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If you want to compare before and after:
https://earth.google.com/web/search/31%2e297226,+34%2e243649... - then click "show historical imagery" next to the search box.
The horror of the "Playground" marker here: https://earth.google.com/web/@31.28532193,34.25349609,77.611...
I'm a little confused by this one, because if you hit the "Show historical imagery" button, and go back through the prior years, I don't really see much or anything of a playground there.
Usually a football field.
Atomic dome vibes when looking at some of the few buildings still standing
Another one to look at is the maps of Ukraine [0]
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/google-maps-...
The icons from what was there before are a haunting digital ghost. School, Restaurant, Pharmacy all the city is just rubble.
It's sad that most world leaders do nothing to combat such genocide. There are so few sanctions against the state, or specific people, of Israel. Foreign forums are very much still open for business to them.
1) Ultimately, money means more to foreign nations than what happens with internal affairs of their trading partners
2) Accusations of genocide, whether they stand up or not, are great fodder for whataboutism discussions. Let's say the world's two largest economies, the US and China, decided to start sanctioning Israel for what's happening in Gaza. You could expect other countries to start threatening actions against the US and China over their previous or current genocidal behaviors. These are obviously not things that the US and China want to deal with.
What do you think world leaders should've done differently?
The post you are responding to lists several possible actions. Another good start would be to stop providing the weapons that have done this damage.
Cut off weapon gifts+sales to Israel, impose sanctions. Same way we dealt with the South African apartheid state.
Israel has both nuclear weapons and the Epstein files, so that's not really an option (granted: SA had nuclear weapons too, but nobody really to drop them on).
Nuclear weapons sure, but what is this about Epstein?
he's referring to the fact that epstein is a mossad agent and that compromised world leaders are being blackmailed to support the genocide
Epstein (and Ghislaine Maxwell in particular) are widely believed to have operated as a massive Mossad blackmail operation, collecting (and creating) blackmail material against western politicians and influential individuals to ensure their support for Israel.
I won't go into details that support or refute this claim, but that is what the parent poster likely meant.
So you're suggesting that Israel would drop a nuke on a Western country imposing a boycott? Somehow, I doubt it.
Who's this "we" who dealt with the SA apartheid state?
The international pressure on SA did absolutely nothing to change their mind (I'm old enough to have seen PW Botha's Rubicon speech live on TV). The NP (political party in charge) was slowly and carefully convinced to push out the hardliners.
The people left, like FW De Clerk, actually did the dismantling - unbanned the ANC, released Mandfela from prison, switched to allowing black voters, etc.
The rest of the world's pressure had absolutely no effect on the leadership. Change only came when leadership started changing.
See this for more background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiations_to_end_apartheid_...
A lot.
Literally on Oct 7, Hamas tried to return civilian hostages, who the IDF killed. This is why Hamas changed policies to only give up hostages through 3rd parties. They reached out to israel to try and return hostages and were ignored. They reached out to the US to return hostages and were ignored. [1]
So for starters, the US could have pressured Israel to negotiate with Hamas to return the hostages.
As Israel started to show genocidal intent (for example, killing aide workers multiple times). The US could have at a minimum threaten to withhold aide. In fact, there are laws on the books that a country such as Israel committing war crimes is ineligible for aide.
Finally, the UN should have deployed peace keepers to gaza specifically to stop the genocide.
Actions could have been taken, but they weren't because our politicians are so bribed by Israeli lobby money as to turn a complete blind eye to it's misdeeds.
[1] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-politics/2026-09-...
So you feel like after October 7, there should've just been a talk about what happened and some form of negotiation ?
Quote exactly where I even implied that.
Well what else do you expect when you subjugate a native population for decades? Just expect perfect victims?
The peaceful route didn't work. Only idiots will think continuing with the status quo will result in anything different.
What a bizarre claim and outright lie. They kept them locked up and starving. They could’ve just dropped them off near the border with Israel or Egypt, or handed them over to the Red Cross (which wasn’t even allowed to visit and check on the hostages).
What he means is they could have been traded for all of the concessions Hamas wanted in exchange for them.
And yes this is true but the reason you couldn’t comprehend his point is because his point is insane.
UN has no such power. I am still amazed how people do not get this.
Members need to vote for such things to happen. It wouldn't, not in this climate.
The question was
Members should have voted in the UN to deploy peace keeping troops. The UN does have that power if it's voted for. This isn't a question of the current realities but a question of what the right actions are.
This is where you notice that the world is more complicated than social media posts.
Like it would've been a nice idea, until you realize that Hamas is heavily backed by Iran, Iran is helping Russia, Russia is invading Ukraine, and it starts to look like that level of intervention is a step towards a world war.
Then you notice world energy markets are going to be effected by a massive conflict etc.
If the UN went into Gaza, got attacked by Iran, then had to respond, next minute they're attacking a close Russian ally, and maybe even China might have to get involved in that.
What would've been good is if October 7 didn't happen, and that goes for both sides.
Iran would WELCOME UN peace keepers in gaza, are you kidding? Hell, I think even Hamas would welcome their presence. UN peace keepers would mean the likes of UNRA could operate once again in Gaza to deliver aid. It would also mean that Israel would have to stop it's aggression.
lol, no, other way around. Though the Russia hasn't really been involved with Iran since Ukraine started. It's actually China that's the biggest Iranian trade partner.
The only party that'd be upset over UN peace keepers in Gaza is Israel.
Lie. It was a deal to get complete immunity for a massacre. Also, 'Civilian' per Hamas is anyone over 60. 'Let Hamas murder and keep nearly all hostages' was not in Israel's playbook.
