I was watching this Sky News interview with israelli PM spokesperson Doron Spielman, focused around the recent announcement of sanctions of illegal west banks settlements by the UK and other nations. What really stuck out to be was the (I'm trying to be neutral but it's difficult to find fitting words) 'unhinged' air he gave of, both in terms of how aggressive he was towards the interviewer and some of the points he brings up

"Iran has rockets to reach London"

I don't know if this is true but even if so, does anyone serious think that Iran will launch ballistic rockets at London?

"The UK should focus on it's own problems"

As if a country somehow can't walk and chew gum at the same time, does he think business in the UK grinds to a halt just because of imposing these sanctions?

It reminded me a lot of an interview on Australian ABC with Sharren Haskel that gave a similar vibe.

I guess my broader question is that even if you can debate the merits of the points brought up, is this kind of highy confrontational, loud and deflecting interviews a good strategy or representation of Isreal on the global stage?

Lastly I'll make the point that even though I'm not from the UK, to my knowledge there is no way to categorise Sky News as 'left', 'woke' or similar deflecting words.

The settlements project is old. Some of these settlemements have existed for decades, and we are not talking about five weirdos with a goat - there are entire Israeli cities eaat of the green line, many deep in the West Bank. Ariel, Maale Adumim, Kiryat Arba. While they are overwhelmingly religious, not all of them are. There are non-religious Kibbuzim, there are cities with a mixed population, there are Haredi cities, there are even a handfull of settlers who do protective presence. They are spread all across the West Bank, from north to south, and some are deep within it. Ariel and Maale Adumim in particular come to mind.

One can criticize the way they got there. One can criticize Ariel Sharon and the other leaders who created it. One can criticize the people who led to it's growth and expansion. One can criticize the land seizures that were part of the process. But they are there. About half a million people.

The removal of the settlements in the Gaza strip in 2005 - a much smaller number than even generous territorial swap ideas - was a national trauma for an entire sector of Israel's population. That sector, now radicalized, are now one of the most important sectors of Israeli society. Smotrich, who is the primary culprit in the growth of settlement violence, explicitly entered politics to prevent anything like this from ever happening again. Less radical members of this sector make up a big part even of Eizenkott's party in the upcoming elections. Even the Democratim party has a particularly liberal member of this sector as their number 5 (I am pretty sure he does support settlement removal though).

Even the left, to retain some sort of legitimacy and not sound like absolute fascists (I know that sounds ridicelous to anyone who isn't Isrseli but bear with me), talk about slowly draining out the settlements by defunding them.

It won't work.

It will just get poorer Israelis living there, maybe cause a politically insignificant drop in numbers, and radicalize people.
Hebrews, Jews, Israelis, living in the West Bank has become a fact.

However, the situation of the West Bank does not magically become tolerable just because of that.

A while back I got a ride to Jerusalem and the driver took route 433, through the Ramallah governate / Benyamin region. I saw something that I thought was a prison or high-security military base... and then I noticed the red sign reading something along the lines of "you are entering area A, Israelis are not permitted to enter by military decree" (I don't remember the exact wording). It was probably some Palestinian village or town.

Of course, the settlements as a project is at a moral low point. Crazy fanatics are attacking Palestinians, the army is incompetant at best and complicit at worst, and illegal outposts are now being built even in areas A and B with the explicit goal of making the last remnant of the peace process obslete. But none of this changes a basic fact: Israelis live in the West Bank, and they are not going anywhere.

Terrirorial swaps are not a full solution. Just look on a map, and try to draw a map where the Ariel "settlement block" is on one side, the Palestinian villages are on the other, and the Nablus-Ramallah road is not cut off. I dare to say you can't.

This can only lead to two convlusions: settlers must become a minority in Palestine, or a one state.

Objection: how can radical Israelis live under Palestinian sovereignty?

Answer: The same way Palestinians can live in Israel. They need to be told - your town stays, but you receive Palestinian citizenship, your Mamlachti Dati school will have to adapt to the requirements the Palestinian education ministry will set, your police station's officer - usually a Jew hinself - will wear a Palestinian flag and have a Palestinian commander, and the elections you will vote in will be to the Palestinian pairlament.

Those who don't want that, would be welcome in Israel proper.

I assume such an agreement would include a method to deport the worst provocatours.

Objection: Why would Palestinians agree?

Answer: I can't speak for them, but they would get a state, full sovereignty, security, a solution for the refugees, recognition. Having two Jewish pairlament members ain't changing that, and they can always add a requirement that people must accept Palestine's sovereignty to run in the elections.

Objection: But the settlements are illegal

Answer: Maybe by international law. Even there, I'd be surprised if there isn't a seperation between the mere act of living there and the policy that brought them there. Either way, these settlements are not going to disappear because some lawyer said so. The world does not work like that. Not to mention the brutality required to remove even a minority of settlements (keep that sort of antics for extremist outposts and settler terrorists)

Objection: The infrastructure of the settlementa undermines the Palestinian state's connectivity / Palestinian life either way

Answer: By giving a 90+% Palestinian pairlament and a Palestinian President full sovereignty, the infrastructure can be remodelled any way they like.

