never happened, there’s no reason to think Jewish communities in the Middle East couldn’t have continued existing as they had for centuries - as minorities within Muslim-majority societies, sometimes marginalized, sometimes thriving, but not facing systematic expulsion or extermination.

The catastrophic violence came with the colonial project, not before it.“

But wasn’t this all done legally through land purchases?

After 1917, the British Mandate actively facilitated Zionist settlement through:
    •    The Balfour Declaration promising a Jewish homeland (without consulting Palestinians)
    •    Immigration policies favoring Jewish settlers
    •    Legal frameworks that made it easier for Zionist organizations to purchase land
    •    Military protection for Jewish settlements

So “legal” meant “legal under a colonial administration that Palestinians never consented to and that was explicitly working against their interests.”
If someone colonizes your country, sets up a legal system, and then uses that system to dispossess you - is that legitimate? It’s “legal” within that imposed framework, but the framework itself was illegitimate.

The demographic reality
By 1947:
    •    Jewish population had grown from ~6% (1918) to ~33% through immigration
    •    Palestinians went from ~94% to ~67%
    •    This wasn’t natural demographic change - it was planned settlement

Palestinians saw this happening and correctly understood: “This project aims to make us a minority in our own land, then create a state we’ll have no say in.”
That’s not paranoia - that was the explicit Zionist goal. Create facts on the ground through immigration and land purchase until a Jewish state becomes viable.

So when violence erupted in the 1920s-1940s, it wasn’t because of “illegal” squatting necessarily - it was because Palestinians recognized the political project behind the “legal” purchases:

    •    You’re not just buying some land
    •    You’re systematically changing the demographics
    •    You’re building the foundation for a state that will dispossess us
    •    And you’re doing it with British colonial backing

Compare to other colonial contexts:
European settlers in Algeria, Kenya, South Africa also often made “legal” land purchases or received “legal” grants from colonial authorities.
 

Does that make French Algeria, British Kenya, or Apartheid South Africa legitimate? The law itself was imposed by colonial power. Following that law doesn’t make the underlying project just.”

[zazen]

@Breakingthewall According to your worldview people should be grateful to have a more developed people govern them - colonialism is legitimate to you so it’s all okay.

You should make colonialism a fashionable again - make Spain great again hombre. Go re conquer South America maybe? Trumps already making a start with Venezuela with the largest oil reserves so you could tag along.

I want to see you on a superyatch in Ibiza or Marbella next year with your new colonial riches.

[Breakingthewall]

2 hours ago, zazen said:

According to your worldview people should be grateful to have a more developed people govern them - colonialism is legitimate to you so it’s all okay.

You should make colonialism a fashionable again - make Spain great again hombre. Go re conquer South America maybe? Trumps already making a start with Venezuela with the largest oil reserves so you could tag along.

People always say this about colonialism, when it's obvious that's not the case. Colonialism is when a foreign power invades and settles in foreign lands, as the English, Ottomans, Spanish, Mongols, Romans, etc. did, keeping the polis as its center.

What happened in Israel was that there was massive immigration to a stateless land by a population originally from that land. It's a fact; you may like it or not, but you have to accept it because It's absolutely stupid to dedicate your life and the lives of your children to fighting against that fact. It shows that your life is so empty and stupid that you can't think of anything better.

If you were a slave in Egypt, forced to drag stones with whips to build pyramids, or an African in Louisiana, it's understandable. But if you're a Palestinian who's horrified because there are desecrations on the Al-Aqsa esplanade and you offer your child as a martyr, you're simply mentally retarded. It's very difficult to communicate with mentally retarded people. You have to use a language they understand, a loud one. 

 

[Breakingthewall]

3 hours ago, zazen said:

Violence erupted when a settler-colonial project began actively dispossessing one population to make room for another.

