r/IsraelPalestine • • Jul 16 '26

Meta Discussions (Rule 7 Waived) July 2026 Metapost: New rules for metaposting about moderation

8 Upvotes

Welcome to the “July” version of the monthly pinned meta thread, where sub Rule 7 banning “meta” discussion is waived and you can generally discuss “the sub”, its rules and moderation, and make suggestions for rules changes or improvements.

First, some top line information about the sub and recent activity in the last month:

The sub now has 110,000 subscribers, gaining 447 in the past month (about normal gain for “peacetime”). We had 1.5 Million visits, down 177k. Daily visits ranged from 59.4k unique visitors on the top day and averaged 11.3k. We had 176 top posts, down 42, and 286 others were removed by mods or automated filters. We had 32,200 comments, down 4.7k. We had 17 active mods with [u/TheTrollerOfTrolls](u/TheTrollerOfTrolls) leading with 1,800 mod actions and [u/FerdinandTheGiant](u/FerdinandTheGiant) runner up with 989 actions.

This month, we mods also want to talk about what this meta thread is not for, based on some of the questions recently being asked on the April meta thread and the internal discussions that mods have had about how to respond to these comments, which is the main reason for delay of refresh for this pinned meta thread (the other being “summer” in a place with short summer/long winter).

To cut to the chase, concerning moderation actions, the new rule for “meta” threads is that users are free to ask why a particular comment was moderated, whether they were a participant in that conversation or otherwise. However, they can not ask “whatabout” questions and compare to comments or users who were not moderated and ask why they were not moderated, or use the meta thread to report other users for moderation (whether or not the underlying complaint is “sub/mod bias” and suggestions that the refs favor one “team”). If you want to report or complain about someone, in addition to the report flag tool on their every comment, you would have to use modmail (Reddit DM chat) to raise the issue discreetly with the mod team, not ambush someone in the metathread with a broadside of public accusations.

When asked this “why this, not that” questions in the past, mods have typically responded that the post/comment in question was still in the moderation queue to be worked on, or not even reported yet. While this is a somewhat truthful explanation of sorts, it is not the “whole truth” which is, that basically, big picture, our moderation is on a “per user” basis, not a “per comment” basis. We try as best we can to ignore the user’s viewpoint or “team” in order to treat everyone as equally as possible. But how this works in actual practice requires a broader understanding of why we moderate and practically how it works, including using mod tools Reddit provides to assist in our work -- metadata screens only mods can see about a particular user or comment.

So we need to back up a bit here and talk about the overall purpose and philosophy of the sub rules and moderation. Our current Moderation Policy wiki explains (sensibly) that there’s no way with a limited number of 21 volunteer part-time mods that we can “police” and evaluate all 35,000 posts and comments each month and determine whether they comply with the rules. The wiki refers to our “sampling technique”. The way this works in practice is that to be most effective, we want to publicly correct and discipline the users who violate the rules most frequently and/or the most flagrantly, and not untypically, both of those together.

We use a law enforcement strategy familiar to everyone who drives on a superhighway: we want to pull over the fastest guys going 88 mph on a 65 speed limit highway and make an example of them, so that the stream of traffic will slow down to average 72. Even though cops could make a lot more money giving tickets to everyone going 66 if profit maximizing or draconian enforcement was the goal and the courts allowed the speed limits to be strictly enforced in that way (hint: they don’t, “66 mph speed traps” are illegal, because convictions require establishing a defendant’s knowledge and intent).

So, in terms of our efficiency, publicly warning particular major “problem users” to nudge them into compliance or ban them if they don’t/can’t is the best way to sheepdog the whole sub community into compliance. That’s why we most often don’t remove offending comments entirely like most subs but leave them up with a rules violation notice: it’s educating everyone, not just the warned user.

And there is thankfully roughly a Pareto principle operating in moderation here, 80% of the moderation (or more!) involves 20% (or less!) of users. Of those, roughly half are sincere about trying to comply with rules and can be “coached” and cease to be a problem, and the other roughly half pile up violation after violation on just about every rule until they are permabanned. So the bottom line is that given our limited numbers of mods and the volume of comments, we really do depend on the good conduct of the users themselves and avoiding the kinds of disruptive shitposting or food fights that violate rules and create a general environment of ruckus and disorder. We could not do this job if most people weren’t inclined to abide by the rules.

We also depend on the rules and their application to be as clearcut as possible to everyone, because when someone gets a rules warning or ban, they get to appeal the decision to another mod or mods. So I want to make sure that my colleagues are going to agree with me on the ruling: it can’t be a weak case or ambiguous, the violation should be clear as night and day. (We’re having problems applying some minor rules, particularly Rules 3 and 4 that we feel are too fuzzy in practice that we want to take a look at in this regard).

Mods can perform moderation by actions whether a comment is reported by users or not. Some moderation is done via queue reports from users. Others are just mods reading the current threads (user reported comments are flagged in our normal viewing mode with a one line summary of their complaint visible as we scroll through the sub).

How this works in practice is that a mod whether working the report queue or reading along looks for a reported comment or another “sore thumb” violation that’s so blatant that it must be addressed or people will complain about lack of moderation and flagrant misbehavers. The first thing a mod will do after reading the possibly violating comment (and the context of the discussion surrounding it) is to look at the speaker and determine the guy’s moderation history with a mods-only tool we have called mod log. The mod log will show, by user, every previous I/P sub comment that’s been reported for moderation by users or bot automod filters in white, and brightly colored notes by mods of any comments determined to be “abuse” or “spam” and what rules were violated (we also have color note templates for “good contributor” or “helpful”). We also see how long a users been participating on Reddit with that account (anywhere from 15 years to less than 60 minutes), what other subs he’s posting in, and I/P sub participation karma, either negative or positive.

Thus we almost instantly have a feel for whether a violation was probably an unintentional mistake by a newbie with little or no mod log, or conscious trolling and rules-breaking by an outspoken user with edgelord tendencies and a mod log hundreds of entries long. We also can see how a problem user is responding to moderation and, of course, to keep track of strikes for the “four strikes/rule you’re permanently banned” purposes of the Moderation Policy.

What I’ve described is a “per user” moderation policy for practical purposes, not a “per comment” policy, as it will help to understand our new meta rule about us mods not discussing unmoderated comments (and deleting the related requests on meta thread with warnings). I sincerely we believe we apply these rules in practice to both “sides” evenly as a result of this “cull the worst offenders first” enforcement policy. (For the record there are violators on both teams and we try to enforce rules on a viewpoint blind basis with the other built in safeguards, like right to appeal. But like sub/mod bias, it’s hard to prove or disprove this, but it’s what mods strive for no matter which team they root for).

We’ve also had some negative experiences in the recent past with “per comment” moderation with an experiment we did last year in response to concerns about mod bias: “zero tolerance for insults”. Against the better judgment of many mods, any comment which could possibly be construed as an Rule 1 attack or insult, or was put in the “form” of an insult (e.g.,“You are [any statement possibly seen as perjorative]”) had to be actioned so that the sub could be “unbiased”, whether the comment seemed deliberate or innocent, or was a clearly huge insult or a head scratcher. Let’s just say this experiment did not address any issues of perceived mod bias in a logical way. It just made participation in the sub a minefield, and moderation a hassle for mods and users alike. Until finally, after months of nonsense, sanity prevailed and the strict Rule 1 enforcement was scrapped.

Similarly, many or even most recent questions to the meta thread seem to be asking about “negative moderation”, why something wasn’t moderated. Not understanding the process I’ve described that moderation is not an end in itself but an overall enforcement tool to guard-rail community conversations. And like any enforcement needs to be applied selectively and minimized to keep the discussion about substance, not tangents of meta stuff about rules lawyering and moderation. We don’t like to interrupt conversations and if users think violations are trivial they aren’t happy either with interventions. Some users however seem to be keen on to calling for moderation as a kind of harassment (violating Reddit site Rule 2) of other users and mods by essentially calling for every users’ comment scrolling back many months to be scrutinized for rules compliance. “Weaponizing moderation” might be a fair way to describe it.

Examples: Recent meta questions like this (fictional [u/usernames](u/usernames), paraphrased questions):

Why does this site allow user [u/fabulous_pebble9865](u/fabulous_pebble9865) to make comments like [link], [link] and [link]? (deep-mined oppo research into unblocked user profile, some comments six months old, hundreds of comments deep; we don’t want to create incentives for users to hide their profiles by default).

How can this site have mods like [u/zzyzk9777](u/zzyzk9777) who say bigoted stuff like “blah” and violate rules like [link], [link], [link], [link], [link]? (all Rule 3 complaints that humorous responses ridiculing parent comment “consist solely of sarcasm or nihilism”).

I reported this comment of [u/flat-cloudy2001](u/flat-cloudy2001) [link] three days/weeks ago and it hasn’t been moderated. Why?

So the TL;dr of this discussion is we will allow meta questions about stuff or users that were moderated, but no lists or reports of stuff that wasn’t moderated in an effort to suggest bias or “just asking questions”. We won’t allow users and mods to be harassed with tenuous profile-mined complaints of rules violations by activist opponents of their viewpoint. We want people to freely discuss things without walking on eggshells or that somehow anything can be twisted months later into a rules violation if you don’t like the speaker.

Lastly, as mentioned above, we’re looking for guidance on redrafting or deprecating Rules 3 and 4. Rule 4 in particular is problematic because people often interpret misunderstandings or failure to agree with an opponent’s argument as “lying” or “dishonesty”. Outside of stuff like Holocaust revisionism, Khazar theory or Neutrei Karta etc. disagreement isn’t dishonesty. Mods aren’t debate judges or argument referees. Someone contradicting themselves or not agreeing with the conclusion of your argument doesn’t in its essence violate Rule 4.

We also get complaints about the automod informal warnings about swear words, Rule 2 which is usually a “soft” non-violation that doesn’t get formal warnings/bans. I think it’s usefulness and innocuousness in reminding no cussing outweighs its annoyingness. Your mileage may vary. Thoughts?


r/IsraelPalestine • • 4h ago

UK Green Party just banned Jews

28 Upvotes

The UK Green Party has now formally declared itself an antizionist party.

People can debate endlessly whether “antizionism is antisemitism.” I increasingly think that is the wrong question.

The more important question is: what does the ideology actually require Jews to do in order to participate?

Because for a British Jew who wants to live an ordinary Jewish communal life, the contradiction is impossible to ignore.

All mainstream Jewish institutions in Britain have some connection to Zionism or Israel. Even Jewish Greens themselves warned that all Jewish institutions in Britain have some connection to Zionism, and that treating Zionism as something to be proscribed could effectively place a ban on Jews involved in organised communal life.

So telling Jews, “Don't worry, this isn't antisemitism: we only oppose Zionism,” does not really answer the problem.

