wifeisafurd said:

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sycasey said:

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socaltownie said:

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wifeisafurd said:

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socaltownie said:

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wifeisafurd said:

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Cal88 said:

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wifeisafurd said:

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dimitrig said:

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I think there is a path to peace and it has to start with Israel deescalating the conflict.

If Israel stops bombing civilians and provides aid to the affected it would go a long way toward restoring Israel's reputation. Maybe Israel can call for UN peacekeepers in Gaza. If Israel stands down and Hamas continues to lob rockets at them then they can take control of the narrative again to be viewed as victims of unprovoked aggression. Right now they are losing support from the international community.

Israel has to take the moral high ground. Otherwise, they are proving to be everything Hamas has made them out to be. They were sucked into this conflict and they can extricate themselves just as easily. The US needs to organize international pressure against them to stop this madness.

---

Israel is not stopping until Hamas is decimated and there is regime change. If you listen to Blinken, that is also what the US is advocating. The US is calling for temporary humanitarian stops to bring to Gaza basics like food and water, but there will be war until Hamas is gone and the US tries to install the PLO for governance. The approach in Blinken's mind is that of a separate country run by a bolstered PLO is what brings peace (kinda the "real peace" another poster was talking about).

Whether Israel, which controls things on the ground, buys off on this remains to be seen, but none of this has anything to do with moral high grounds. Moral high ground in places like the Middle East are just words people in in the west use. You don't have to take my word for it, you can go back and read the article posted by Bearrister above, quoting Blinken.

---

Pragmatically speaking, and humanitarian reasons aside (that's a big caveat there), Israel cannot "decimate" Hamas without completely obliterating its public image, which has been one of its main weapons and one of the main reasons it has managed to maintain its existence as a colonial state. It will undoubtedly hold on to a segment of conservative American Boomers and Evangelical Christian zionists who literally worship that state, but it will lose support across the rest of western public opinion.

As well, "decimating" Hamas will not work, as the collateral damage is somewhere over 95%. It's going to create tens of thousands more orphans and young men with nothing to lose whose relatives have been pulverized.

Israel -and the US- have to recognize that we are in a new global geopolitical context, where aircraft carriers are nearly obsolete and stand-off weapons like drones and missiles rule the battlefield. This means that Israel will no longer be able to maintain military hegemony over its neighbors. Its only viable -and moral- choice is to retrace the steps of slain prime minister YItzak Rabin and sue for a real peace with the region in the form of the 2-state solution, which is acceptable to a large majority of Palestinians and to every state in the region, including Iran.

---

I respectfully disagree with you military assessment. It seems pretty obvious that the Israeli army is dominating the battle field, despite drones or thousand of missile shot off by Hamas, and that no one is coming from the North as long those US battleships and planes on battleships are in range.

The US and its allies have made a calculation, for better to worse, that Hamas must be taken out for peace with a two state solution to work, and further that Iran must be contained. Like I said before, it could work. What could go wrong? Israel could screw it up, the PLO has a history of corruption, things regionally could change quickly, etc. Welcome to the realities of the Middle East. Your enemy today is your ally tomorrow.

Looking at some things US allies do with impunity in the Middle East, such as Saudi or Egypt not to mention Iran and others, public relations and moral high grounds are built on quick sand in that part of the world. Sorta like Africa as well. We try to demand everyone play by western values, and I'm not seeing a lot of success at that. Somalia should have been a lesson. China's diplomatic take over of Africa should be a lesson.China and Africa: Human Rights Perspective - JSTORJSTORhttps://www.jstor.org stable. Israel is part of US and Saudi strategy of containing Iran. That isn't going to change, because short term public opinion is not happy with Israel. There are much bigger things at play than what some liberals protesting in the US or Europe think.

In an area where military action is a constant, I'm not sure Israel doesn't want a reputation as hard arse, who will destroy you if you attack them. When survival is at stake, Israel seems happy to take some PR hits. When people who live in the West start talking about their values or their public opinion, the rest of the world tends to view this high minded approach as hypocritical.

I don't think the Biden administration is very concerned about what the left is saying on Gaza or much else. Those voters really have no alternatives. They are making judgements on an international relations construct, not on idealism. Ideals are preferred and I suppose we try to teach them to younger generations, though ideals may vary in most of the country. They are a sort of mental model, a target, whereby people, especially those in the west, can communally understand how the world should work. Unfortunately, they block understandings of how the world does work, and that is where are policy makers live.


I keep seeing posts that a wave of young populism will take over this time. After watching the generation older than me protest around campuses, tell everyone they will change the world, and money doesn't matter, and then completely change their values so they can run around retirement villages in golf carts chanting white power, I have to think this is the arrogance of youth and idealism that certainly existed when I left college in me. I want the world not to have wars, but now I'm cynical being older that progress can happen or be saved without them. The thing is as we grow older and more experienced, are ideals change, and we incorporate thoughts based on the way we find the world actually is. This is a long way of saying is most of today's younger generations will think differently over time and become the boomers of tomorrow.

---

the problem is that it is nearly impossible to win coiunterinsurgency wars if we define winning as 100% security for Isreali jewish citizens (which is how Isreali has defined it). So they dominate the battlefield. Unless they have idenfitied every hamas footsolider give it a few years and they will emerge again.

This is the :"logic" of Ulster. The RUC (and occasionally the British) thought they could eliminate every republican and member of the Provisional IRA. They clearly could throw a bunch in jail. But they never created absolute security in Ulster. It took (finally) a realization that both catholic and protestants were first and foremost "citizens" of the 6 counties and their willingness to forge a multi-sectarian "thing" (not a state, but something akin to it).

---

Sure, a lot of that makes sense. Israel is breaking Hamas, but it there game plan is to occupy Gaza permanently or wipe out every Hamas fighter they are being unrealistic. It seems more likely Bliken's plan for robust PLO rule in Gaza makes more sense. Israel is going to have to make concessions after this mess is over, and it won't alway be pretty for them dealing with the PLO in Gaza, but if they want peace and US support they need to get on board. I assume Blikin is literally telling Israel that right now. I think Ireland is a good example that it can be done, as is Egypt and Israel. But the PLO will have to keep the remnants of Hamas in check, which I think they desire to do after what Hamas did to them. There is no way Israel can think they can rule over several million people.

