Hamas attacks southern Israel

[Ludicus]

Smotrich, the Israeli minister who says that there is "no such thing" as a Palestinian people… Must Be Fired-Haaretz

… is warmongering in the West Bank. His order to stop all transfer of tax money that Israel collects for the Palestinian Authority – money that doesn’t belong to Israel and that Israel is obliged to transfer according to signed agreements, endangers the state.

[PointOfViewGun]

nhytgbvfeco2 said "they" (the israeli masters) might build an international port.

Is this the same port that Israel bombed the construction of in spite in the past?

Gaza seaport

The idea of constructing a seaport for Gaza was discussed in almost all agreements reached by Israel and the Palestinians as part of the peace process, the sides “recognizing the great importance of Gaza Port for Palestinian economic growth and for increased Palestinian trade.”133 In the Declaration of Principles, signed in September 1993, the parties agreed for the first time to establish a joint committee to “set the guidelines” for implementing the idea.134 After six years of foot-dragging, Israel agreed, in the Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum, signed in September 1999, to allow the Palestinian Authority to “begin construction work on the seaport.” According to the memorandum, “the two sides agree that the Gaza seaport would not be used at all before a joint protocol on the port is reached by the parties…”135 The parties have never signed such a protocol.136 In the summer of 2000, work began on constructing the infrastructure of the seaport on the coast of Gaza City. The costs were funded by the Donor States. However, in October, the Israeli Air Force bombed the building site in response to an incident in Ramallah where a Palestinian mob killed two Israel soldiers.137 Following this, the Donor States ceased funding the project. The work on the port stopped and has not recommenced.

[Muizer]

@povg, where do the Hamas attacks of 7th of October fit into your narrative?

[Ludicus]

@Muizer, Israel's right to self-defence is not absolute.The state of Israel must comply with international law and that includes international humanitarian law.Furthermore, when religious zealots and ultranationalists saythey want to wipe Gaza off the face of the earth, believe them.
The Palestinian people seek refuge in schools and hospitals, a choice any of us would make in similar circumstances.

[PointOfViewGun]

@povg, where do the Hamas attacks of 7th of October fit into your narrative?

It's not exactly my narrative. It's the narrative of the Israeli public that chant "Bibi the Murderer!" in their rallies. Hamas, from its creation, was the beast Israel needed against secular Fatah. I posted some information on that and how Israeli authorities supported it to rise against opposing factions earlier. It's much easier for Israel to argue for whatever it wants to do with a religious extremist enemy after all. Netanyahu's handling, of which you see in the below source, is the apex of that ideology. It would be a miracle for a group of people to stay peaceful after being subjected to what Gazans are subjected to anyways. Even there Hamas does not enjoy total or even majority support. Gazans simply have no choice or means to get rid of Hamas. Anyways. A lashing out like that of in October 7th was bound to happen. Its foolish to expect Hamas to transition into a tamer group living under a siege. We now know that Israeli authorities were not strangers to it either. It was an attack Israel needed and apparently waited to happen.

Then there is the idea that what happened that day simply doesn't make sense. Can we just brush it off with saying that Israel got too comfortable? The holiday alone explains it? Holiday or no holiday, Gazan border has been one of the most guarded border in the world looked after by one of the most well armed and trained army in the world. Yet, Hamas managed to infiltrated pretty much throughout the entire line of contact with a bit of exception in the small section of the northern border. Occom's razor. Israeli complacency bound to exist. I suspect we'll learn more of it as time passes.

How Netanyahu's Hamas policy came back to haunt him — and Israel

Israelis don't agree on much, especially lately, but polling shows they mostly agree that Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is to blame for leaving Israel unprepared for Hamas's onslaught on October 7. The accusations aimed at Netanyahu go beyond merely failing to foresee or prevent the Hamas attack of October 7, however. Many accuse him of deliberately empowering the group for decades as part of a strategy to sabotage a two-state solution based on the principle of land for peace.

Yuval Diskin, former head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, told the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in 2013 that "if we look at it over the years, one of the main people contributing to Hamas's strengthening has been Bibi Netanyahu, since his first term as prime minister." In August 2019, former prime minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio that Netanyahu's "strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking … even at the price of abandoning the citizens [of the south] … in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah." The logic underlying this strategy, Barak said, is that "it's easier with Hamas to explain to Israelis that there is no one to sit with and no one to talk to."

