Slava Palestini said:

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BearGoggles said:

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An instructor at @Stanford has been suspended for telling Jewish students to take their belongings and stand in a corner.

The instructor said, “This is what Israel does to the Palestinians”

The instructor then asked, “How many people died in the Holocaust?”

When a student…

— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) October 13, 2023

I was waiting to post this until it was confirmed by multiple sources I trust (that are @Stanford)

Just read this. Hopefully widely reported on tomorrow

These are 1930s vibes pic.twitter.com/PbPBbLYSZf

— Shaun Maguire (smc.eth) (@shaunmmaguire) October 13, 2023

https://forward.com/news/564587/stanford-university-jewish-students-instructor-hamas/

Those of you aligning with the "anti-colonialism" BS, these are the people and ideologies you're endorsing. For the record, the teacher is a Berkeley BA/MS/PHD and Stanford lecturer. Collin Kap's mentor.

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The teacher's two mistakes were asking people to identify themselves as being Jewish or Israeli and conflating all murders committed by "colonizers" with the murders committed by Israel, which I'm pretty sure are well under 6 million. Although after this week, maybe they've cleared that total.

It doesn't matter what the student's identities are for the purposes of explaining the obvious - that Zionists are colonizers, that they did displace and murder Palestinians to create their homeland, and that they have murdered many more over the years





Israel is responsible for the Palestinians they've killed since 1948, but not for all people killed by all colonizers worldwide. Those countries (including the U.S.) that murdered indigenous peoples to steal land have their own blood on their hands, but that's those countries' issues - not Israel's.

Does this justify kidnapping, torturing, taking hostage, and murdering innocents by Hamas? No, but when you negotiate in bad faith as Israel has, when you fund Hamas to sow dissension to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state, and when you perpetrate your own Holocaust on Gaza in a ridiculously disproportionate response, you lose all moral authority to claim victimhood.

Israeli terrorism pic.twitter.com/5u2ObKJamL

— Richard Medhurst (@richimedhurst) October 13, 2023

Also, if BearGoggles has an issue with the Jewish diaspora, he is welcome to take it up with Babylonia.

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kal kommie said:

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BearGoggles said:

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kal kommie said:

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BearGoggles said:

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sycasey said:

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Question: is a two-state solution even feasible? I'm not confident such a thing would actually hold in the long run; the problem is that the Jews and the Muslims both want the same land.

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If you read historical accounts, the problem is not occupancy of the same land. The division of land was largely resolved (return to 1967 borders, with trades for security and settlements) and some sort of joint authority (dual capitals) in Jerusalem.

I understand the central problem are;

1. To this point, the Palestinians have insisted upon a literal right of return which is interpreted by Israelis as a means to destroy the Jewish character of Israel. There were several attempts to bridge the gap by offering compensation or a limited symbolic right of return. Those were rejected by Abbas.

2. Fundamentally, at this point the Israelis have no basis for expecting their security concerns will be addressed by any formulation

My personal opinion is that Abbas was incapable of making peace because his entire existence was based on being the rebel fighter. His rhetoric - which largely continues to be employed by others to this day - does not prepare the Palestinian people for compromise. "From the river to the sea" is not a call for peace - it is a call for a the destruction of Israel.

Israel has made many mistakes and has contributed to/reinforced many of cycles of violence. But Israel has a large center left/left contingent that advocate for peace. Who are the people in Palestinian society that advocate for a true two state solution? There is a reason most of the Arab world is no longer willing to advocate for Palestinians.

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In the early 2000s a basis for the resolution of the land questions (including settlements), security, and Jerusalem seemed within reach, at least between the negotiating teams. However 20 years of "facts on the ground" have annihilated that basis. Continued settlement expansion has already redrawn the map of the West Bank and would seriously complicate any land swap. More importantly, Israel no longer appears willing to consider a divided Jerusalem. Netanyahu has repeatedly declared Jerusalem to be the "eternal, undivided capital of Israel" and Israeli public opinion steadily turned from ambivalent on the issue to being strongly against dividing Jerusalem.