---

But I really think that for Northern Ireland to work the Republicans needed to stop seeing themselves as seperated from Ireland by the nasty roundheads and the Protestants needed to stop thinking about themselves as the last bastion of Empire and the traditional English ways. A key was a northern Ireland Identity.

Until some creative and couragous Isreali politician figure out how to square the demographics and then the traditional importance of Isreal being a "jewish" state I don't see that.

One way would be to enshire a constittuion, with difficult amendment processes, providing for the three religions of the levant special status and special immigration status. Big asks. But I really do believe the only way forward is for both "sides:" to see themselves as mutually legiimate "citizens" of that geographic space.

---

Any actual long-term solution seems impossible as long as Netanyahu or anyone like him remains in charge. He is on record as opposing any kind of multiple-state solution and has actively worked against one.

And yes, the same goes for Hamas, but they don't really have the power to change Israeli leadership by force.

---

Not sure where you are getting your information on internal Isreal politics. Netanyahu actually is on the record for supporting a two state solution, it is just what those two states look like changes a lot. .Netanyahu outlines vision for two-state solution - CNNCNN.comhttps://www.cnn.com 2023/02/01 middleeast netan...

The problem Netanyahu faces is whether his right wing coalition stays in place with a 2 state solution because the ultra right doesn't support a two state solution. With migration and population changes, the right is Israel is gaining in number. Blinken to get Israel to support his two state approach with the PLO governing has to get support from a different coalition, which will need to include Netanyahu's party in order to be a majority.

---

Quote:

---

Palestinian hopes of establishing a sovereign state "must be eliminated," Netanyahu told Knesset (Israeli parliament) committee members in a closed-door meeting about his government's plans for the eventual departure of PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

---

wifeisafurd said:

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sycasey said:

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socaltownie said:

---

wifeisafurd said:

---

socaltownie said:

---

wifeisafurd said:

---

Cal88 said:

---

wifeisafurd said:

---

dimitrig said:

---

I think there is a path to peace and it has to start with Israel deescalating the conflict.

If Israel stops bombing civilians and provides aid to the affected it would go a long way toward restoring Israel's reputation. Maybe Israel can call for UN peacekeepers in Gaza. If Israel stands down and Hamas continues to lob rockets at them then they can take control of the narrative again to be viewed as victims of unprovoked aggression. Right now they are losing support from the international community.

Israel has to take the moral high ground. Otherwise, they are proving to be everything Hamas has made them out to be. They were sucked into this conflict and they can extricate themselves just as easily. The US needs to organize international pressure against them to stop this madness.

---

Israel is not stopping until Hamas is decimated and there is regime change. If you listen to Blinken, that is also what the US is advocating. The US is calling for temporary humanitarian stops to bring to Gaza basics like food and water, but there will be war until Hamas is gone and the US tries to install the PLO for governance. The approach in Blinken's mind is that of a separate country run by a bolstered PLO is what brings peace (kinda the "real peace" another poster was talking about).

Whether Israel, which controls things on the ground, buys off on this remains to be seen, but none of this has anything to do with moral high grounds. Moral high ground in places like the Middle East are just words people in in the west use. You don't have to take my word for it, you can go back and read the article posted by Bearrister above, quoting Blinken.

---

Pragmatically speaking, and humanitarian reasons aside (that's a big caveat there), Israel cannot "decimate" Hamas without completely obliterating its public image, which has been one of its main weapons and one of the main reasons it has managed to maintain its existence as a colonial state. It will undoubtedly hold on to a segment of conservative American Boomers and Evangelical Christian zionists who literally worship that state, but it will lose support across the rest of western public opinion.

As well, "decimating" Hamas will not work, as the collateral damage is somewhere over 95%. It's going to create tens of thousands more orphans and young men with nothing to lose whose relatives have been pulverized.

Israel -and the US- have to recognize that we are in a new global geopolitical context, where aircraft carriers are nearly obsolete and stand-off weapons like drones and missiles rule the battlefield. This means that Israel will no longer be able to maintain military hegemony over its neighbors. Its only viable -and moral- choice is to retrace the steps of slain prime minister YItzak Rabin and sue for a real peace with the region in the form of the 2-state solution, which is acceptable to a large majority of Palestinians and to every state in the region, including Iran.

---

I respectfully disagree with you military assessment. It seems pretty obvious that the Israeli army is dominating the battle field, despite drones or thousand of missile shot off by Hamas, and that no one is coming from the North as long those US battleships and planes on battleships are in range.

The US and its allies have made a calculation, for better to worse, that Hamas must be taken out for peace with a two state solution to work, and further that Iran must be contained. Like I said before, it could work. What could go wrong? Israel could screw it up, the PLO has a history of corruption, things regionally could change quickly, etc. Welcome to the realities of the Middle East. Your enemy today is your ally tomorrow.

Looking at some things US allies do with impunity in the Middle East, such as Saudi or Egypt not to mention Iran and others, public relations and moral high grounds are built on quick sand in that part of the world. Sorta like Africa as well. We try to demand everyone play by western values, and I'm not seeing a lot of success at that. Somalia should have been a lesson. China's diplomatic take over of Africa should be a lesson.China and Africa: Human Rights Perspective - JSTORJSTORhttps://www.jstor.org stable. Israel is part of US and Saudi strategy of containing Iran. That isn't going to change, because short term public opinion is not happy with Israel. There are much bigger things at play than what some liberals protesting in the US or Europe think.

In an area where military action is a constant, I'm not sure Israel doesn't want a reputation as hard arse, who will destroy you if you attack them. When survival is at stake, Israel seems happy to take some PR hits. When people who live in the West start talking about their values or their public opinion, the rest of the world tends to view this high minded approach as hypocritical.

I don't think the Biden administration is very concerned about what the left is saying on Gaza or much else. Those voters really have no alternatives. They are making judgements on an international relations construct, not on idealism. Ideals are preferred and I suppose we try to teach them to younger generations, though ideals may vary in most of the country. They are a sort of mental model, a target, whereby people, especially those in the west, can communally understand how the world should work. Unfortunately, they block understandings of how the world does work, and that is where are policy makers live.


I keep seeing posts that a wave of young populism will take over this time. After watching the generation older than me protest around campuses, tell everyone they will change the world, and money doesn't matter, and then completely change their values so they can run around retirement villages in golf carts chanting white power, I have to think this is the arrogance of youth and idealism that certainly existed when I left college in me. I want the world not to have wars, but now I'm cynical being older that progress can happen or be saved without them. The thing is as we grow older and more experienced, are ideals change, and we incorporate thoughts based on the way we find the world actually is. This is a long way of saying is most of today's younger generations will think differently over time and become the boomers of tomorrow.

