Middle Eastern Conflagration, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Iran

[Jman220]

Also worth noting that quote was not Voltaire, it was neo-nazi and convicted pedophile Kevin Storm.

[Surf]

Are these people posting people I should have heard of or care what they think? Or just random nobody getting talked about for having a spicy take?

[Jman220]

She’s the head of a US based Palestinian advocacy group.

[CaffeineNeeded]

Pure anti Zionism here no antisemitism

[goofy]

Israel maybe killed a Palestinian-American kid in the West Bank

New Orleans teen reportedly killed by Israeli military

[MrWookie]

Could also go under the poor media outlet choices thread for the failure to highlight that the West Bank isn’t even the same place where Hamas struck from and holds hostages.

[goofy]

Protesters allegedly sprayed with hazardous chemical at pro-Palestinian...

What’s particularly interesting about this is how much the Ivy League-obsessed media elites absolutely do not care about any higher ed stories that don’t fit in with the narratives they already want to tell. Columbia student protesters being assaulted should be a big story! Buried near the end is a tidbit about the university threatening these students (the ones who got assaulted) with suspension for having the “unsanctioned” protest at all!

[goofy]

You Don't Understand How Bad It Is Here

In the middle of this nightmare in Gaza, I traveled to the West Bank to bear witness to Palestinian life under the occupation (I am a Jewish American guy who lives in Brooklyn, for those who don’t know)—I guess I got tired of being told, “You don’t understand.” The plan had been to send out dispatches along the way (as I did from East Africa and across America), but I encountered a few obstacles that forced me to abandon this plan somewhere in the Jordan River Valley where it was presumably trampled by settlers.

First, there is the sheer volume of inputs. Let me show you what I mean. On my first day in Hebron, a local journalist and human rights activist named Hisham Sharabati took me into the Old City. He told me the story of being shot by an Israeli sniper while reporting on the aftermath of the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs mosque massacre (an act of pure terrorism that Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has long celebrated; Ben-Gvir, a Hebron resident himself, is now arming the violent local settlers), but he was interrupted by a text and then a phone call from the IDF accusing him of participating in a Hamas rally, asking if he was a member of ISIS (??), and finally warning him that he was being watched—punishment for future indiscretions would be severe. As he took the call, I watched the military checkpoint across the street suddenly close up shop, causing the dispersal of a long line of mothers and children with backpacks who had hoped it would be one of those days when they’d make it to school. When Hisham finished taking the call (which gave him a good laugh—these threats are nothing new), we walked through the Old City market.

Everyone knew Hisham, and they knew a wide-eyed American when they saw one, so they were eager to tell me their stories. A grey-haired peace activist described taking a settler’s stone to the face and being unable to reach the only hospital around that could have saved his eye—such is life when you don’t have the right permit. He popped out his glass eye and offered it to me. He showed me security camera footage of a group of settler children following him home and dumping pig fat in his doorway.

Then a woman came by, exasperated, on her way to see her grandchildren—it was the first time she’d been allowed out of her house in weeks due to some arbitrary curfew (she received no explanation, there is never an explanation). She told me that a soldier shot her son in the leg, and a settler pushed her daughter off a roof. We walked through the market. A man in front of an empty clothing shop—the whole market has been empty since 10/7 when Israel locked most of the gates between each town—pointed to his temple to show me where an IDF bullet entered his 15-year-old son’s skull, lodging itself in his brain, leaving him braindead and paralyzed. This happened roughly 20 years ago, so the son was my age. The shopkeeper was an old man now but would be his son’s caretaker for the rest of his life. We walked by a sweets shop. The owner, a real smiley guy with a bad leg, invited us in for (free) baklava and coffee (it has been very difficult to get anybody in Palestine to accept my money). While we ate, drank, and smoked, he stepped outside to look for more customers. A passing soldier said, “Get inside before I break your other leg.”

Hisham pointed out the settlement looming above the market behind metal netting, which the locals had installed to prevent settlers from hurling large objects at them. Unfortunately, it has not stopped them from dumping buckets of piss and shit. This, the shopkeepers decided, was better than the alternative of spending their days under the darkness of a protective roof. Nearby, soldiers painted over a refugee camp mural of young men they had recently killed there. When they couldn’t find the artist, they arrested his father and announced he’d be detained until the boy turned himself in (there is a name for this act). He repainted the mural and then received a call from the IDF that said, “Paint over the mural, or we’ll bomb it over your heads.”

All this occurred in my first two hours in Hebron

I am convinced that no reasonable person could spend even a week here and come away believing the occupation is morally defensible under any circumstances; the trouble is that most will neither come nor even look too closely.