I think the understanding of the "central problem" that Bear Goggles presents is generally valid though I would not characterize Abbas or any leader as the main stumbling block so much as the deeply held opinions of the Palestinian people (insofar as I would be willing to characterize Palestinian attitudes as the stumbling block at all as opposed to Israeli attitudes).

1. Right of return

Palestinian negotiating teams in the early 2000s showed willingness to compromise on the right of return through limitations on the number of refugees who would be allowed into Israel and compensation for the remainder, but Palestinian public opinion has always emphatically rejected these compromises, leaving it unclear as to whether any mutually acceptable agreement could ever have been fulfilled.

2. Security concerns

Again, Palestinian negotiating teams in the early 2000s were willing to compromise by accepting in large measures the Israeli demands for that state to be demilitarized and for Israel to retain at least some security installations in Palestinian territory, but again Palestinian public opinion was strongly against these concessions as they would infringe upon the sovereignty of the future Palestinian state. However, this issue seems to me more tractable than the right of return.

Here's a link to a 3rd party observer summary of what some feel is the most viable negotiation ever between Israeli and Palestinian representatives at Taba in 2001. That opinion was expressed by members of both negotiating teams, with the chief Palestinian negotiator having said they needed only six more weeks to conclude the agreement, but Israel pulled out of the Taba Summit before it could be completed, citing its upcoming elections. Since Labor was kicked out of power in that election, it's likely that even if the negotiators had reached a deal, it would have been stillborn.

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-200101/

Bear Goggles is plainly mistaken about there being a large "center left/left" contingent" in Israeli politics. Likud has controlled the government for 17 of the last 21 years, during which time the left has been decimated. It took a center + center/left (Labor) + left (small parties) coalition to remove Likud from power between 2006-2009. Labor, once the largest Israeli party, has not received more than 6% of the vote since 2013. In the 2022 elections, the seven largest vote shares comprising 80% of the vote went to center right, right, or far right parties while Labor had been reduced to 3.7%. The electoral rise of the right wing, which originates in the late 1970s, has been accompanied by decades of neoliberal "reforms" as throughout the western world, leading as always to rising inequality and immiseration of the working class, a particularly revolutionary outcome in a state that was once politically defined by its commitment to economic social democracy.

Bear Goggles is also mistaken as to the relative levels of support for "peace" in Palestine and Israel. Support for the two state solution between Palestinians and Israeli Jews has been closely mirrored through this century. Up to 2017, polling had consistently indicated that between 45-55% of both demographics supported the two state solution but support on both sides has severely declined since then to around 30% with Palestinian opinion slightly lower than Israeli. Most tellingly, support for the two state solution by Israeli Arabs has crashed from its historical levels exceeding 80% to under 50%. Support for some form of a one state solution has grown in all groups but optimism regarding the prospects for any negotiated solution are virtually at all time lows.

Those are the facts, now for my opinion. I do not believe the people who really hold power in Israel have ever been interested in either a two state solution or a one state solution. This is also the opinion of two of the foremost experts on Israel/Palestine from the left, Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein (both Jewish Americans). A federative single state involves unacceptable power sharing with Palestinians. An integrated single state is incompatible with Israel as a Jewish ethnostate. Any viable Palestinian state created through a two state solution would be an eternal security threat to Israel even if Palestinians agreed at the start to Israel's security concessions.

Moreover, the status quo serves the designs of Israeli maximalists almost perfectly. Remember that just as there are Palestinians who feel their people are entitled to possession of the whole country, there are Israelis who believe the Palestinians are entitled to absolutely nothing, that Eretz Israel belongs entirely to the Jewish people and refuse to consider any concessions except as part of a design to eventually acquire the whole country. This was in fact David Ben Gurion's position with respect to proposals to partition the country, a position he explicitly details in a letter to his son in 1937.

One only needs to consult maps from 1967 and today to see how Israeli maximalists have fulfilled Ben Gurion's vision. The multi-generational process of illegal annexation of the territories conquered in 1967 has slowly but surely disintegrated the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, in addition to netting the Golan Heights and Jerusalem entirely for Israel. On each iteration of the so-called "peace process", Israel is able to confront Palestine with a new set of "facts on the ground". Israel refuses to remove the vast majority of its illegal settlements and those few settlements they are willing to remove become currency in land swaps.