---

the problem is that it is nearly impossible to win coiunterinsurgency wars if we define winning as 100% security for Isreali jewish citizens (which is how Isreali has defined it). So they dominate the battlefield. Unless they have idenfitied every hamas footsolider give it a few years and they will emerge again.

This is the :"logic" of Ulster. The RUC (and occasionally the British) thought they could eliminate every republican and member of the Provisional IRA. They clearly could throw a bunch in jail. But they never created absolute security in Ulster. It took (finally) a realization that both catholic and protestants were first and foremost "citizens" of the 6 counties and their willingness to forge a multi-sectarian "thing" (not a state, but something akin to it).

---

Sure, a lot of that makes sense. Israel is breaking Hamas, but it there game plan is to occupy Gaza permanently or wipe out every Hamas fighter they are being unrealistic. It seems more likely Bliken's plan for robust PLO rule in Gaza makes more sense. Israel is going to have to make concessions after this mess is over, and it won't alway be pretty for them dealing with the PLO in Gaza, but if they want peace and US support they need to get on board. I assume Blikin is literally telling Israel that right now. I think Ireland is a good example that it can be done, as is Egypt and Israel. But the PLO will have to keep the remnants of Hamas in check, which I think they desire to do after what Hamas did to them. There is no way Israel can think they can rule over several million people.

---

But I really think that for Northern Ireland to work the Republicans needed to stop seeing themselves as seperated from Ireland by the nasty roundheads and the Protestants needed to stop thinking about themselves as the last bastion of Empire and the traditional English ways. A key was a northern Ireland Identity.

Until some creative and couragous Isreali politician figure out how to square the demographics and then the traditional importance of Isreal being a "jewish" state I don't see that.

One way would be to enshire a constittuion, with difficult amendment processes, providing for the three religions of the levant special status and special immigration status. Big asks. But I really do believe the only way forward is for both "sides:" to see themselves as mutually legiimate "citizens" of that geographic space.

---

Any actual long-term solution seems impossible as long as Netanyahu or anyone like him remains in charge. He is on record as opposing any kind of multiple-state solution and has actively worked against one.

And yes, the same goes for Hamas, but they don't really have the power to change Israeli leadership by force.

---

Not sure where you are getting your information on internal Isreal politics. Netanyahu actually is on the record for supporting a two state solution, it is just what those two states look like changes a lot. .Netanyahu outlines vision for two-state solution - CNNCNN.comhttps://www.cnn.com 2023/02/01 middleeast netan...

The problem Netanyahu faces is whether his right wing coalition stays in place with a 2 state solution because the ultra right doesn't support a two state solution. With migration and population changes, the right is Israel is gaining in number. Blinken to get Israel to support his two state approach with the PLO governing has to get support from a different coalition, which will need to include Netanyahu's party in order to be a majority.

---

wifeisafurd said:

---

sycasey said:

---

socaltownie said:

---

wifeisafurd said:

---

socaltownie said:

---

wifeisafurd said:

---

Cal88 said:

---

wifeisafurd said:

---

dimitrig said:

---

I think there is a path to peace and it has to start with Israel deescalating the conflict.

If Israel stops bombing civilians and provides aid to the affected it would go a long way toward restoring Israel's reputation. Maybe Israel can call for UN peacekeepers in Gaza. If Israel stands down and Hamas continues to lob rockets at them then they can take control of the narrative again to be viewed as victims of unprovoked aggression. Right now they are losing support from the international community.

Israel has to take the moral high ground. Otherwise, they are proving to be everything Hamas has made them out to be. They were sucked into this conflict and they can extricate themselves just as easily. The US needs to organize international pressure against them to stop this madness.

---

Israel is not stopping until Hamas is decimated and there is regime change. If you listen to Blinken, that is also what the US is advocating. The US is calling for temporary humanitarian stops to bring to Gaza basics like food and water, but there will be war until Hamas is gone and the US tries to install the PLO for governance. The approach in Blinken's mind is that of a separate country run by a bolstered PLO is what brings peace (kinda the "real peace" another poster was talking about).

Whether Israel, which controls things on the ground, buys off on this remains to be seen, but none of this has anything to do with moral high grounds. Moral high ground in places like the Middle East are just words people in in the west use. You don't have to take my word for it, you can go back and read the article posted by Bearrister above, quoting Blinken.

---

Pragmatically speaking, and humanitarian reasons aside (that's a big caveat there), Israel cannot "decimate" Hamas without completely obliterating its public image, which has been one of its main weapons and one of the main reasons it has managed to maintain its existence as a colonial state. It will undoubtedly hold on to a segment of conservative American Boomers and Evangelical Christian zionists who literally worship that state, but it will lose support across the rest of western public opinion.

As well, "decimating" Hamas will not work, as the collateral damage is somewhere over 95%. It's going to create tens of thousands more orphans and young men with nothing to lose whose relatives have been pulverized.

Israel -and the US- have to recognize that we are in a new global geopolitical context, where aircraft carriers are nearly obsolete and stand-off weapons like drones and missiles rule the battlefield. This means that Israel will no longer be able to maintain military hegemony over its neighbors. Its only viable -and moral- choice is to retrace the steps of slain prime minister YItzak Rabin and sue for a real peace with the region in the form of the 2-state solution, which is acceptable to a large majority of Palestinians and to every state in the region, including Iran.

---

I respectfully disagree with you military assessment. It seems pretty obvious that the Israeli army is dominating the battle field, despite drones or thousand of missile shot off by Hamas, and that no one is coming from the North as long those US battleships and planes on battleships are in range.

The US and its allies have made a calculation, for better to worse, that Hamas must be taken out for peace with a two state solution to work, and further that Iran must be contained. Like I said before, it could work. What could go wrong? Israel could screw it up, the PLO has a history of corruption, things regionally could change quickly, etc. Welcome to the realities of the Middle East. Your enemy today is your ally tomorrow.