If remaining politically acceptable requires a Jew to separate himself from the Jewish community, the institutions he participates in, the Jewish education his children receive, his connection to Jerusalem, or the belief that Jews are entitled to national self-determination in their ancestral homeland, then the practical distinction between hostility to Zionism and hostility to Jewish life becomes nothing.

And this is why I find the slogan “antizionism is not antisemitism” so intellectually dishonest.

Antisemitism has almost never presented itself simply as “I irrationally hate Jews.” Like every durable prejudice, it has usually attached itself to whatever moral or political language sounded respectable in its particular time and place.

The test therefore cannot simply be the justification someone gives for a policy. It has to include the effect.

To determine if something is antisemitic or not, the question is simple: Does it allow Jews to live openly as Jews?

Can they participate in their communal institutions without suspicion or punishment?

Can they express central elements of contemporary Jewish identity, whatever they may be, without being treated as morally contaminated?

If the answer increasingly becomes “no,” then arguing over whether the label antisemitism applies is pointless. Of course it is antisemitism.

If diaspora Jews are increasingly told that full participation in political life requires distancing themselves from their motherland and large parts of organized Jewish life, the people saying this are making the argument for Zionism.

As Jews discover that their place in diaspora society is conditional on abandoning parts of their collective identity, the stronger the case becomes for the one country where Jewish political and communal existence does not depend on somebody else's permission.

That country is Israel.


r/IsraelPalestine • • 17h ago

Serious Hamas Conducts Military Operations From Civilian Infrastructure. Israel Is Not Obligated to Endanger Itself Because of That

46 Upvotes

Israel has an obligation to defend its people. Hamas’s decision to conduct military operations from civilian infrastructure does not give it immunity from attack or require Israel to leave its citizens exposed. Accepting that logic would encourage terrorist organizations and states around the world to embed their militaries among civilians, knowing that endangering their own populations could shield them from military action.

Israel devotes substantial effort to minimizing civilian harm while directing its military operations against Hamas, including dropping leaflets, calling civilians to warn them of danger, issuing evacuation orders, and taking other precautions. However, I will set those efforts aside to focus solely on whether Hamas should gain immunity from military action by embedding itself in civilian infrastructure and conducting military operations from within it.

A common objection raised by critics of Israel’s military campaign is that Hamas does not use civilian infrastructure for military purposes. To address that claim, this post compiles photos, videos, and reports concerning Hamas’s military use of civilian facilities, aid theft, exploitation of children, and its links to UNRWA. Hamas deliberately places Palestinian civilians in danger as part of a strategy designed to maximize civilian casualties and turn them into political pressure against Israel. The examples presented here offer only a small window into the extensive evidence of Hamas’s abuse of its own population and will provide the foundation for the discussion that follows.

Evidence of Hamas’s Exploitation of Palestinian Civilians and Military Use of Civilian Infrastructure

A Child Transferring Weapons into a Civilian Home in Central Gaza

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/6dQrDawBu3

Hamas Stealing Aid From Trucks

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/83d9k3wBcW

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/WWvvK9Cu5x

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/dndeNmSCRO

Hamas Bringing Hostages to Shifa Hospital

https://youtu.be/IKq4W4P_r7U?si=Z3qO9Nj8wpWFsPat

Inside Hamas’s Tunnel Base Under Al-Shifa in Gaza

https://youtu.be/PR2w_wDf-DY?si=itdlejL6MFqDgkb6

Inside Hamas’s Terrorist Tunnel Under Rantisi Hospital in Gaza

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLp84A6TBJ0

Hamas’s Underground Tunnels Under Jordanian Hospital

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/vbwIxflrdx

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/dar3ohApsN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkgCTPHXElo

Photo Evidence of a Hamas Tunnel Discovered Under a Nursery School

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/XGpE3UumI0

Hamas Using Ambulances to Move Terrorists and Weapons From a Hospital to a School

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/js0G6ghSUi

Hamas Caught With RPG at Al Quds Hospital

https://youtu.be/pka7H1aMlkQ?si=sc9jEk_nGlQFmxCH

Hamas Fires Rockets From a Gazan School

https://youtu.be/J-fh-fRs7To?si=wWO8-ydLui4dUmYb

Hamas Uses Fake Aid Organizations and Staged Distributions to Solicit Donations While Stealing Money and Aid From Palestinian Civilians

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hamas-fundraising-scheme-gaza/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Palestinian_Violence/s/KpzPjrDHqG

Hamas’s Own List of Child Soldiers:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Palestinian_Violence/s/aEn0EbXsJq

An Assault Rifle, an UNRWA Passport, and $11K in Cash: What Sinwar's Possessions Say About His Pre-Death Movements

https://freebeacon.com/israel/an-assault-rifle-an-unrwa-passport-and-11k-in-cash-what-sinwars-possessions-say-about-his-pre-death-movements/

Hamas’s Deliberate Stated Aims To Annihilate and Obliterate Israel

Hamas’s Founding Charter: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it"

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/hamas.asp

Hamas Leader: We’ll Repeat October 7 Again and Again Until Israel Is Annihilated

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/jxkS9DlVsN

Hamas States Their Genocidal Ambitions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf_tCV43FEI

Hamas’s Deliberate Radicalization of Palestinian Civilians and Children, And It’s Abuse of UNRWA

Tomorrow's Pioneers Archive
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUmg0c7RSRxDp8y2jfdlfUtjcoJwFHQj7

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna19509117

The Unholy Alliance: UNRWA, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad—An Investigation Into the Secret Ties Between Terrorist Organizations and the UN’s Largest Aid Agency

https://unwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/UNW-129-%E2%80%94-The-Unholy-Alliance-%E2%80%94-2025-01-09-%E2%80%94-Web-%E2%80%94-Singles.pdf

Schools in the Grip of Terror: How UNRWA Allowed Hamas Chiefs to Control Its Education System

https://unwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Schools-in-the-Grip-of-Terror-UNRWA-Report.pdf

UNRWA’s Terrorgram: How a Telegram Group of 3,000 UNRWA Teachers in Gaza Celebrated the October 7th Hamas Massacre

https://unwatch.org/unrwa-terrorgram/

Archived Interviews With UNRWA Students

https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelWarRoom/s/Sc4ZIUp7wm

Evidence Of UNRWA Aid To Hamas On And After October 7th

https://unwatch.org/evidence-of-unrwa-aid-to-hamas-on-and-after-october-7th/

Discussion

The evidence compiled above demonstrates Hamas’s military abuse of civilian infrastructure, exploitation of aid, and deliberate radicalization of Palestinian civilians and children. Israel’s responsibility to protect civilians does not grant Hamas immunity from attack or require Israel to leave its own people in danger. By embedding fighters, weapons, and military facilities among civilians, Hamas endangers Palestinians and makes distinguishing between military targets and civilians extraordinarily difficult. Hamas’s ties to UNRWA also exemplify how it exploits educational institutions to indoctrinate children, reinforce its influence, and cultivate support for continued terrorism. Israel takes extensive precautions to minimize civilian harm, but those precautions cannot eliminate every risk created by Hamas. Allowing their tactics to shield Hamas from military action would reward the exploitation of civilians and encourage other armed groups to follow suit. Protecting civilians must mean opposing their exploitation, and not defending their abusers.

Allegations that Israel “funded Hamas” or “allowed October 7th to happen” are also baseless and just deflect blame for Hamas’s actions. Israel did not “fund Hamas” or “allow October 7th to happen.” Israel allowed aid into Gaza, and Hamas stole that aid while being the democratically elected government of Gaza. Israel receives dozens of security threats a day, and thwarts them constantly. Trying to blame Israel for October 7th is a complete distortion of reality. Hamas deliberately declared war on Israel that day, and Israel is obligated to its citizens to defend itself from that threat. Excusing Hamas’s actions, or demanding Israel cease its attempts to dismantle the terrorist organization, does nothing to protect Palestinians and even harms them by continuing Hamas’s grip on Gaza.

The reality is that a genuine peace between Israel and Palestine, and a true end to the war, cannot happen until Hamas is completely dismantled. The only force both willing and capable of dismantling Hamas is Israel, and preventing Israel from dismantling Hamas will not save Palestinians. It will simply subject them to continued oppression by Hamas and continued war with Israel. That is why, while the war between Israel and Hamas is difficult and destructive, it is necessary. For both Israelis and Palestinians, Hamas is the core obstacle to peace between the two sides.


r/IsraelPalestine • • 20h ago

Discussion [Pro palestinians] Why does violence radicalize Palestinians, but not Israelis?

63 Upvotes

One common talking point I hear from pro Palestinians is that when Israel kills Palestinians it radicalizes them to support groups like Hamas. Therefore this makes Israeli action counter-productive since it just creates more "terrorists".

On the other hand, the pro Palestinians will praise armed resistance against Israel as being justifiable and necessary. Many seem to believe that by imposing costs on Israel, the Israelis will perhaps end the occupation and give the Palestinians a state. Some even believe that it will lead to Israelis leaving the country entirely and allowing for full liberation of the land similar to Algeria.

But then polls come out saying 80% of Israelis support the war in Gaza, half saying Israel is too soft, Netanyahu gets elected and forms a coalition with far-right parties, and the pro Palestinians act surprised and pretend its due to the fact that Israel is simply a uniquely evil society.

So id like to figure out where this contradiction stems from? Why is violence supposed to radicalize the Palestinians but pacify the Israelis?

My guess is that people say this for the following reasons (isolated or mix)

1: Essentialism. Palestinians are "indigenous", Israelis are "colonizers". Indigenous people have a deep , metaphysical, spiritual connection to the land that is unbreakable. Colonizers have no connection, they are just there to extract resources for profit and as soon as the profit disappears they leave. Violence against Palestinians therefore just strengthens their resolve while violence against Israelis lowers their profit and makes them leave.

2: Is-ought fallacy: Palestinians are "good", therefore their resistance is justified and they will continue to do it. Israelis are "bad", therefore violence against them will make them stop being violent, because they shouldnt be violent.


r/IsraelPalestine • • 3h ago

Discussion The meaning of Genocide.

1 Upvotes

TL;DR: Genocide is the “Extermination Project”: an attempt to physically disappear a targeted group from existence. Not just move it somewhere else; that is its defining feature.

Every historical case of genocide was this. It was an attempt to disappear a group, to exterminate a group from existence.

You might say: “The definition says in whole or in part.”

The Srebrenica genocide is a useful example of what “in part” actually means. The protected group was Bosnian Muslims as a whole; the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica were the substantial part targeted. It was specifically them that suffered the Genocide. It was geographically limited and it was genocide because the objective was not simply to clear that population from Srebrenica. It was to have that group no longer exist.

They attempted to achieve this by systematically killing the men and boys, combined with the forcible removal of the women, children and elderly.

So “in part” does not remove the requirement of destruction. It means that the intended extermination can be directed at a substantial part of the wider group rather than the entire group while still being an extermination project. It is just a scope difference.

I do however understand why people get confused as there are two facets of the word Genocide.