In every negotiation that has ever taken place, the Palestinians are the only ones who are required to make concessions on their rights under international law and the principles of self-determination. They must give some of their unquestionable right to return to their homes lost in the wars and illegal annexations. They must give up some of the sovereignty of their prospective state to the security concerns of their conquerors or endure continued stateless existence. They must legitimize not only the illegal annexations since 1967 but the original negation of their right to political self-determination throughout the country in the creation of the Jewish ethnostate of Israel. Whenever the Palestinians balk at the degree to which they are required to unilaterally surrender rights, Israeli partisans brand them as rejectionist as though they were the ones who have been in continuous violation of international law for 56 years and haughtily refuse to rectify their illegalities.

This is the realist appraisal of the situation, the one taken with the understanding that people are fundamentally self-interested, alone or in groups, and that international relations are based on nothing more than power dynamics. If anyone still does not understand how this applies to the Israeli plan for the the Palestinians, they should consult the candid words of the forthright Israeli warmaster Moshe Dayan after Israel won the 1967 war: "Let's say 'we don't have a solution, and you will continue living like dogs, and whoever wants will go, and we'll see how this procedure will work out." Generations later this is obviously still the plan.

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You're pretty selective in your conclusions and doing lots of cherry picking - very Chomsky of you. You're quick to point out the things that Netanyahu has said - what have Abbas and Hamas said about sharing Jerusalem or for that matter Israel's right to exist?

Labor is not the only center/center left/left party in Israel. If the right's control of government is so strong, why have there been 5 elections in 4 years? Why were there massive protest by the left recently? The Israeli left has a strong and consistent peace advocacy program that is politically active. Where is the counterpart in the Palestinian community? When was the last time Palestinians ANYWHERE demonstrated against their government, for recognizing Israel, and/or in favor of Peace?

Your extrapolation of the Taba Summit is equally silly. If only they had six more weeks? Really? All parties, including Palestinians, knew that Barak and Clinton were leaving office. It was the last chance after the failed 2000 camp david summit. Arafat missed an opportunity (again).

Settlement policy is unhelpful. But not nearly as unhelpful as continued violence from Gaza and the West Bank. Israel has removed settlements and would do so as part of any peace settlement (or those people would become citizens of the Palestinian state). When have the Palestinians (including Hamas) renounced violence?

And while we're on the subject of elections, what is going on in the West Bank and Gaza?

Your suggestion that Israel is simply pursuing "Ben Gurion's vision" ignores the fact that the Israel has traded land for peace and in fact (by your own admission) offered the Palestinians 97% of the West Bank and all of Gaza - that is per the Moratinos non-paper you cited.

And to go "there" your claim that only the Palestinians must give up the right to their homes is laughable. Did history start in 1948? In 1948, were their jews in the West Bank and other Arab countries? How were those people treated? Remind me, what is under the Dome of the Rock? I'm pretty sure there's a Jewish temple there. I find the argument least relevant at this point, but if any claim will be decided on "who was there first", the Jews win. So just stop.

What is most striking about the above is that you completely deny the Palestinians agency (or responsibility). To you, they are just victims. You claim to be a realist, but far from it.

A realist position would acknowledge that the Palestinians have no option but to make compromises to achieve their larger goals. Something their leaders never acknowledged, instead suggesting the impossible - that Israel will be destroyed and Palestinians would control from the river to the sea.

A realist position would acknowledge that the Israelis can never make peace with a country governed by terrorists (or that permits terrorism against Israel). NO COUNTRY would be expected to make the compromises you're asking of Israel given the current situation. You're not a realist; your an apologist.

The Palestinians need to remake their society to be a partner for peace. If you really cared about their suffering (which is very real), you'd be advocating for those types of changes. Instead, you present them as victims and Israel as the sole bad actor. You are perpetuating the problem.

And to be clear, Israel and all other countries/people of good will need to do their part to assist the Palestinians. The first part of that is removing Hamas which is a permanent obstacle to peace.

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"Cherry picking" here means pointing out obvious critical flaws in your statements, of which I am certainly guilty. We're about to pick another basket full of cherries, a harvest that would have been larger had you not exercised the better part of valor and ignored several salient points, but I'll repeat those points in the hope that you will be more courageous next time around.

