zazen

We've already gone over what these offers entailed. They were offered 'less than a state' or Israel's definition which doesn't meet the international standard. Watch just 2 min of this video from 16-18 minute - she was part of the peace negotiations during the Oslo accords. Yitzhak Rabin - ''He also described his vision of a Palestinian “entity” he described as “less than a state.” https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pm-rabin-speech-to-knesset-on-ratification-of-oslo-peace-accords#google_vignette

No one says Israel can't defend itself - its how it defends itself. Defence has become a label to cover other motives such as ethnic cleansing and land grabbing. Establishing deterrence capacity isn't defence either - which is literally the state quo of Israeli military strategy - to be disproportionate and scare / terrorise any hostilities into submission. Look up Dahiya doctrine. Israel thinks it's safer going down this route when it is probably the opposite. Israeli's will only have true safety once the Palestinians are given the dignity of a state on what was once their land and not 'less than a state' demilitarised and with Israeli security within it. Or live under a democratic state with equal rights which Israel will never allow because the Palestinians will out number the Israeli Jews. A poll shared by Israels UN representative showing majority in Israel agree with ‘voluntary’ migration of Gaza residents to other countries ie ethnic cleansing. Whilst we’re talking of UN: Israel don’t like journalists or investigation because they know the truth is ugly for them.

Someone holding the gun with a finger on the trigger is still oppressive - whether the trigger is pulled or not. Resisting that oppression isn’t necessarily a disorder though it can be resisted in disorderly ways - seeking justice can be done unjustly. The boycott movement which is a peaceful form of protest helped South Africa end its apartheid - the BDS movement against Israel is thwarted and stopped by legislation and laws. So when peaceful forms of protest are no longer available they are left with the un-peaceful forms of it - they seek life through death. From the Israeli perspective security controls and defence the way Israel defines it isn’t seen as oppressive but it is to the outside world. A argument can be made that a certain group runs a society better than another - again in the case of South Africa which is now ruining its own nation due to corruption etc I’ve heard a similar case been made for Palestinians that live better lives under Israeli leadership. If one group is less developed it’s not the right of another to ‘spread development’ to them in unjust ways by stripping them of their rights and dignity. If they mess things up or fight each other that’s their right within their society - we can’t rob a society of its growth. People complain about Islam being spread by the sword in the past but remain silent when the US spread democracy by the gun - something being critiqued only now once they feel the repercussions of it via extremism, refugee crises and loss of credibility on the world stage. Should the US be stripped of its rights and sovereignty because of its bad behaviour in the world? A child is governed by an adult but a society is not to be governed by another - and even then modern parenting tells us children are to be treated with dignity or else they rebel.

@Lila9 Very sad indeed. What’s caused them to be this radical? 2 million Gazans out of 2 billion Muslims is 0.1% of the Muslim population. If Jew hating and explicit incitement of killing was a uniquely Muslim thing we’d see a lot more of it but it’s unique to Gaza because of the situation their in. It’s easy to indoctrinate kids when their childhood is taken from them in various form. Things like toys, musical instruments, chocolates and diapers have been banned at times by Israel to name a few things. If people claim the current destruction and death in Gaza is Hamas’s fault and not Israel’s, can people also claim that Palestinian radicalisation is partially the fault of Israel imposing conditions on them that make it easy to radicalise in?