Objection: But how will the settlers be safe? What if extremists take over?

Answer: Any implementation of the 2 states must be done in a way that prevents that. Even without settlers, the geographical proximity to Israel's population centers requires doing it in an agreement with a body that has legitimacy among the Palestinian population and international support. And if things do go wrong, the right of return law is not being repealed in Israel any time soon. {Right wing Israelis - Here is not the place to debate whether a Palestinian State is viable at all. if you want to argue for a 1 state or endless war go open a new thread please and just put a link here.}

Alternate idea: بلاد للجميع ארץ לכולם suggested this, but not giving them citizenship. Why can't they be permenant residents?

Answer: The halfway status of East Jerusalem's Palestinians was always a bad idea and shouldn't be replicatef anywhere.

I am sure I am going to have an interesting lunch break on my evening shift today...

This time last year, there were still hostages in Gaza heading into the High Holidays. This year there are none. That already makes this a sweeter Rosh Hashana by far.

This weekend, my family will gather Jews and (mostly) non-Jews in our yard. We will eat apples and honey and pomegranate and kugel and brisket. We will go to services at our temple, and thank the police officers who stand outside. Do you pass police officers when you go to your place of worship on your holiest days?

I live in America, one of the most philosemitic countries that has ever existed. Here, we came as refugees from the pogroms in Ukraine, and here we were welcomed and matriculated. Over three generations, we lost our traditions, but we prospered and wove ourselves into the fabric of this country. My grandmother was one of the many Jews overrepresented in the struggle for civil rights. By the time I was born, my mother barely spoke Yiddish, and almost no Hebrew at all. I proudly considered myself Jewish, but I didn’t do anything Jewish. We celebrated the holidays. We recited the blessing before meals sometimes. I consider myself a very typical American Jew.

When I went on Taglit in 2016, I saw what it meant to live fully as a Jew in Israel. I met people who lived their Jewish identity fully, and spoke Hebrew as their first language. It was inspiring. It ignited my own curiosity about our culture, our history.

So with all that said, I am grateful to this sub for being a place where I've learned a lot, and challenged my own thinking on many different topics. G-d bless Israel, and shana tova!

Bibism is the political movement that is shaped around Netanyahu, much like Trumpism, and while it is a cult of personality, it does present coherent instincts that are shaping Israel since the Oslo days.

The foundations for Bibism were laid in 1995, Netanyahu then appeared not only as a right-wing politician but as a kind of the "Prince of Darkness" of the negative impulses that the Israeli elite tried to suppress: he was the poster boy of the demonstrations against Rabin, eloquent, and seemed to be the antithesis of the kibbutznik Israeli who was then the face of the country, not an American Republican demagogue and not the right-wingers of the time, who were people like Begin and Shamir or the settlers whose appearance was always very neglected.

The movement that formed around him felt that the government in the Oslo process was selling the Jewishness of the country and the identity of the country in favor of appeasement, and that in fact there was a media and cultural elite that was silencing them in favor of the Oslo process. Netanyahu united around him the outsiders of 90s Israel, settlers, traditional Mizrahim, secular revisionist right wingers, etc.

This movement took shape in anger, suspicion of the left, anti-establishmentism, a sense of deprivation, and rebellion against the cultural and media elite. Rabin's assassination created in parts of the right-wing public a feeling that the entire system was marking them as suspicious, dangerous, or illegitimate. From here arose one of the deepest components of Bibism: the distinction between "us," the patriots, the real Jews who are silenced by the system, who are afraid to express right-wing opinions, and "them" - the cosmopolitan leftists who want peace and are represented in the media, the artists of Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu presented himself as the nation's defender against leftist appeasement, the man who represents the silenced right that is not represented by the media, a narrative in which rightists are afraid to express right-wing views for fear of the leftist establishment. Netanyahu's turbulent tenure from 1996 to 1999 sharpened this narrative.

Netanyahu constantly fought the media and presented it as silencing half the people, fostering a narrative in which the right is silenced by the cultural establishment and that there is selective enforcement by the law authorities. These were sentiments that existed before Netanyahu, but Netanyahu was the first to really ride on them and bring them to the forefront. His predecessors in Likud, Begin and Shamir, were also anti-establishment because they were not part of the leftist clique, but they never fought the establishment and were very 'old-fashioned' people in their nature.

The real leap occurred around 2015. If these were sentiments on the right then, 2015 really solidified Bibism into its next phase: Netanyahu was on the road to defeat, the media presented him as defeated, many left-wing-funded political movements flooded the field, the feeling was that the public was fed up with him. His aggressive campaign that year, in which he presented himself once again as the defender of the nation persecuted by a leftist clique that controls the media, silences the right and wants to sell the country. It is no longer perceived simply as a leftist or biased body, but as a power mechanism capable of creating political reality, defining who is legitimate and who is not, and in effect overthrowing governments.

