this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 158 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

What Israel is doing to Palestine today is exactly what America did and is doing to their indigenous population. Why do you think they're allies?

[–] [email protected] 127 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Why does anyone think Israel was there first??? Lmfao. Their own Torah says otherwise.

"God gave this to us" isn't a legitimate argument.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i think most people don't know the history and just figure it's a normal country we're allied with for the normal sort of reasons

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Even less when they wrote it themselves.

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I mean, the US sucks, but they don't just support settler colonial states for its own sake. They support Israel because it's strategically useful to have a US friendly state in the middle east that's small enough that they will basically do what we say (unlike Saudi Arabia). Also a significant portion of Republicans in congress think that Israel/Palestine being controlled by Jews is a necessary precondition for the Rapture. The US is more indifferent to the genocide of the Palestinians than anything, which imo is just as bad, but it's important to look at the material causes for things instead of just saying "these two countries have similar ideologies so they'll be allies".

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

All of that is true AND they have an ideological solidarity. Think of it like this: If there was a genuine landback movement and the Illegal Occupation of Palestine was seen as what it is, then people are going to start looking at the Americas and noticing similarities. For a country that was built on the same settler colonial genocide, claims to be democratic when it's clear they're not, and subjugation of minorities. Oops.

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[–] [email protected] 103 points 1 year ago (11 children)

What matters isn't who came first. What matters is that no one has the right to expel a human from a land they're living in. That is the core of the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

I am pro Palestine, but have no issue with the increase of Jewish migrations in the 19th century. The problem is not Jewish migration. It is the fact that Israel expelled Palestinians from their homes, murdered them, suffocated them, and made their lives miserable.

And this is the same thing that was done to the native people of the modern day Americas.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

This is an honest question, is Wikipedia just wrong on that? Because there they write that Palestine also expelled all Jews and that they moved to Israel for that reason (because they weren't allowed in Palestine). And also they write that Hamas specifically want all Jews to be gone.

If Wikipedia is wrong, where do you get your information from?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Please feel free to ask any questions! I am happy to answer them all

Can you please cite which part of Wikipedia is saying this?

"Palestine" and "Israel" are two names for the same region, so it doesn't make sense to be expelled from one into the other. I think there must be a misunderstanding here.

I bet this is referring to certain Arab States expelling Jews during the creation of Israel and the British occupation of Palestine, as a retaliation (which was horrible and stupid and I fully condemn it). But keep in mind this is well into the conflict, when Zionists and British occupation were already well into committing heinous acts and massacres, and that this is Arab States who sympathized with Palestine, not Palestine itself.

What I was referring to was treatment of Jews in Palestine before the Zionist project.

As for Hamas' anti-semitism, I think some background information is important here.

When it was founded, Hamas was not a popular group by any means. Popular Palestinian resistance groups at the time were socialist and progressive, such as the PFLP and other members of the PLO. Hamas was founded as a Muslim brotherhood affiliate, and its charter had many anti Semitic references.

Israel saw this as a huge opportunity, and it propped up Hamas while fighting off other groups. Fast forward to the 2000's, every Palestinian resistance group was left defeated, and Hamas was left as the only group left fighting. Palestinians had no choice but to support Hamas.

This was a major change for Hamas. It saw hoardes of Palestinians join its ranks, and most were not ideologically aligned with them. There are even Christians fighting among its ranks. This caused an ideological shift within Hamas. It was even reflected in its new charter in 2017, which dropped anti-semitic rhetoric and said it is fighting against Israel, not because of its religion, but because of the Zionist occupation. You can find this charter translated online easily.

Since then, many Hamas officials reiterated their position that they are not fighting to expel Jews, but against Zionist occupation.

Palestinians today see Hamas as a vehicle for their liberation, and not as an ideological alignment. But even then, most of the people in Hamas do not hold anti Semitic opinions anymore, and we should keep in mind this major shift throughout its history.

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[–] [email protected] 95 points 1 year ago (5 children)

And the Israelites weren't the first either, there's a few books of the Bible about who exactly they pushed out.

[–] [email protected] 94 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This might surprise you but the bible isn't 100% accurate.

Jokes aside: scholars think that the Israelites were a group of Canaanites who lived as "outcasts" in the hinterlands and seized the cities after the bronze age collapse.

So Israelites came when the Canaanites collapsed but the causality is different than depicted in the bible. Also they weren't that foreign in the first place.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Pushed out? You mean committed mass genocide.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (24 children)

Where is a good place to start to learn about this conflict. I have no idea who is in the right here.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I understand and appreciate you trying to learn. I think one of the issues why nobody can really point you to a good resource is that there are no 100% neutral resources that document "the conflict". Even just where/when you start something like a timeline can be biased.

Keeping all that in mind I have found a video that gives a short simplified summary of the base history.

https://youtu.be/1wo2TLlMhiw?si=_ANEgker8DzQZQxR

I liked it (might be part of my bias since I like crash course). But I'm sure there are mistakes in there and as above some details/framing might just be due to biases of the author's/presenters etc.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah definitely a problem finding truly unbiased information. I'm paranoid my whole world view is shaped by western rule even though there is more free speech here than anywhere else.. or is that idea also propaganda lol

I will give that a watch when I have some time later thank you.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

If you want a book, 100 Years War on Palestine does an excellent job going over everything up to 2017.

Very in-depth, full picture of everything that's happened from 1917 (what just about everyone considers to be the beginning of the modern conflict), including errors and crimes committed by both sides. The author is Palestinian and obviously not neutral, but is far from extremist, and comes at things with a historical/academic rigor.

There are many other books/resources of course, but at least as far as getting a decent idea of what actually happened thus far, it's a very good history of the conflict, major players and the geopolitics associated.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Jews weren't there first. The Canaanites were there first.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Of which the Israelites are believed to have branched out from/are descended from

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Zionists are basing their irridentism on the Torah, and from what I've read, the Canaanites existed in the area before Abraham was given the land as a promised land.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Something tells me that the Torah isn't exactly a reliable historical source.

The Cannanite - Israelite connection is suggested by modern achaelogical information which I take as a little more reliable.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

If we use that as precedent then we should let them fight with a winner takes all

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