Lie. There was repeated negotiations for two years after, with plenty of Hamas demands for the hostages. It was totally public too.
Literally not relevant. The US has much bigger errors in the current conflict.
Snort. Look at how successful they were in Lebanon. Peace keepers need to be willing to fight to keep the peace, and in this case, it meant fighting both sides. LOL.
I suggest looking at the far bigger Qatari and Saudi expenditures (didn't they just grant an entire 747?). It's more that US politicians recall the war on terror, and know all this nonsense will one day be sent back at them with much greater force (wasn't it 4 million deaths or so?), they have no wish for the precedent to be set and deployed at them.
You are making stuff up. Nobody reports that Hamas was shooting for a "get out pillaging free" card. And the fact still remains that they tried to return 3 hostages to show good faith who the IDF proceeded to kill.
Hamas, on multiple occasions, agreed to all the terms only for Israel to reject the agreement and change the terms. That was all public. It's why the hostage families became really mad at the government.
Two wrongs don't make a right and yes, it's relevant when the IDF explodes clearly marked aid vehicles rendering aid. There's no reason to do that.
Does that really matter? The question wasn't "how effective will this be" it's "What world leaders should have done". That's what world leaders should have done.
These are weaker lobbies because of US laws. The likes of AIPAC and CUFI get around campaign finance restrictions because they are operated by US citizens (in behest of Israel). No other nation has that sort of organizations in the US. The closet you can find is things like the weirdo Shen Yun cult.
This allowed them to spend $60M in a democrat primary. You won't find that sort of direct spending from Qatar or the Saudis (barring the clear bribe in the Jet. They aren't exactly giving away jets to every primary run).
'Israel to withdraw and grant all other Hamas demands' is a 'get out free' card.
These hostages _escaped_ and were shot in error. Not 'tried to return'. Note that there was a week's ceasefire a month earlier and Hamas could have returned everyone then if they cared to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Gaza_war_ceasefire
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/21/world/israel-hostages-cam...
You mean all of 'Hamas's terms'. Right. The Israeli government had very different terms as the final deal (very different from what Hamas demanded) shows. The Israeli gov insisted on controlling the Egyptian border, Gaza demilitarization, etc.
Of course. They wanted the hostages out ASAP, and could only pressure the Israeli government (obviously Hamas wouldn't care for the families).
Right, but there's such a thing as hypocrisy. One could make a 'genocidal' case against the country who started a war by bombing a schoolhouse and spoke of 'destroying an entire civilization' (it would still be wrong though). But they're a little too strong, and it's easier to pick on Israel.
Most world leaders want to be reelected (or not be overthrown if they're dictators). Sending out troops to die in a foreign land for an arguably hopeless cause is not very helpful to that end. They're likely aware of the history of military involvement in the Middle East.
Qatar etc. gets around it by donating billions to US universities or using organizations like ISNA. Everyone seems to have found a way.
That’s a complete misrepresentation of the facts.
Hamas was willing to return hostages if israel freed all thousands of Palestinians prisoners, including those captured in Israel while committing the Oct 7 massacre.
And that is exactly what sinwar wanted to achieve in every one of his wars, just like when in 2014 Israel traded 1 captured Israeli soldier for 1000 Palestinians prisoners.
So basically Hamas wanted israel to surrender, accept Hamas terms, and ignore Oct 7.
If you had to guess, what do you think they might do? I feel like questions like this are in bad faith. Think about it for a minute, and try to come up with some things that they might do.
Send all collaborators to the international criminal court. (In the US, especially congress critters and members of the executive branch.)
Also, blockade Israel proportionally to the Gaza blockades. I doubt they would have kept murdering red cross members in Gaza once the supermarkets started running out of food.
At the very least diplomatic condemnation and a South African level sanction.
Do not forget that world leaders are heads of sovereign states that are in charge of their self defense. Those that actually have to defend themselves, like the US, rather than relying on strong allies, need to make public statements that are not hypocritical about what they would do for self defense. This is why both U.S. administrations support Israel's actions
Pretty sure that's not why US administrations support Israel's actions.
Bad phrasing on my part. That is one of many reasons
wow, you hold a very high opinion of american politics. you must have been reading new from paper news paper for the last 30 years
Sure, the need to self defense against US dangerous neighbors. Looking at you, Canada!
Have you been living under a rock? The time when "public statements" used to work is long, long gone.
Sure, but are we going to ignore about the US having to rely on its "helpless" allies to provide staging points and cannon fodder for its illegal imperialistic wars? How much of a superpower would it be without its overseas bases?
Its really telling to see the destruction limited to where the structures used to be rather than to all of the surrounding green spaces. If the destruction of civilian dwellings was purely an accident you'd expect to see the destruction spread evenly over the area. Instead it looks much more like a prolonged set of surgical strikes to destroy the buildings while preserving as much of the surrounding areas as possible.
For a great example of this, look at this pin https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZcMbdFcx87PrqoYNA
And here's a pin of where the farms were spared https://maps.app.goo.gl/iZbbTH4iH27FCz4s9
They just use bulldozers to flatten whatever the bombs don't. They can drive a bulldozer pretty precisely, especially when they don't care who's in front of it or under it.
Caterpillar even supplies the IDF with bulldozers just for this purpose, which then get up-armored and sent into Palestinian civilian areas to do this (including unmanned versions).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDF_Caterpillar_D9
I don't quite understand your argument here. In your first pin I'm struggling to find a single building that isn't leveled, or at least severely damaged. Even buildings far away from the city center in the boonies are leveled.