Looking at some things US allies do with impunity in the Middle East, such as Saudi or Egypt not to mention Iran and others, public relations and moral high grounds are built on quick sand in that part of the world. Sorta like Africa as well. We try to demand everyone play by western values, and I'm not seeing a lot of success at that. Somalia should have been a lesson. China's diplomatic take over of Africa should be a lesson.China and Africa: Human Rights Perspective - JSTORJSTORhttps://www.jstor.org stable. Israel is part of US and Saudi strategy of containing Iran. That isn't going to change, because short term public opinion is not happy with Israel. There are much bigger things at play than what some liberals protesting in the US or Europe think.

In an area where military action is a constant, I'm not sure Israel doesn't want a reputation as hard arse, who will destroy you if you attack them. When survival is at stake, Israel seems happy to take some PR hits. When people who live in the West start talking about their values or their public opinion, the rest of the world tends to view this high minded approach as hypocritical.

I don't think the Biden administration is very concerned about what the left is saying on Gaza or much else. Those voters really have no alternatives. They are making judgements on an international relations construct, not on idealism. Ideals are preferred and I suppose we try to teach them to younger generations, though ideals may vary in most of the country. They are a sort of mental model, a target, whereby people, especially those in the west, can communally understand how the world should work. Unfortunately, they block understandings of how the world does work, and that is where are policy makers live.


I keep seeing posts that a wave of young populism will take over this time. After watching the generation older than me protest around campuses, tell everyone they will change the world, and money doesn't matter, and then completely change their values so they can run around retirement villages in golf carts chanting white power, I have to think this is the arrogance of youth and idealism that certainly existed when I left college in me. I want the world not to have wars, but now I'm cynical being older that progress can happen or be saved without them. The thing is as we grow older and more experienced, are ideals change, and we incorporate thoughts based on the way we find the world actually is. This is a long way of saying is most of today's younger generations will think differently over time and become the boomers of tomorrow.

---

the problem is that it is nearly impossible to win coiunterinsurgency wars if we define winning as 100% security for Isreali jewish citizens (which is how Isreali has defined it). So they dominate the battlefield. Unless they have idenfitied every hamas footsolider give it a few years and they will emerge again.

This is the :"logic" of Ulster. The RUC (and occasionally the British) thought they could eliminate every republican and member of the Provisional IRA. They clearly could throw a bunch in jail. But they never created absolute security in Ulster. It took (finally) a realization that both catholic and protestants were first and foremost "citizens" of the 6 counties and their willingness to forge a multi-sectarian "thing" (not a state, but something akin to it).

---

Sure, a lot of that makes sense. Israel is breaking Hamas, but it there game plan is to occupy Gaza permanently or wipe out every Hamas fighter they are being unrealistic. It seems more likely Bliken's plan for robust PLO rule in Gaza makes more sense. Israel is going to have to make concessions after this mess is over, and it won't alway be pretty for them dealing with the PLO in Gaza, but if they want peace and US support they need to get on board. I assume Blikin is literally telling Israel that right now. I think Ireland is a good example that it can be done, as is Egypt and Israel. But the PLO will have to keep the remnants of Hamas in check, which I think they desire to do after what Hamas did to them. There is no way Israel can think they can rule over several million people.

---

But I really think that for Northern Ireland to work the Republicans needed to stop seeing themselves as seperated from Ireland by the nasty roundheads and the Protestants needed to stop thinking about themselves as the last bastion of Empire and the traditional English ways. A key was a northern Ireland Identity.

Until some creative and couragous Isreali politician figure out how to square the demographics and then the traditional importance of Isreal being a "jewish" state I don't see that.

One way would be to enshire a constittuion, with difficult amendment processes, providing for the three religions of the levant special status and special immigration status. Big asks. But I really do believe the only way forward is for both "sides:" to see themselves as mutually legiimate "citizens" of that geographic space.

---

Any actual long-term solution seems impossible as long as Netanyahu or anyone like him remains in charge. He is on record as opposing any kind of multiple-state solution and has actively worked against one.

And yes, the same goes for Hamas, but they don't really have the power to change Israeli leadership by force.

---

Not sure where you are getting your information on internal Isreal politics. Netanyahu actually is on the record for supporting a two state solution, it is just what those two states look like changes a lot. .Netanyahu outlines vision for two-state solution - CNNCNN.comhttps://www.cnn.com 2023/02/01 middleeast netan...

---

Quote:

---

Netanyahu has never been a full-throated supporter of a two-state solution, weaving in and out of different definitions of what that would mean. But in recent years he's settled on the idea that he'd be open to a Palestinian state - as long as it has no military or security power, an arrangement that would have no parallel among modern sovereign states.

Most Palestinians would view that arrangement as a continuation of the current occupation and an unacceptable starting point for peace negotiations.

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wifeisafurd said:

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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When even the Atlantic (chief Obama/Hillary/Biden apologists) are no longer backing the Israel narrative, you know that things are going bad for the Zionists.

Don't equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, Adam Serwer writes. "There is nothing anti-Semitic about anti-Zionists who believe that the existence of a religious or ethnically defined state is inherently racist." https://t.co/C7CNpMMCrh pic.twitter.com/bH0ZtCVPB8

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) November 3, 2023

We are witnessing the largest U.S. anti-war protests since the #Iraq war. pic.twitter.com/3rRxViWF1P

— Rula Jebreal (@rulajebreal) November 4, 2023

---

I appreciate that you're blinded by your politics, with self-segregation on news sources, with constant retweets of the same messages from those sources. What is next, quoting Vox on the massive change in the direction of public opinion? Did that really "huge" Iraq protest really change things (it barely attracted media attention).

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Quote:

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I like to read The Atlantic (and consider the writing excellent), but let's face it, no one really cares what they say outside liberal elite circles.

---

Fetterman Encourages Gazan Child Who Lost Family In Airstrike To Try Therapy https://t.co/PsjlQooCn5

— The Onion (@TheOnion) November 3, 2023

10% For The Big Guy said:

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Ask the Republican Party in 2008 what the protests against Iraq changed.

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wifeisafurd said:

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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Ask the Republican Party in 2008 what the protests against Iraq changed.

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Because a dynamic candidate, Sarah Palin combined with McCain's age, and a sputtering economy didn't matter, and American voters actually decided to care about foreign affairs issues instead. Should be some interesting polling from Vox on that.

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KPG said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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KPG said:

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So when I post on here worried about Israel's actions, it's because I don't want to see millions of Jews put into existential threat and thousands die, I don't want to see millions of Palestinians live in apartheid and tens of thousands of them die, and I don't want to see the US dragged into a regional war that we can't win and risk further injury to American soldiers, I don't want to see my religion co-opted and become synonymous with the inherent racism behind Zionism. I don't think we in the US will be willing or able to pay the price of what is necessary to keep Israel safe as it currently exists given the changing regional dynamics. I don't see any path forward that doesn't involve significant loss of life one way or another and that is profoundly sad.