Chatgpt:

2. The violence began for political and religious reasons The conflict arose when Arab nationalist and Islamist leaders incited the population against the Jewish immigrants. They argued that the Jews wanted to "seize the land" and "desecrate Muslim holy sites." Tensions grew due to rumors, religious discourse, and fear of losing political power. The first attacks (Nebi Musa, 1920, Jaffa, 1921, Hebron, 1929) were massacres of defenseless Jews, not responses to any expulsions. --- 🔹 3. The Arab expulsions came later (1947–1949) During the Israeli War of Independence (1947–1949): Many Arabs fled out of fear or on the orders of their own leaders, and others were expelled by the Israeli army in combat zones after almost 30 years of previous violence against Jewish communities.

Maybe because this attitude everything is difficult 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DO95BHgAP1D/?igsh=MzdobjZ1Y2FiZzA5

Well, difficult....if I were israelí, for me would be clear what to do. Do my thing and forget the unbrained sheeps

Edited October 7 by Breakingthewall

[_Archangel_]

Guys, unironically, can someone prease help me understand how did we get from "Hamas needs to be erased"  to  "positive climate around USA-Israel-hamas negotiaitions"?

 

[BlueOak]

@zazen

I'll italic your quotes, if I do any copy-paste typos, I apologize. I'll correct.

Quote:
That's why I said America AND the Western led order. They are distinct from the US which is the clear unipolar hegemon but they exist as preferential partners and allies within that order - that are also taken advantage of when it suits the hegemon, as we are seeing today. If they truly want to be left out of great power competition then they need to build their own defense capabilities to gain strategic autonomy and sovereignty - and act accordingly.

While it would be nice to live in this alternate reality where having a large military funded by the country is entirely defensive and not used offensively, even while being pressured and attacked by outside powers. We don't, and we never will. I actually agree with Sadhguru on this one, even if his solution was inane. That is: Having a large military is the cause of war. Its all the resources going into it, its the cultural, economic political and institutional influence it creates etc.

The arms race, creates the arms race, which creates the arms race. And its only disarmament that solves it. Sadhguru called it defanging.

In short Zazen we will never live in the reality you propose as the solution to the problem of hegemony. As Europe rearms it will use that military against the alliance threatening it, just as Israel did. And you will go on to moralise or analyse that this is bad, when it is an entirely predictable course. Because its an obvious pattern.

So understanding that inevitable outcome, what are Europe’s and Israel’s choices at this juncture?

• Give up on American protection, cower against an increasingly aggressive world, give up more of their sovereignty to Russia/Iran instead.
• Stick with America doing the dirty work as you call it, while at the same time being blamed for going along rather than destabilising it further.
• Or build a large military of its own and use it.
• Or something else? I am open to this, I had suggested other forms of alliance in the past, or an EU military for example. In israel's case it could align more with other countries in the region to form a defensive alliance, this will be harder now for obvious reasons.

I'd love to say empower the UN, but that'll never work when the world is so divided and no leader can be put under sufficient force or pressure for defying the UN. I can say BRICS vs NATO will create these scenarios ad nauseam to exist, even if people never attribute that competition as the direct cause.

If Russia had not invaded and brought us to the brink of WW3, this would be different discussion but it always does. Its done this for hundreds of years. Any significant power in Europe did because it had the military strength to. The only thing stopping a lot of smaller countries globally going to war is a large military force saying. Don’t do that. If you need examples, I could write them for hours. So what you call Europeans being, shall we say lazy and indifferent to the suffering of others, I call a necessary band-aid on a bad human instinct.

Had Hamas (Iran) not killed a large amount of civilians, this would be a different discussion, but it always does. And before we go through hoops, even if I take the premise that this huge coordinated movement of their proxy was pulled off without Iran’s knowledge (I don’t) they still structure half of this conflict.

Quote:
I did say Western violence gets framed as policy, everyone else's as pathology - acknowledging that others can be or are violent. I'm not denying others aggression or threats of it - I'm saying there's asymmetry in how that aggression is talked about or understood based on who does it and why.

Welcome to how every country justifies war.  You think Russia is out there preaching a symmetrical understanding of force or violence to its citizens or allies? If it did that, they’d never fire a shot.