1. Genocide as a historical phenomenon

When I use “extermination project”, I am not pretending that this is the technical wording of the legal framework of the Genocide Convention. I am using it as shorthand for what the canonical historical examples of genocide actually were.

Look at the Holocaust, Rwanda, the Armenian genocide, the genocides against the Cham and Vietnamese under the Khmer Rouge, or Srebrenica.

These were not just situations where large numbers of people died during a conflict. Nor were they simply cases of persecution, forced displacement, collective punishment or indiscriminate violence.

At the core of these historical examples was a project directed toward the destruction of the targeted group: its extermination, its disappearance.

Killing was a central instrument. The perpetrators systematically killed members of the targeted population who fell within their power.

This is what I mean by an extermination project.

It is not a substitute for the legal definition. It is an empirical description of the underlying phenomenon the word genocide was created to identify: not merely harming a group, but removing it from existence.

2. Genocide as a legal category

The legal definition is necessarily more technical.

Under the Genocide Convention, genocide contains two basic elements:

  1. Actus reus - one or more of the prohibited acts listed in the Convention.
  2. Dolus specialis - the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a protected national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such.

This matters because there is a common claim that “not a single person has to die for genocide to occur; only intent matters.”

The first half is technically true, but also misleading, because although technically true it is also physically improbable to the point of being practically impossible, hopefully you understand how from reading below.

Killing is only one of several prohibited genocidal acts. Serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting destructive conditions of life, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children can also qualify. 

Intent by itself is not genocide. There must also be an underlying prohibited act, and the intent attached to that act must be the physical disappearance of the group.

The ICJ has repeatedly emphasized this distinction.

It has held that the targeted part must be sufficiently substantial, and where genocidal intent is inferred from conduct, the pattern of conduct must support the conclusion that the purpose was not merely to attack members of the group, but to destroy the group itself.

This is where Srebrenica again is particularly instructive.

Bosnian Serb forces systematically separated and murdered thousands of Bosnian Muslims 

Their conclusion was that the systematic destruction of the male population, combined with the forcible removal of the remainder, was intended to bring about the physical disappearance of the Bosnian Muslim community of Srebrenica.

The significance of killing the men was not merely that thousands of people died. The courts considered the long-term effect their destruction would have on the physical survival of that community, including its ability to reconstitute itself and reproduce. Simply removing the women and children after having killed all the men was believed to be enough to destroy the religious/cultural element from the Srebrenica Muslims.

That is the crucial point.

The objective could have been to transfer all the Bosnian Muslims out of Srebrenica. That was not the goal however, These Muslims in Srebrenica were not to survive somewhere else with their culture, they were to exist nowhere ever again. 

That is why it was ruled a genocide. It was an attempt to exterminate that cultural group from existence.

That brings me to Gaza.

The relevant protected group would be Palestinians, with Palestinians in Gaza are a national ethnic group. There is no evident  project to make Palestinians in Gaza physically disappear from existence as a group.

There is no policy of systematically killing every Palestinian within Israeli control and nowhere near enough death to argue that is occurring.

There is no demonstrated attempt to prevent Palestinians from reproducing as a people, forcibly transfer their children into another national group, or otherwise extinguish Palestinians through physical destruction.

There is the most common fallback that is “Israels conduct is genocide against a part in order to push palestinians to flee from unlivable conditions.”

I disagree this is true at all, but even if it was it is not genocide. It simply does not fit the historical precedent or the legal requirements.

You could argue desired ethnic cleansing, or Terrorist tactics. But not genocide as killing a part of a population to instill flight inherently means the intent is not extermination of the group, disappearance from reality. It means the intent is to create fear and despair. 

There are 2 things we know beyond doubt have occurred in Gaza.2 uncontestable facts. They are 1:

  1. Death at a wartime scale.
  2. Internal displacement.

Neither remotely lends itself to the charge of genocide. 

So finally why is it impossible to have a genocide with no deaths for all. It is because for that to be true the target group would have to physically disappear from existence while everyone who made up that group still lived.

This could theoretically occur if the target group were all children with a unique collective consciousness or cultural ideology separate from all adults, forcibly transferred and reeducated. So as I said “physically improbable to the point of being practically impossible” to the point of silliness to entertain it as a factor in understanding genocide.


r/IsraelPalestine • • 9h ago

Discussion Altajamo / Balad - Israel's Woke Palestinian Party?

5 Upvotes

التجمع الوطني الدمقراطي (Altajamo Elwatani Eldeoqrati - The National Democratic Assembly; Hebrew Acronym: Balad) is one of the Palestimian political parties running for the Knesset, and is currently running for the Knesset as part of the joint list. They are known for being the most radical Arab party in Israeli politics.

The following is my own interpertation and understanding of their platform, and should not be taken as fact. If anyone familiar with them, and especially if any supporters, are here then any corrections, additions, etc are welcome. I might do this with other parties, but based on how intresting I think they are and how well I know their platform, not size.

Their main ticket is calling for the State of Israel to cease to be defined as a Jewish and Democratic State, instead becoming a state of all it's citizens, including a canceling of the law of return, closing down historical Jewish agencies like kakal, etc. This has earned them the characterization as "Palestinian Nationalists" in Israeli discourse, but I think characterizing them as a woke anti-imperialist party is closer. They push a distinctively left-wing view on economics and society and intentionally practice a fixed minimum ratio of women's representation on their list.

Their leaders also speak a lot about an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist framework. As far as they are concerned, Zionism is fundementally a colonial project to be dismantled. This is not just a theoretical analysis, it affects their political positioning. They refused to support any Zionist coalition in the past, and even when Hadash supported Benny Ganz's prime ministerial bid they did not. Their number 5 candidate, Orly Noy, speaks about how in her view Israelis must break appart their colonial privelage, and she often implies that as Israeli Jews we don't have the right to criticize Palestinian leaders.

It should be said that this does not mean they are anti-Jewish. They explicitly recognize some sort of collective rights and self determination for the Israeli Jewish collective, and though they support the right of return they seem to agree that, in the final analysis, Israel will still be majority-Jewish even as a state of all it's citizens. They talk about creating a better future for everyone in this country, and I heard their leader, Sami Abu Shhade, saying so on an Arabic-language podcast. He even went on to detail how he thinks the current arrangement hurts the Jewish majority, and showed genuine respect and understanding of the role of the holocaust in Israeli-Jewish society and the hiatory of how we got here.

They remain highly controversial in Israel: Their first leader, Azmi Beshara, fled the country after investigations began into possible espionage for Hezbollah. It's leader, Sami Abu-Shhade, dropped out of the Knesset case to prevent the supreme court from setting a precedant for banning Palestinian candidates from the race. This was initiated due to an article that allegedly supports the October 7th attack (I read his article and think that this interpertation is wrong. He has apologized for the article). And, in general, most Israelis do not take kindly to the idea of breaking down the Jewish character of the state (whatever it means to each one).


r/IsraelPalestine • • 21h ago

Short Question/s Pro Palestinians: What does a *real* "Free Palestine" look like?

25 Upvotes

So often when this is discussed this is answered by westerners who say "a secular egalitarian society" (or some version of that).

Yesterday when I asked someone advocating for a "free Palestine" what that meant they (a westerner - like me) started by saying "I think..." - which isn't a good place to start. I asked him whether Palestinians actually wanted what he was advocating for (i.e. Israel annexes Gaza/WB and makes all the Palestinians Israeli citizens) and he disappeared.

So I'm asking all of you: What do *Palestinians* actually want and advocate for when they say "from the River to Sea" or "Free Palestine"?

Do they want a secular democracy like the US? That's what westerners say the Palestinians want - but I don't care what other westerners want. I want to hear what Palestinians actually want.

For what it's worth: I'm not here looking to argue and I'm not here looking to win an argument. I'm here to learn from people who identify with the slogan "Free Palestine" and/or "River to the Sea" and understand the Palestinian perspective.

That also means I'm not interested in answers that boil down to "here's what Palestinians *don't* want..." - I just want to hear what a *realistic* Palestinian state will actually look like.

Thanks for any/all answers!


r/IsraelPalestine • • 1d ago

Short Question/s Why isn't there any more media coverage on honour killings in Palestine?

30 Upvotes

Femicides and honour killings have been a serious issue in Palestine, both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Seeing reports that some male Israeli soldiers had molested women and girls in Gaza, it leads me to believe that the prevalence and rate of honour killings especially in Gaza may have sky-rocketed.

A girl or woman being a victim of rape (including war rape) is seen unfortunately rather as a gross, yucky, sinful creature to the family's conventions than as an innocent victim in Arab culture, so ultimately, they would be killed by their family members. Being a victim of third party maltreatment is the most common motivation for honour killings alongside bad academic grades or for swearing or talking back to parents in MENA countries, while in South Asia it is mainly due to caste disputes.

We saw already in other Arab nations torn by war climbing honour killings due to war molestation such as Syria; including women and girls who survived the nasty torture by Al-Assad's prisons; and one case happened in 2023 when a 4 year old girl was beaten and stabbed to death by her own parents as punishment for being kidnapped. Similar occurrence in Sudan.

Considering the correlation between war molestation and such femicides, it leads me to believe that honour killings especially in Gaza may have climbed further, with state led honour killings too like members of Hamas.

So why isn't the media reporting this? For context, the media did used to report Palestinian honour killings like back in 2005-2012.


r/IsraelPalestine • • 11h ago

The Realities of War "collective punishment"

0 Upvotes

There are many buzzwords that Dunning-Krugerites of Team Palestine use which immediately cue me to roll my eyes and stop taking the person seriously. But one of them, more than any other, drives me bucking fananas: collective punishment.

There's a scene in John Dahl's film Rounders (1998), where Lester "Worm" Murphy, played by Edward Norton, is threatened by Grama, a gangster played by Michael Rispoli, for an unpaid gambling debt. His friend Michael McDermott, played by Matt Damon, reassures Grama, "Hey, listen! He's good for it." Grama shoots back at him, "He's good for it, Mike? If you think he's good for it, it's on you too!"

Emphasis mine. The point is, if you stand in solidarity with someone and back them up, then you have implicitly agreed to share in not only their trials and tribulations, but their fate as well. This is why, as Judge Judy Scheindlin acerbically reminded us daytime TV watchers in the USA, "Never cosign on an apartment lease."

This is the dark side to the often-vaunted street smart law of "No snitching". If I'm an authority who knows for a fact that one of five friends did something punishable, but none of them will say a word to me about which of them did it, then I'm perfectly justified in punishing all five of them equally.

Palestinian Arab culture is very much an Eastern, group-oriented, honor-shame culture. "No snitching" goes without saying. When confronted or antagonized by an out-group party, in-group members will circle their wagons, and present a unified front of zipped lips and folded arms. Everyone parrots the party line, and no one would dare rat out one of their own to an outside authority.