First we'll dispatch the counter-points you did offer.

1. The supposedly large Israeli center/left + left

Your evidence that there is a large Israeli center/left + left is:

A. There have been 5 elections in 4 years

It is true that there have been 5 elections in 4 years but this has nothing to do with a supposedly large center/left + left. It follows entirely from disunity between the center (not the center/left) and the right-wing parties.

Edifying note for Americans: in US politics, "liberal" is ridiculously connoted as "left" thanks in part to how far warped to the right US politics are and in other part to particular historical circumstances in 20th century US party politics. In most of the western world "liberal" when describing a party means center/right (such as the UK's Liberal Democrats or Australia's Liberal Party or Japan's LDP) which is why I included them in the combination of center/right + right + far right from my previous post but Wikipedia identifies the Israeli "liberal" parties as center so I will adopt that identification here. The point is they are not part of the left. The two Israeli "liberal" parties in this four year span, Blue & White and Yesh Atid, both support the two state solution but also support settlement expansion and reject dividing Jerusalem.

The rapidity of elections over the past four years has been produced by fluctuations in the on-again/off-again coalition between the major center party (first Benny Gantz's Blue & White Party, then Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid) and the right-wing bloc led by Netanyahu's Likud. Likud and the center party have been the two largest vote getters in every one of these five elections. In none of these elections did any center/left or left party get more than 13% of the vote, and even that showing required the temporary consolidation of several left parties that before got small single digits.

Here is the breakdown of vote share by alignment in each of the five elections. Note that "Left" includes center/left (Labor) and "Right" includes center/right. One party, Shas, particularly defies clean classification as it combines center/left economic policy with strong right-wing social policy; Shas used to be moderate where Palestine was concerned but in the last decade has taken a sharp right-wing turn. It is included here as a right party given our discussion's orientation toward Palestinian policy. Similarly Ra'am defies easy classification since they are a conservative Islamist party that has joined centrist coalitions against Netanyahu. They are listed here as a center party.

April 2019
Left (Hadash-Ta'al, Labor, URWP, Meretz, Ra'am-Balad) 19.6%
Center (Blue & White, Kulanu) 29.7%
Right (Likud, UTJ, Yisrael Beiteinu, Shas) 42.2%

Sept 2019
Left (Joint List, Labor, Democratic Union) 19.7%
Center (Blue & White) 26.0%
Right (Likud, Shas, UTJ, Yisrael Beiteinu, Yamina) 51.5%

March 2020
Left (Joint List, Emet) 18.5%
Center (Blue & White) 26.6%
Right (Likud, Shas, UTJ, Yisrael Beiteinu, Yamina) 54.1%

March 2021
Left (Labor, Joint List, Meretz) 15.5%
Center (Yesh Atid, Blue & White, Ra'am) 24.3%
Right (Likud, Shas, Yamina, UTJ, Yisrael Beiteinu, Religious Zionist, New Hope) 58.7%

Nov 2022
Left (Labor, Hadash-Ta'al) 7.4%
Center (Yesh Atid, National Unity, Ra'am) 30.9%
Right (Likud, Religious Zionist, Shas, Yamina, UTJ, Yisrael Beiteinu) 52.9%

The total marginalization of the Israeli left should be self-evident from a review of electoral results in the five year span you identified. And again, this in a country that used to be defined by its social democracy. Every PM until 1977 was from Labor. No left party has held the govt since 2001.

B. Netanyahu's authoritarian judicial bill drew massive protests

The wide-spread protests to Netanyahu's profoundly authoritarian judicial "reform" in which the Israeli left naturally participates along with the center are not a left wing movement. They're protests against a sharp slide toward authoritarianism that includes both the center and the left. Even Alan Dershowitz vociferously opposes these "reforms" and he is strongly anti-Palestinian. Palestinian issues are a channel through which supporters of the Netanyahu government have sought to fracture the protests as the body of protesters is widely divided on those issues.

Imagine a Trump II administration announced a policy by which the judiciary would be prevented from ruling on the constitutionality of new laws or ruling against actions taken by members of the executive branch. Do you think the ensuing protests would be limited to American leftists? No, in fact I bet there are posters on this board who voted for Trump in 2016 who would be out on the streets with me.