Netanyahu's hawkish defence minister Avigdor Liberman was the first to report in 2020 that Bibi had dispatched Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and the IDF's officer in charge of Gaza, Herzi Halevi, to Doha to "beg" the Qataris to continue to send money to Hamas. "Both Egypt and Qatar are angry with Hamas and planned to cut ties with them. Suddenly Netanyahu appears as the defender of Hamas," the right-wing leader complained. A year later, Netanyahu was further embarrassed when photos of suitcases full of cash going to Hamas became public. Liberman finally resigned in protest over Netanyahu's Hamas policy which, he said, marked "the first time Israel is funding terrorism against itself."

[Lord Thesaurian]

Israel's right to self-defence is not absolute.The state of Israel must comply with international law and that includes international humanitarian law.

That’s strange. I distinctly recall even unprovoked invasions being a legitimate recourse if there are antisemites among the defenders and the people backing said defenders are hypocrites. Hamas is awfully antisemitic and funded by other morally suspect Islamist governments that do stuff like literally trade slaves. What changed?

Furthermore, when religious zealots and ultranationalists saythey want to wipe Gaza off the face of the earth, believe them.

Are we supposed to believe the majority of Palestinians when they say they want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth?

[Ludicus]

How strange is to say that the state of Israel must comply with international law and that includes international humanitarian law?
-----
The Republican Party criticizes Obama in the same way that Israel criticizes Guterres for saying that Hamas attacks "did not happen in a vacuum".
Thoughts on Israel and Gaza- Obama

…how Israel prosecutes this fight against Hamas matters.

In particular, it matters… that Israel’s military strategy abides by international law, including those laws that seek to avoid, to every extent possible, the death or suffering of civilian populations…

...It means guarding against dehumanizing language towards the people of Gaza or downplaying Palestinian suffering — whether in Gaza or the West Bank — as irrelevant or illegitimate.

…It means acknowledging that Palestinians have also lived in disputed territories for generations; that many of them were not only displaced when Israel was formed but continue to be forcibly displaced by a settler movement that too often has received tacit or explicit support from the Israeli government.

…it is possible for people of good will to champion Palestinian rights and oppose certain Israeli government policies in the West Bank and Gaza without being antisemitic.

[Hobbes]

Huh? Care to elaborate?

Hadash is not an "Arab party" (whatever that means). Saying that anyone disagreeing with the methods used by Israel is an Arab is dangerous because it casts Israeli dissenters as race traitors.

[Lord Thesaurian]

How strange is to say that the state of Israel must comply with international law and that includes international humanitarian law?

It’s very strange this obligation apparently only applies to the US and its allies.

Hadash is not an "Arab party" (whatever that means). Saying that anyone disagreeing with the methods used by Israel is an Arab is dangerous because it casts Israeli dissenters as race traitors.

It’s an Arab nationalist party larping as communists. One way to avoid being called an Arab party in Israel is to not have the vast majority of membership be Arab, and the party platform should probably include something besides Arab nationalism filtered through Marxist language. But concern for the few thousand Jews who also vote for them is definitely real and not at all a rhetorical tactic.

[Muizer]

It would be a miracle for a group of people to stay peaceful after being subjected to what Gazans are subjected to anyways.

I can accept that individuals lash out in anger when pushed too far, but not governments. Not without drawing the conclusion they are fundamentally evil or downright crazy.

Gazans simply have no choice or means to get rid of Hamas.

Of course they have. Every population has that choice and means. It's just the price can be high. But evidently, as we can see, so is the price of not getting rid of Hamas.

[Hobbes]

It’s an Arab nationalist party larping as communists. One way to avoid being called an Arab party in Israel is to not have the vast majority of membership be Arab, and the party platform should probably include something besides Arab nationalism filtered through Marxist language.

lmao you just pulled this out your rear, didn't you?

[Lord Thesaurian]

lmao you just pulled this out your rear, didn't you?

Well my school teachers might agree Wiki is the same thing, but you’ll have to take my word as assurance Wiki fits many more things inside of it. How would you describe a political party comprised mostly of Arabs whose political platform can be summarized as demanding Arabs be recognized as a sovereign ethnic and national minority (ps capitalism is bad)?

[Hobbes]

my school teachers

Oh I see. Well here's a tip: You can read on the history of Hadash and how it was founded and by whom. Don't trust Wikipedia blindly, but do make use of the footnotes; if there are enough citations you can probably trust that any given article is legit. In this particular case you can also see what kinds of action Hadash or any other party are involved in and compare that to their rhetoric. I think this is a good way to get a clear picture about things that interest you. You can also go to your school's library because actual books is still valuable, damn it!

[Lord Thesaurian]

Oh I see. Well here's a tip: You can read on the history of Hadash and how it was founded and by whom. Don't trust Wikipedia blindly, but do make use of the footnotes; if there are enough citations you can probably trust that any given article is legit.