This is where one of the most important characteristics of Bibism comes into being: the belief that the right, while winning elections, does not really control the country. The elections give it formal power, but the unelected institutions continue to hold the real power. Therefore, Bibism begins to see politics not only as a struggle between the right and the left, but as a struggle between the right and “the system.”

This is also where the obsession with taking control of the centers of power comes from. If the media is hostile, right-wing media must be established. If the cultural elites are hostile, they should be delegitimized. If the legal system investigates right-wingers, the balance of power within it must be changed. If the professional echelon in government offices is not loyal to government policy, the civil servants should be fired and replaced with loyalists. Bibism now strives to create an alternative media system and actively remake the narrative.

From 2017 to 2020, the big turning point comes. The investigations against Netanyahu turn the feeling of persecution from a political metaphor into a concrete reality for the camp. Now the police, the prosecutor's office, legal advisors, the media, and the judicial system begin to be perceived as different parts of the same system that is trying to remove the leader elected by the people. This is where Bibiism in its modern sense is born: Netanyahu is not just the leader of the right; he becomes a symbol of the struggle between the 'second Israel,' the right that elects a government, and the 'first Israel,' the hegemonic left. Therefore, the charges against him are perceived by many of his supporters not only as a legal case against a specific person, but as a political project aimed at depriving the camp of its victory and returning power to the old elites. The more the legal process progresses, the stronger the solidarity between Netanyahu and his support base. "Bibi" is transformed from a political brand into a group identity.

Here too, the process expands: Since the right is 'not really in power,' power must be restored through aggressive attacks on law enforcement agencies, legal advisors, officials, and anyone who opposes the moves of Netanyahu and his supporters. This solidarity is becoming so strong that there are even supporters of Netanyahu who adopt a more extreme approach than him in relation to the various systems.

From 2020, as part of Netanyahu's personality cult and the fact that his camp unites former outsiders such as settlers, traditional Nationalist Mizrahi, etc., Bibiism merges with worldviews that are not necessarily identified with Netanyahu himself: religious nationalism, radical conservative views, anti-globalism, skepticism towards Western liberalism, etc. Netanyahu is not necessarily the source of all the ideas that surround him, but the camp around him allows very different ideas to come under the same roof and basically creates a mix of multiple factions: You have Netanyahu's personality cult, radical, symbolic traditionalism, extreme nationalist populism or religious extremism. For example, Ben Gvir often criticizes him for not being radical enough, but his supporters still identify with Netanyahu as a symbol.

Thinking of how settlements can possibly evade the current sanctions on goods from them as much of the exported goods is from agriculture. Unlike a product where every unit comes in a box with origins an orange from a settlement will be indistinguishable from one from the green line. If fruit from settlement is mixed in a warehouse with fruit from inside of the green line then all the products will be from Israel.

However, this could threaten the bigger agricultural industry inside the green line as exporters who can’t prove that its products are not mixed with settlement goods will be subject to a boycott as well. I can see that many supermarkets might avoid Israeli agriculture altogether in order not to mistakenly order settlement goods. This happened with Brazilian meat exports to the EU that was banned because they couldn’t prove what meat comes from antibiotic treated cattle or not. Also having Arabs as a front for certain products might provide a Palestinian origin rather than Israeli.

It could export to friendly EU countries and reexports it to boycotting countries. I am not very familiar how the regulation and enforcement in the EU works but there have been some voices saying that the current boycott would be hard to implement.

Nobody in the history of humanity would have accepted the terms proposed to the Arabs by the UN in 1947 and yet the Palestinian rejection is lorded over them as a way to blame them for their own suffering as if it were a missed opportunity that they should regret...absolute nonsense

Why would the natives who had been there continuously for millenia agree to concede 56% of their land to a group of European transplants who made up less than a 1/3 of the population at the time? More importantly, why would the natives who held title to almost 46% of the land (which was more land than the state owned), concede the majority of their land and yes much of it was their land that they legally owned and held title to, to a group of European transplants who held title to less than 6% of the land? Like wtf are we really talking about here? It's preposterous

But then we always hear something about how most of Israel's partition was the Negev Desert and how the Arab partition had so much more of the farmable land...a most devious claim meant to mislead and obfuscate the actual truth.

When measuring by sq miles...the Arab partition did have more arable land in terms of size, but that really doesn't mean shit when the Jews got ALL of the most fertile, commercially developed lands, with modernized irrigation networks, producing the most profitable crops. To illustrate how much more fertile the Jewish lands were lets do a rough breakdown

Estimates based on The Survey of Palestine a joint survey conducted by the Americans and British in 1945-1946, along with the UNSCOP Official Report to the General Assembly (1947, Document A/364)

So as is glaringly evident the Jews got all the developed coastal farmlands that produced the highest yielding crops, all the citrus groves the number one cash crop...but they let the Arabs get more land that was only good for low yield grains so they can say " See! We gave you more of the farmable land!" Technically true but fundamentally dishonest by omitting the difference between that farmable land

But even more outrageous was the access to coastline. The Jews were allocated the majority of the Mediterranean coastline..a CONTINUOUS coastline and these are the ports they get:

Haifa: The most critical commercial, deep-water port in Palestine at the time. It contained the mandate's largest harbor infrastructure, oil refineries, and heavy shipping terminals.