C. The existence of an Israeli peace advocacy program

Here you identify advocacy for peace between Israel and Palestine as leftism, which is ironic because no left party has won a national election in this century but you still claim Israel has sincerely pursued peace. In reality the desire for peace is not confined to the left, as some right leaning members of this board will attest. And even if we did grant the entire Israeli peace movement to be entirely left-wing, it does not take a gigantic number of people to run peace advocacy programs. We have them here in the US and the organized left barely has a political pulse.

2. Taba

"Six weeks" is not MY "extrapolation" of the Taba Summit. As I said before, that was the assessment of the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, who said "My heart aches because I know we were so close. We need six more weeks to conclude the drafting of the agreement." Erekat was echoed by Israel's negotiator Shlomo Ben-Ami who said "We made progress, substantial progress. We are closer than ever to the possibility of striking a final deal."

On the contrary, I said that regardless of whether the negotiators had been able to reach an agreement, the upcoming Israeli elections would likely have rendered that agreement stillborn. How did you miss these things? Is your reading comprehension this bad or is this due to your own awareness that your arguments are so weak that you feel the need to purposefully misrepresent me in attempts to score fraudulent points?

Nor did the progress made at Taba (and Camp David) die there. The progress was incorporated into the secret negotiations at Geneva over the next two years. The respective reactions by the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships to the terms arranged at Geneva once they were made public is telling: Arafat, Abbas and Qurei gave it qualified support despite significant domestic opposition while Sharon, Peres (Labor) and Barak (Labor) rejected it outright. The outcome signaled the futility of negotiation to the moderate segment of the Palestinian public, though future Palestinian governments nonetheless continued the effort.

And Arafat did not "miss an opportunity" at Camp David. There was no viable proposition there for Arafat to accept but the negotiations over the Clinton Parameters did help pave the way for Taba and Geneva. We could talk more about why the Camp David proposals were not viable from the Palestinian side or you can remain ignorant about it, your choice.

3. "Settlement policy is unhelpful"

Understatement of the century. Like so much else Israel has done and continues to do, the settlements are a blatant violation of international law. Until the Trump administration, even the US government officially asserted that fact. That Palestinians cannot secure even a halt to the EXPANSION of the illegal settlements, much less their removal, says everything about Israel's aims here. If you sincerely wanted peace you would be careful not to take actions that even further violate the rights of your counter-party. It's my understanding that in legal practice, a disputed asset is supposed to be frozen until the dispute is resolved. The settlements themselves are the cause of tremendous violence and are a part of the on-going expropriation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by Israel.

4. The West Bank vs Gaza

Since you asked, what's going is that Hamas won the only free and fair (as attested by international monitors) legislative elections ever held for the united Palestinian government despite attempts by Israel to obstruct their participation through repression. The US and Israel immediately rejected the results and issued sanctions on the Palestinian government. The collaborationist outgoing Fatah government (which sent $50 million in Palestinian reserve funds to the US govt rather than have it available for their own people's elected govt) joined the US and Israel in planning a coup which Hamas pre-empted by seizing total control of Gaza and initiating a split in governance with the West Bank that continues today and which is greatly to Israel's benefit (divide and conquer).

5. "Ben Gurion's vision"

Your belief that a willingness to negotiate over land division means that Israel is not pursing Ben Gurion's visions completely ignores the fact that Ben Gurion was willing to negotiate away 83% of Eretz Israel in 1937 and 38% of the country in 1947 in order to advance his explicit (though privately stated) goal of obtaining the entire country. The people who hold and exercise power in Israel are not stupid or inept. Of course they're willing to TALK about giving up land in negotiations that are carefully managed to restrict terms to those they know are unacceptable to the Palestinians or they would lose the cover this talk provides to people who either through stupidity or dishonesty deny that this is exactly what Israel is doing. Meanwhile the illegal annexation continues year after year, making it more and more difficult for negotiated solution to succeed. Given how successful this program has been, why would they do anything else?

6. History before 1948

How are the Palestinians in any way responsible for what other Arab countries did to their Jewish populations? How are they in any way responsible for the decision by Muslim rulers to build a mosque on the Temple Mount 14 centuries ago?