Ok. Is this legit? Too many footnotes

Hadash defines itself as a non-Zionist party, originally in keeping with Marxist opposition to nationalism. It calls for recognition of Palestinian Arabs as a national minority within Israel.[4] Hadash has in recent times included elements of Arab nationalism in its platform.[18]
Hadash shifted to a more Arab nationalist appeal after running on a joint list with Ta'al in 2003.[19]

[Ludicus]

It's worth remembering that the PLO officially renounced terrorism in 1993; in 2005, the IRA announced that it had ended its terrorist campaign. All liberation movements are rightly deemed as terrorists at certain stages of their resistance struggle. In the desirable - but highly unlikely scenario, in my opinion- of Israel accepting the existence of an independent Palestinian state with the 1967 borders and also allowing the return of expelled Palestinians, it would render religious fundamentalist movements in Israel irrelevant to the country's foreign policy. The same would apply to Hamas, which would have to renounce the terrorism it practices, because of which the US, Europe and the rest of the world have now reawakened to the two-state solution,previously almost buried by the Abraham Accords.

[nhytgbvfeco2]

Hadash is not an "Arab party" (whatever that means).

Umm.. it is. All but one of its members of knesset are Arabs, they're in a joint list with an Arab nationalist party, and headed the Joint List until recently, which included
said Arab nationalist party, an Arab Islamist party, and a pan-Arabist Arab party. 90%+ of their voters are Arabs (if not higher). They represent the interests of Israeli Arabs, and a tiny extreme fringe of Jewish far-left voters. I've never met one of those personally.
Israeli politics are quite sectarian. You've got the two ultra-Orthodox parties, the party of the immigrants, 2 or sometimes 3 parties for Religious Zionists, and the 4 Arab parties, which sometimes run together and sometimes separately.
Calling them Arab parties does not carry any negative connotation, no more than calling the Ultra-Orthodox parties as such. I don't know why you immediately assumed this is saying something negative about them, do you think the term Arab is negative? I don't.

Saying that anyone disagreeing with the methods used by Israel is an Arab is dangerous because it casts Israeli dissenters as race traitors.

Them being an Arab party is not at all related to this, they have been an Arab party for a very long time. These terms aren't absolute. Not all who vote for the ultra-orthodox parties are ultra-orthodox (I know several who do and aren't). It does not make one a race traitor to vote for an Arab party, I even considered voting for one at one point.

As for opposition to the current war, it is the extreme fringe. There is near universal support for the continuation of the war among Jewish Israelis.

The same would apply to Hamas, which would have to renounce the terrorism it practices, because of which the US, Europe and the rest of the world have now reawakened to the two-state solution,previously almost buried by the Abraham Accords.

Ludicus, this reads like an endorsment and praise of Hamas's actions.

[AqD]

@Muizer, Israel's right to self-defence is not absolute.The state of Israel must comply with international law and that includes international humanitarian law.Furthermore, when religious zealots and ultranationalists saythey want to wipe Gaza off the face of the earth, believe them.

Do you want to your country to participate if Israel just flattens Gaza? Or Hamas blows up entire Israel?

In fact, if we didn't stand in their way, the war could have been over long ago, with one side utterly conquered or wiped, doesn't matter which side. Peace always comes after that and we can just forget it as a bad memory.


We have tens of thousands of years of human history showing how to resolve such conflicts. Yet here we are, following some made-up text we call international law and believing humans would act against their nature and their rationale to be better, when in fact almost none of our ancestors was like that and none of our nations was built that way.


Let them finish the fight for real this time.

[Infidel144]

Pro-decolonization activist attempts to decolonize Indianapolis Jewish... colonizer school with her car:

"INDIANAPOLIS — IMPD officers arrested a woman, who they labeled a “terrorist,” after she drove her car into a building that she thought was a Jewish school."

"Almaghtheh told officers she was watching news coverage of the Israel-Hamas war on television and decided to plan an attack on the building because she was offended by the “Hebrew Israelite” symbol on the front of the building."
https://fox59.com/news/indy-police-a...by-hate-group/

[She did not realize that it was a Black Hebrew Israelite school and the BHI hate Jews as much as she does. As an aside, some of the videos where the BHI and the pro-decolonization protesters clash despite both hating Jews are interesting]

=====
New York Public Defender filmed decolonizing posters of children decolonized in the zionist entity... Israel:

"NY County Public Defender Caught Removing Posters of Israeli Children Kidnapped By Hamas"
"New York County Public Defender Victoria Ruiz is facing backlash for her actions involving the removal of posters featuring Israeli children kidnapped by Hamas terrorists decolonizers.

