With respect, as a person who believes that both sides are guilty of this conflict, I disagree. It is perfectly possible to be disgusted by the actions of the IDF as it is by the actions of Islamic terrorists. It is also perfectly possible to understand that both sides have what they consider to be justifiable reasons for their actions. The Palestinians and Israelis have been chipping away at each other for a very long time. This will not end until BOTH sides accept that the other has a right to live in peace within agreed secure boundaries. That means that Israel must stop their incursions into what is deemed Palestinian territory and that Palestinians have to stop the suicide bombing and terrorist attacks and accept that Israel isn’t going to disappear. This has nothing whatsoever to do with supporting Israel. I know plenty of neutrals who are horrified at their disproportionate response to 7th October and who want to see Netanyahu and his ultra right wing government removed. They, and I, also want to see the extremist faction of Hamas removed. You are welcome to pick a side and believe that you are right but please don’t put words into other people’s mouths are pretend that they support Israel’s actions. The reality of the situation is that without the attack by Hamas on 7th October we would not be looking at a destroyed Gaza today. That is absolutely not condoning some Israelis actions against Palestinian people and the Israeli ignoring of UN directives. In another forum I am called an antisemite because I have been critical of Netanyahu and the IDF. Here I get labelled as Islamophobic because I criticise Islamic terrorists. It does nobody any favours to throw lazy labels around over a very complex and inflammatory situation that has defied attempts to find a peaceful solution for millennia. And yes I agree, there are not two sides to genocide but to use another unhelpful but true statement, if you stir up a hornets nest, expect to be stung.
The Israeli response has been disproportionate but they were never going to let the attack of 7th October go unpunished. Has gave those who want the Palestinians gone a perfect excuse to do exactly what is happening at the moment.
Being neutral and wanting both sides to stop the violence is not supporting Israel. Please stop with this nonsense.
With respect, I find it a false claim of complexity to make out that the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts are simply the continuation of the religious conflicts over "the holy land." This argument can be used with respect to the arguments of the Abrahamic faiths over Jerusalem in present day, but making out that the current state of Israel and Palestine is a religious war is used as a way to hand-wave the conflict as "too complex" for peace.
The claims to Israel as a right of return for Jewish people relies on Biblical texts and thus invokes millennia-old religious lore and ethnoreligious claims to land (though not to indigenous heritage if we're using Biblical texts as proof - those say the Israelites won the land in conquest over the native peoples like the Philistines). But from there the claim it's a millennia old conflict fall apart.
This is no more a complex and millennia-old conflict than England claiming ownership over France. If the royal family pitched up in Normandy claiming right to the lands, and went around removing the population, writing legislation depriving them of equal rights, and enacting violence while depriving them of any military response or right to reprisal under international law, no one would be pulling out the "well actually, this is quite a complex and ancient claim..." lines.
This is a modern conflict of colonisation that
draws its claim by invoking an ancient conflict. That does not make it the ancient conflict.
This dude called Trump a race baiting, xenophobic bigot, then ended up crawling up Trump's derriere. Why does the U.S. media give this guy oxygen. Why do they always bring up Hiroshima and Nagasaki? It is a widely held view now that the atomic bomb dropping in Japan was overkill and unecessary, but apparently U.S. military officials are now "full of crap." Somebody needs their Geritol.
www.theguardian.com
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