They are saying that this is genocidal destruction. In a war sometimes civilian infrastructure is hit as collateral. But here, all infrastructure is destroyed and it's clear this wasn't done by 1 or 2 errant bombs but rather because of direct targeting. It can't be argued to be an accident because in farmland you see no bombs which hit the farmland by mistake. In other-words, this is entirely purposeful.
Please check Norman Finkelstein's latest book namely Gaza's Gravediggers on this matter [1].
He also has a very telling and chilling interview recently on Palestine and Gaza [2].
[1] Gaza's Gravediggers: An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places [book].
[2] Norman Finkelstein Reveals Shocking Discoveries While Researching History of Israel’s Gaza Obsession [video]:
https://youtu.be/Jmv2h1WYnNo
What a nice, objective guy:
https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/uyqjn2/norman_fink...
He also promotes transphobia. Chomsky was friends with Epstein and acquaintance of Steve Bannon. I don’t think that discredits his entire body of work, but I think we should stop promoting him when there are sources that are less problematic.
You are mixing Chomsky (the subreddit) up with Norm (the book author). Norm was friends with Chomsky but not Epstein or Bannon. I'm unaware of him having transphobic views.
I would caution against uncritical consumption of Finkelstein's work. He is a bit unhinged, and limited in what content he can analyse as he can't read Arabic or Hebrew.
Also Tucker Carlson? Seriously?
A war requires at least two militaries. This is what happens when a well armed military engages a mostly unarmed civilian society unable to mount significant opposition.
"Before the October 7, 2023 attacks, the total size of Hamas’s military wing (the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades) was estimated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and intelligence agencies to be between 25,000 and 30,000 fighters, with some intelligence assessments placing the upper limit as high as 40,000. This army was organized into five regional brigades and 24 battalions."
"Hamas's military force prior to October 7, 2023, was roughly 3 to 4.5 times larger than the United States military when measured as a percentage of their respective total populations."
Source: the aggressors
No link to a source ?
Anyway, IDF as ≈170k active duty personnel and 465k reservists[1]. Literally a different order of magnitude. Add to it the vast different of resources, access to an air force and nuclear weapons and it become even more clearer that there is no comparison possible.
(And comparing personnel count to the USA is laughable as it is vastly different military type. Both a fighter jet pilot and a foot soldier count as one personnel, but it's neither the same force projection nor the same investment of civilians working for the war machine).
1: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/10/14/idf-explai...
There were a lot of arms used over the border on October 7th, more confiscated on video and being used on video against the IDF, and the constant stream of unguided rockets being shot at civilians year after year. Rockets are weapons.
Hamas describes its fighters as their “military wing”. They engage in military training exercises and wear uniforms (when not fighting). That’s a military.
While it may be dumb, gross, and a hate crime against their civilians: war was the exact and predicted outcome of the attacks Hamas launched. They made statements to that effect, kicking off a regional war was central to the plan on October the 7th.
almost as if they didn't have the best interest of the civilians in mind uh
If it was genocide, why would you spare the farmers? Doesn’t really make sense.
It’s more efficient to spend your ammo on housing and city buildings.
Wouldn’t it actually be much more efficient to just destroy all the food infrastructure and just have everyone die from hunger instead of destroying all the houses?
You're right, it is, hence the strikes on World Central Kitchen and the blockade on food entering the area.
Food production was target, even in different part of Palestine (west bank).
Farmers were killed, even in different part of Palestine.
Killing farmers have nothing to do with the definition of genocide.
Looks the same in Ukraine, and at least there it's most likely not primarily because Russians wanted flatten the city (I'm sure they'd have preferred taking it in one piece) but rather because fighting happens from buildings resulting in the buildings getting targeted.
Doesn't mean that here the targeting couldn't have been done with the primary goal of displacing the population, but the buildings being destroyed doesn't prove the motive.
Does it look the same in the Ukraine? I haven’t seen any footage of entire cities leveled like this.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-26/damage-data-reveals-e...
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/5/24/satellite-...
And that just from the start of war.
Yeah, we can look at how Mariupol looks on satellite images. It looks nothing like Rafah. You have to be completely blind to not see the difference.
Seriouslly?
You can find lots of videos of Russia firing thermobaric weapons into populated areas - you will find none fired by Israel into Gaza. And I don't think that's because IL doesn't have them.
It does not look the same, at all.
A lot of destruction is from bulldozers like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDF_Caterpillar_D9
The way the IDF fought in Rafah and other areas is leading with bulldozers that can take RPGs, IEDs, mines etc. to clear way for troops behind. That's how the tunnel and other guerrilla advantages are neutralized.
So yes, the destruction is absolutely purposeful, its purpose is to take away the advantage of the tunnels and guerrilla tactics, and enable excavations for tunnel access and detection.
The sequence was something like this (AI assisted):
Early May 2024, the IDF issued extensive, phased evacuation orders. This prompted an estimated 1 million to 1.4 million civilians—many of whom had previously fled to Rafah from other parts of Gaza—to evacuate to designated zones like Al-Mawasi.
Once ground troops secured these largely emptied areas, the IDF Combat Engineering Corps moved in. Objective satellite damage assessments show a massive spike in structural destruction in Rafah beginning in the summer of 2024, directly correlating with the ground invasion.
Satellite imagery confirms that ground forces used controlled explosive demolitions and heavy earth-moving equipment, including armored D9 bulldozers, to systematically clear residential blocks, agricultural land, and infrastructure.