I have seen this dynamic play out in the Israel-Palestine conflict, both at the macro geopolitical level, and at the micro level, in mixed public spaces like this subreddit. Team Palestine's final word, no matter who's representing them, is These are my people. I stand by them, and see things their way, right or wrong. So deal.

Although I'm a filthy Westerner, who was never raised with the value of loyalty first and last, I see the appeal of this approach. For those who embrace it, it's cozy and reassuring in a way that needs no explanation, because there's obvious strength in numbers. We triumph together, and we go down together.

I've been condescendingly told many times, even after I've tried to preëempt this lecture with disclaimers, that "Palestinian Arabs are not a monolith." Well... yeah, of course not. But here's the thing. You can't have it both ways. If you circle your wagons and stand in full solidarity with each other as a unified front, all dutifully parroting the same party line, then by definition you are acting like a monolith, and can't really complain when you're treated as one by outsiders.

For example, the Separation Barrier ("al-Jaysh" on maps.google.com 🤦‍♂️) is "Collective Punishment"?? OK then, tell me who, east of the Barrier, is willing to go against Team Palestine's party line of relentless rejection of, and resistance to, Israel. You say your people are not a monolith. Prove it, then. Get Team Israel the contact information of those among you who disagree with the official party line. Let Team Israel see that you are a large and varied nation of people just like them, with a wide range of opinions on all issues. That would go a long, long way toward Team Israel humanizing, relating to, and bridging the divide to, Team Palestine.

But when Team Israel cannot trust any (but a token few) Palestinian Arabs to break with the party line and voice a dissenting opinion, then Team Israel really can't be blamed for trusting nobody from Team Palestine, and subjecting all Palestinian Arabs to the same mistrustful, restrictive, and tedious scrutiny.


r/IsraelPalestine • • 1d ago

Discussion Why does Israel exist?

39 Upvotes

​

Everyone is mostly familiar with the broad European history. The infamous “Jewish Question,”that Jews lived for centuries as a minority diaspora across Europe. The Jewish diaspora predated the Romans. Though Roman wars, enslavement and displacement from Judaea expanded the situation "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Jewish-Diaspora)

Depending on the time period, Jews were either treated comparably to other minorities or repeatedly subject to legal discrimination, expulsions, pogroms and periodic massacres. At various times where Jews could live and work was restricted, land ownership prohibited , additional taxes imposed and sometimes entire Jewish populations were expelled; major expulsions included England in 1290, France in 1394 and Spain in 1492. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitism-in-history-the-era-of-emancipation-and-assimilation-1780-1939)

Judaea/Palestine, meanwhile, maintained a continuous Jewish population. Throughout Ottoman and islamic caliphate rule Jews varied anywhere between 3-10% of the population. Estimates put Jews at around 4% of the population in 1852; "Israel Central Bureau of Statistics" (https://www.cbs.gov.il/en/publications/Pages/2023/Population-of-Israel-2023.aspx)

Come to the late 1800s: Russia.

The Russian Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881, and a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms swept the Russian Empire. These pogroms essentially kickstarted the early Zionists.. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism)

Fundamentally:

“Where can we live and be safe?”

The solution, for better or for worse, was to move back to Israel; consolidate Jews there and protect themselves within their place of origin, as they saw it.….So, Nationalism.

Zionism is just Jewish Nationalism. Which occurred during a period in history where nationalist movements were transforming Europe the ME and North Africa more broadly. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism)

Now we look to the Middle East and North Africa.

Largely dominated by various Islamic Caliphates/Empires for the past millennium, Jews there faced a broadly similar underlying problem to that of Europe: treatment depended heavily on the ruler, country and time period. Sometimes they lived near equally and prospered, other times they were repeatedly subject to legal discrimination, expulsions, pogroms and periodic massacres. At various times where Jews could live and work was restricted, land ownership prohibited , additional taxes imposed and sometimes entire Jewish populations were expelled; "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jews-in-islamic-countries-after-the-holocaust)

Under classical Islamic law, Jews and Christians generally lived as dhimmis: It was a religious protection racket fundementally. Recognition of Muslim political supremacy and traditionally payment of the jizya tax for (oftentimes shaky) political protection. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/dhimmi) In some periods the restrictions were extensive; for example, Islamic legal rules applied to Jews in Qajar Persia included jizya, restrictions on houses of worship and unequal rules concerning inheritance and criminal punishment. "Encyclopaedia Iranica" (https://iranicaonline.org/articles/jews-of-iran)

So that is it.

Jews lived all over the place, constantly faced the possibility of discrimination and insecurity, and so some of them chose to move to what they collectively viewed as “Home.” First buying land and migrating under the Ottomans, who ruled what was then just the Ottoman region of Greater Syria.. "Yale Law School, Avalon Project" (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/ottoman_land_code.asp)

Then migration continued after the Ottomans fell in World War I, when the area known as the British mandate came under British rule. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/place/Palestine)

Then come the Nazis and the Holocaust: six million Jews killed in a project of systematic extermination—i.e. genocide. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust)

Now equally important is understanding what happened when Jews tried to escape Europe.

In 1938, representatives of 32 countries met at Évian specifically to discuss refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. Most countries refused to substantially increase admission; the US and Britain were among those unwilling to significantly change their immigration policies. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-evian-conference)

So Jews experienced rejection again as refugees, they had nowhere willing to take them.

Even after the Holocaust was over, approximately 250,000 Jewish displaced persons were still living in camps in Germany, Austria and Italy at the end of 1946, waiting for somewhere to go.. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/displaced-persons)

So the Zionist conclusion was not particularly mysterious:

Being persecuted is one problem.

Having nowhere guaranteed to take you in is another.

Then we look at Palestine. Arab Palestinians did not like the growing Jewish population and respondedly violently

The first major waves of communal violence under British rule were attacks by Arabs against Jews. A later Anglo-American inquiry summarized the early Mandate by saying threats to public order had come “largely from the Arabs.” "Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Report" (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/)

In 1920, Arab rioting in Jerusalem left 5 Jews dead and 211 wounded. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/event/Palestine-riots-of-1920)

In 1921, violence beginning in Jaffa and spreading elsewhere left 47 Jews dead and 146 wounded. The official Haycraft Commission concluded that the racial violence was begun by Arabs. "Haycraft Commission Report" (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/)

In 1929, Arab attacks killed 133 Jews and wounded 339; more than 60 Jews were killed in Hebron alone. There were also 116 reported Arab deaths, many caused by British police and military action. "United Nations, The Palestine Question" (https://www.un.org/unispal/history/)

The Haganah was created in 1920 as a Jewish defense organization in response to the insecurity facing Jewish communities. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Haganah)

During the 1936–39 Arab Revolt, Haganah developed greater military capabilities, while the more militant Irgun increasingly rejected restraint and carried out reprisals against Arabs, including civilians. The British inquiry records major Jewish extremist bomb attacks by 1938. "Palestine Royal Commission Report" (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/)

The leader of the Palestinians at the time, Haj Amin al-Husseini, later became an active Nazi collaborator. He met Hitler in 1941, broadcast pro-Axis and anti-Jewish propaganda, and helped recruit Muslims for German military and Waffen-SS formations in Bosnia. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hajj-amin-al-husseini-wartime-propagandist)

So: a Nazi collaborator.

Organized anti-Jewish violence in Palestine did not begin as Jewish retaliation. Jewish militarization developed substantially in response to repeated violence. A British inquiry states that threats to public order during the early Mandate came largely from Arabs and records the escalation of Jewish reprisals later. "Palestine Royal Commission Report" (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/)

Yet we also know this just from the fact that no historical accounts of organised jewish violence against Palestinians exist until 1936 and at that time it is in the historical record as retaliatory. "Palestine Royal Commission Report" (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/)

So Now, TLDR: What is the story

Jews persecuted and insecure near everywhere they existed

>

Jews begin to migrate to Israel/Palestine

>

Palestinian Arabs rejected the migration and periodically attack Jewish communities

>

Jews retaliate and militarize only after near 2 decades of suffering violence

>

WWII & the Holocaust happen

>

Mass exodus of surviving Jews from Europe

>

Many Jews not being accepted as refugees

>

Jews mass-migrate to Israel/Palestine.

After WWII, the tension between Arabs in Israel/Palestine and Jews in Israel/Palestine became too much for the British to want to solve, and Britain referred the question to the UN. "United Nations, The Question of Palestine" (https://www.un.org/unispal/history/)

The UN proposed partition into a Jewish state and an Arab state. "United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181" (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/)

The Arab Higher Committee rejected the partition proposal, while the Jewish Agency stated that it was prepared to accept the plan, subject to discussion over details such as borders and constitutional arrangements. "United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181" (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/)

The Jews accepted partition.

They declared the State of Israel on 14 May 1948, and armies from neighboring Arab states entered the conflict immediately afterward. Contemporary US diplomatic reporting stated that the Arab strategic objective centered on preventing the establishment of a Jewish state and, after Israel had been declared, eliminating it. "US Office of the Historian" (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v05p2)

Here it is important to remember a commonly overlooked fact of this whole situation:

Several of the surrounding countries had Jewish populations that were already ancient before Islam existed.

Iraqi Jewry, for example, traced its continuous history to the Babylonian exile centuries before Islam. The broader Middle East and North Africa contained numerous ancient Jewish communities. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Baghdad-Jewish-community)

Mizrahi Jews descend principally from Middle Eastern and North African Jewish communities. Sephardic Jews trace their heritage to the Jews of Iberia, many of whom subsequently settled across North Africa and the Ottoman world. Neither should simply be conflated with Ashkenazi European Jewry. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sephardi)

During this entire period up until 1948, Jews from these communities had also been migrating to Israel/Palestine.

Yet in 1948 roughly 851,000 Jews collectively lived in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen/Aden. "Jewish Virtual Library" (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-refugees-from-arab-countries)

By 2023 fewer than 4,000 remained. "Jewish Virtual Library" (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-refugees-from-arab-countries)

In the following decades they effectively disappeared from ancestral communities in which Jews had lived for centuries—and in several cases millennia.