---

I agree with everything you say here. It's a sad situation and there are only bad choices. Netanyahu has often found a way to make the wrong choice in situations like this but it's not clear to me at this point what the least wrong choice would be. I think many are underestimating just how bad the 10/7 attacks were and why so many people in Israel have reacted so strongly. Obviously the same is true regarding some of the reprisals.

But it's also too late to avoid the existential threat with thousands of deaths - Israel has been facing an existential threat from day one. There is nothing Jewish people can do to eliminate anti-semitism, any more than American people of color can turn off racism here. Jewish history is filled with pogroms, persecution and genocide. Every Jewish family has their stories. I'm sure your grandparents have given you plenty.

Ultimately, I don't see anyone offering any humane solution. No one else is offering to send troops to root out Hamas in Gaza. You certainly aren't seeing that from neigboring Muslim countries or the UN and believe it or not the US seems to be the only country in the world actually doing anything to help Palestinian people. Biden has done quite a bit to hold back Netanyahu from going further, faster and right now may be the closest thing to a friend Palestinian people have.

---

Indeed, my grandmother was a staunch liberal and a proud Jew. But she couldn't bear to listen to KPFA when they'd be critical of Israel's actions, it caused her profound emotional agony and anger and she would swiftly switch it off and check back to when they'd change subjects. She truly saw Israel as "A Light Unto The Nations". I was raised Jewish, always read The Four Questions at Passover as the youngest, and always toasted "Next year in Jerusalem!" as a kid without having the faintest understanding that it was a real place, to me as a kid it was as real as something in The Chronicles of Narnia or The Lord of the Rings.

My grandmother married my step-grandfather in 1972, before I was born, one of the most amazing men I've had the privilege of knowing - Dr. Peter Kunkel, who some may know as a pioneering leader at the Mt Diablo Medical Center - now John Muir Health Concord, having established the ICU, Coronary Care Unit, and served at a time as Chief of Staff and Chief of Cardiology.

He was also a Jew living in Germany, born in 1921 with well-read, educated parents. They had the wherewithall to enroll him in boarding school in the Netherlands during his teen years. In 1938, when he was 17 years old, following the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, his parents through their extensive contacts arranged for him to embark by sea to America, and start a life anew, and alone, in a country he had never been to without friends or relatives in a language he had only recently learned at boarding school. His mother was Jewish, making him Jewish of course, but his blonde hair, blue eyes, and Germanic name bought him plausible deniability to go to boarding school in the Netherlands "to learn English to help the Fher" that would be otherwise unavailable to darker featured Germans with obviously Jewish sounding surnames. Even still, his memoirs recount harrowing border encounters with the Gestapo prodding as to why a young German would be leaving when his country needs him most, and a palm-sweating thorough review of paperwork when crossing borders that became more dangerous more quickly than even his well educated parents had imagined.

My step-grandfather was proud of his faith, though certainly tacked closer to secularism than my grandmother. Above all else, he valued caring for others. He worked tireless long hours as a doctor in the service of others. He intentionally stayed affiliated with the publicly owned Mt Diablo Medical Center that disproportionately treated Medi-cal / uninsured patients, when his peers at John Muir in Walnut Creek were making four to five times as much in compensation. He was gentle, firm, wise, and unflinchingly fair. He helped my mom with a down payment for a modest house in Oakley when her father and mother (to whom he was married) both disapproved because of lifestyle choices she had made coming out as a lesbian. This caused friction in his marital life, but he thought it was the right thing to do.

As a man who had to flee for his safety and leave his family for the crime of simply being Jewish, he was able to separate emotions from his own internal sense of justice, and maintained respectful daylight from my grandmother's lockstep support of Israel - supportive yet critical when their rights to establish a Jewish state eroded the rights of Palestinians to have self-determination.

I can't say for certain how he would feel now, his health diminished before Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, but I can't imagine he would be providing full throated defense for the atrocities now being committed by a state borne as a refuge against the atrocities he witnessed firsthand. I wish more than anything I could ask him, I didn't know nearly enough to have real conversations about it when he was still lucid.

I wonder daily how my grandma would feel about it - she passed from pancreatic cancer in the early 1990s. When I criticize Israel and reflect on my own moral disagreements, I think of her, and I feel the same shame I felt as a kid being admonished by her for putting my elbows on the table, for chewing with my mouth open, and for bickering with my sister. I feel her judging my criticism. I wish I could talk to her about how I feel, to square my feelings of the injustice I see with her feelings of unflinching defense of Israel. I wish she were here and I wish my step-grandfather were here. But they're not, and no one else in my family thinks about these things at all, so here I wander into the Off Topic boards of Bear Insider to talk with you all. Thank you for humoring me.

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wifeisafurd said:

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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Ask the Republican Party in 2008 what the protests against Iraq changed.

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Because a dynamic candidate, Sarah Palin combined with McCain's age, and a sputtering economy didn't matter, and American voters actually decided to care about foreign affairs issues instead. Should be some interesting polling from Vox on that.

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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wifeisafurd said:

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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Ask the Republican Party in 2008 what the protests against Iraq changed.

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Because a dynamic candidate, Sarah Palin combined with McCain's age, and a sputtering economy didn't matter, and American voters actually decided to care about foreign affairs issues instead. Should be some interesting polling from Vox on that.

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I love how you completely ignored having only 40 senators and 179 members in the House to pretend that Sarah Palin was the problem in 2008

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wifeisafurd said:

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wifeisafurd said:

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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Ask the Republican Party in 2008 what the protests against Iraq changed.

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Because a dynamic candidate, Sarah Palin combined with McCain's age, and a sputtering economy didn't matter, and American voters actually decided to care about foreign affairs issues instead. Should be some interesting polling from Vox on that.

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Also, thinking about it more, I agree with your comment about The Atlantic. The Atlantic is the left equivalent of the National Review. Hardly anybody reads it, but it has a certain gravitas in intellectual circles, and what is says does matter on the liberal spectrum of inside baseball, just as the National Review does on the right.