This mechanical destruction was particularly concentrated along the Philadelphi Corridor (the Gaza-Egypt border) and in eastern Rafah. The military objective of these block-by-block clearing operations was to uncover and destroy cross-border smuggling tunnels and to establish a widened, flattened security perimeter where structures previously stood.
In summary, while aerial bombardment occurred prior to and during the invasion, you are correct that the wholesale, block-by-block leveling of Rafah was heavily driven by engineering operations using bulldozers and controlled demolitions after the majority of the civilian population had evacuated the targeted areas.
You can also see a lot of buildings demolished on the Egyptian side too.
In 2015, the Egyptian government announced a plan to demolish the entire Egyptian city of Rafah, in order to deter smuggling with the Gaza Strip. More than a decade on, most of it is gone. The residents were forcibly relocated to elsewhere in Egypt.
It also looks similar to Mosul in Iraq before and after the ISIS and Iraq and coalition forces fought:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/15/world/middlee...
Urban warfare is brutal, especially when one side systematically digs in and uses IEDs and booby traps in civilian buildings.
Yeah, this is not what happened here. You can look up Israeli articles from the time that described that nothing was going on for weeks on end other than demolitions. Basically no fighting. You get Israeli politicians repeating beforehand that Rafah will get leveled.
They wanted to level the city, they did. That's all. There was some fighting eventually with a few fighters holed in in Rafah, but nothing that would justify this. And Israelis continue leveling entire areas the whole year after so called "ceasefire" during which there were almost no attacks on them, yet they managed to murder more than a thousand of people.
Oh 100%, you can see specific buildings (mostly marked as schools) that are still standing.
The buildings were levelled with bulldozers for the most part after the civilians left during combat operations against the tunnel infrastructure and any remaining combatants. Not sure what the "surgical strikes" comment is about. Are you asking why weren't open spaces destroyed or attacked?
How does bulldozing a family home have any affect on a tunnel?
It encourages the former occupants leave the country. Once they all leave or die, there will be no more tunnels or insurgents.
That is a definition of a genocide[1].
[1] https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition
Not quite. Perhaps you were thinking of "ethnic cleansing" ?
non-X Google Maps link to ~location of screenshot: https://www.google.com/maps/@31.2857778,34.2533333,1010m
jesus fucking christ
Israeli here. Maybe I can give some helpful context.
Most people in Israel have not, and probably will not see this - any “support” for Palestinians is seen as a very far-left idea after Oct 7. There are still many here who oppose the extent of the war - I see regular demonstrations in Tel Aviv calling for peace. I will note that there seems to be fairly universal agreement that _something_ needed to be done after Oct 7. If you want to understand the Israeli perspective (doesn’t seem like most commenters do, but I’m not writing this for them), you have to look at how Oct 7 shaped Israeli society these last 3 years.
But anyways, don’t take my word for anything, pay attention to our upcoming elections. We will see how big the tents are then.
Wishing for peace, for saner voices to rise, and for an end to this cycle of violence.
Is there any acknowledgement in Israel that Nakba and the very formation of the country is to blame? That Zionism is a European colonial ideology and at it's very core requires ethnic cleansing? I feel like most of the world has become educated enough to reach this conclusion and thus stands against Israel. The only peaceful way out of the situation Israel is in would be serious and massive reparations (similar to what Germany has given to Jewish people). Is there any support for that?
Israelis generally do learn about the Nakba in school. But we’re much more concerned about the circumstances Jews find themselves in after the Holocaust/WWII. We don’t see it in the way you describe. For us it was a matter of the survival of our people.
Reparations - Israel would love nothing more than that. Pay Palestinians to leave? That’s the easiest way about it! Bibi would be delighted. Unfortunately it’s a non starter. The fight was always about the land, and Palestinians have been losing since 1948. There is a complex history of “whose fault was it” - neither side has clean hands.
I don’t agree with the conflation of Zionism to ethnic cleansing. I think there were paths to peace that could have worked early on. Call it bad luck. I think Palestinian leadership failed its people by failing to secure them a diplomatic end to the conflict. Fighting a lost war for decades seems a bad plan. I also do blame Israeli leadership, for not always offering the olive branch without condition.
Edit: i will also address your initial question directly: “Is there any acknowledgement in Israel that Nakba and the very formation of the country is to blame?” - a very, very small fringe of the far left phrases it like this. I’m not trying to be dismissive, just pointing out that it’s a really tiny minority. I, as a self-described center left, disagree with the premise.
An ethno state is a stupid backwards idea.
EDIT: how is anyone downvoting thos. Who thinks it's a good idea?
Didn't downvote but I'll bite: Haven't states largely always been ethno-states, and isn't "ethno-state bad" a relatively modern and potentially as-yet unproven argument in the big scheme of things?
It's clearly bad to specifically re-engineer the ethnic composition of an existing state to create one, particularly violently, but I don't know that it necessarily follows that a naturally occurring ethno-state is conceptually abhorrent as you seem to be suggesting. Japan is very much such a state - is Japan bad for existing?
What is modern are states like we have now. Passports didn't exist before WW1 for example. The idea that people can't freely move across land and imaginary lines we call borders is a modern idea.
You have it backwards.
That’s a pretty weird claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport
The history section has an example of a passport in the Old Testament and a lot of other examples where people needed travel documents and were limited in their travels way before the First World War.
Orthodox Jews are against marrying non Jews. Is this not known?
They do not share Western social values.
An ethnostate generally is a bad, illiberal idea, but concerning Israel, the ideas that are good in terms of ideology would have been, and possibly still would be, worse in practice.