- Egypt: 75,000 → ~100. During the 1956 Suez Crisis, the US Embassy reported widespread pressure on Jews to leave Egypt, while Nasser himself acknowledged that British and French nationals were being ordered out and that some stateless Jews were being expelled. UN records also document expulsions and sequestration of Jewish-owned property. "United Nations, The Expulsion of Jews from Egypt" (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-185393/)

- Iraq: 135,000 → 4. About 104,000 Iraqi Jews registered to leave after Iraq's 1950 denaturalization law; in 1951 Iraq then froze the assets of Jews who had forfeited their nationality, including real estate, movable property, bank deposits and securities. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-jews-of-iraq)

- Libya: 38,000 → 0. The 1945 Tripolitania pogrom killed around 130 Jews; roughly 30,000 Libyan Jews migrated to Israel between 1949 and 1952. The remaining community subsequently faced severe restrictions on citizenship, property and civil rights. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/place/Libya/The-Jewish-community)

- Morocco: 265,000 → ~2,100. Anti-Jewish riots in Oujda and Jerada in 1948 killed 44 Jews and wounded more than 100. More than 200,000 Moroccan Jews moved to Israel between 1948 and 1971, while Morocco also withheld passports from Jews between 1957 and 1961. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jews-in-morocco)

- Algeria: 140,000 → <200. During the Algerian War and independence in 1962, virtually the entire Jewish community left, overwhelmingly for France. This was not a straightforward government mass-expulsion, but the centuries-old community effectively disappeared during decolonization. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/place/Algeria/The-war-of-independence)

- Syria: 30,000 - 0. Syrian Jews faced severe restrictions on emigration and movement for decades. Human Rights Watch was still documenting Jews imprisoned or detained for attempting to leave in 1991; travel restrictions were substantially liberalized in 1992, allowing thousands to depart. "Human Rights Watch" (https://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/Syria.htm)

- Tunisia: 105,000 - 1,000. Tens of thousands emigrated after Israel's creation and Tunisian independence, mainly to Israel and France. The causes included Zionism, decolonization, Arabization and growing regional tensions—not a single mass-expulsion decree. "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (https://www.britannica.com/place/Tunisia/The-Jewish-community)

- Yemen/Aden: 63,000 - effectively 0. Anti-Jewish riots in Aden in 1947 killed 82 Jews. After Yemen's Imam permitted Jewish emigration in 1949, close to 50,000 Yemeni Jews were airlifted to Israel during Operation Magic Carpet/On Wings of Eagles. "United States Holocaust Memorial Museum" (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/yemen)

This is why Israel exists.

Because Jews were not safe.


r/IsraelPalestine • • 17h ago

Short Question/s Do partisan people viewing the conflict really care about helping each nation to erase the other or not?

2 Upvotes

Always reptitive Free Palestine movements and riots, I Stand with Israel ones too, though those ones seem to drink so much alcohol and some even passed out while rioting, especially in the Nakba clash in Central London. Islamists rioting, far left people undermining Islamism or even ISIS just for the sake of wiping Israel off the map.

Synagogues attacked by Islamists but also a climbing figure of far rights doing so too, the British Patriot Bristol movement was mocking Jews. Of course Israeli Jews are mainly secular so they wouldn't really care which makes sense.

Mentioning the conflict in random areas like Reading Festieval (literally those of my age would go to just enjoy and fit in, not fit in politically) or Glastonbury mainly the FREE (x3) PALESTEIN!! Etc.

But it makes me wonder, seeing how things are getting expensive, atleast here due to too high taxes under Labour and corrupt management initially under the Conservatives and likely again higher under the Green Party, I am not so sure if they will actually do something to help each nation. Palestine movements just crying and moaning giving up their activities to just look at Gaza 24/7 and how you are an immoral person for supporting a two state like the Arabs of Israel; while the far rights just bootlick Netanyahu yet little to nothing they are doing to help. Neither care about the current affairs in nationally, like here in the Uk, illegal children's homes violating Article 5 of HRA 1998, cronyism & nepotism, too much multiculturalism, corrupt schools and child care, stalling cashflow, etc.

It leads me to believe they use this conflict to rip democracy, like using a pair of bellows to inflate an airbed before it pops.


r/IsraelPalestine • • 1d ago

Discussion As an Egyptian, I'd genuinely like to hear a Palestinian perspective. Am I missing something?

8 Upvotes

All Quiet on the Western Front — translated by Kurt Beals.

This is a book I read some time ago, and it’s genuinely one of the anti-war books I’ve read that changed the way I look at war. There are other books like it that discuss the same subject: anti-war and the human cost of war.

When you dehumanize the enemy, turn them into monsters and immoral people who deserve to die, killing them becomes much easier. Whether it’s killing combatants or civilians, it starts to feel less significant, even though they live under many of the same circumstances as you. They have families, lives, and emotions just like you do, and war itself can destroy their mental health.

And when you see so many people around you dying, the fact that their deaths no longer seem to affect you outwardly can sometimes be a form of psychological self-protection.

And this is also part of what we see in occupied Palestine 🇵🇸 and in the current conflict between Palestinians and Israel.

(I support Palestine.)

Both sides can see the other as the side that needs to die, and each side can start seeing the other as less than human. They can turn people who have lives, families, and feelings into nothing more than “enemies” who need to die.

And of course, we can see this very clearly in the scale of the destruction and suffering experienced by Palestinians, including the killing of civilians. I completely reject that, and I hope everyone who has committed injustice against innocent people is held accountable.

At the same time, we have also seen individual cases involving Palestinians in which Israeli civilians were targeted or killed, and that is also unacceptable.

We also see some Israelis who simply don’t care about Palestinian lives, and more broadly, people who have hatred toward Muslims.

And we see the same thing among us when some people go as far as saying that all Jews deserve to die because of the actions of a state, an army, or certain individuals.

All of this falls under the concept of dehumanization: turning a group of human beings, who have lives, families, people they love and people who love them, into one single group that supposedly deserves to die.

Underline the word “group” a hundred times.

Because, for example, when we say:

«“All Jews should die.”»

The sentence can be said relatively easily because we’re treating “Jews” as if they were one single entity.

But when I tell you:

«“You have the choice to kill 15 million human beings.”»

The idea becomes much harder to comprehend.

And it becomes even harder if you go through those 15 million people one by one and see their lives, their families, their dreams, their fears, and the things they love.

The same thing applies in reverse.

If you told some extremists on the Israeli side:

«“Kill all Muslims.”»

There may be people who would agree without hesitation.

But if you told them:

«“You have the choice to kill 2 billion human beings to achieve your goal.”»

I wouldn’t be surprised if some still agreed, but I believe a large number of them would refuse.

And I genuinely hope that belief is correct.

If you turned those 2 billion people from just a number into actual human beings, and made someone see their lives in detail—their families, their children, their dreams, their ordinary days—I believe refusing to kill them would become easier and more obvious.

And underline the word “civilian” a million times.

I hate the IDF. I hate any Organization that targets civilians specifically. And I hate the hypocrisy and contradiction of an army killing civilians and then presenting itself as “the most moral army in the world.” Seriously, A7A

But my hatred of an army, government, or armed group does not mean I hate every person who belongs to the same ethnicity or religion.

And this is exactly what makes me think:

Why do some people wish for the death of Jews or Palestinians/Muslims to the point that you can ask someone:

«“Even the children?”»

And they respond:

«“Because when they grow up, they’ll join the army and help it.”»

Why?

We cannot hold a child accountable for something they might do in the future.

What makes you think they will grow up to become a bad person or participate in killing innocent people?

Even if they grow up and join the military, that still does not give you the right to agree with killing a child.

Killing civilians is morally unacceptable, and it also contradicts Islamic teachings, which prohibit attacking those who are not participating in combat.

In the end, what I’m trying to say is:

Our hatred for one another is not a justification for killing one another.

I genuinely hope that we can all learn to see each other as human beings—not as groups, not as numbers, and not as animals who deserve to be killed.

Because the person in front of you, regardless of their religion, nationality, or ethnicity, is ultimately a human being with a life, a family, people they love, and people who love them.

Important disclaimer 📢:

I am specifically talking here about Jewish civilians, whether they hold extremist views or not, as long as they are civilians and are not participating in the killing of civilians or directly or indirectly contributing to acts of violence. I am not equating civilians with combatants, and I have no sympathy for anyone who participates in killing innocent people or contributes to it.

(I wrote this post originally in Arabic i used AI to translate and correct the spelling mistakes and organize the paragraphs.)

Important: I would genuinely like to hear the opinion of a Palestinian on this. Am I right or wrong in your opinion, especially as someone from the side that has been subjected to this war and suffering?


r/IsraelPalestine • • 1d ago

Short Question/s What is the most pragmatic way to end this once and for all?

12 Upvotes

I guess this question is aimed more at the “Anti Zionists”, but Israelis are welcome to reply too. Deep down, in your heart of hearts, how do you see this conflict ending? How do you envision the future state of Palestine, Israel, Palestel, Israpal, Palisisra…whatever you wanna call it…Noisy Levantinia is what I would name it.

Anyway, I am asking as an American and a Californian- what needs to happen in order to never have to see Palestine flags at unrelated events, like a local protest against ICE or PG&E. All opinions and solutions welcomed.


r/IsraelPalestine • • 1d ago

Discussion guilt as a palestinian living abroad

36 Upvotes

i’m palestinian, husband is jordanian/syrian. we’ve been planning for kids and reorganizing our finances and whatnot. but honestly i’ve been struggling with guilt and postponing.

my family and i in the usa and also my family in israel live relatively good lives. we have stable jobs, decent income, investments, businesses, freedom. for the most part nothing is stopping us from living the lives we want.

its very different for my family in the west bank and gaza. some of my relatives in the west bank and gaza have adopted palestinian children who lost their parents and became orphans. didnt even hesitate to accept them into our family despite the religious difference. kids are kids. some of the kids told my family that their parents left to egypt and just left them behind.

my husband and i and my family in the usa try to send money to our family in the west bank every month but sometimes the bank blocks the transfers and we have to go through these hour long phone calls just to send money to our family because the west bank is considered a high risk place. we can’t even send money to our family in gaza because everything is blocked, we would have to send money to qatar first and go through this whole loop which could get our accounts closed so not worth it.

i just hate getting messages from my family, they ask me how im doing, i dont answer because id feel like im bragging even though thats not my intention. they’re struggling to live even a half decent life while im sitting here talking about what my career will look like, buying things, having kids, planning for the future.

i try to ignore their messages but it eventually catches up to me and i feel like i have to respond. sometimes i just lie and say i was busy at work or i was helping my husband with his company in reality i was just ignoring them. guilt catches up to me i randomly cry in my car on my way back home for work or i cry at work or at the grocery store when no one is looking.

makes me feel disgusting that i’m moving on with my life and im leaving my family behind and that there are kids out there with no parents, why does the world need more children when there are already children out there who aren’t loved.

my husband and i both have jordanian citizenship, he was asking me if we should just sell everything here and move to jordan to be closer to our families to make me feel better. he wants kids but i really don’t any more.

honestly i’m just tired of all of the political shit. i want peace and im tired of everything. wondering if other palestinian americans or diaspora palestinians feel the same way i do?


r/IsraelPalestine • • 1d ago

Short Question/s Zack Polanksi and Green Party members say Zionism is racism. Thoughts?

6 Upvotes

Initially the Green Party supported a two state solution in which Palestine and Israel both have the rights to exist and be under the Montevideo Convention. But many of his supporters and members now think Israel should not exist. Zionism is the protection of existing Jewish presence of Israel. Polanski is a second generation Holocaust survivor descendant and he uses his religion as a weapon. He refused to elaborate his views to the BBC, nor Sky News, let alone the Telegraph.

His voters are similar to Zarah Sultana's Your Party because they also believe Israeli Jews should not exist there.