Why should the existence of a Jewish state in Palestine 2000 years ago give all Jewish people throughout eternity overriding political rights to self determination over the native population in a country that at the time of the liberation of Palestine from the Ottomans was over 90% non-Jewish? Did the Palestinians or even their ancestors have anything to do with the destruction of that Jewish state? Do you really believe the Jewish colonists who came from Europe and North America between 1918 and 1948 had the right to establish an ethnostate over the objections of nearly all of the country's native population?

Do you support returning 62% of the United States to the sovereignty of Native American tribes? Because that's what was demanded of the Palestinians in 1947 under threat of war if they refused. And that's not even the same because nearly all of the descendants of indigenous people of the US still live in this country instead of being colonists from thousands of miles away.

I don't even have to wait for your answer. We both know you damn well wouldn't.

7. Denial of Palestinian agency

Exactly how did I deny the Palestinians agency?

YOU are the one who denies them agency. You claim their leadership is the obstacle to peace as though their will to resist their oppressors through armed struggle was some aberrant quantity that is sourced from the top down. If you knew anything about Palestine, if you regarded Palestinians as human beings rather than as dupes who would cry uncle if Hamas was gone, if you took even the slightest effort to learn what the Palestinians actually want instead of yet again asserting your stupid prejudices, you would know that the mandate for armed struggle against Israeli oppression comes from the people. That's why they elected Hamas to begin with.

Far from relying on the image of being a "rebel fighter" as you ignorantly claimed, Abbas is known as a "pragmatist" who has opposed armed resistance since before he was elected president in 2005. Because of your careless ignorance you don't realize that Abbas is despised by the overwhelming majority of Palestinians who now regard him as a corrupt Quisling. In your ignorance you don't realize that if new presidential elections were held, Abbas would be trounced by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyyeh (despite Hamas' relative unpopularity especially in the West Bank) who would in turn be trounced by Marwan Barghouti, a leader of both the First and Second Intifada, if the latter was released from the Israeli prisons he has spent the last 21 years in.

You didn't even know that Palestinian support for a two state solution has always tracked closely with that of Israeli Jews because you don't actually care at all about what Palestinians think or want. And you talk about agency? What a fool you are.

8. Realism

You say the Palestinians have no option but "compromise" which means unilaterally surrendering rights to Israelis who surrender nothing in return except some land swaps and even there they insist the Palestinians make one-sided sacrifices by accepting the swaps at less than 1:1, at less than equal quality of land, at locations of Israel's choosing, and by allowing Israel to retain control over large portions of the land they surrender in the swap (portions which slice the West Bank into pieces). But you are characteristically wrong, as the Palestinian people constantly prove. They can choose to reject these abusive deals that require them to sacrifice their unquestioned right to return to their homes, to surrender sovereign security rights to the people who have oppressed them, to legitimate all that Israel has done to them from 1947 to the present and instead suffer to maintain their equality of rights as human beings. It may not be the realistic thing to do, it may not be what I would do in their shoes (how could I know?), but it is incredibly courageous and demands respect rather than obloquy.

You say the Israelis can never make peace with a country governed by terrorists (as though Israel wasn't itself a country governed by terrorists with far more blood on their hands than Hamas, or that terrorism wasn't a standard policy among states in general, particularly ours), the exact same rhetoric that used to be applied by rejectionists like you to Northern Ireland and the IRA. "You can't negotiate with terrorists, that only emboldens them. You can't trust deals made with terrorists, they will not keep faith. The terrorists must lay down their arms before negotiation can take place." Turns out the rejectionists were wrong on all counts. "We won't negotiate with terrorists" is the standard rhetorical ploy of rejectionists everywhere who understand that sympathetic or fearful audiences won't challenge either the premise or the conclusion, won't realize that in most armed conflicts each side regards the other as terrorists and yet human history is filled with peace being made between them nonetheless.