The existence of Israel as an ethnostate is more down to the ethnic preferences of others in Russia¹, Germany, multiple middle eastern countries², and elsewhere³, than the ethnic preferences of jews.
Most of the jews I have known in my life are liberals who see Israel as a refuge against illiberals, not supremacist weirdos that get attention on the internet.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kishinev_pogrom
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_...
³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis
How can you simultaneously decide you do not need to care about the lives of a group of people on the basis of a difference of ethnicity as you prioritize the formation of an ethnic state, and simultaneously refuse the premise that the formation of that state is to blame for ethnic strife? Your first and last paragraphs cannot be reconciled.
That’s not what reparations are, that’s ethnic cleansing.
As is true in every war.
The question is who started it.
If that’s the question, it truly is hopeless. Because whoever you think started it, they don’t see it that way. So there can be no shared understanding, ever. It’s just circular blame across centuries.
In the rare cases where adults have prevailed, the question has been “what will it take to end it”.
The British like usual.
That is unfair. The British actually did not like the Zionists and they tried to keep the peace.
I do wonder, isn’t there a sense the Palestinians face the survival of their people today?
Their leadership failing the people feels like a heavy burden to place on the average person, especially in a society where there is no meaningful democracy, but even then.
There appears to be no end to what’s happening three years on. October 7th was a horror of horrors, but to visit that on an entire people day after day for years upon years as revenge, when almost none of the people suffering participated or planned it? What’s the point?
I have always supported Israel, but these last few years have gone into a zone of inhumanity towards their fellow man that is shocking to the soul of any person with human compassion.
There appears to be no condition to end the suffering other than their death. That’s genocide. Evicting them from their homes by relocation, appropriation, settlement, destruction, is the definition of ethnic cleansing. These are disturbing things that we all agreed should never happen again after WWII. It disturbs me that Israel gets a free pass because of what happened to the Jews - the horror of the past doesn’t entitle anyone to visiting their own horrors.
Am I wrong? I’ve struggled with how to discuss this with my Israeli friends.
The problem is that the historical timeline doesn't match up. Zionism started way earlier, and tried to found a "Jewish homeland" in 1820 in New York, and in 1903 in Uganda, and there are literally dozens of other examples throughout history. Even if we look solely at modern-day Israel, it dates back all the way to the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The first settler violence started decades before the Holocaust ever begun.
How do you propose Zionists could've established an ethnically Jewish country on land already occupied by Palestinians without ethnic cleansing? Why didn't the Zionists migrate to Palestine by integrating in the already-present culture and society, rather than by displacing it?
My own country lost its mind after 2,977 people died in one terrorist attack a quarter of a century ago and we made many many bad decisions for a long time afterwards. It sucked. In October 2023 I had hoped that my country's well publicized example would help your country not make the same choices but it's hard to learn from other people's mistakes.
America didn't do things like this after 9/11, we tried to build democracies in a naive way, failed, and got a lot of people killed unnecessarily. Iraq was completely unjustified and based on fabrications.
But we weren't trying to wage war against the entire civilian populations as revenge. That's an entirely different category of crime.
A lot of the stories that came out of Abu Ghraib sure sound like they have very strong parallels to what is happening today. At the level of "poorly trained reservists trying to do something difficult without sufficient oversight and getting frustrated and turning to torture" it sounds very similar.
And the destruction of Fallujah from Phantom Fury ended up only marginally better than what happened to Rafah (destroyed about a quarter of the buildings in Fallujah and damaged another quarter).
Abu Ghraib was a scandal, some people got punished, probably not all of the right ones.
When it came out that Israel was systematically sodomizing detainees with nightsticks, they had protestors come out in favor of the guards. It's still ongoing, all charges have been dropped. Nobody is scandalized by it.
That's a very flat take. That ignores the fact that the doctor that saw the prisoner reported it for investigation or that the military had chose to prosecute it, also you don't mention this was one case, not "systematic"
Even ignoring the fact that protests do not imply popular support, there is no comparison as 9/11 did not include widespread sexual violence and ongoing hostage rape was still going on at the time this happened.
So even if this seemed terrible to most Israelis, it was hard to find someone who will publicly defend a rapist from rape in jail
Sure if you ignore the UN Commission of Inquiry report from March 2025 that concluded sexual and gender-based violence was used systematically against Palestinian detainees.
the UNHR is comically biased against Israel though and controlled by totalitarian countries with less than stellar human rights records
The reaction of Americans to Abu Ghraib and the reaction of Israelis to the - larger scale - torture of Palestinian prisoners, is miles apart. It's also why there was always an end in sight to the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, yet there isn't for Gaza until it has not a single Palestinian left.
The world must appear quite monochrome to your simple mind.
Would you have preferred that the US stay out of WW2 to avoid killing any civilians? Sure, the Nazis took over, but at least our hands are clean!
This is a false equivalence. 9/11 is not Oct 7 and the US is nothing like Israel, in fact the US was attacked for (amongst other things) it's support of Israel. America also did not conduct genocidal actions in the manner Israel has.
Israel is a colonial project that annexes land and homes from people against international law and has done so since it's conception. Gaza is a refugee camp of descendents of people displaced from their homes during the Nakba. There's a saying there: "My Grandmother is older than Israel" -- and it is true.
To look at Oct. 7 as some sort of isolated incident ignores the history of the project: After the holocaust Western Jews decided to move to an area already occupied by other people based on some loose notion of having claim to it millennia ago. They used western governments to push this concept forward. Sure, America displaced Native Americans, but Israel did it during modernity... and those natives also happen to have access to modern heavy weaponry... what did they expect to happen?