They'd realise that anything up to and including systemic thinking about war is not sufficient. That this is human nature the world over, and it is only overcome or integrated by seeing the other person as part of yourself or failing that their wellbeing in your own best interests (harder to put forward).

Quote:
And the causal chain gets erased to frame the latest act of aggression as if it comes out of a vacuum - that the one doing it is simply aggressive by nature, culture, psychology - to the point of not wanting to live on the same planet as them lol.

For me no, its simply not wanting to get shot, or living in an authoritarian hellhole.
Please re-read where I said it was not cultural. I used to think the Chinese culture was the most interesting on the planet. Mandarin is the only language I have voluntarily studied, and I include English in that.

I do finally see parallels with Israel and Europe. However, the Israeli’s have had to endure it a good deal longer than I have. And as such been demonised more than Europe. They have my sympathies. Much as I understand militarism creates war, I fully understand why Zionism was embraced as a response to irrationality. (Whatever the cause, hate is not rational).

I fully understand that if and when Europe embraces militarism and fights back, you’ll demonize them the same. Claiming that we hate other cultures. When its an entirely predictable pattern inherent in human nature and the problem of seeing the other as separate from ourselves.

Quote:
 I said Muslims and Jews have lived quite peacefully (relatively) for centuries

Arabs and Jews were peaceful relative to what? How big were their militaries? How far are we going back and to what period? What were the forces inherently pressuring those areas at that time? How were they for food/resources?  (Hint: these are all questions with no need for an answer). Anyone can live with anyone, but too many people see the other as a threat.

Quote:
I can understand yet not condone the actions they felt they needed to take due to survival pressures after the Holocaust.

But not the current climate? You could easily understand this if you wanted to and still not condone it. I understand Russia, China and Iran, but don’t condone any of them either. You could easily with a click of your finger grasp what I am saying about Europe, that people would rather live in snug safety, pretending the Americans are not that bad, because it's much easier to ignore problems that don't affect us. You could easily grasp what I am saying about Israel, being born into the mindset of seeing all around them as threats, being constantly pressured or threatened by larger powers for living on the land they were born to.

Quote:
Russia also uses historical claims (Ukraine isn't real, historical Russian lands) to justify what is also a response to strategic encirclement. The historical rhetoric obscures the defensive logic, but the defensive logic still exists within which to understand its actions. If we strip away Putin's speeches about Ukrainian history and look at the strategic picture - Russia is reacting to an alliance expanding toward its borders to a country that is being used as a launchpad through which to weaken it on its flank. This has been laid out in think tank papers only a arrogant hegemon would have the audacity to make public.

That’s one of their weaker claims. Enriclement… on one flank.
All the while trying to move its territory closer to the threat they say they don’t want.
It's illogical on its face, because its not an accurate description of the cause(s) or goals of this war.
 

Quote:

Russia's defensiveness is real due to a accurate assessment of the threat - even if their response and rhetoric are wrong to the point they blur the lines of their defensive logic and make us question their motives (imperial vs defensive). Israel's defensiveness meanwhile is theater and cover for domination of the land they want to settle in. Israel claims existential threat - but from who? Egypt, Jordan, UAE are normalized. Syria is destroyed. Iran is far away and only retaliated after Israel directly struck it. Their threat is exhaustion from proxies (that Iran backs yes) and non-state actors who emerge because of the unresolved Palestinian issue. That's not an existential threat to the state - that's blowback from perpetual occupation which is the root cause of the issue. The "sea of hatred" narrative is increasingly detached from a actual state level threat.

War is not defensive. Americans used to tell me it was and I said the same to them. Its about as offensive as you can get.

Israel is threatened on multiple fronts. In part this is because of their own actions.
Russia is threatened on multiple fronts, In part because of their own actions.

Also because they exist, and are different enough to both be considered by, and consider their neighbors threats to Ego ID.

To directly answer you question: IRAN. Directly threaten Israel. Without Iran Palestine would already be part of Israel. Without America, Israel would already be a vassal state of someone else or at least much less aggressive.