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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wifeisafurd said:

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sycasey said:

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socaltownie said:

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wifeisafurd said:

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socaltownie said:

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wifeisafurd said:

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Cal88 said:

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wifeisafurd said:

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dimitrig said:

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I think there is a path to peace and it has to start with Israel deescalating the conflict.

If Israel stops bombing civilians and provides aid to the affected it would go a long way toward restoring Israel's reputation. Maybe Israel can call for UN peacekeepers in Gaza. If Israel stands down and Hamas continues to lob rockets at them then they can take control of the narrative again to be viewed as victims of unprovoked aggression. Right now they are losing support from the international community.

Israel has to take the moral high ground. Otherwise, they are proving to be everything Hamas has made them out to be. They were sucked into this conflict and they can extricate themselves just as easily. The US needs to organize international pressure against them to stop this madness.

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Israel is not stopping until Hamas is decimated and there is regime change. If you listen to Blinken, that is also what the US is advocating. The US is calling for temporary humanitarian stops to bring to Gaza basics like food and water, but there will be war until Hamas is gone and the US tries to install the PLO for governance. The approach in Blinken's mind is that of a separate country run by a bolstered PLO is what brings peace (kinda the "real peace" another poster was talking about).

Whether Israel, which controls things on the ground, buys off on this remains to be seen, but none of this has anything to do with moral high grounds. Moral high ground in places like the Middle East are just words people in in the west use. You don't have to take my word for it, you can go back and read the article posted by Bearrister above, quoting Blinken.

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Pragmatically speaking, and humanitarian reasons aside (that's a big caveat there), Israel cannot "decimate" Hamas without completely obliterating its public image, which has been one of its main weapons and one of the main reasons it has managed to maintain its existence as a colonial state. It will undoubtedly hold on to a segment of conservative American Boomers and Evangelical Christian zionists who literally worship that state, but it will lose support across the rest of western public opinion.

As well, "decimating" Hamas will not work, as the collateral damage is somewhere over 95%. It's going to create tens of thousands more orphans and young men with nothing to lose whose relatives have been pulverized.

Israel -and the US- have to recognize that we are in a new global geopolitical context, where aircraft carriers are nearly obsolete and stand-off weapons like drones and missiles rule the battlefield. This means that Israel will no longer be able to maintain military hegemony over its neighbors. Its only viable -and moral- choice is to retrace the steps of slain prime minister YItzak Rabin and sue for a real peace with the region in the form of the 2-state solution, which is acceptable to a large majority of Palestinians and to every state in the region, including Iran.

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I respectfully disagree with you military assessment. It seems pretty obvious that the Israeli army is dominating the battle field, despite drones or thousand of missile shot off by Hamas, and that no one is coming from the North as long those US battleships and planes on battleships are in range.

The US and its allies have made a calculation, for better to worse, that Hamas must be taken out for peace with a two state solution to work, and further that Iran must be contained. Like I said before, it could work. What could go wrong? Israel could screw it up, the PLO has a history of corruption, things regionally could change quickly, etc. Welcome to the realities of the Middle East. Your enemy today is your ally tomorrow.

Looking at some things US allies do with impunity in the Middle East, such as Saudi or Egypt not to mention Iran and others, public relations and moral high grounds are built on quick sand in that part of the world. Sorta like Africa as well. We try to demand everyone play by western values, and I'm not seeing a lot of success at that. Somalia should have been a lesson. China's diplomatic take over of Africa should be a lesson.China and Africa: Human Rights Perspective - JSTORJSTORhttps://www.jstor.org stable. Israel is part of US and Saudi strategy of containing Iran. That isn't going to change, because short term public opinion is not happy with Israel. There are much bigger things at play than what some liberals protesting in the US or Europe think.

In an area where military action is a constant, I'm not sure Israel doesn't want a reputation as hard arse, who will destroy you if you attack them. When survival is at stake, Israel seems happy to take some PR hits. When people who live in the West start talking about their values or their public opinion, the rest of the world tends to view this high minded approach as hypocritical.

I don't think the Biden administration is very concerned about what the left is saying on Gaza or much else. Those voters really have no alternatives. They are making judgements on an international relations construct, not on idealism. Ideals are preferred and I suppose we try to teach them to younger generations, though ideals may vary in most of the country. They are a sort of mental model, a target, whereby people, especially those in the west, can communally understand how the world should work. Unfortunately, they block understandings of how the world does work, and that is where are policy makers live.


I keep seeing posts that a wave of young populism will take over this time. After watching the generation older than me protest around campuses, tell everyone they will change the world, and money doesn't matter, and then completely change their values so they can run around retirement villages in golf carts chanting white power, I have to think this is the arrogance of youth and idealism that certainly existed when I left college in me. I want the world not to have wars, but now I'm cynical being older that progress can happen or be saved without them. The thing is as we grow older and more experienced, are ideals change, and we incorporate thoughts based on the way we find the world actually is. This is a long way of saying is most of today's younger generations will think differently over time and become the boomers of tomorrow.

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the problem is that it is nearly impossible to win coiunterinsurgency wars if we define winning as 100% security for Isreali jewish citizens (which is how Isreali has defined it). So they dominate the battlefield. Unless they have idenfitied every hamas footsolider give it a few years and they will emerge again.

This is the :"logic" of Ulster. The RUC (and occasionally the British) thought they could eliminate every republican and member of the Provisional IRA. They clearly could throw a bunch in jail. But they never created absolute security in Ulster. It took (finally) a realization that both catholic and protestants were first and foremost "citizens" of the 6 counties and their willingness to forge a multi-sectarian "thing" (not a state, but something akin to it).

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Sure, a lot of that makes sense. Israel is breaking Hamas, but it there game plan is to occupy Gaza permanently or wipe out every Hamas fighter they are being unrealistic. It seems more likely Bliken's plan for robust PLO rule in Gaza makes more sense. Israel is going to have to make concessions after this mess is over, and it won't alway be pretty for them dealing with the PLO in Gaza, but if they want peace and US support they need to get on board. I assume Blikin is literally telling Israel that right now. I think Ireland is a good example that it can be done, as is Egypt and Israel. But the PLO will have to keep the remnants of Hamas in check, which I think they desire to do after what Hamas did to them. There is no way Israel can think they can rule over several million people.

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But I really think that for Northern Ireland to work the Republicans needed to stop seeing themselves as seperated from Ireland by the nasty roundheads and the Protestants needed to stop thinking about themselves as the last bastion of Empire and the traditional English ways. A key was a northern Ireland Identity.