I think Israeli people are ingenious and talented but they picked the wrong patch of land to occupy -- the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem is as sacred as the Vatican and you have 1.5 billion (often crazy) Muslim people revolving around this sacred conceptualization. This is why the common people even of places like UAE/Saudi all back Palestine despite the political actions of such states. It is a recipe destined for disaster, especially with the Iran war de-coupling the Gulf States from the USA. It seems to me there is no way out.
First Nations
What do they call it in the US? Manifest Destiny?
Did Native Americans also pick "the wrong patch of land to occupy"?
Native Americans overwhelmingly died from Smallpox that was accidentally brought over by Europeans. There is no credible evidence that the transmission was malicious.
In return, Native Americans accidentally gave the Europeans Syphilis. Fair trade? Probably not, although the all-time death totals aren’t as incomparable as you might think.
It's a genocide and Israel showed the dark side is in everyone even in our modern, supposedly more enlightened time.
Humanity has a deep darkness and no society is immune. USA is a partner in this and as someone living here I'm deeply ashamed.
I support Israel, but not wholeheartedly. I understand how Nakba was a matter of survival of your people. But why is this still going on today? Why is Israel continuing to expand settlements? Can you not understand how Palestinians must feel to constantly live in fear of being pushed out of their own homes? This is what gives me heartache. Can't you draw a line and say, what happened in the past cannot be reversed, but we will not continue to expand settlements?
Probably tougher to do politically than me stopping ICE from putting non-violent immigrants in concentration camps
I did a study abroad in Israel in 2005 (not jewish, just for middle eastern studies) when Israel pulled out of Gaza and did essentially that. They forcibly removed settlers and left Gaza. As I recall most Israeli's thought it'd be good step toward peace.
Unfortunately Hamas took over Gaza shortly after and shot some 12k+ rockets into southern Israel over the next 20 years, and then launched Oct 7.
Unfortunately now there seems to be far less interest in Israel now in restricting settlers in the West Bank. I also feel for the Palestinians, particularly the Arab Christian communities, however extremists on both sides don't want peace.
Sure, if you ignore the part where they kept bombing Gaza, assassinated political leaders, did ground incursions, and blocked it by land, sea, and air.
If Israel wanted a peaceful two-state solution, why did they keep occupying Gaza by turning it into an open-air prison?
The answer is in the post you replied to.
It was an automated system that immediately responded within 60s to rockets sent from Gaza. Shoot one rocket from Gaza, get the building destroyed within 60 seconds. Also, the first rocket is a war crime (indiscriminate attack), the second is a military target.
You can't just say "Israel bombed Gaza" and play the victim, omitting information.
The position you’re describing is essentially the modern left position in Israeli politics. Again, we’ll see in the upcoming election, but not everyone here supports the current goings on in the West Bank. The “Palestinian situation” is a major question in Israeli politics, both wrt Gaza and the wb.
One thing you will find across the board is that nobody is willing to compromise on security. Most voters today remember the second intifada. There is no serious political position where Israel fully withdraws from the wb. But there’s a big difference between “massively expanse settlements” and “phase out settlements and make room for the possibility of a future Palestinian state”.
The words “Palestinian state” are usually political suicide here in Israel, but the fact that Palestine is recognized to various extent by many countries in the world means that eventually these two realities are going to have to clash.
Israel rejects the two-state solution. They seem to be aggressively pursing a one-state solution, incorporating all of former Palestine (and perhaps beyond) into Israel. Obviously this doesn't include taking in the people living there, giving them Israeli citizenship. People will be killed or expelled. All while Israel continually claims to be the victim "look at what those people trying to stop us stealing their land did to us now."
No, twice they offered and twice Palestine rejected. Read some history please.
The history is vast, you'll have to be more specific about what you are referring to.
"Palestinian right of return" was a perfectly normal political position, but you don't hear much about it these days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_right_of_return
The question is what did the government know before October 7th https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/2026/09/ra-vivian-repor...
On the day that it happened both Egypt and the US confirmed that Egypt had informed Isreal in advance.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67082047
This article is from a few days after that, but I remember that there were confirmations already during the day.
Most people in Israel have not, and probably will not see this
It is outside their zone of interest.
Counterpoint, a more passive turn of phrase is more fitting: How Israeli society was shaped around oct 7.
The event doesn't shape society by itself, political and media response/interest shape the society.
As someone that’s watched the conflict and learned about the history, the Nakba and the displacement of Palestinians far before the years of Malcolm X and Martin Luther, the conflict with Palestine didn’t start on October 7th as this comment purports.
When I didn’t have any context of the history, I took comments like this one at face value.
However it is difficult to take comments like this in good faith as it frames Israelis as folks who are pushed beyond their conscience by their government, similar to Americans in current America, when the statistics are to the contrary.
47% support the genocidal approach - https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/majority-israelis-support...
56/67/82% (depending on the polling method) support expulsion of Palestinians - https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/poll-show-most-jew...
This is the typical type of propaganda that many supporters post and write hoping to reinforce the narrative to the uninformed folks of their innocence.
While I can acknowledge that there are genuinely folks who oppose the ongoing genocide, what the world ought to look out for is whether after the next set of elections, an actual change of power and direction occurs.
And when I point to elections, the potential replacement candidates all support the same policies of genocide and expulsion. Some may be less, some are absolutely more, but if nothing changes, that is on the Israeli people.
As Americans hold responsibility for the current state of politics, Israeli’s hold the responsibility for their country as well.
Is it not good that the US and Israel govt are generally doing what their people want though?
What's the point of a democracy if it acts against it's people like the UK does?