You talked about Libya and Yugoslavia (Serbia) Of course you understand these were Russian-backed proxy wars in the same way? Like Iraq, armed, trained and funded by Russia. Because the Hegemony you describe was practised by Russia also, only now its old, faded and dying off over the decades. America just likes to be on Camera, boasting about how great they all were back then, Russia preferred to just send people and/or material.

No matter how much you want to frame Russia’s foreign policy as purely defensive, it never has been. Unless every action is to be considered defensive, in which case this war between Israel and Palestine is also.

Quote:

They got comfortable and indulged progressive fantasies of green energy and mass migration assimilation because someone else lifted the hard weight of survival. Europe’s moralism is a luxury afforded by American militarism. Their only soft and grandstand about their “values”because they outsourced the need to be hard and survive just like anyone else.

If you acknowledge that order - then it logically follows that the actors we are talking about are acting within that current order - and where they are within that order and how they are treated within that order (contained vs pampered) will determine how they act or react. I did also say that states can act independent of that order and not everything can be blamed on it. Not every protest is going to be a regime change operation despite the clear track record and evidence of the US perfecting that art (US-UK couping Iran in 1953 for example).

No more than I blame the Russian people for Putin’s warmongering. Which I have flirted with before, but at the end of the day they chose being politically lazy, as did I. I am not better than any of them.

We are getting a bit long, so I’ll end here:

Quote:
I said everyone's actions have deeper roots to the point we get into the chicken or the egg argument - ultimately blaming God who started it all. So then what time do we pick to analyse events? if we go too far back it becomes too detached from the current reality to be pragmatic in understanding and resolving it, if we just go with the latest actions our analysis is surface level and symptoms based rather than root based. That's why we look at things systemically - and therefore look at the current system within which events take place. 

This is where you step out of systemic thinking into a global consciousness and global understanding.

No point in time will ever suffice.

Or you keep picking linear events to base your analysis on, and I keep pointing out of the flaws of such.

I’d love to keep going as you made some good points, such as this:

My critique can be moral but not moralistic - I said in my full comment that ''Israeli's aren't the problem, the way they are acting upon their survival is''.

Which I couldn’t agree with more.

And some terrible ones:

Im just pointing out the hypocrisy within that structure by the ones who lead it claiming their own survival needs are primary whilst others are secondary or non-existent. 

People will always put their survival needs over others in a large group context.
I could step in front of a bullet for someone, but a large group for strangers, never. (You get a few % of a population trained to do so, soldiers or officers of the law.)

Edited October 7 by BlueOak

[Nivsch]

4 minutes ago, BlueOak said:

I'll italic your quotes

What is "italic"?

For a moment I thought you are Italian 

[BlueOak]

15 minutes ago, Nivsch said:

What is "italic"?

For a moment I thought you are Italian 

Italic
Slanting the typeface (text) to the right.

A font choice to separate text. It has a few uses, sometimes in quotes, first-person entries in journals, or by writers to offer a separation from the main text, such as speech or a character's internal thoughts.

Edited October 7 by BlueOak

[BlueOak]

30 minutes ago, _Archangel_ said:

Guys, unironically, can someone prease help me understand how did we get from "Hamas needs to be erased"  to  "positive climate around USA-Israel-hamas negotiaitions"?

 

There is a large peace push by the US currently.

I am going to suggest most of the UN assembly walking out on Netanyahu speaking was the final catalyst, among a hundred other factors.

[zazen]

3 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

People always say this about colonialism, when it's obvious that's not the case. Colonialism is when a foreign power invades and settles in foreign lands, as the English, Ottomans, Spanish, Mongols, Romans, etc. did, keeping the polis as its center.

What happened in Israel was that there was massive immigration to a stateless land by a population originally from that land. It's a fact; you may like it or not, but you have to accept it because It's absolutely stupid to dedicate your life and the lives of your children to fighting against that fact. It shows that your life is so empty and stupid that you can't think of anything better.