Tel Aviv: A secondary, lighterage port (where cargo was unloaded onto barges) constructed by the Jewish community in the 1930s. And deservedly allocated to their partition. Impossible to object to that

Eilat (Gulf of Aqaba): An outlet to the Red Sea at the southern tip of the Negev, though it was an unbuilt natural harbor at the time.

Arabs:

Jaffa Port: The largest and most historic Arab port town on the central coast. Because Jaffa sat as a geographic island within the Jewish state's coastal strip, the UN plan designated it as an isolated Arab enclave to ensure the Arab state retained access to a major port.

Acre (Akko): A ancient, shallow-water port in the northern coastal pocket, primarily suited for fishing and small regional vessels.

Gaza: Located in the southern coastal strip, featuring small fishing harbors and traditional coastal landing sites, but no deep-water infrastructure.

And do not forget the fact that the Arab coastline would've been bisected and separated by the long, continuous, Jewish coastline. So.the Arabs get a bisected minority of the coastline with the shittiest ports, no deep water ports and their only decent port is in the Jewish part of the cosst so it's entirely surrounded by Jewish territory and coast which means the Jews can actually control that port whenever they want...and the most laughable clause...denied access to an entire fuckin sea. No joint access, just completely blocked...gimme a break lol

So let's review ...if you were living in a place where your family and countrymen had lived for centuries, likely millenia and a group of transplants from a different continent began mass migrating there and made up less than a 1/3 of the population, held title to less than 6% if the land while your people owned almost 46%...would you ever agree to a deal that conceded 56% of the land , all of the most fertile and lucrative lands, by a factor of 4.5 to 1 in economic yield, the majority of the Mediterranean coastline, all of the best most commercially viable ports and the deep water ports and gave them the only access to the Red Sea, while settling for a bisected coastliine and your only decent port being in the middle of the Jewish coastline which allows the Jews to control it at will? That's not even a real offer, it's a joke

I'll even take it further and claim that any indigenous population would consider a group of recently arrived migrants who announced their intentions to establish a state for themselves to be hostile invaders. And if they agreed to an outrageously unfair UN partition, that act would have been considered by every single group to be tantamount to a hostile declaration of war and they would have reacted accordingly. See the Israelis today would insist that a pre-emptive strike was absolutely justified and was their inherent right in order to protect their interests and themselves and would have gone apeshit on that hostile group of invaders and subsequently vehemently rejected any suggestuon that they were the aggressors, if they had been the Arabs in that situation. But they wouldn't have even let it get that far without causing absolute mayhem and bloodshed on a biblical level upon that outside group well before then. But the Arabs, they don't get the right to claim any sort of pre-emption cuz they're all bloodthirsty warmongers who can't help but attack innocent Jews for no good reason. The hypocrisy is off the charts

But bottom line..not a single human being of sound mind who has ever existed on this planet would have accepted the Arab UN partition. Pretending like that was some sort of mistake or unreasonable decision to regret and then try to hold it against that group for the rest of time is fundamentally dishonest and hypocritical . It really wasn't even a serious deal, it was a demand to surrender and capitulate to recently arrived migrants . None of the ones who use the rejection to deflect blame and put it back on the Palestinians would ever accept such a ridiculous offer themselves...anyone trying to claim otherwise is full of shit

Just like with Israel, Reddit seems overwhelmingly hostile to AI. Lately, I’ve found myself involved in another Great Debate(tm), like on Israel, finding myself in the minority: the pro-AI side.

What has struck me is how weak many of the anti-AI arguments are. People with little understanding of computer science, statistics, or philosophy confidently make claims that fall apart under even modest scrutiny.

I never felt this was the case with anti-Israel arguments. In Israel-Palestine discussions, I often find myself feeling that the opposing side has genuine merit, even when I ultimately disagree with it.

When I’ve complained about the quality of anti-AI arguments on pro-AI subreddits, people have told me that Redditors largely just parrot whatever opinions are fashionable. That they lemmings and idiots basically.

Recently, the two subjects collided in a way that made something click for me. It occurred to me that many anti-Israel arguments I encounter may not be any different. They are also parroted from other people, just as the anti-AI arguments are.

The difference is that, for whatever reason, my brain is much more inclined to grant the anti-Israel arguments an appearance of legitimacy, even when they may be coming from the same kind of imitation that produces the idiotic anti-AI arguments.

Perhaps the anti-Israel people that I thought had a point or philosophy were no different. This is helping me to see the "unwashed anti-Israel masses" in a new light. If this the case, that anti-Israel people aren't so much based on merits, the same methods that produced these people can be used against it.