At least in the case of the US, I would point out that the current sitting president was elected with less than 50% support from the people who bothered to show up and vote. I would say the system is not really working well.
I mean it was 49.8% it's not like it was 30 or even 40. There are plenty of people that actually wanted Donald Trump to be elected.
No. Look into the history of human rights. It's long been recognized that there need to be backstops against excesses of (democratic) government.
If we have to look at how October 7 shaped Israeli culture, we also have to look at how all of the dates leading up to October 6 shaped Palestinian culture. How many people were killed in the West Bank on October 6 - does that register, anywhere?
Can you try to free your brain from political bullshit for a moment and think which kind of a person can come up with a plan to kill civilians not in the heat of battle, but with premediation and purpose? And in which kind of society this idea could have a wide enough support to be implemented.
What perspective is there on murdering a hundred thousand people, starving millions, razing entire cities? this isn't a game you can play by shuffling around some moral relativism, to gain a better "perspective". This is pure unadulterated evil on a scale that can never be erased from the conscience of every Israeli citizen for generations.
There are Street View photos that look like they were taken from someone driving down one of the side streets so you can pretty much walk on it. You can see apartment buildings, local shops, people going about their day... It’s heart-wrenching to contrast that life with the current aerial view, with nothing but rubble and destruction.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/31%C2%B016'58.6%22N+34%C2%...
For comparison, here's Mosul in Iraq after the defeat of ISIS:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/15/world/middlee...
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/middle-east/2016/11/01/battl...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mosul-satellite_n_596d34a3e4b...
This should be higher I think - it is pretty clear that cities get demolished during war, whether purposefully or not.
It's pretty clear you didn't look at the pictures. The destruction in Mosul appears very limited compared to the annihilation of Rafah.
I did look at them and the destruction in both was horrific. I'm not saying that the conflicts are in anyway comparable, but both include fairly comprehensive destruction of civilian areas.
Interesting. Despite the images of Mosul (e.g. on the NYTimes) being presumably selected to show the areas with largest impacts, the destruction is in patches and you can see many houses still standing. In Rafah, every single house has been razed to the ground.
The sad thing is that in a way the terrorist won.
Internationally Israel is probably positioned weaker than before and there is a fissure running through liberal societies from Ireland to France, from Portugal to Germany and probably similar in the US.
This is conflict polarizes. A good example is the recent election in Berlin, which was focused on the housing crisis but now devolved into name calling based on how people think of Israel. A minority might have voted “pro Palestine” but most people wanted affordable flats.
Sowing dissent among your adversaries is very effective.
"Sowing dissent among your adversaries is very effective"
Yes it is, and some countries have become very good at doing that
I take a harsher stance: that we should expect division to be sewn among us by our adversaries, and harden ourselves accordingly through open mindedness, debate, clear info, leaders who discuss deeply and write essays, integrity, best-faith debate (rather than flame wars, especially in popular contexts like tv and social media).
I find it strange that the antidotes to a lot of the bad stuff going on today is basic enlightement stuff: cultivating a citizenry who value evidence-based worldview, education and rule of law. Yet it feels like that is increasingly slipping from our fingers.
The "bad stuff going on today" that you call is the opposite of enlightenment - citizenry based on emotions, tribal and racial affiliations, and rule of strength. There are countries and media that actively promote such a world, since it's easy to get rich and powerful in circumstances like these.
So did Netanyahu. His far-right policies require an eternal enemy to distract the people and blame for everything going wrong. The October 7 attack definitely didn't hurt his position in national politics.
I don't have a strong position on this but seems at least plausible that the Israeli security services did in fact know about Oct 7th but chose not to act.
I mean come on... Hamas were seen practising flying hang gliders around the strip and one of the most paranoid states in the world didn't think that merited some investigation?
And everyone just happened to not be at their posts?
"The sad thing" is that 100k+ humans were brutally killed and the lives of 2 million others were destroyed. The second sad thing is that Germany will never learn. Also, I'd suggest you look up the definition of the word "terrorist".
Hamas's own Health Ministry says 70,000 dead, not 100,000, including around 10,000 natural - all deaths for the last 3 years have been labelled as matryr - and that figure does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. By Hamas' own military figure pre-war and Israel's war assessments, up to half could be non-civilian.
Those numbers don't account for people still under the rubble.
No a single estimation are near your number : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war#Civ...
Most are about 80 to 90% civilian killed.
That's what the sad thing is?
Interesting interpretation.
The Israel stock market is up about 100% since October 7.
The Israeli Shekel is so strong against the dollar it is causing issues with exports.
Israel has signed major missile defense deals with many European countries and just signed a major new one with Greece.
Gaza is in near complete ruins, the tunnel infrastructure Hamas spent the past 2 decades building is being destroyed.
Nasrallah was killed and Hezbollah is severely diminished militarily and politically in Lebanon.
Iran’s nuclear weapons program and ballistic missile capabilities have been severely damaged and no longer pose an existential threat, at least for the time being.
Israel is doing very well since October 7 whereas Hamas and Gaza is not.
Is that the same program that was compeletly damages last year?
Google Maps acting as a real-time war damage tracker is a sobering use case. The raw satellite data is a stark visual.
reminded me of this post from earlier this year, also Rafah but from the ground:
https://x.com/MacaesBruno/status/2017251152900079675
Israeli regime is pure terror.
Rafah is like Nazi Germany Dresden. You start a war, You Lose a war, You pay the price.
But Israel started the war, in 1948.
Against whom? The British mandate?