Until some creative and couragous Isreali politician figure out how to square the demographics and then the traditional importance of Isreal being a "jewish" state I don't see that.

One way would be to enshire a constittuion, with difficult amendment processes, providing for the three religions of the levant special status and special immigration status. Big asks. But I really do believe the only way forward is for both "sides:" to see themselves as mutually legiimate "citizens" of that geographic space.

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Any actual long-term solution seems impossible as long as Netanyahu or anyone like him remains in charge. He is on record as opposing any kind of multiple-state solution and has actively worked against one.

And yes, the same goes for Hamas, but they don't really have the power to change Israeli leadership by force.

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Not sure where you are getting your information on internal Isreal politics. Netanyahu actually is on the record for supporting a two state solution, it is just what those two states look like changes a lot. .Netanyahu outlines vision for two-state solution - CNNCNN.comhttps://www.cnn.com 2023/02/01 middleeast netan...

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You should read the articles you cite:

Quote:

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Netanyahu has never been a full-throated supporter of a two-state solution, weaving in and out of different definitions of what that would mean. But in recent years he's settled on the idea that he'd be open to a Palestinian state - as long as it has no military or security power, an arrangement that would have no parallel among modern sovereign states.

Most Palestinians would view that arrangement as a continuation of the current occupation and an unacceptable starting point for peace negotiations.

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My previous post about you stands.

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“All lives matter” unless there’s a Hamas base.

— Reed Coverdale (@ReedCoverdale) November 3, 2023

oski003 said:

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Real Admiral Daniel Hagari of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told reporters in a briefing Sunday that Israel trying to protect civilians in the war but that the Palestinian terror group Hamas was trying to stop civilians from evacuating, and operating from hospitals.

Hagari said that Israel had "prioritized evacuation efforts over other missions." He said that the Israel Air Force dropped over 1.5 million flyers warning Palestinians to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip, which is where Hamas's strongholds are located, and to move south, beyond the Wadi Gaza wetlands, for their own safety. He added that Israel had made 20,000 personal telephone calls to civilian residents of Gaza, telling them to evacuate the area.


Hagari showed videos of flyers being dropped, and played audio of warnings in Arabic that had been broadcast to residents.

"Hamas is weak without human shields," Hagari said. That was why "Hamas is actively stopping civilians from moving to a safer area.

He showed aerial photos of a Hamas roadblock that, he said, had been set up to stop Palestinian civilians from leaving the Jabaliya refugee camp.

In addition, Hagari said, Hamas continued to use hospitals for military purposes. He noted that Israel had previously exposed Hamas's abuse of the Al Shifa hospital. He then went on to describe Hamas activities at other hospitals.

Hagari played video of IDF soldiers exposing a Hamas tunnel opening next to the Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Hospital, also known as the Qatari hospital, named after the country that funded it. He also said that Hamas terrorists had shot at the IDF from within the hospital, and played a video showing them doing so.

Next, Hagari showed images of another hospital, the Indonesia Hospital, showing the construction of Hamas tunnels underground, and aerial photos showing evidence of rocket launches 75m away.

He also revealed intercepted and recorded phone calls that showed Gaza residents appearing to state that there was no shortage of fuel in the area, and that Hamas was storing it underneath hospitals, while claiming that the hospitals were running out of fuel.

Hamas moves fuel from the hospitals to terrorists … from Shifa Hospital to Jabaliya … because Jabaliya is a terror center."

Hagari also played a clip from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), in which a Hamas spokesman admitted to Russia Today TV on October 27 that it had built tunnels to protect Hamas terrorists from attack, and had not built shelters for civilians.

"We will not accept Hamas's cynical use of hospitals to hide their terror infrastructure. Hamas's exploitation of hospitals must come to an end."

A reporter asked why Israel was continuing to fight, knowing that Hamas was putting Palestinian civilians were at risk. Hagari replied by noting that this was a war "we did not start and we did not seek," but which Israel had been forced to wage after October 7.

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oski003 said:

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socaltownie said:

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Yes but this is WHOLLY expected and Isreal is not likely to win the information war as much as they might try. Contrast this with crying mothers and dead children.

The attack on Gaza was wholly reflective. I get that. We invaded afghanistan (but then stupidily stayed there for nearly 20 years) after 911. But where is the end game. Indeed, since aid is going to POUR into gaza I expect Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Hezzbollah(sp) to emerge STRONGer.

Moreover, and this is a real problem, Bennie is NOT stopping settlers (some in "unpermitted settlments) from terrorizing palistineans on the West Bank. This has really exposed the ugliness of trying to be an ethnoreligious state in a polyethnic and multi-religious region.

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It is unfortunate that you feel the media narrative should control whether or not Israel can root out Gaza's kidnappers. If the actions of Israeli settlers in the West Bank is a major issue, shouldn't the Palestinians have another way to protest such without kidnapping 240+ and murdering 1400+?

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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oski003 said:

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socaltownie said:

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Yes but this is WHOLLY expected and Isreal is not likely to win the information war as much as they might try. Contrast this with crying mothers and dead children.

The attack on Gaza was wholly reflective. I get that. We invaded afghanistan (but then stupidily stayed there for nearly 20 years) after 911. But where is the end game. Indeed, since aid is going to POUR into gaza I expect Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Hezzbollah(sp) to emerge STRONGer.

Moreover, and this is a real problem, Bennie is NOT stopping settlers (some in "unpermitted settlments) from terrorizing palistineans on the West Bank. This has really exposed the ugliness of trying to be an ethnoreligious state in a polyethnic and multi-religious region.

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It is unfortunate that you feel the media narrative should control whether or not Israel can root out Gaza's kidnappers. If the actions of Israeli settlers in the West Bank is a major issue, shouldn't the Palestinians have another way to protest such without kidnapping 240+ and murdering 1400+?

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Such as?

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oski003 said:

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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oski003 said:

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socaltownie said:

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Yes but this is WHOLLY expected and Isreal is not likely to win the information war as much as they might try. Contrast this with crying mothers and dead children.

The attack on Gaza was wholly reflective. I get that. We invaded afghanistan (but then stupidily stayed there for nearly 20 years) after 911. But where is the end game. Indeed, since aid is going to POUR into gaza I expect Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Hezzbollah(sp) to emerge STRONGer.