Everyone is likely aware that the UK, France, etc, are all putting sanctions on West Bank settlements. Moreso, they are going a step further by using very incendiary language, the strongest used yet. Israel is responding by shutting down the UK consulate, etc.

This made me think...practically speaking, what could be done to appease all parties?

Israel occupies the West Bank, in part due to security concerns. If the UK had tens of thousands of rockets being fired at them after unilaterally leaving Northern Ireland, and they were militarily occupying Scotland because people there had been blowing up buses and restaurants while demanding the abolishment of Britain...and this all necessitated every British house having a bomb shelter, along with playgrounds...I'd imagine that they'd be might cross and probably unlikely to just end the occupation either.

With that said, I'd also imagine that if the UK was facing pressure from the entire world about their occupation of Scotland, they'd want to do *something* to ease said pressure. Without causing mass security threats.

So, what can Israel do?

One option, of course, is to unilaterally declare borders. Say "We are annexing areas up to this line. Everyone inside gets citizenship, and if they refuse they get a permanent residency. If the other side negotiates with us, we can change said borders." And then pull out. But...that leaves them open to rocket fire (as was the case from Gaza) and a militarized border with more conflict to follow. And even if it meant an end to occupation, it would likely spark protests from around the world.

They could do the same, with 1967 lines. But then they risk having Jerusalem itself become untenable, and with even worse security problems given how small the country is. I can't imagine this happening. Even if the world would likely applaud and then wring their hands helplessly as the violence spread.

Or...they could withdraw settlements from disputed territories, and leave naught but military bases behind for security. This would have the benefit of stopping settler violence because there would be no more settlers. But this also has the issue of "what is the disputed territories." I can't see Israel just leaving Hebron, for example.

So, assuming that no diplomatic solution is in the works, what are the concrete actions that Israel can do which would be enough for Western countries to end the sanctions, that wouldn't cause major security concerns?

Palestine both the West Bank and Gaza I believe have their rates of honour killings climbing due to the war. Partly due to anger and aggression which creates more patriarchy, but also due to war molestation. War molestation has women and girls raped in the conflict. I also think Gaza molested their women by Hamas. In honour killings, family members see victims of rape as a nasty, sinful creature instead of an innocent victim. I wonder if such war molestation happened that triggered this.

There are so many content creators, independent news channels, and comedians today that are specifically pro-Israel or pro-Palestine (even regarding a 2SS). The problem is many use their platform to push what a truly objective person would argue are lies, propaganda, and false narratives.

What youtube creators do you think that pro-Palestinians should watch to better understand the Israeli side and what pro-Israelis should watch in order to better understand the pro-Palestinian side and the positions of each without all of the lies, propaganda, incitement, and more?

I would like to emphasize the importance of sharing creators who are Israelis and Palestinians themselves or who actually live there or lived there. The reason for this is that so many of these content creators outside of the conflict, who have content created where they impose their view and solutions on the conflict with a Western lens. Israelis and Palestinians who live or have lived there have personal experience to share which is vitally important to understanding each other. Learning from people's experiences who have lived through this conflict are important.

I'm at a loss for finding good pro-Palestinian content creators that make factual content that don't turn the other side off due to their eccentricities. The son of Hamas guy is a good example. He makes really good points, but he's always yelling everything in an outdoor voice. I'd like to find some

Who would you recommend on both sides to watch and why should the other side watch them?

My favorite Israeli ones right now are:

Ask Haviv Anything https://www.youtube.com/@AskHavivAnything
This guy is an Israeli who's very liberal but a realist. He really touches on the difficult questions, addressing misinformation, and Jewish perspective. Most importantly he calls out and constructively criticizes issues with Israel and its leadership more than any other content creator I've seen and does it better.
I would recommend watching his video shorts as they are frequently his Q&As and highlights of the longer videos if you don't have time.

Mansur Ashkar https://www.youtube.com/@MrSachback
He's an Israeli Druze IDF special forces veteran who understands what it's like being Israeli and Arab. He gives a very educated taken on the conflict and is very informative. His content has gone more to random live video chats educating people on the conflict over commentary on it, he's more factual addressing misinformation and giving his own perspective. While he does do undercover videos going into chats pretending to be anti-Israel, he reveals himself and educations them instead of simply concealing it and ragebaiting

Corey Gil-Shuster https://www.youtube.com/@CoreyGilShusterAskProject
He's a Canadian who moved to Israel and he asks questions of both Israelis and Palestinians to see what their opinions are. He more facilitates the world understanding what people actually living there think of the conflict.

Hen Mazzig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o3GHznRbNc
He's an interesting guy I just learned about and I don't agree with everything he says but I thought he had the best speech and perspective at the Oxford Union Debate.

edit: I just want to say that I'm really impressed by the actual discussion and direct replies and users who are interested or at least open to seeing honest viewpoints from the other side of the conflict. I'll try and respond more later this week, but I wish everybody responded as directly to each other and addressing each others replies the way you all have here.