Not only should we be critical of how Israel wages this war, but we should also recognize the role of Hamas. Deliberate killing of non-combatants, civilian abductions, unguided rocket and mortar fire, use of human shields, perfidy and disguise, all war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Most of us here in the US don't have to worry about threats of terrorism like this. It doesn't excuse Israel's (many) war crimes but often we don't acknowledge the horror of Hamas on Israel and Palestinians when talking about this conflict.
Also Russians have just bombed a Dobrobut hospital in Kyiv. One of many war crimes happening every day. We also need to be talking about that conflict as well.
How much more do we need to talk about it?
For one thing, there isn't a major, bi-partisan, pro-Russian-war-crime lobby with a controlling interest currently sitting in government.
The main difference here is that Russia is not funded by western nations nor is it an ally to most of NATO countries. The gripe many of us have with Israel's actions is that we enable them directly by providing money, weapons and manpower. No nation in the west will hesitate to condemn Russia's war crimes, whereas just recently we started seeing some manner of blowback to Israel's.
Hamas is mostly an invention of Israel, as I understand it. To excuse attcks on Palestine. Hamas is in reality just resistance and not a very organized "terror" group
They won the election in Gaza and has been running the entire thing for years.
I wonder why
I don't know why this is getting down voted. I thought it was pretty widely known? See: - https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas
I wouldn't call them an invention of Israel, but they were allowed/encouraged to flourish.
You forgot the extensive tunnel infrastructure dug under all these civilian areas. The fighting in civilian clothing. Weapon caches and tunnel entrances in civilian buildings. Booby trapping civilian structures to kill soldiers that attempt to search/enter them. Mining roads in civilian areas to inflict damage on invading forces.
None of Israel's critics is able to suggest some significantly different strategy that would allow Israel to after Hamas. So the discussion inevitably ends up (with said critics) at Hamas had a right to commit these crimes, because they are the oppressed/occupied, and Israel has no right to defend itself by going after and defeating Hamas while minimizing its casualties like any other western army would do and has done (see Mosul or many other examples).
Sounds a lot like how the colonists fought much of the revolutionary war here in America where I am from.
But that aside, how "honorably" would you fight back if your homeland were occupied and turned into an apartheid state and you were treated as a second-class citizen effectively living in an open air prison while armed settlers came in and claimed many of your neighbor's homes, possibly killing them in the process?
Funny how you're still doing unpaid Hasbara.
IDF showed a few weapons "found" in al shifa is pretty much all they managed to show, and by found I mean obviously planted after being seen carrying them into the hospital in brown boxes.
Then there's the hilarious renders provided by IDF, like the second video here https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/war-peace/realistic-fantasy-isr...
Hey guess what, Hamas are terrorists, I can easily say that. I can also say that Israel isn't behaving any better while supposedly is the only democratic country in the middle east with the most moral army in the world. And really never since this conflict started because the goal of Zionism was always to take over more and more of the are and create an ethno state. Even the nakba was done because the ethnic composition of the would be Israeli state was not congruous with their democratic ideals so they needed people gone.
It should be noted that Hamas exists because of the occupation and atrocities that Israel has been committing for decades and decades. All war is atrocious, the actions of terrorists are disgusting, BUT you cannot discuss the actions of Hamas in a vacuum and forget why they even formed in the first place and continue to carry out their actions.
As soon as you murder civilians you lose all your justification. I mean both sides.
Correct.
I'd like to point out though that Israel are unique in the sense that every single authoritative body on the subject have declared that Israel is committing genocide, Hamas for all their drama, is not.
In every war civilians are murdered. By both sides: bombing of rotterdam, Dresden, Hiroshima…
if you mean that all war is unjustified, consider stating that plainly. if that's not what you mean, then perhaps there is some nuance left out of your statement.
Also using child soldiers.
But the West does acknowledge it, almost exclusively. Any criticism of Israel's war crimes are followed by "But do you agree that Israel has a right to exist?" and "Do you condemn Hamas and the attack they conducted in Oct 7"? Mainstream media only shows Hamas actions, and only recently started highlighting Israel's war crimes due to increased souring of their reputation among audiences. Hamas actions also shouldn't be taken in isolation, the atrocities of October 7 didn't happen in a vacuum, but as a reaction to a conflict that has been happening for almost 80 years that is overwhelmingly one sided.
You mean, Hamas, one of the only armies that doesn't fight with a uniform and hides artillery in civilian buildings?
Do the settlers wear uniforms when they kill villagers?
The world is aware of the answer to that one.
It's sad that so much of this conversation has devolved into technicalities of whether this is a genocide.
You can't look at this, at reports coming out of Gaza and the West Bank, at Israel's own government officials' statements, and not, at minimum, believe that brutal war crimes were committed on a massive basis here. Whether it's "Holocaust level" or "genocide" is a red herring. It needs universal condemnation, it needs to stop, and the people who did it need to be held accountable.
It did stop. When the hostages were freed and Hamas gave up. Which they could have done at any point. Or you know, they could not have started the war too.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/18/run-get-away-w...
I have been watching the atrocities that Israel have been committing since 1987 and there is simply zero argument any supporter of the regime can make to change my mind that they are evil, by every definition of the word.
There is no justification for their actions. There is no justification for the greater Israel project they are pushing. There is no justification for them to be taking a leadership role in the global security technology industry. The whole thing is just absolutely Fkd and I find any person trying to contort the argument in a way to justify this shit to be evil themselves.
At this stage I just feel nihilism/defeatism towards the Middle East. In 500 years they’ll still be killing each other with all sides genuinely believing in their righteousness and that it’s all the other sides fault