[Soulman]

Israel mirroring Nazi Germany more and more has to be one of the greatest tragedies of modern history.

[CaffeineNeeded]

@Soulman

Israel mirroring Nazi Germany more and more has to be one of the greatest tragedies of modern history.

yeah, this is one of those things that isn’t true and really downplays what germany did in ww2. You really shouldn’t say things like that.

[Soulman]

Just actually read what Israel is doing on the West Bank. Obviously Germany eventually ended up committing atrocities on a scale that Israel isn’t doing (yet). I’m not saying they’re equally bad. But what Israel is doing is imo a horrible reversal of what the jews themselves experienced during the earlier phases of nazi germany.

[CaffeineNeeded]

No, just no. What you said is edgelord bs that is a thing antisemitic people say

[kerowo]

At a certain point the Israelis are going to do something so bad it used to be only what anti-semites used to say about them.

[CaffeineNeeded]

Whatever. It’s very possible to criticize Israel without slipping into antisemitic and clearly wrong tropes of they’re on a path like Nazi Germany.

Saying that is ignorant and racist. It deserves to be called out as inappropriate

[Surf]

@CaffeineNeeded

Whatever. It’s very possible to criticize Israel without slipping into antisemitic and clearly wrong tropes of they’re on a path like Nazi Germany.

Saying that is ignorant and racist. It deserves to be called out as inappropriate

Not sure it’s inherently racist or antisemitism to compare any politicians or country actions to various aspect of Nazi germany. Like for example people talking about Trump rhetoric about immigrants poisoning blood of country as being similar to Nazi statements but that does not mean they are saying he literally put immigrants in gas chambers.

[CaffeineNeeded]

It’s racist when you use it to describe the state created by Jews fleeing nazi germany who aren’t anything like nazis

[Surf]

@CaffeineNeeded

It’s racist when you use it to describe the state created by Jews fleeing nazi germany who aren’t anything like nazis

So if instead of Trump it was someone running for office in Israel and said immigrants were poisoning the blood of Israel it would be racist for people to make the same observations they are of Trump?

ETA- also this discussion probably not super important to continue, I obviously see your point

[Pwn]

Just like when a Palestinian says “from the river to the sea,” they are clearly genocidal anti-Semitic fanatics but when the PM of Israel says it, it’s totally fine.

[boredsocial]

From the river to the sea is a great example of how the Palestinians never help anybody trying to help them at all. Truly if anyone can find me a single good decision made by Palestinian leadership since 1948 they surely haven’t shown it to me yet.

That being said the vast majority of the Palestinian population wasn’t even born yet when the last really major decision was offered to their leadership, and were in diapers the last time the government of Israel was even moderate. They’ve basically just spent their entire lives getting punished for the choices of their parents/grandparents generations.

At this point I really don’t see a non tragic ending for this. The Israeli’s are responsible for a considerable portion of this, but the Palestinians have pretty much been dead weight every time anyone has tried to improve the situation.

Obviously if anyone sane could go back in time and change a decision they would opt to encourage global Jewish refugees to settle in upstate New York instead of Palestine. The odds of anything good happening were low at the start and have worsened from there.

We’ve always had a very uncomfortable relationship with Israel in my family. My paternal grandfather was an extremely anti-zionist reformed Jewish guy who resented having any relation to the Israeli’s at all. My dad was quite a bit more pro Israel than his father was, but he had very mixed feelings about it despite having lived in Israel for a couple of years.

I started out more pro Israel than my dad was but that has slowly soured over time to the present where it’s fully curdled. Grandpa was right back when there were still other ways it could go. This whole thing has been a fucking tragedy. An echo of the holocaust carried out by the descendents of the victims of the holocaust because of choices made decades ago out of political expediency and antisemitism. I really need to stop following all of this for my mental health.

[commonWealth]

I don’t know how you can read that passage goofy posted and conclude that comparing the actions of Israeli settlers and Netanyahu’s Israel to the early stages of Nazi Germany is exaggerated and anti-Semitic.

It’s a violent harassment and torture campaign to try to get the ethnic minority to leave the area that was actually carved out to be theirs. All good people should oppose it, and not try to distract from calling attention to it.

Like what seems to be a normal day in the West Bank right now does bear similarities to Kristallnacht. Less death, perhaps, and more imprisonment in the own home instead of being hauled off to camps, but they’re harassing the Palestinians violently, threatening businesses and forcing some closed, vandalizing the area, etc.