If you were a slave in Egypt, forced to drag stones with whips to build pyramids, or an African in Louisiana, it's understandable. But if you're a Palestinian who's horrified because there are desecrations on the Al-Aqsa esplanade and you offer your child as a martyr, you're simply mentally retarded. It's very difficult to communicate with mentally retarded people. You have to use a language they understand, a loud one. 

 

Settler colonialism isn't merely interested in the resources of new lands, but also in the land itself in which to carve out a new homeland. The obvious issue is that if people already inhabit the land you must create a justification for displacing them from it. The common ''a land without a people for a people without a land“ slogan.

Settler colonialism is when: people from elsewhere arrive to permanently settle, they aim to replace or subordinate the existing population, they establish political dominance, they're backed by imperial/colonial power (Britain). That's exactly what Zionism was: European and other Jews immigrating, explicitly aiming to create a Jewish-majority state (requiring demographic replacement), backed by British colonial power (Balfour Declaration, British Mandate), establishing political structures (Yishuv institutions) to govern independently of existing population

Herzl who is one of the founders of political Zionism wrote to Cecil Rhodes in 1902 (a notorious colonizer) framing the issue as a colonial project that Britain should get behind:

“You are being invited to help make history,” he wrote, “It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor ; not Englishmen, but Jews . How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.”

Revisionist Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky, in an essay titled The Iron Law (1925) wrote that:

“A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question either now or in the future. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find some rich man or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else-or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempt to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not difficult, not dangerous, but IMPOSSIBLE!… Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important… to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot – or else I am through with playing at colonizing.”

Zionism as a ambition for a homeland is noble, but the logistical reality of the land in which they want to make home already being inhabitated requires viewing Palestinians as obstacles to be removed, subordinated, or in your own words treated as "mentally retarded" people who need violence to understand that they aren't truly being oppressed like slaves.

Every piece of land on Earth has been inhabited by different groups over millennia. A connection from 2,000 years ago doesn't override the rights of people currently living there. The Jewish immigrants coming in the 1900s-1940s were Europeans (Ashkenazi), Middle Eastern (Mizrahi), and others who had lived elsewhere for generations. They weren't "returning home" in any meaningful sense - their great great great grandparents many many many generations back may have lived there, but they didn't.

From AI

''If Native Americans were persecuted, fled, and returned 1,000 years later, would that be colonialism? It depends on how they return.

Scenario A (not colonialism):

Native Americans return

Integrate into existing American society

Seek minority rights, cultural recognition, maybe some land back through negotiation

Live alongside current inhabitants

Scenario B (colonialism):

Native Americans return with European backing

Declare they're creating a "Native American state"

Start immigrating en masse to achieve demographic majority

Establish separate institutions

Use force to expel or subordinate current inhabitants

Create a state where only Native Americans have full rights or are the majority where they can politically dominate

Scenario B is colonialism, even if they're "indigenous." Because what matters isn't where your ancestors lived 1,000 years ago - it's what you're doing now to people currently living there. And Zionism was Scenario B.

Strip away the narrative and look at material reality:

- People (many from Europe) arrived

 - To a place where other people lived

- With explicit goal of creating a state where they'd be majority

- Backed by colonial power (Britain)

- Displaced existing population to achieve demographic dominance

- Used force to maintain it

That's colonialism, regardless of ancient ancestry claims.''

Ancient claims don’t override the rights of current inhabitants - otherwise every border on Earth becomes contestable. Religious affiliation isn’t a land title either. Judaism spread as a religion, not a single ethnic line, so the idea of a universal '‘Jewish return'’ often means people whose ancestors converted to Judaism claiming territory on religious grounds.

That’s like saying two billion Muslims have a right to ‘'return'’ to the holy land of Saudi Arabia for some of that oil wealth - clearly absurd. Jews from Poland, Russia, or Ethiopia claiming automatic right of return to Palestine on religious grounds raises the same issue.