I can understand that it can take a dispassionate look at reality to come up with the most compassionate actions that don’t always seem compassionate on the surface. Most sane people either side agree to want peace and prosperity - I think they differ on the best method to getting there (war vs ceasefire for example) and how it will manifest (a Palestinian state militarised vs de-militarised or Palestinian areas occupied by some Israeli presence / security apparatus). Part of integrating is elevating. Maybe in the case of war this means not losing the dynamic of war but elevating the nature of it to a non physical domain. Instead of physical war which spills blood we elevate it to a war of idea’s spilt onto the table of discussion - though I do realise for that to take place there first needs to be a certain amount of peace that allows the fight or flight response to not be present blunting either sides ability to reason with eachother. This seems to be the reasoning behind a ceasefire beyond the simply instinctive response to stop bloodshed and which people can easily virtue signal with. “This war is not going to take away any underlying causes, only a bona fide peace treaty can do that. This war is about removing Hamas and Gaza's military capabilities. I assume that after the war Israel will retain some security control like it has in the West Bank.” People will argue that whatever designates security control is part of the underlying cause that keeps the cycle going. That is the current status quo which you rightly pointed needs changing but which there isn’t a clear objective solution to except remove Hamas and continue as is until Hamas 2.0 props up or a West Bank style security presence which also gets resistance and condemnation for the settler expansion IDF are complicit in by their lack of prosecution. Having laws aren’t enough but rule of law and implementation of it is needed also. That keeps the situation as an occupied / occupier dynamic which Israel will deny or say it isn’t an accurate label of the situation because they know what comes from that isn’t in their favour legally / morally. If Palestinians aren’t given a state in the full sense and Israel remain in some way then it needs to be called for what it is which is occupation or a one state within which different districts with different laws exist for different peoples akin to apartheid.

I can understand that it can take a dispassionate look at reality to come up with the most compassionate actions that don’t seemingly look compassionate. Most sane people either side agree to want peace and prosperity - I think they differ on the best method to getting there (war vs ceasefire for example) and how it will manifest (a Palestinian state militarised vs de-militarised for example or occupied by some Israeli presence / security apparatus). Part of integrating is elevating. Maybe in the case of war this means not losing the dynamic of war but elevating the nature of it to a non physical domain. Instead of physical war which spills blood we elevate it to a war of idea’s spilt onto the table of discussion - though I do realise for that to take place there first needs to be a certain amount of peace that allows the fight or flight response to not be present blunting either sides ability to reason with eachother. This seems to be the reasoning behind a ceasefire beyond the simply instinctive response to stop bloodshed and which people can easily virtue signal with. “This war is not going to take away any underlying causes, only a bona fide peace treaty can do that. This war is about removing Hamas and Gaza's military capabilities. I assume that after the war Israel will retain some security control like it has in the West Bank.” People will argue that whatever designates security control is part of the underlying cause that keeps the cycle going. That is the current status quo which you rightly pointed needs changing but which there isn’t a clear objective solution to except remove Hamas and continue as is until Hamas 2.0 props up or a West Bank style security presence which also gets resistance and condemnation for the settler expansion IDF are complicit in by their lack of prosecution. Having laws aren’t enough but rule of law and implementation of it is needed also. That keeps the situation as an occupied / occupier dynamic which Israel will deny or say it isn’t an accurate label of the situation because they know what comes from that isn’t in their favour legally / morally. If Palestinians aren’t given a state in the full sense and Israel remain in some way then it needs to be called for what it is which is occupation or a one state within which different districts with different laws exist for different peoples akin to apartheid.

True. As societies develop and evolve so do the standards of right and wrong and things that used to be or are currently seen as popular may not be in the future. Though popular perspectives also can’t be dismissed outright - like how we in modern times do more easily to religion and tradition which have truths that can become distorted. It’s the distortions we detest. Partial truths are often hijacked by dirty distortions of that truth. For example the Black Lives Matter movement - massive protests happened signalling a certain truth that resonated with the masses - one being that police can act out brutally and blacks are over represented in these statistics. Like a dirty bomb, the dirty distortion of that truth is that this is intently done by white people leading to a simplistic ‘white man bad’ meme. Then the cause is hijacked by bad agents wishing to sneak in their ideologies - in the BLM case anarchist sentiments of defunding the police.