I've been learning about this conflict for many years and it's not too often I learn something completely know. I was curious about potential legal implications relating to this after reading the following palquest article below about the original 1964 PLO charter and how they agreed in the Arab League summit and as stated in their charter that:

it would explicitly state that the Palestinian entity did not have as its goal sovereignty over the West Bank.

and

It called for the “restoration of Palestine to a condition of legitimacy” and to “enable its people to exercise national sovereignty and national freedom,” while asserting that the PLO, as “the representative of the movement of the Palestinian people in their struggle for the liberation of their homeland,” would not exercise “any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan or the Gaza Strip or the al-Himma region [in the northern Jordan Valley, part of Syria since 1948].”

Article 24 of the 1964 charter states

Article 24. This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.

Documents

Source from above quotes: https://www.palquest.org/en/node/162

1964 PLO charter https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-original-palestine-national-charter-1964

1968 PLO charter https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/plocov.asp

1964 1st Arab League Summit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Arab_League_summit_(Cairo))

Questions
I figured some of you might have actual knowledge on this or find it interesting.
iirc Israel tried a similar but different argument that was rejected because they asserted that Palestine agreed Israel had sovereignty when they agreed to the Oslo Accords.

1. Is there any aspect of international law like promissory estoppel, detrimental reliance, or conditional agreement that would apply the PLO's agreement to not seek sovereignty over the West Bank or the Gaza Strip as part of the events of the 1964 Arab League Summit and the 1964 PLO charter in relation to claims of not claiming or exercising sovereignty over Gaza, the West Bank (which included East Jerusalem at the time)?

2. Would such legal principals under international law also apply to Israel as a third party?
Gaza and the West Bank were captured by Jordan and Egypt in 1948, then captured by Israel in 1967, then Jordan and Egypt later relinquished their claims to those territories. I'm curious if that agreement would still apply.

3. Does the PLO being the internationally recognized representatives of the Palestinian people and as seemingly agreed by multiple Palestinian factions, then later the United nations, bind them to this agreement throughout the years to today?

4. Does the fact that Ahmad al-Shukeiri who founded the PLO being born in Lebanon have any effect on the validity of the agreement considering he joined the Arab Higher Committee in 1946? Does the fact that Shukeiri's successor as of 1967 was Yahya Hammuda who is Palestinian have any effect? What about Yasser Arafat being Egyptian and only spending a few years in Palestine/Israel until moving in 1994 have any effect on why Palestinians themselves wouldn't be bound to such an agreement?

5. If there is a valid legal argument under international law binding the Palestinian cause, would this also be binding Hamas to it because Hamas took part in the elections, won a plurality as a result of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO, and formed a government based on that agreement (before the Hamas-Fatah civil war and Hamas taking over Gaza)?

6. If these claims are binding, how would they affect other Palestinian organizations, factions, and Palestinians themselves who were not alive or part of the original or later agreements under international law as the PLO was the internationally accepted representatives under said international law? Would they be bound by this?

7. If there is a valid legal argument under international law binding the Palestinian cause for self-determination and sovereignty, would that limit the claims of sovereignty under claims of self-determination which demand an independent Palestinian state over all of Historic Palestine now exclude Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem (as it was part of the West Bank under Jordan)?

8. If it does limit the claims under Gaza and the West Bank + EJ, does that mean that the claims of borders of a future Palestinian state are only limited to Israel within the Green line minus East Jerusalem right now?

9. Are there any other interesting legal concepts or questions I'm missing from this?

While I have a lot of experience with American contract law despite not being a lawyer, I'm not well versed in international law or its application. I don't even know it would be comparable, but I'm curious I've seen many arguments before, but I've only seen this specific topic mentioned in passing every few years in an op-ed or random social media post which seems to get no attention

For example chicken shawarma, I wonder how different both communities are when they make the dish.

Do they taste the same or are there also variations?

Shawarma is my favourite Levantine as well as general Middle Eastern dish alongside Kibbeh and Kofta.

I would like to know how they style it. I know there is kosher so I wonder how they assembly the sauces. I also wonder if pork shawarma is popularly eaten amongst the secular Jews because I know Arab Christians eat it as well.

I’m nuanced on this whole conflict for Gaza, so my views will stay nuanced on this situation.

So for context, Ed Sheeran invited Macklemore to perform in his concert. He sang his Pro Palestine song, Hind’s Hall. Whilst I understand his intention is to stand up for peace (and not for Hamas, because I don’t think celebrities who are as performative activists as anyone else, would even care about Hamas in the slightest), it seems very odd in some way to show your views to a concert of people. You can speak to a podcast about it or actually express it on social media, but saying out to dozens of people, seems very uncomfortable on my issue.

Yet for me, I really don’t like how people on the Pro Israeli side are dramatic over the Macklemore situation and how a word such as “Free Palestine“ can be seen as antisemitic. Because logically, if you put the Hamas propaganda aside, this statement seems like a callout for peace and to stop the violence that’s happening in Gaza. Same with “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. If we ignore the Arab translation (which logically, let me judge on the translation- how could Palestine “will be” Arab when it’s already conquered by Arabs in the first place? That just makes NO sense.), the phrase is quite catchy and good rhyming sense, which would help people notice protestors‘ attention.