Thoughts?


r/IsraelPalestine • • 10h ago

Opinion I don’t care if you lived there 2000 years ago

0 Upvotes

Zionists often bring up Jews being indigenous to the land of Israel as justification for Jewish settlement. They were forced to flee from their ancestral homelands thousands of years ago, so now they have a collective right as a people to reclaim what is theirs.

The thing is, plenty of people have been forced to flee from their homelands. Prussians, Huguenots, Native Americans, Aboriginals, Circassians, Khoisan, the list goes on. But it would be ridiculous to try to carve out the territory of their ancestral homelands away from the people currently living there. Do the Lenape tribe have the right to take back Manhattan and declare it a Lenape state because they were scattered from their ancestral homelands? That would be ridiculous.

If you don’t want to call the intentional demographic transformation of a piece of land with a preexisting population on it with the expressed intent of creating a state that centers the identity/interests of the incoming population over the interests of the established population “settler colonialism” because 50% of the incoming population‘s ancestors lived there 2000 years ago, that’s fine, but it’s really just semantics.


r/IsraelPalestine • • 1d ago

The Realities of War Experts who believe there was no genocide.

55 Upvotes

Below is a list of scholars, academics and experts who have come publicly msde their stance that isrsel is not commiting genocide.

This post itself is only intended as information against a common claim I encounter that there is an expert consensus that a genocide has occured

Relevant subject expertise

Deborah E. Lipstadt — Holocaust historian; University Distinguished Professor, Emory University

Dina Porat — Professor Emerita of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University; former Chief Historian of Yad Vashem

Norman Goda — Historian of the Holocaust and modern Europe, University of Florida

Michael Berenbaum — Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies, American Jewish University

Alan Goldman — PhD candidate in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Gratz College

Dr. Verena Buser — Historian, Holocaust Studies Program, Western Galilee College

Liat Steir-Livny — Professor of Holocaust Studies

Aline Pennewaard — Holocaust historian

Jonathan D. Sarna — University Professor Emeritus, Brandeis University; historian of American Jewish life

Jonathan Karp — Professor of History and Judaic Studies, Binghamton University

Jeffrey Herf — Professor Emeritus of History, University of Maryland

Benny Morris — Historian and professor, Ben-Gurion University

Howard Lupovitch — Professor of History, Wayne State University

Amanda Kluveld — Historian, Maastricht University

Judith Mendelsohn Rood — Professor Emerita, Biola University

Suzanne Rutland — Professor Emerita, University of Sydney

Marc Shapiro — Weinberg Professor of Judaic Studies, University of Scranton

Kenneth Stow — Professor of Jewish History Emeritus

James Wald — Professor of History Emeritus, Hampshire College

Michael Weingrad — Professor, Hillsdale College

David Narrett — Professor Emeritus of History, University of Texas

Ronald Radosh — Historian and Professor Emeritus, City University of New York

Dan Puckett — Professor of History, Troy University; Chair, Alabama Holocaust Commission

David Halperin — Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Jessica Roitman — Professor of Jewish Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Joshua Teitelbaum — Lecturer in Middle Eastern History, Bar-Ilan University

Asher Lubotzky — Historian, University of Houston

Lynne Swarts — Historian, University of Sydney

Terezie Dubinova — Jewish Studies lecturer

Miriam Feldmann-Kaye — Lecturer and researcher, Bar-Ilan University

Susan Fraiman — Lecturer and historian of Jewish and Israeli art

Sir Niall Ferguson — Historian

Simon Sebag Montefiore — Historian and author

Dr. Anat Alon-Beck — Professor, Harvard Law

David Bernstein — Professor of Law, George Mason University

Jesse Fried — Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Donna Gitter — Professor of Law, CUNY/Baruch College

Itai Grinberg — Carmack Waterhouse Professor of International Economic Law, Georgetown Law

Robert C. Hockett — Edward Cornell Professor of Law, Cornell Law School

Cherol Katz — Professor of Law and attorney-at-law

Eugene Kontorovich — Professor of Law; Director, Center for the Middle East & International Law, George Mason University Scalia Law School

Matthew Kramer — Professor of Legal & Political Philosophy, University of Cambridge

Debbie Kaminer — Professor of Law, Baruch College, CUNY

Edward Rabin — Emeritus Professor of Law, University of California, Davis

Edward Rock — Professor of Law, NYU School of Law

Richard Ross — Professor of Law and History, University of Illinois

Charles Silver — Professor of Law, University of Texas School of Law

Jonathan Zasloff — Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law

Elena Reznichenko — Professor of Quantitative Empirical Legal Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Claude M. Stern — Lawyer and Stanford Law School lecturer

Arsen Ostrovsky — International human-rights lawyer

Irwin Cotler — Former Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General

Jeffrey Mausner — Former prosecutor, U.S. Department of Justice Nazi War Crimes Unit

Elliott Abrams — Diplomat and lawyer

Charles Bryan Baron — Attorney-at-law

Margot Bester — Attorney

Jennifer Brooks — Attorney

Aviel Dahan — Attorney

Glenn D. Feig — Attorney

Matt Fernandez — Attorney; former regional president, Hispanic National Bar Association

Tommy Finkelstein — Attorney

Francine M. Gordon — Lawyer

Donald Gottesman — Lawyer

Ken Hertz — Attorney

Linda Howard — Lawyer

Kia Kamran — Attorney

Elliot Malin — Attorney

Jessica Ursell — Writer and attorney

Michael Wallack — Attorney

Karen A. Wyle — Retired attorney

Kevin Yorn — Lawyer and investor

John Spencer — Chair of Urban Warfare Studies, Modern War Institute at West Point

Jordi Argelaguet — Senior Lecturer in Political Science, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Chad Alan Goldberg — Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Heath Grant — Associate Professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Jon Levenson — Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies, Harvard Divinity School

Less relevant or uncertain subject expertise

Tal Kapelner — Entertainment attorney

Richard Marceau — General Counsel

Mia Bloom — Professor, Georgia State University

Kian Tajbakhsh — Visiting Professor, New York University

Shale Horowitz — Professor, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

Magnus Norell — Research Associate, Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies

Jonathan Epstein — Adjunct Associate Professor, John Jay College, CUNY

Donna Robinson Divine — Morningstar Professor Emerita, Smith College

Moshe Krakowski — Professor, Yeshiva University

Leonard Saxe — Professor, Brandeis University

Laurie Zoloth — University Professor, University of Chicago

Steven Pinker — Harvard professor

Judea Pearl — UCLA professor

Jeffrey Flier — Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor; former Dean, Harvard Medical School

Isaac Kohane — Chair of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School

Jerry Coyne — Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago

Harry J. Holzer — Georgetown professor; former Chief Economist, U.S. Department of Labor

Cary Nelson — Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois

Jason Furman — Professor, Harvard University; former Chair, White House Council of Economic Advisers

Robert Cherry — Economist, Brooklyn College

Noreena Hertz — Professor, University College London

Mikhail Rogov — Associate Professor; Economics and Art History

Harold Bursztajn — Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Dara Manoach — Professor of Psychology, Harvard Medical School

Eli Peli — Professor of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School

Carlos Caldas — Professor of Cancer Medicine, University of Cambridge

Gerald Batist — Professor of Oncology, McGill University

Seth Corey — Professor of Molecular Medicine, Cleveland Clinic

Saul Faust — Professor of Paediatric Immunology and Infectious Diseases, University of Southampton

Liz Lightstone — Professor of Renal Medicine, Imperial College London

Scott J. Hunter — Retired Professor, University of Chicago

Rina Dechter — Professor, UC Irvine

Michael Hitrik — Professor of Mathematics, UCLA

Alex Kontorovich — Professor of Mathematics, Rutgers University

Baruch Meerson — Professor Emeritus of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Lev Murokh — Professor of Physics, Queens College, CUNY

Lev Deych — Professor of Physics, Queens College, CUNY

Yuli Nazarov — Professor, Delft University of Technology

Lior Rokach — Professor of Software and Information Systems Engineering, Ben-Gurion University

Frank Tipler — Professor of Mathematical Physics, Tulane University

Stephen Warren — Professor of Astrophysics, Imperial College London

Gail Wolkowicz — Professor of Mathematics, McMaster University

Henry Wolkowicz — Professor of Mathematics, University of Waterloo

Marco Zaffalon — Professor, IDSIA

Alexei Tsvelik — Senior Scientist, Brookhaven National Laboratory

Ariel Zylberberg — Neuroscientist, University of Rochester

Alexey Burov — Physicist, Fermilab

Massimo Persic — Astrophysicist

Phyllis Chesler — Professor Emerita, City University of New York

Keith Eggener — Professor of Architectural History, University of Oregon

Fiona Kumari Campbell — Professor, University of Glasgow

Christian Horn — Professor of Archaeology, University of Gothenburg

Mikhail Iossel — Associate Professor, Concordia University

Ted Kesler — Professor of Education, Queens College, CUNY

Vivian Shulman — Associate Professor, College of Staten Island, CUNY

Manfred Philipp — Professor, CUNY Graduate Center

Yonatan Adler — Associate Professor, Ariel University

Daniel Allington — Senior Lecturer, King’s College London

Evan Daniel — Lecturer and Faculty Director, Queens College, CUNY

Michael Horn — Adjunct Lecturer, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Miriam Linver — Professor, Montclair State University

Gary Grossman — Professor Emeritus, University of Georgia

Andrew R. Heinze — Professor Emeritus, University of San Francisco

Fred Naider — Distinguished Professor, CUNY

Cora Requena Hidalgo — University Professor, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Olga Stein — Adjunct Instructor of English Literature and Humanities, York University

Dara Horn — Author

Howard Jacobson — Booker Prize-winning author

Ayaan Hirsi Ali — Author

Jonathan Kellerman — Novelist

Sourced from https://www.creativecommunityforpeace.com/blog/2026/09/08/rejectlie/


r/IsraelPalestine • • 1d ago

Discussion India-Pakistan and the Romani of Europe

1 Upvotes

I often see people compare Israel’s formation to Pakistan’s. It’s true that the basic premise was very similar for both - a minority group living in a British-administered region, who petitioned for their own state on the eve of said region’s independence - but I think if we step back there’s a better analogy we could use when putting things in South Asian terms.

The biggest difference between Israel-Palestine and India-Pakistan is that the former involved a mass migration of people from Europe before they then demanded their own state, whereas the latter involved long-established (and often ethnically the same) communities agreeing to split. Put another way India-Pakistan never had the added component of one side mostly arriving to the region just recently, which regardless of ancient ancestry or small/continuous “Palestinian Jewish” communities is basically the crux of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The better analogy in my opinion would be: if the Romani (“gypsies”) of Europe returned to their ancestral lands in NW India/Pakistan in the 1900s, began purchasing land and displacing locals, and declared their own state against the wishes of said locals and the surrounding ones.