Moreover, and this is a real problem, Bennie is NOT stopping settlers (some in "unpermitted settlments) from terrorizing palistineans on the West Bank. This has really exposed the ugliness of trying to be an ethnoreligious state in a polyethnic and multi-religious region.

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It is unfortunate that you feel the media narrative should control whether or not Israel can root out Gaza's kidnappers. If the actions of Israeli settlers in the West Bank is a major issue, shouldn't the Palestinians have another way to protest such without kidnapping 240+ and murdering 1400+?

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Such as?

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Working with their allies in the region to pressure Israel to control their settlers.

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oski003 said:

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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oski003 said:

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socaltownie said:

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Yes but this is WHOLLY expected and Isreal is not likely to win the information war as much as they might try. Contrast this with crying mothers and dead children.

The attack on Gaza was wholly reflective. I get that. We invaded afghanistan (but then stupidily stayed there for nearly 20 years) after 911. But where is the end game. Indeed, since aid is going to POUR into gaza I expect Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Hezzbollah(sp) to emerge STRONGer.

Moreover, and this is a real problem, Bennie is NOT stopping settlers (some in "unpermitted settlments) from terrorizing palistineans on the West Bank. This has really exposed the ugliness of trying to be an ethnoreligious state in a polyethnic and multi-religious region.

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It is unfortunate that you feel the media narrative should control whether or not Israel can root out Gaza's kidnappers. If the actions of Israeli settlers in the West Bank is a major issue, shouldn't the Palestinians have another way to protest such without kidnapping 240+ and murdering 1400+?

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Such as?

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Working with their allies in the region to pressure Israel to control their settlers.

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“Unable”. Lol. https://t.co/J0bkYdepYe

— Sam Husseini (@samhusseini) November 6, 2023

10% For The Big Guy said:

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oski003 said:

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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oski003 said:

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socaltownie said:

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Yes but this is WHOLLY expected and Isreal is not likely to win the information war as much as they might try. Contrast this with crying mothers and dead children.

The attack on Gaza was wholly reflective. I get that. We invaded afghanistan (but then stupidily stayed there for nearly 20 years) after 911. But where is the end game. Indeed, since aid is going to POUR into gaza I expect Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Hezzbollah(sp) to emerge STRONGer.

Moreover, and this is a real problem, Bennie is NOT stopping settlers (some in "unpermitted settlments) from terrorizing palistineans on the West Bank. This has really exposed the ugliness of trying to be an ethnoreligious state in a polyethnic and multi-religious region.

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It is unfortunate that you feel the media narrative should control whether or not Israel can root out Gaza's kidnappers. If the actions of Israeli settlers in the West Bank is a major issue, shouldn't the Palestinians have another way to protest such without kidnapping 240+ and murdering 1400+?

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Such as?

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Working with their allies in the region to pressure Israel to control their settlers.

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Tell me more about these allies and how they're going to be able to influence Israeli policy

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oski003 said:

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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oski003 said:

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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oski003 said:

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socaltownie said:

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Yes but this is WHOLLY expected and Isreal is not likely to win the information war as much as they might try. Contrast this with crying mothers and dead children.

The attack on Gaza was wholly reflective. I get that. We invaded afghanistan (but then stupidily stayed there for nearly 20 years) after 911. But where is the end game. Indeed, since aid is going to POUR into gaza I expect Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Hezzbollah(sp) to emerge STRONGer.

Moreover, and this is a real problem, Bennie is NOT stopping settlers (some in "unpermitted settlments) from terrorizing palistineans on the West Bank. This has really exposed the ugliness of trying to be an ethnoreligious state in a polyethnic and multi-religious region.

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It is unfortunate that you feel the media narrative should control whether or not Israel can root out Gaza's kidnappers. If the actions of Israeli settlers in the West Bank is a major issue, shouldn't the Palestinians have another way to protest such without kidnapping 240+ and murdering 1400+?

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Such as?

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Working with their allies in the region to pressure Israel to control their settlers.

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Tell me more about these allies and how they're going to be able to influence Israeli policy

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Iran, Turkey, Qatar, Algeria, Sudan, Tunisia etc... Negotiating with Israel in good faith instead of massacring and kidnapping so many innocent people. Taking the high road.
If Israel continues an expansionist policy, they will then look like the actual bad guy. Of course that requires Hamas to actually be a good guy instead of the group of people holding the Gaza population hostage.

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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“Unable”. Lol. https://t.co/J0bkYdepYe

— Sam Husseini (@samhusseini) November 6, 2023

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movielover said:

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Who's suggesting our worst modern-day President for the Nobel Peace Prize? Delusional.

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movielover said:

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Who's suggesting our worst modern-day President for the Nobel Peace Prize? Delusional.

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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oski003 said:

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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oski003 said:

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10% For The Big Guy said:

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oski003 said:

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socaltownie said:

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Yes but this is WHOLLY expected and Isreal is not likely to win the information war as much as they might try. Contrast this with crying mothers and dead children.

The attack on Gaza was wholly reflective. I get that. We invaded afghanistan (but then stupidily stayed there for nearly 20 years) after 911. But where is the end game. Indeed, since aid is going to POUR into gaza I expect Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Hezzbollah(sp) to emerge STRONGer.

Moreover, and this is a real problem, Bennie is NOT stopping settlers (some in "unpermitted settlments) from terrorizing palistineans on the West Bank. This has really exposed the ugliness of trying to be an ethnoreligious state in a polyethnic and multi-religious region.

---

It is unfortunate that you feel the media narrative should control whether or not Israel can root out Gaza's kidnappers. If the actions of Israeli settlers in the West Bank is a major issue, shouldn't the Palestinians have another way to protest such without kidnapping 240+ and murdering 1400+?

---

Such as?

---

Working with their allies in the region to pressure Israel to control their settlers.

---

Tell me more about these allies and how they're going to be able to influence Israeli policy

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Iran, Turkey, Qatar, Algeria, Sudan, Tunisia etc... Negotiating with Israel in good faith instead of massacring and kidnapping so many innocent people. Taking the high road.
If Israel continues an expansionist policy, they will then look like the actual bad guy. Of course that requires Hamas to actually be a good guy instead of the group of people holding the Gaza population hostage.

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Israel looks like the bad guy now. They've always been the bad guy, but people haven't bothered paying attention because the body count wasn't high enough to get people's attention.

None of those countries have any ability to affect Israel's policy towards the occupied territories, nor are they even Palestinian allies.

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