@Lila9 @Vrubel Silly caption from Jake shield lol good that a Israeli media outlet shared that. It doesn’t detract from the interview shedding light and providing some nuance on who Hamas are that’s all - maybe whilst there are cruel people among them there are also normal ones who joined because they saw no other way out of their situation including a lot more normal people who will probably join now after Israel’s atrocities who if or when they come up again in a few years it will be easy to reflexively refer to them as savage animals. Sharing a different view point isn’t establishing a moral high ground - it’s not like people are going around saying their moral the way Israel claims to be the most moral army. It’s just understanding the situation a bit better rather than the base assumption and reflexive labeling of ‘virus’ or ‘savage’ which dehumanises - though not done with ill intent or in a vacuum either - dehumanisation shuts down neural pathways to understanding, which blinds us to their cause, which blinds us to the root of the issue and the eventual solution. As Vrubel mentioned adding an Islamist ideaology to these kind of conditions is a recipe for repeated October 7’s. It’s much harder to destroy the ideology than it is to improve / change the conditions which breed that extremist kind of ideology - though changing the conditions by coming to a peace agreement isn’t easy either. But with every bomb Israel thinks gets rid of Hamas it likely only reinforces revenge within their psyche and a victimhood mentality that brings a level of entitlement with it that will demand more concessions in a future peace deal that Israel will be too stubborn to accept - the status quo and cycle continues. You teach them how you want to be treated - and when or if they (Hamas 2.0 or a future Palestinian state) organise in the future Israel better hope they don’t want to seek revenge for how its treated them in the present. Vrubel - you mentioned the way Hamas / Gazans act makes the world lose sympathy for them but to me (maybe I’m echo chambered) it seems the opposite - if anything the Palestinian cause has garnered more sympathy worldwide than ever before by looking at the global protests, social media and condemnation for Israel’s actions from nations and global organisations. Happy holidays to all 🎄

What about the similar phrase used in the likud party charter? Same way people thought the Black Lives Matter slogan was a call for genociding white people - though some extremists were amongst that movement / organisation for sure. What could be heartwarming is that Christians and functioning churches exist in Gaza - something the Mayor of Jerusalem (not a random person) denied because it goes against the narrative that Hamas / Gazans are anti-semite savages. For the mayor of such a holy city to lie and deny facts that lead to dehumanisation that causes such unholy crimes upon the holy land isn’t heartwarming however - especially during Christmas - yet the evangelical Zionists will still cheer on ironically. Maybe also this: Could be that hostages were taken mostly as a bargaining chip in exchange for their women and children detained without due course for rock throwing. And as a leverage as any other form of protest or leverage are shut down by Israel including the BDS movement which South Africans used to successfully free themselves. As the saying goes when all means of peaceful protest are shut down the violent means become the last - though Israel could say that when peaceful means of self defence don’t work they must resort to violent means of defence.

Israel’s situation is almost like its own thing. People automatically jump to the most obvious definition of the word and where it originated in South Africa. But if the situation is close enough to fit the definition for many organisations and prominent people to use it then surely it must have some truth. Here’s a amnesty article / report on it which can be downloaded in any language: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/israel-palestinians-are-living-under-system-apartheid-major-new-report Former Israeli peace negotiator and advisor to former PM Daniel Levy even uses the word in the video above that Raze shared.

Very interesting documentary. All organisations will try to influence but this is very sophisticated and goes deep behind the scenes. Makes you wonder the motives and dirtiness of politics/politicians. A relevant clip showing the puppet masters blatantly in action from yesterdays UN resolution: Freudian slip through a gesture? Her good conscience wasn’t good for vested interests.

True - militaristic jihad and martyrdom aren't life goals of Muslims lol they do however help frame struggle and suffering to make them more bearable similar to how self help / law of attraction / stoicism re-frames life's hardships as a buffer against them. Of course these can be taken to extreme degrees - majority of Muslims criticise these extreme manifestations yet ignorance will still blanket label 2 billion people. If most people mingled with and broke bread with different people including 'stage red' 'developing people' they'd realise beyond the superficial differences we are mostly the same with the same encoded desires and drives that biology chains us down to. Having friends from these places and been to them myself I can attest to that.