Videos capturing her poster removal have gained widespread attention on X, leading to a surge of outrage from the online community. Calls for her immediate resignation have been growing in response to this incident.

In the viral footage, Ruiz can be observed walking away from the individual recording the video while being repeatedly questioned about her actions. The person behind the camera asked, “Why are you taking down pictures of innocent children?” Despite the inquiries, Ruiz remained silent, leaving the person recording the video frustrated as they commented, “Why are you taking down pictures of babies?”"
https://matzav.com/outrage-ny-county...pped-by-hamas/


47:4 Therefore when you meet those who are kafir strike their necks. Then when you have decimated them,
tie their bonds tightly and set them free or ransom them, until the war is finally over. That is how it is to be.
If Allah willed, He could avenge Himself on them. But it is so that He can test some of you by means of others.
As for those who fight in the Way of Allah, He will not let their actions go astray.

[Lord Thesaurian]

[She did not realize that it was a Black Hebrew Israelite school and the BHI hate Jews as much as she does. As an aside, some of the videos where the BHI and the pro-decolonization protesters clash despite both hating Jews are interesting]

Here’s a photo taken at the scene of the incident:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Ludicus]

Originally Posted by Ludicus
The same would apply to Hamas, which would have to renounce the terrorism it practices, because of which the US, Europe and the rest of the world have now reawakened to the two-state solution,previously almost buried by the Abraham Accords

Ludicus, this reads like an endorsment and praise of Hamas's actions.

Of course not. I'm just stating a fact, which is undeniable.
----
Let me tell you that to combat the rise in prejudice and hatred against the Jewish people - which does exist - the way forward is not to support the criminal acts of the Israeli government by accusing those who criticize them of being anti-Semitic. On the contrary, we must always bear in mind that Israel acts as a representative of Zionism and not of Judaism.
The collective punishment of the civilian population, condemned as a war crime under international law, is an essential and frequent practice of the Zionist colonial enterprise. You know, days after Israel's territorial expansion in 1967, the Hebrew philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz categorically stated that Israel should withdraw from the territories because the souls of nations that exercise colonial power gradually rot. Colonization can only be justified by reinforcing a supremacist ideology and, consequently,by dehumanizing the colonized people:

Revisiting Yeshayahu Leibowitz: JSTOR

“Israel has aright to defend itself.” It is a refrain frequently invoked to justify Israeli responses to attacks launched against its citizens by Palestinian militants.Yet not every Israeli has accepted that truism. Indeed, if there is a single individual who best represents the challenge to such thinking it is the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz.


A fierce embodiment of the Socratic gadfly, Leibowitz (1903-1994) was unafraid to use strong language to criticize Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian people andterritories, which commenced in 1967.
“The corruption characteristic of every colonial regime would also prevail in the State of Israel,” he said in his typically provocative style. For Leibowitz, the occupation meant that Israel forfeited its right to retaliate in self-defense,and he was ever vocal about this position. For his opinions, he was called “the conscience of Israel” by no less an eminence than Sir Isaiah Berlin. Revisiting Leibowitz’s views now—more than five decades after he first articulated them—provides observers with a unique, and often overlooked, perspective in contemporary discourse on the conflict.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz was born in Riga, Latvia in 1903 into a family of religious Jews. They were Zionists, adherents of the pan-national movement founded in Europe whose goal was to establish a sovereign state for the Jewish people in their historical homeland, namely, the land of Israel. A brilliant pupil, Leibowitz studied chemistry and philosophy at the University of Berlin, and then medicine in Koln and Heidelberg, before moving to Basel to finish his medical degree while the Nazis rose to power in Germany. In 1934, he immigrated to Palestine and took an appointment as a professor of biochemistry, and later neurophysiology, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he taught for nearly six decades. In addition to publishing numerous books and articles on everything from the history of science to the philosophy of Maimonides, he was the editor of the Encyclopedia Hebraica, and a frequent public speaker on Jewish thought, ethics,and philosophy.

His outspokenness, eloquence, and polymathy helped establish him as Israel’s premier public intellectual.
Like his relatives,Leibowitz was a committed lifelong Zionist, yet he grew disillusioned by the use of Judaism as a political tool and as a justification for Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories. As an antidote, he developed his own secular brand of Zionism, which was simply “the endeavor to liberate Jews from being ruled by the Gentiles,” as he wrote in his 1992 book Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State.