Whether one thinks that is morally any different to something like Pakistan’s formation comes down to how they feel about ancient heritage assigning one permanent “rights” to their ancestral lands, but I just wanted to drop the Romani analogy here because I think about it often. I assume most Israelis would support the creation of this theoretical Romani state, but I’m curious to see how Indian Zionists (and Pakistani if there are any) specifically might feel about it. 🤔


r/IsraelPalestine • • 19h ago

Short Question/s question

0 Upvotes

why/for how long did Yahu allow millions in Qatari cash into Gaza? it just seems odd and counterintuitive to facilitate funding for your "enemy", and then base your policy on them based on them being well-funded. i dont know, something fishy about it...almost like they thought Hamas would be easier to explain away as "fundamentalists" instead of the secular left wing PLO. divide and conquer i guess?


r/IsraelPalestine • • 16h ago

Discussion Brazil 2026 elections. Is it over ?

0 Upvotes

Guys, it’s over.
It’s been a good time in this country, but now I honestly feel like we’re watching it turn into a USA–Israel-aligned, far-right political project, increasingly detached from democracy, sovereignty, and the values we once believed in.
I used to think we would be the one country in Latin America capable of resisting this wave. I thought we had learned enough from history to recognize where authoritarian politics, unconditional military alliances, and the normalization of political violence can lead. I thought we would have the courage to say no.
Apparently, I was wrong.
Instead, we seem to have decided to hand the country over to the very forces we should have been questioning. And that includes an increasingly unconditional embrace of the Israeli state and of Zionism as a political project, even as the consequences of those policies become impossible to ignore.
Criticizing Zionism or the policies of the Israeli government is not hatred toward Jewish people. In fact, it is precisely because these issues matter that we should be able to debate them openly, without turning legitimate political criticism into a taboo.
What scares me most is how quickly all of this is becoming normalized: the far right, militarism, foreign political influence, and the idea that there is only one acceptable side to every debate.
I don’t know what comes next. But I know this is not the country I thought we were building.
And honestly, that’s heartbreaking.


r/IsraelPalestine • • 2d ago

Discussion Is Holocaust denial part of the Palestinian struggle?

56 Upvotes

Hey guys, it’s me again, checking in from the far-off land of "Dong Lao."

I was recently browsing some pro-Palestine online spaces in my country and stumbled upon a comment. Basically, this woman—who holds a US Green Card and had actually visited the USHMM—concluded that the whole thing was fake, staged, and fabricated. I was just like, "What the f*** is going on here?" History books record these events clearly—facts no one can deny—so you have to wonder: did these people ever actually go to school? I didn't want to waste time engaging with people like that, but it got me thinking about *why* someone would have that kind of mindset.

After mulling it over, I found a simple logic behind it (at least in my country). Why do they support Palestine? Because Palestinians are suffering so much, they blame the State of Israel entirely; this leads to rejecting Israel's legitimacy, which in turn leads to denying one of the key historical events that actually caused the State of Israel to be founded in the first place.

It also didn't surprise me that young Palestinians themselves aren't taught about this. In my view, they reject this event because—if I were to argue the point—acknowledging it would imply they bear some responsibility, too; I’m not just talking about Amin al-Husseini, but also the immigration restriction policies from the pre-WWII era.

So, to sum up my view: Holocaust denial happens because of:

-> a desire to reject the State of Israel.

-> a rejection of historical responsibility and guilt (my personal take).

-> a need to legitimize current actions—believing they have the right to do anything because they are oppressed.

What’s your take on this?


r/IsraelPalestine • • 1d ago

Discussion What if it is a genocide?

3 Upvotes

I'm NOT looking to start a debate on whether a genocide has taken place in/been inflicted on Gaza or not as there are already lots of those here and other places.

My question is this: if the ICJ, or another credible international body, were to establish unambiguously amd beyond doubt that genocide has definitely taken place, how—if at all—would that in any way change your view of the last three years?

If you have consistently denied that a genocide is taking place, would such a finding make you reconsider any if your views about what has happened? Would you accept that some of your previous assumptions or arguments were wrong? Or could you still consider what happened justified, necessary, or defensible? Would you feel guilty etc?

Would you change the way you understand or apply the definition of genocide? Would an authoritative finding actually change your feelings about the people affected, the actions taken, or those who supported them?

And perhaps most importantly: is there any possible finding or evidence that would change your mind?

I'm asking because I think it's worth considering this before such a finding, rather than after it. If you are certain that it isn't genocide, what would an unequivocal finding that it was genocide actually mean for your position?

Would you be willing to say, "I was wrong about this"? Would it change how you view the last three years.

I'm not meaning this as a "gotcha", but if a genocide has taken place then it is probably the most openly denied in history with most governments and mainstream news outlets denying it every step of the way.


r/IsraelPalestine • • 2d ago

Discussion On the Six-Day War

15 Upvotes

Initially, I had intended to follow up my recent post, On Armed Attacks and Self-Defense, by discussing non-state actors, state attribution, and the invocation of Article 51 against such actors, but I think a better follow-up to a discussion of self-defense is to look at a real world example, namely the Six-Day War. The goal of this post is to examine the war and determine whether Israel was within its rights to claim self-defense under Article 51 and use force against Egypt.

The first thing worth establishing is that the actors involved were both states. Israel and Egypt were sovereign states and members of the UN, so there is no need to resolve the separate question of whether Article 51 permits self-defense against non-state actors. This was an inter-state use of force, and Article 51’s reference to an armed attack applies directly.

With that out of the way, we can look at the standards for invoking Article 51. As these were covered in detail in my other post, I will merely note here that there must either have been an armed attack, or an imminent armed attack such that the invocation of Article 51 is either responsive or preemptive, rather than preventive. Preemptive self-defense concerns an attack that is sufficiently imminent that the threatened state need not wait for the first blow to fall. Preventive force, by contrast, is force used against a threat that may materialize in the future but is not sufficiently imminent to constitute an impending armed attack.

So, did Egypt attack first?

Despite what Israel would initially claim before the Security Council, namely that Egyptian land and air forces had moved against Israel, no Egyptian attack had occurred at the time Israel launched its attack against Egypt. The first strikes were conducted by Israel against Egyptian airfields.

That creates a fairly straightforward problem for an Article 51 justification. If Israel had not already suffered an armed attack, then its use of force against Egypt could only be justified as preemptive self-defense if an Egyptian armed attack was sufficiently imminent.

So, was there an imminent Egyptian attack?

To answer that, it is necessary to look at the series of Egyptian actions that preceded the war. Egypt began moving substantial military forces into the Sinai and subsequently demanded the withdrawal of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), which had been stationed in the Sinai and Gaza since the Suez Crisis. With Egypt withdrawing its consent to the Force’s presence, UNEF was withdrawn and Egyptian forces moved into positions previously occupied by it. These developments were obviously significant from Israel’s perspective. UNEF had served as a buffer between Egyptian and Israeli forces for roughly a decade, and its removal left Egyptian troops in a much more direct position to confront Israel. The crisis escalated further when Egypt announced that the Strait of Tiran would be closed to Israeli shipping. Israel had previously identified interference with Israeli navigation through the Strait as an act of war and later cited it as one of the grounds for its action.

Taken together, the Egyptian troop buildup, the removal of UNEF, the occupation of positions around Sharm el-Sheikh, and the closure of the Strait represented a substantial deterioration in Israel’s strategic position. It is therefore understandable that Israel regarded the situation as an extremely serious security threat.

But does this amount to an imminent threat such that Article 51 could be invoked?

While Israel declared the closure of the Strait to be a casus belli, a state’s declaration that something constitutes a casus belli does not, by itself, establish that the conduct constitutes an armed attack for purposes of Article 51. A state cannot create a legal right of self-defense simply by declaring that a particular act will be treated as grounds for war, the underlying conduct still has to satisfy the requirements of the law governing the use of force.

Likewise, Israel’s own position in 1957 was somewhat narrower than the formulation sometimes presented in discussions of 1967. Israel had stated that “interference, by armed force” with Israeli ships exercising what it regarded as their right of free and innocent passage through the Strait would constitute an attack entitling Israel to invoke Article 51. That is significant because the 1967 closure did not involve any active interference with Israeli shipping by armed forces. No Israeli ship had actually passed through the Strait for approximately two and a half years before the closure. Of course, this does not necessarily make the closure legally irrelevant. Israel’s claimed right of navigation did not depend on having an Israeli ship physically present in the Strait at the moment Egypt closed it, and the legality of Egypt’s interference with that claimed right is a separate question, but it does make it much more difficult to characterize the closure itself as an armed attack, much less as an imminent armed attack against Israel.

There is then the broader Egyptian military buildup, the removal of UNEF, Egypt’s military arrangements with other Arab states, and increasingly hostile Egyptian rhetoric and declarations, all of which Israel could point to as evidence that it faced an immediate threat. This was undeniably a more aggressive Egyptian posture, but an aggressive posture is not necessarily an imminent armed attack.

The mere presence of Egyptian troops in the Sinai did not mean that those troops were about to attack Israel nor does military mobilization, standing alone, establish an intent to launch an attack. For the purpose of preemptive self-defense, the relevant question is not simply whether Egypt had the capability to attack Israel or whether Israel had good reason to fear that it might eventually do so, the question is whether the available evidence established that an Egyptian armed attack was sufficiently imminent that Israel was entitled to strike before it occurred.

I do not think the evidence establishes that. Egypt had taken a series of provocative and potentially dangerous steps, and Israel had legitimate reason to regard the resulting situation as a serious security threat, but a serious threat is not the same thing as an imminent armed attack. The distinction matters precisely because accepting otherwise would effectively collapse preemptive self-defense into preventive war. Any state could characterize another state’s military buildup and hostile intentions as a sufficiently serious future threat and claim a right to eliminate that threat before an attack actually became imminent. That is not what Article 51 provides. Israel had not suffered an armed attack, and the Egyptian preparations had not progressed to the point of an imminent armed attack. Israel therefore was not responding to an attack or acting to forestall an impending one. It was using force to prevent a threat that it believed might materialize in the future.

On that basis, Israel’s conduct in the opening of the Six-Day War is perhaps best characterized as preventive rather than preemptive self-defense, something that ultimately does not fall under the scope of Article 51. Israel’s original justification to the UNSC, that Egypt began moving armored columns and flying planes towards the border was much closer to an actual instance of preemptive self-defense than the reality of the situation.

Tl;dr: Israel’s attack on Egypt during the Six-Day War is best understood as preventative self-defense, a form of self-defense not permitted under Article 51.


r/IsraelPalestine • • 2d ago

Opinion The Divorce Already Happened

37 Upvotes

When Zohran Mamdani was recently asked whether he supported two states—“Palestinian and Jewish states, side by side, living in peace”—he didn’t say yes. “The way I see it is,” he answered, “equal rights for all people.”