True, what differentiates this from 9/11 is that the perpetrators of the attack are on the border and not far away in the case of US / Afghanistan and the Israeli's are hypersensitive to threat due to their past traumatic history. But hypersensitivity may get the best of them - it informs their military strategy and reaction (Dahiya doctrine) and establishing a deterrence capacity through show of force. Their hypersensitivity makes them insensitive to the suffering of others and international law - both of which only causes more suffering (as a response) and global condemnation + rise in anti-Semitism. The general shift of the society to the right and the rhetoric and attitude even before October 7th is telling. It's hard to tell between what is a reaction to October 7th or what is a revelation of their true character and feelings towards Palestinians. We are told that Palestinians or the Muslim populations in general have something wrong within their own society (a virus as Nivschs says) making them more violent - yet it's the US and Israel who insist upon this war rather than a ceasefire. The Arab nations have mostly tried to de-escalate except Yemen who is the most active in retaliating and causing economic pain.

@Danioover9000 As Lina said - look forward to your comments after a needed break - this thread isn’t going anywhere haha Interesting read on the body language. Elite level diplomats are definitely trained - Rishi Sunak masterfully dodges and evades questions for example. I heard a professor say that as with 9/11 it’s expected for people to be outraged speaking emotionally but that died down within a month - with this the dehumanising language has persisted till today and it’s not random members of society but prominent members of Israeli society ie Politicans or leadership roles.

The problem with power as is often said is that power corrupts - but it also seems to attract the corruptible. Certain systems allow power to be checked better than others. Here's a interesting critique of Democracy though tilting a bit conspiratorial in the end but still some good insights: Example of external or internal lobby influence - old clip of Netenyah: In the domain of political or social organizations, the challenge is when the bureaucracy and elites within them prioritize self-preservation when the issues they were established to address become rare or negligible. Once their primary objectives are mostly achieved they rarely scale down. The survival instinct of the organization, coupled with the need to sustain a chain of salaries and relationships, distorts its incentive structure. What was once a noble (social cause) or neutral (political) endeavor becomes corrupted, as the motive extends beyond the original social or political cause to also safeguard the jobs of those benefiting from these causes. Introducing a profit motive to a political or social cause skews the incentive structures.

The fact of Christian existence goes against the narrative of Hamas being Islamists most likely - so it must be denied Christians or functioning Churches reside there.

As others mentioned - great video. Not sure what happened with @Danioover9000 and others but cool heads, peace and love prevail - if not in the Middle East at least on this forum 🙏🏻

@Danioover9000 Good John Mearshimer share - seems to be a very reasonable objective voice. To add to Nabds video of Bibi invoking Almalek again - the same time three hostages were sadly killed waiving white flags and shirtless just shows how the IDF operates. What of Palestinian civilians they come across wearing clothes (can’t see if their armed) and not waiving a flag..bad optics.

I agree both sides need to change no doubt. But putting them in certain conditions will change them for the worse rather than the better. During this whole time ‘waiting’ for them to change and build themselves under certain conditions they’re seeing what could be their future state being eaten away at rapid pace. And this isn’t just centrist liberal minded settlers but far right orthodox ones who are now armed and will be impossible to re-settle. This segment of the Israeli population will also make up a third of the population (due to higher birth rate) only shifting Israel more right in the years to come whilst the US population (youth) are shifting their support away from Israel at the same time - the two are diverging in opposite direction. Are we expecting them to develop to stage green or something before giving them a state - by then it would be full of settlers nullifying the whole thing. It’s more on the abuser to win the trust of the one he’s abusing - can we expect the person being abused to not resist and ‘develop’ to a point to stop being abused or is it the inalienable right of the abused to stop the abuse first? The same logic that says ‘when we are attacked (October 7th) we retaliate in self defense and don’t look to assess the morality or the casualties of it’ can be applied to the Palestinians. October 7th will be etched in the mind of Israelis as a terrifying day, but 7 terrifying and dehumanising decades are etched in the mind of Palestinians - not just a day but the date x decades. And sure, for Jews they have been unjustly prosecuted in the worst of ways for hundreds of years and deserve a safe place and state of their own - just not at the expense of others, especially not the ones who didn’t inflict that suffering on them. Palestinians shouldn’t be paying the blood price for the sins of others who persecuted the Jews. Israel has adopted a strategy of defense which commits atrocities to those that offered to protect them from atrocities. They mine their past traumatic history and in doing so and living amongst that dark past through victimhood re-traumatise others in the present day. Israel is obsessed with its right to self defence but doesn’t give those same rights of self defence to the very people they occupy and oppress. You may not frame the situation as Israel being the abuser but all relevant bodies and states of the world refer to it as such - human rights groups and even states that are allies with Israel acknowledge occupation and apartheid - abuses to the spirit and dignity of man.