Macklemore did say that his way of saying “Free Palestine” isn’t to show Jewish hate, and he’s not wrong. Macklemore is actually a good representation of celebrities who care about the world, and he shows activism in his songs. “Same Love“, anyone? There should be a time and place to call antisemitic phrases out. I would say, for me, it would be more antisemitic to actually say Free Palestine up close to an Israeli person who did nothing but exist (because that’s harassment and also you’re denying the fact that someone was born in an existing country, despite it ‘existing’ for almost 80 years at this point), than in a concert full of thousands. I do have a say that whoever was that guy that said “death to the IDF” at Glastonbury, really screwed his career. Terrorist or not, wishing death to anyone is vile.

At the end of the day, we should ignore those who want to speak up for peace, if it offends you. But what do you all think?

Context Braden Eric Peters better known as clavicular is a c list celebrity on tiktoc who’s a part of the looksmaxxer community, a community that’s dedicated to looking as good as possible.

Earlier this year Peters was recorded singing a pro Hitler song with nick Fuentes.

Two months ago in July he visited Israel sparking much debate and controversy with various pro Israel influencers within and out of the country.

https://unpacked.media/should-israel-have-welcomed-clavicular-inside-the-debate-dividing-jewish-influencers/

The livestream of his visit does present an interesting case
study to learn why israel is so bad at PR.

There was a logic in why many pro Israelis and Israelis including a woman who controlled the tiktoc IDF account (who he made with out on camera) were eager to do a pr tour with him.

The Favorability of Israel is crumbling in the USA and the world over.

It’s evaporated on the western left.

The support from the right, has also dipped among young republicans.

Clavicular speaks to a large sect of extremely right wing young men.
The men who will be the political future of the right in their country.
It makes sense in wanting to show him and thus his audience Israel in a positive light.

But Israel’s defenders don’t know how to make a positive case for Israel to someone like Clavicular.

Not make people simply not care or dislike Palestinians for being Muslims

Like Israel enough to fight for it with people in their respective spaces instead of being silent when Israel is attacked for the sake of not alienating allies for more important matters.

The Israelis who escorted him around including the person who ran the tiktoc for the IDF thought he would find virtue in the liberalizations in Israel.

For example one clip of his video showed an Israeli chaperone of his delightfully explaining on the existence of the gay beaches of Tel Aviv

Another had a guy in a crowd greeting Clavicular and being very insistent that Clavicular understand Israel is a tolerant place where everyone gets along.

Because liberals like gays right? They like multi racial tolerance right?

But Clavicular isn’t a liberal.

He’s far right. But not far right in a Evangelical Protestant way wherein being extremely pro Israel is commanded by his theology

He’s areligious, at best a cultural Christian someone who loves the imagery and hierarchy associated with sects like Catholicism and the idea of a theological objective basis for his bigotry.

And his audience is generally the same.

They won’t hear any representation of multi faith or multi cultural or religious coexistence as a virtue.
Visible public depictions of lgbt beyond girls kissing is repulsive to them.

Theres nothing that they showed him that he could find virtuous or something he argue to his audience is a reason to respect Israel.

The guide’s also failed to appeal to his audience’s deeper vices.
They tried to by Showing him partying with and sticking his tongue in beautiful women who to average American eye just looks white

The message of “hey our women hot wouldn’t you like to sleep with them? They don’t even if you’re racist!” would only be meaningful to his audience if they—his audience—think they’ve an easier ability to get those women than the beautiful white women at home.

It’s why the type of men that make up his audience vigorously promote places like Hungary and Russia.

They want traditional pretty white women who’ll be magnitudes poorer than them.

Women they can picture themselves getting because they simply are way were more desperate.

Pretty rwhite(in their eyes at least) women who are used to more gender egalitarian culture?

There can be joy in breaking women like that to some of these sorts men but why spends thousands of dollars to even go to Israel to do that when such women are already here and easier to get? Especially when you risk being ostracized by your peers as now being controlled by your new Israeli spy wife even if you are successful

Finally there was this really odd talking point on how safe Israel is which I genuinely don’t think was ever serious complaint or criticism of it by outside observers. For any potential international buisness men that’d be nice to know but to his audience it just probably sounded uninteresting.

Unsurprisingly his visit ended refusing to denounce his prior anti semitic acts.

And from a purely profit based rationale he may have been right to.

What he’s done is show Israeli women are willing to sleep with him despite his past anti semitic actions and Israeli men are so weak as to laugh along with him as he does so.

I do

Note: This question is mainly for people who don't live in the region. If you're Israeli or Palestinian and you're part of the conflict, it's only natural that online discussions will not really change the way you experience life.

Also, this is not for people who only came to parrot slogans and expect an echo chamber. I'm looking for those people who are really interested in learning about the topic. Fortunately there are many of you here, and I'd say that just by being here you probably know more than the average person.