Most importantly, you are wrong about which one of us misapprehends the reality of Israel/Palestine. I recognize the demands of both peoples and understand the degree to which they are incompatible. Palestinians want their full right to return; Israelis want to maintain their ethnostate. Palestinians want full sovereignty over their prospective state; Israelis want control over Palestinian security for their own sake. Palestinians want at the very least all of the land beyond the Green Line; Israelis want at the very least to keep nearly everything they have seized from Palestinians after 1967. The difference between us is that I understand that Israeli realists have used the incompatibility of these requirements as diplomatic cover to stonewall any negotiated solution indefinitely while they slowly but steadily achieve their maximum aims.

You pretend it is the Palestinians -- and them only -- who must mend their ways to become partners for peace. Who deprived the other of self-determination to begin with? Who conquered what remained of the other in 1967 and almost immediately began annexing their land in violation of international law? Who has run the world's longest military occupation again in defiance of international law? Which side has killed the other at a rate of 20:1 over the last 15 years before this latest exchange of deaths? Which side has subjected the other to the collective punishment of internment in the world's largest open air prison? Which side arbitrarily imprisons the other's people for crimes like waving a flag or shouting a slogan or having a cousin who organizes activism?

You want to talk about Hamas denying Israel's right to exist? Israel denies Palestine even exists as a state! Why should the Palestinians make concessions like legitimizing Israel's existence or surrendering their right to armed resistance before they even get to the negotiating table. Why are the Israelis not required to renounce the use of violence to suppress the Palestinians before negotiating; to hold their private citizens responsible for murdering Palestinians; to recognize the existence of the state of Palestine; to freeze settlement expansion until peace is made; to lift the collectively punishing blockade of Gaza; to release the thousands of Palestinians, including children, who languish in Israeli prisons, some of whom for no greater crime than exercising freedom of speech and freedom of association.

Your ignorance, arrogance, and unreal one-sidedness is staggering. Next time you're going to spout off on an important topic, please educate yourself first that way neither I or anyone else will have to waste time and effort correcting your factual errors before correcting your logical and ethical ones.

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BearGoggles said:

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An instructor at @Stanford has been suspended for telling Jewish students to take their belongings and stand in a corner.

The instructor said, “This is what Israel does to the Palestinians”

The instructor then asked, “How many people died in the Holocaust?”

When a student…

— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) October 13, 2023

I was waiting to post this until it was confirmed by multiple sources I trust (that are @Stanford)

Just read this. Hopefully widely reported on tomorrow

These are 1930s vibes pic.twitter.com/PbPBbLYSZf

— Shaun Maguire (smc.eth) (@shaunmmaguire) October 13, 2023

https://forward.com/news/564587/stanford-university-jewish-students-instructor-hamas/

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concordtom said:

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Israel is telling people to evacuate so they can bomb their buildings?

In the US, if someone sneaks onto your property to steal your stuff, or light it on fire, are we allowed to shoot them to stop them?

…Even if 1.1M flee, what about all their stuff? And I mean, forget washers and dryers, I'm talking about photo albums, family bibles (equivalent thereof), paintings and other stuff they won't be able to carry with them.

This is absurd!!

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tequila4kapp said:

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concordtom said:

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Israel is telling people to evacuate so they can bomb their buildings?

In the US, if someone sneaks onto your property to steal your stuff, or light it on fire, are we allowed to shoot them to stop them?

…Even if 1.1M flee, what about all their stuff? And I mean, forget washers and dryers, I'm talking about photo albums, family bibles (equivalent thereof), paintings and other stuff they won't be able to carry with them.

This is absurd!!

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Simple solution. Don't elect or otherwise allow yourself to be ruled by terrorists.

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dajo9 said:

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What's happening in Gaza right now is terrible. In 10 years everybody will say they were always against what Israel is doing right now in Gaza. Just like nowadays everybody says they were always against what we did to Iraq. The Venn Diagram of people who really supported both would be impressive.

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concordtom said:

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sycasey said:

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tequila4kapp said:

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concordtom said:

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Israel is telling people to evacuate so they can bomb their buildings?

In the US, if someone sneaks onto your property to steal your stuff, or light it on fire, are we allowed to shoot them to stop them?

…Even if 1.1M flee, what about all their stuff? And I mean, forget washers and dryers, I'm talking about photo albums, family bibles (equivalent thereof), paintings and other stuff they won't be able to carry with them.

This is absurd!!