Sure it may be. So if one culture is less developed that means another more developed culture has the right to displace, mistreat and govern them? That kind of logic justifies colonialism, apartheid and occupation. The problem with being in a echo chamber of Zionist ideology that dehumanizes Palestinians and normalizes oppression is that Zionist supporters can easily say things that make Israel look bad on the world stage, because it becomes the norm to look at things that way. This also goes for fundamental Islam or any ideology for that matter. October 7 was just a echo of the violence Israel has been doing to Palestinians for decades - and it's foolish to get angry at a echo for talking back. Israel needs to look at how it talks, walks and breathes - how it exists in its current form that puts it in a tricky situation and condemned globally.

The thinking seems to be that Palestinians, in particular Gazans can only be offered a state once they show they are 'developed' enough or 'behave' good enough like Pavlovs dog to be given one. So what did the Palestinians in the West Bank who 'behaved' better and 'developed' relatively more than their Gazan counterparts get? Were they rewarded even the most fundamental rights or the beginnings of any sovereignty for their good behaviour? Israel had its chance to show them they mean peace and good faith - but they failed. Instead they got settlement expansion and settler violence increasing to such degrees that any sovereignty becomes almost impossible. So why would Gazan's think they would get something by behaving and developing if on the contrary when they look over to the West Bank they see a clear indication that 'behaving and developing' leads to nothing except the opposite. In fact, Bibi's view was that the existence of Hamas works in their favour by creating a divide among Palestinians and de-legitimising the Palestinian cause by them being more extreme - and that's exactly how its been used. The conditions Palestinians are put under is extreme which causes them to radicalise, then when they radicalise the excuse is used that they are too radical to be given a state.

The majority of people who hear about the 'countless offers' have no clue what the parameters of the offer are. All they hear is that the Palestinians have rejected yet another “peace” initiative by Israel which gets spun as them being unpeaceful greedy savages. This is why the discourse always focuses on the number of offers - because it distracts from their content and unviability/unfairness. Lets look at why they refused the proposals by looking at the most commonly claimed 'generous offer' in 2000 being the Camp David one from Ehud Barack. 1. Barak offered the Palestinians 96% of Israel’s definition of the West Bank, meaning they did not include any of the areas already under Israeli control, such as settlements, the Dead Sea, and large parts of the Jordan Valley. This meant that Barak effectively annexed 10% of the West Bank to Israel, with an additional 8-12% remaining under “temporary” Israeli control for a period of time. In return for this annexation, Palestinians would be offered 1% of desert land near the Gaza Strip. Thus, Palestinians would need to give up 10% of the most fertile land in the West Bank, in exchange for 1% of desert land. Not to mention that if the past record is any indicator, the additional 8-12% under “temporary” Israeli control would remain so forever. 2. Israel demanded permanent control of Palestinian airspace, three permanent military installations manned by Israeli troops in the West Bank, Israeli presence at Palestinian border crossings, and special “security arrangements” along the borders with Jordan which effectively annexed additional land. 3. Israel would be allowed to invade at any point in cases of “emergency”. As you can imagine, what constituted an emergency was left incredibly vague and up to interpretation. The Palestinian state would be demilitarized, and the Palestinian government would not be able to enter into alliances without Israeli permission. 4. Regarding Jerusalem, Israel refused any form of Palestinian sovereignty over the majority of the city, including many Palestinian neighbourhoods. 5. Regarding right of return, it offered a very limited return for a very limited number of refugees over a very long period of time. This “generous offer” amounted to turning the West Bank into non-unified districts, crisscrossed by a network of settlements, roads and Israeli areas. Even the supposed “capital” of the Palestinian state would mostly be under Israeli control, with stipulations and conditions that stripped any real sovereignty from any area of the supposed Palestinian “state”. Not even the sky above Palestinian heads would be under their control, nor the water under their feet, as Israel still demanded access to water resources under the West Bank. Palestinian aspirations cannot be allowed to exceed the ceiling of Israel's entitlements. Israel is not really conceding anything through these offers; ending its occupation and stopping its settlement activities is merely following international law. It is not a sacrifice - it should be the default position. @lina @Nabd Good way of putting it.