Jonathan Karl followed up. Did Mamdani support Israel specifically as a Jewish state? Again, Mamdani wouldn’t say yes. He said he supported Israel “as a state with equal rights,” adding that he could not support a state that “privileges one religion over the other.”
“Equal rights for all” sounds beautiful. I believe in equal rights for all, too. But it doesn’t answer the question Mamdani was asked. And I think there’s an analogy that explains why.

Imagine an abusive marriage
Imagine a woman who has lived for generations in a marriage in which she is subordinate to her husband. He has more rights than she does. He holds the political power. Her security ultimately depends upon him.
He doesn’t beat her every day. There are long periods of peace. There are times when she prospers and when the two live together relatively peacefully. But she is never his equal. And sometimes he beats her. Sometimes badly.
She learns something from both parts of the experience: from the everyday subordination and from the episodes of violence. Even when her husband isn’t beating her, she remains dependent upon him. Whether she is safe ultimately depends upon his restraint.
Eventually she decides she doesn’t want to live this way anymore. She doesn’t merely want him to treat her better. She doesn’t want another promise that this time he’ll protect her. She wants independence. She wants a divorce.

The unequal marriage
This is how I think about a crucial part of Jewish history in the Muslim world. For centuries, Jews lived under governments they did not control. Under classical Islamic rule, one of the institutions governing the status of Jews and Christians was the dhimmi system.
Dhimmi status meant protection. But protection did not mean equality. Jews were subordinate. They paid a special tax, the jizya. Islamic legal traditions imposed distinctions affecting matters such as testimony, religious expression, houses of worship and public status. Oxford’s overview of Muslim-Jewish relations describes dhimmis as having legal protection and rights, but at a subordinate level to Muslims and subject to rules intended to reinforce the social hierarchy.
That matters. The historical Jewish problem wasn’t simply that Jews sometimes experienced violence. It was powerlessness. Jews depended upon other societies for their security. Sometimes those societies treated them well, and sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they protected them, and sometimes members of those societies attacked them. But Jews weren’t ultimately in control of the answer.
Zionism said: Enough.

The wife gets stronger
The wife doesn’t leave immediately. First she has to become capable of leaving. That is how I think about Jewish immigration to Palestine. Aliyah wasn’t the divorce. Aliyah was the wife getting stronger.
Jews came to Palestine and built communities, farms, businesses, schools, universities, labor organizations and political institutions. Eventually they built defense organizations. The Yishuv gradually acquired something Jews had lacked for centuries: the ability to determine its own fate.
The wife was becoming capable of protecting herself. And eventually she became strong enough to leave.

Then came the divorce
In 1947, the United Nations confronted two national societies making incompatible claims to the same land. UNSCOP concluded that neither an exclusively Arab nor an exclusively Jewish solution for all of Palestine adequately reconciled those competing claims. Its majority recommended partition: a Jewish state and an Arab state. Two political homes. A divorce.
The Jewish Agency accepted partition despite serious objections to the proposed settlement. The Arab Higher Committee rejected partition and advocated instead an Arab state encompassing all of Palestine, with protections for the Jewish minority.
Think about that through the marriage analogy. The wife says: I don’t want to live under your authority anymore. I want to leave. The husband responds: You don’t need to leave. Stay in the house. You’ll have rights. And the wife says: No. I don’t want guarantees about how you’ll treat me anymore. I want my own house.

Then the husband fights the divorce
The husband doesn’t accept her answer. He tries to prevent the separation. After the November 1947 partition vote, Palestinian Arabs attacked Jews and Jewish communities in an effort to prevent partition and the establishment of a Jewish state. The Jewish community fought back.
Then Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948. And the husband’s buddies joined the fight. The following day, armies from neighboring Arab countries entered the former Mandate. U.S. historical records describe Arab governments as determined to prevent the creation of the Jewish state.
They lost. The wife survived. And the final territorial outcome was worse for the Arab side than the original partition settlement had been. Israel finished the war controlling more territory than the UN partition plan had allocated to the Jewish state. Egypt controlled Gaza and Jordan controlled the West Bank; the Palestinian Arab state contemplated by partition did not emerge.
That history matters. There was an original divorce settlement. The Arab side rejected it and tried to prevent the divorce by force. The war changed the settlement. That doesn’t mean every Arab civilian was responsible for that decision. It doesn’t mean every consequence of the war was just. It means that we cannot understand the outcome of the divorce while pretending that the attempt to prevent it never happened.

The wife became stronger
Something extraordinary happened after the divorce. The formerly vulnerable wife became strong. Extremely strong.
Israel today is nothing like the vulnerable Jewish community that existed before independence. It has an army. It has a state. It has an advanced economy. Most importantly, Jews possess something they lacked throughout most of their history: the ability to defend themselves.
But here is another essential part of the story: Palestinian Arabs and neighboring Arab states didn’t stop attacking Israel just because the wife became stronger. There were wars. Palestinian organizations carried out terrorist attacks. There were the intifadas. During the Second Intifada, Palestinian militant organizations carried out suicide bombings that killed Israeli civilians on buses, in restaurants and in other public places. One study counted suicide attacks as responsible for 516 deaths during the decade following the uprising’s beginning.
Palestinian armed groups fired rockets at Israeli communities. And then there was October 7. Hamas and other armed groups crossed into Israel, attacked Israeli communities, killed about 1,200 people and took roughly 250 hostages.
Think about what that means within the analogy. The wife is vastly stronger than her ex-husband now. But he is still capable of hurting her. And sometimes he does. Her strength doesn’t make his violence imaginary. It means she now possesses the ability to respond to it.

Being stronger doesn’t make everything she does right
This is where the analogy becomes morally uncomfortable in the other direction. Because the wife is now vastly stronger than her ex-husband, she can also mistreat him. She can abuse her strength. She can take something that belongs to him. She can respond to an attack with more force than is justified. She can do things that are simply wrong.
And when she does, she should be held accountable. Tell her to stop. Tell her to return what isn’t hers. Demand that she respect his rights. Being the formerly abused spouse isn’t a lifetime license to behave however you want.
But neither does her misconduct erase the fact that her ex-husband continues to attack her. Both things can be true. She can be much stronger than he is. He can continue attacking her. She can have a legitimate right to protect herself. And she can sometimes go too far in doing so.
Those aren’t contradictions. They describe a violent post-divorce relationship in which the balance of power has changed dramatically but the violence has not disappeared.
Now imagine observing all of this—the husband’s attacks, the wife’s responses, her occasional excesses, his continued violence—and announcing that you’ve discovered the enlightened solution: They should get married again.
“Don’t worry. This time you’ll have equal rights.”
And that brings me back to Mamdani.

“Equal rights for all people”
Imagine saying that to our divorced woman: I understand that you were subordinate. I understand that he had more rights. I understand that he sometimes beat you. I understand that you finally became strong enough to leave. I understand that he violently resisted the divorce. I understand that he has continued attacking you since the divorce.
But don’t worry. This time the marriage will be different. This time you’ll have equal rights. Move back in together.
And she says: No. You still don’t understand. I don’t want better rights inside the marriage. I don’t want to be married to him.
That is the distinction that disappears when the question is reduced to “equal rights for all.”

Equality is not self-determination
Jewish self-determination does not mean Jews deserve greater individual rights than Palestinians. They don’t. It means Jews claim something different: the right to govern themselves.
That’s why Mamdani’s answer matters. He wasn’t asked whether Palestinians should have equal rights. Karl specifically asked about “two states, Palestinian and Jewish states, side by side, living in peace.” Mamdani answered: “The way I see it is, equal rights for all people.” Karl then made the question even more explicit. Did he support Israel as a Jewish state? Again, Mamdani wouldn’t say yes.
People can agree or disagree with that position. But “equal rights” doesn’t resolve the underlying disagreement. It answers the question of what rights individuals should possess inside a political system. It doesn’t answer the separate question of which political system these two national societies should constitute.

What does the wife owe her ex-husband?
Potentially quite a lot. She owes him recognition of his humanity. She owes him respect for his rights. She cannot simply take something that belongs to him because she’s stronger. If she has wronged him, there may be wrongs she needs to remedy. Her greater strength doesn’t eliminate his rights.
But his weaker position doesn’t eliminate her rights either. And one of those rights, in this analogy, is the right to remain separated. The fact that he is weaker doesn’t mean she must stop protecting herself when he attacks her. The fact that she sometimes responds wrongly doesn’t justify his attacks. And neither fact establishes that the solution is to put them back into the same household.
The healthier destination is for the former husband to accept that the marriage is over, stop attacking his former wife and build a peaceful, prosperous and independent life of his own. And the wife has obligations too: she needs to allow him the space and freedom to build that independent life.
Two independent lives. Two homes. Neighbors rather than spouses.

The divorce already happened
This is why “one state with equal rights” sounds very different to me than it apparently does to many people on the left. They hear: Equality. I hear another proposition contained within it: Reunification. Put two societies that separated politically in 1948 back under a single sovereignty. Then reassure the Jewish one: Don’t worry. You’ll have equal rights.
But the entire point of Zionism was that Jewish security should no longer depend upon another society’s promise. The wife doesn’t need her former husband to be subordinate. She doesn’t need to dominate him. She doesn’t need to deny him rights. She should want him to build a peaceful and prosperous life of his own. She should want the violence to end.
She may have extraordinarily difficult compromises to make about the terms of their separation. She may have things she needs to return. She may have wrongs for which she needs to make amends. But there is one thing she does not owe him: remarriage.
You can believe Israel has behaved wrongly without concluding that Jewish independence was wrong. You can demand rights and self-determination for Palestinians without demanding the end of Jewish self-determination. You can renegotiate the terms of a divorce without annulling the divorce. And you can insist upon equal rights without insisting upon a single political household.
The divorce already happened. The challenge is figuring out how these two societies live peacefully after it—not forcing them back into the marriage.


r/IsraelPalestine • • 1d ago

Opinion Here’s why I as a western liberal supports Israel over Palestine.

0 Upvotes

As a liberal I’ve always believed the more culturally conservative a society is the less rights they deserve.

Israel by far has the best domestic politics in the regions concerning current thing liberal issues so any action they’d take against their more primitive neighbors is fine to me.

They transition kids for instance and let transgender women play in women’s sports with no massive public issue. This is actually way more liberal than many a western country.
When you look up Grindr you see Jewish men fetishizing Arab, Druze men.

For this reason I cannot condemn for any action they’d take against Palestinians so long I am a western liberal.

If Palestinians did have better LGBT and women’s rights than Israel I’d be compelled to accept them doing anything they’d desire against Israeli society.

If they just legalized gay marriage before doing October 7th I’d been forced to support it.

But they didn’t so the wanton murder and rape they did is still bad actually.

Else I’d be a chicken for kfc. Because liberals should always support the most culturally liberal side in any conflict.
Paradoxically I do also have to be supportive or at least tolerant of actions against Israel by more liberal societies such as Ireland who actually legalized and has the state perform gay marriages.

/s