Most early Zionist settlers were Ashkenazi Jews who’d lived in Europe for over a thousand years - yet ancestry alone can’t justify displacing others. Building states based on genetic ancestry leads to ethnonationalism and exclusion of others based on genetics such as Hitlers Germany.

2 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

Chatgpt:

2. The violence began for political and religious reasons The conflict arose when Arab nationalist and Islamist leaders incited the population against the Jewish immigrants. They argued that the Jews wanted to "seize the land" and "desecrate Muslim holy sites." Tensions grew due to rumors, religious discourse, and fear of losing political power. The first attacks (Nebi Musa, 1920, Jaffa, 1921, Hebron, 1929) were massacres of defenseless Jews, not responses to any expulsions. --- 🔹 3. The Arab expulsions came later (1947–1949) During the Israeli War of Independence (1947–1949): Many Arabs fled out of fear or on the orders of their own leaders, and others were expelled by the Israeli army in combat zones after almost 30 years of previous violence against Jewish communities.

Note how all those incidents occurred after the introduction of a particular idea (Zionism) backed by a colonial power.

From AI

''There were political and religious elements. But why were those effective in mobilizing people? Because there was a real, material threat to address.

You can't incite a population to violence against a threat that doesn't exist. Arab leaders pointed to Jewish immigration and said "they're coming to take the land and create a state" - and they were right. That wasn't paranoid incitement - that was accurate description of the Zionist project's explicit goals.

From the First Zionist Congress (1897), the stated aim was creating a Jewish homeland/state in Palestine. By the 1920s, this wasn't hidden - it was public Zionist policy. So when Arab leaders said "they want to seize the land," that wasn't a lie or distortion. It was literally true.

Religious framing (threats to holy sites, etc.) was the mobilization tool, but the underlying cause was the political reality of settler colonialism.''

 

Edited October 7 by zazen

[zazen]

@Breakingthewall

Under Israel’s Law of Return (1950), any Jew - including converts - has the automatic right to immigrate to Israel and receive citizenship. That includes you in Spain papi - even with no ethnic or genealogical connection to the region.

Meanwhile a Palestinian whose family can trace continuous residence in Jerusalem, Jaffa, or Haifa for hundreds of years has no such right to return if they were expelled or fled in 1948. 

That’s why many scholars and critics describe the system as ethnoreligious privilege built into a settler-national framework.

That’s how we get Jacob from Brooklyn settling his ass all the way in the Middle East:

 

Edited October 7 by zazen

[Breakingthewall]

12 minutes ago, zazen said:

Meanwhile a Palestinian whose family can trace continuous residence in Jerusalem, Jaffa, or Haifa for hundreds of years has no such right to return if they were expelled or fled in 1948. 

So the Palestinians could legitimately fight for the return of the exiles or for a state, but their fight is for Israel's disappearance. It has always been this way since 1948. The moment they accept Israel's existence, and so do other Muslim countries, the door to negotiation will be open.

For example the president of Indonesia 

 

Edited October 7 by Breakingthewall

[_Archangel_]

1 hour ago, BlueOak said:

There is a large peace push by the US currently.

I am going to suggest most of the UN assembly walking out on Netanyahu speaking was the final catalyst, among a hundred other factors.

Well, that's a big L for Netanuahu and his gov. And a big L for Hamas too, since i'm reading that they are accepting a disarmament.
Really hard to predict if they're both gonna be sticking to the peace plan.

[Twentyfirst]

On 10/5/2025 at 5:04 PM, BlueOak said:

Nobody living in Israel was around for its founding. They didn't create the conditions of their birth. The hatred they were born into surrounding them and threatening them every day. Yes they don't help themselves by escalating and their methods are barbaric, they remind me of Russia, but they have to defend themselves, or they'll be dead. Much like the Russians feel they need to do. 

They could leave and return to Europe. It's not just war against poor innocent people versus them dying. They can leave

If I was born in a place and they told me "your parents stole this land, now you have to shoot this kid in the face and you may die yourself" then I would just leave altogether. I'm not a monster or a dumbass

Edited October 7 by Twentyfirst