At what point do the extreme edge cases become the normalised viewpoint reflecting the politics and society of a country? From John Mearsheimers latest substack article: ''Israeli leaders talk about Palestinians and what they would like to do in Gaza in shocking terms, especially when you consider that some of these leaders also talk incessantly about the horrors of the Holocaust. Indeed, their rhetoric has led Omar Bartov, a prominent Israeli-born scholar of the Holocaust, to conclude that Israel has “genocidal intent.” Other scholars in Holocaust and genocide studies have offered a similar warning. To be more specific, it is commonplace for Israeli leaders to refer to Palestinians as “human animals, ”human beasts,” and “horrible inhuman animals.” And as Israeli President Isaac Herzog makes clear, those leaders are referring to all Palestinians, not just Hamas: In his words, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” Unsurprisingly, as the New York Times reports, it is part of normal Israeli discourse to call for Gaza to be “flattened,” “erased,” or “destroyed.” One retired IDF general, who proclaimed that “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist,” also makes the case that “severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer.” Going even further, a minister in the Israeli government suggested dropping a nuclear weapon on Gaza. These statements are not being made by isolated extremists, but by senior members of Israel’s government. Of course, there is also much talk of ethnically cleansing Gaza (and the West Bank), in effect, producing another Nakba. To quote Israel’s Agriculture Minister, “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.” Perhaps the most shocking evidence of the depths to which Israeli society has sunk is a video of very young children singing a blood-curdling song celebrating Israel’s destruction of Gaza: “Within a year we will annihilate everyone, and then we will return to plow our fields.”

Unreasonable

Mexicans aren't trying to displace Americans and establish their own state with biased laws. That's stretching the definition of the word. Here’s a linked index of discriminatory laws from the democracy known as Israel - https://www.adalah.org/en/law/index Partial truths are a dangerous thing. Sure, not all the Palestinians in the Nakba (a term legislatively banned in Israel) were massacred or directly terrorised by the Haganah (main paramilitary organization which became the core of the IDF) but a great enough proportion were that rumours spread and Palestinians warned their communities leading them to leave - it was the catalyst. Why else would people who had been there generations get up and leave - you think they voluntarily just left and had a change of heart deciding their more beach people preferring Gaza rather than mountainous people in land. Forcibly removed doesn't mean gunpoint evacuation it can be coerced by atrocities and terrorising. The Jewish population in Mandatory Palestine was less than a third of which most arrived between 1924-1939 - meaning that majority of those advocating for partition had been living there for at most 20 years. Yet, the UN partition plan allocated approximately 56% of the land of Mandatory Palestine to the Jewish state. Why were Palestinians expected to agree to cede the majority of their land to a minority of recently arrived settlers? The rejection of such an unfair proposal is often portrayed as irrational or hateful, but why should it be seen as such? Israel thinks it holds all the blood stained cards, but the world has voted and sided with the truth except a few. What were once deemed terrorists such as Mat Turner of the slave revolt or Mandela of South Africa are now lauded as heroes of emancipation. Resistance movements are built on the blood of martyrs which Israel ensures a continual supply of. Their called grassroots movements for a reason - you can't get rid of them unless you poison the soil ie genocide, expulsion or brutal subjugation. Resistance will never stop unless the soil is destroyed because its the soil (people) that keeps the grass (resistance) growing. If Israel or any countries safety requires the occupation, imprisonment and oppression of a people, you don't have safety and never will. Everything Israel obtains through oppression is inherently violent and must be upheld through violence - that violence will be justified through ideas of superiority and the idea that those you oppress must be more violent and oppressive than you.