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Simple solution. Don't elect or otherwise allow yourself to be ruled by terrorists.

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Once the terrorist group is in charge, I'm not sure that is a simple solution anymore. Half of people in Gaza right now were not even born when Hamas first won their one election.

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This!
Tequila's response is a ****ing joke!
Angering! Heartless.
CLUELESS.

Look at those people fleeing, Tequila.

How many brainwashed terrorist "martyrs" inflicted this pain upon their people? 1000? 2000?

I'm not going to pay the price for idiots here in the US who elect MAGA idiocy again. Oh, wait, yes I will - by your logic!

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sycasey said:

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tequila4kapp said:

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concordtom said:

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Israel is telling people to evacuate so they can bomb their buildings?

In the US, if someone sneaks onto your property to steal your stuff, or light it on fire, are we allowed to shoot them to stop them?

…Even if 1.1M flee, what about all their stuff? And I mean, forget washers and dryers, I'm talking about photo albums, family bibles (equivalent thereof), paintings and other stuff they won't be able to carry with them.

This is absurd!!

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Simple solution. Don't elect or otherwise allow yourself to be ruled by terrorists.

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Once the terrorist group is in charge, I'm not sure that is a simple solution anymore. Half of people in Gaza right now were not even born when Hamas first won their one election.

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concordtom said:

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Israel is telling people to evacuate so they can bomb their buildings?

In the US, if someone sneaks onto your property to steal your stuff, or light it on fire, are we allowed to shoot them to stop them?

…Even if 1.1M flee, what about all their stuff? And I mean, forget washers and dryers, I'm talking about photo albums, family bibles (equivalent thereof), paintings and other stuff they won't be able to carry with them.

This is absurd!!

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sycasey said:

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BearGoggles said:

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sycasey said:

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tequila4kapp said:

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concordtom said:

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Israel is telling people to evacuate so they can bomb their buildings?

In the US, if someone sneaks onto your property to steal your stuff, or light it on fire, are we allowed to shoot them to stop them?

…Even if 1.1M flee, what about all their stuff? And I mean, forget washers and dryers, I'm talking about photo albums, family bibles (equivalent thereof), paintings and other stuff they won't be able to carry with them.

This is absurd!!

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Simple solution. Don't elect or otherwise allow yourself to be ruled by terrorists.

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Once the terrorist group is in charge, I'm not sure that is a simple solution anymore. Half of people in Gaza right now were not even born when Hamas first won their one election.

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What is your proposed solution for removing Hamas from power or even causing them to hold a real election? There is only one scenario I can see Hamas losing power and it is about to happen. But I'm open to any ideas you or others present.

Or is your solution to just leave Hamas in place indefinitely? On what basis would any country accept that from its neighbor? The US traveled to the other end of the globe to chase Al Queda.

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The US and its aggressive military response to Al Qaeda was a mistake and an unwinnable mission. Killing Osama Bin Laden was possible (and justified). Eliminating Al Qaeda was not, because they are a large, decentralized terrorist organization and killing one leader just means a few more pop up in different places, and the increasing military commitment just leads to more civilian deaths and more fomented discontent in the region (therefore more ripe recruiting targets).

Hamas is similar. The more force you apply, the more popularity they gain among the civilian population caught in the crossfire. So while it may sound trite, the best way to fight them is to defend your own borders and within them actually live up to your higher values. That means sticking to agreements, negotiating in good faith with non-terrorist Palestinian leaders, supporting freedom and liberal democracy, etc. IMO Israel has fallen away from these values during the Netanyahu era and needs to return to them.

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BearGoggles said:

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concordtom said:

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Israel is telling people to evacuate so they can bomb their buildings?

In the US, if someone sneaks onto your property to steal your stuff, or light it on fire, are we allowed to shoot them to stop them?

…Even if 1.1M flee, what about all their stuff? And I mean, forget washers and dryers, I'm talking about photo albums, family bibles (equivalent thereof), paintings and other stuff they won't be able to carry with them.

This is absurd!!

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In the US, if someone sneaks onto your property, kidnaps and kills members of your family (or tries to), are you allowed to shoot and kill them? Actually, the answer is yes, as it is anywhere in the world.

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