Leibowitz’s positions were shaped by his understanding of Judaism as a religion of praxis, i.e., a normative system of mitzvot, biblical commandments in the Torah observed by practicing Jews, not as a political ideology or a national identity. Contrary to recent interpretations of Zionism inflected with religious and messianic flavors, Leibowitz challenged the notion that the Jewish people have a divine right to the land of Israel. He moreover warned of the dangers of idolizing sovereignty and military power. Divinely sanctioned land claims were, for Leibowitz, tantamount to a form of tyranny, or as he called it,“Judeo-fascism.”


Unfazed by any backlash, Leibowitz condemned the invocation of messianism and the sanctification of military power. These, he said, amounted to “a modern incarnation of false prophecy” and “a prostitution of the Jewish religion.” The occupation led to the erroneous belief that military force can be useful for solving political problems, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
After 1967, when Israel captured the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the so-called “Six Day War,” after fighting Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, Leibowitz warned about the heavy moral price Israel would pay for using sacred terminology to describe its victory. Ascribing religious significance to the state and hiding its aggression behind a facade of religious piety constitutes a form of idolatry, he argued, that leads to moral atrocities committed in the name of the state. On the massacre in the village of Qibya in 1953, Leibowitz wrote (my translation from Hebrew):

We must ask ourselves: where do these young people come from, who have no moral qualms about carrying out such atrocities, and who have the urge to carry out such acts of vengeance? These young people are not the rabble. Rather, they grew upon and were educated in the values of Zionism. They are the product of applying the religious language of the scared to social and national affairs. This practice is common in our education system and in our public advocacy.


In Leibowitz’s schema, there can be no religious claim to the land of Israel, because any such a claim is based on a confusion “between the Jewish people as the bearer of Judaism and the sovereign state instituted by these people as its instrument.”


Though Leibowitz recognized the value of Israel being a sovereign state with supreme authority within its territory, he also warned of the danger that would come fromelevating Israel’s sovereignty above all else. “Sovereignty is a lofty and precious value for Israel,” he said, “for it means that the Jewish people will not be subject to other nations. But elevating the power contained within statehood to a supreme value is a very major source of harm.”
From the perspective of the government of Israel, the 1967 War was a spectacular victory. Israel defeated the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in less than a week. It also captured the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the GazaStrip. Leibowitz did not celebrate the win. Instead, he articulated his prediction that Israel would now become the rodef (persecutor) rather than then irdaf (persecuted) as the Jewish people were in the golah (diaspora) before the 1948 establishment of the state.
“What happened in June 1967 transformed Israel,” he said in an interview in 1985, “into an instrument for the violent domination of another people.” That victory mean that Israel was now engaged in a war of conquest, rather than defense as evidenced by continuous settlement expansion.

It is important to emphasize how radical Leibowitz’s ideas were at the time—almost heretical.After all, European Jews were themselves victims of persecution and genocide only decades before. Leibowitz forced his fellow citizens—many of them concentration camp survivors and refugees—to question whether the trauma of the Holocaust justified occupation of the Palestinian people.
Leibowitz advocated for what is known as a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, premised on the idea that just as the Jews cannot deny the existenceof the Palestinians, the Palestinian people cannot deny the existence of the Jewish people.
Furthermore, he warned of the negative consequences for both sides of the conflict. The occupation, Leibowitz predicted, would corrode Israel’s social fabric. It will“bring about a catastrophe for the Jewish people as a whole; it will undermine the social structure that we have created in the state and cause the corruption of individuals, both Jew and Arab.”
The occupation would also hasten the destruction of democracy in Israel, where Jews enjoy rights and liberties, such as freedom of expression and movement, while in the occupied territories, Palestinians are denied those same freedoms. There can be no true democracy when people are deprived of their civil and political rights,Leibowitz argued. For that reason, he supported conscientious objectors and called on Israeli soldiers to refuse to serve in the occupied territories.


Leibowitz also advocated for what is known as a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is premised on the idea that just as the Jews cannot deny the existence of the Palestinians, the Palestinian people cannot deny the existence of the Jewish people. Both have a right to exist.

In his book, Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State (1992), Leibowitz wrote, “Only one way out of this historically created impasse is feasible in the present situation, even if neither side recognizes it as just nor finds it really acceptable: partition of the country between the two peoples,” recognizing that a two-state solution requires an unconditional withdrawal from occupied lands.

After the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, Israel, under the leadership of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, came close to implementing a two-state solution with the backing of the Clinton Administration. But extremists on both sides sabotaged the effort.

These days, a two-state solution seems like a distant, fading memory. In 2005, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resigned in protest at the Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip. Since then, right-wing governments—including the current one headed yet again by Netanyahu—have focused more on managing the conflict than on finding a long-term resolution to it through peace negotiations.