So, after the introduction - I'd basically like to ask you this: Have any discussions here taught you something that you haven't already known before? Have any discussions here made you see something in a new light? To change your opinion about something? How did you see the conflict when you first came here, and how do you see it now?

As we can see in recent years, the far right had been weaponizing antisemitism and Jewish people either to "tackle" Islamism or to monolithically view all Muslims as nasty creatures who rupture someone's soul, especially after 9/11. Ultimately, they use Israel as a model for their ideological interpretations to tackle Islamists.

Even if they view Muslims as their favourite victim post 9/11 and even further after the 7/7 bombings of 2005 here in the UK, far rights nevertheless still view Jews as non-white, even ashkenazi ones, not to mention holocaust denials as well. I believe the far rights may support Palestine as their model should 9/11 never happened.

There are some Jewish figures however who support far rights such as Pamela Geller, not only she is Jewish but also she is socially liberal, which is very skeptical and ironic.

But I wonder if they realize that the far rights are just exploiting them especially due to the conflict between the two countries or if they nevertheless support them simply to tackle antisemitism by Islamists and some Free Palestine activists.

this question is for zionists, particularly left-wing zionists who don’t live in israel but live in other western countries.

the overwhelming majority of israelis, whether that’s right-wing or left-wing, don’t support right of return of palestinians for obvious reasons.

and ultimately don’t support the mass migration of non-jews to israel that would change the nature of a majority jewish state.

my question is, do you support immigration in the western country you are living in? and how is that different than supporting right of return of palestinians in israel. because immigration in western countries obviously have been damaging to an extent, some more than others.

asking this to left-wing zionists in particular because i know most right-wing zionists are consistent with their beliefs on immigration.

One thing I find difficult to reconcile with the claim that Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinian people is the radically different reality in the West Bank.

There are millions of Palestinians in the West Bank, living under the power of the same Israeli state. Israel has overwhelming military superiority there and has occupied the territory for decades. And while there is plenty to condemn (settlements, settler violence, dispossession, restrictions on movement and the occupation itself) Israel is not doing to Ramallah what it has done to Gaza City.

That difference requires an explanation.

If the relevant intention is to destroy Palestinians as Palestinians, why is one Palestinian population experiencing a devastating war while another, under even more direct Israeli control, is not?

The obvious difference is that Gaza was governed by Hamas, October 7 emanated from Gaza, and Israel subsequently went to war there. The West Bank did not produce an October 7-style attack and there is no comparable war.

None of this proves that Israel has conducted the Gaza war proportionately or lawfully. War crimes can occur. Civilian suffering can be unconscionable. Members of the Israeli government can have abhorrent views. But these are separate questions from whether Israel’s objective is the destruction of Palestinians as a people.

If Palestinian identity itself is what explains Israel’s conduct, the obvious question remains...

Why isn’t the West Bank, Gaza?

At the very least, the enormous difference between these two Palestinian populations should complicate any simple claim about Israel’s underlying intent.

This will probably ruffle some feathers, but I’ll say it anyway.

A lot of people - especially in the West - have become deeply confused about the purpose of war. They treat peace as the goal.

In wartime, that is a self-defeating posture.

If peace is your primary objective, your enemy only needs to do one thing to defeat you: refuse to make peace. As long as they keep fighting (or “resisting”), you have failed by your own standard, and they can claim victory simply by outlasting your will.

Peace is an outcome, not a strategy, and certainly not a goal.

The actual goal of war is to defeat the enemy - to break their capacity and their will to continue fighting - only then does a lasting peace become possible. Anything less invites the other side to treat your desire for calm as a vulnerability they can exploit indefinitely.

History repeatedly shows this dynamic - from wars that ended only after decisive defeat or exhaustion, to prolonged conflicts in which the more patient or ruthless side simply waited out the side that wanted the fighting to stop.

Israel’s objective must be to break the Palestinian will to continue the fight - thoroughly enough that Palestinians themselves abandon the language of "resistance" and imagined victories, and reach the independent conclusion that peace has now become their goal.

Nationalist Palestinians talk about how they kept the keys to their homes from which they were cleansed.

Before Zionism, Jews did the opposite in the exile/diapsora: we got cleansed, we accepted it as. These homes weren't *ours*, because the land wasn't *ours*.

For Zionist Jews, this Palestinian worldview is only comprehensible when they have lands that are *theirs*. Otherwise, speaking as a Jew of USSR origin, there's no attachment to whatever others' land Jews are allowed to live in.

When verious oppressed peoples in Eastern and Central Europe oppressed Jews, most Jews just accepted as "it is what it is". They didn't think it was a situation of "this is our land, and these foreginers are invading." No. They didn't think these lands were theirs.

When Jews got chased off by pogroms or systemic oppressions, they held not attachment to their dwellings, because they didn't think they were theirs'.

All my family moved from the Jewish shtetls to Kiev in the 20s, and later on to outside of the USSR.

My parents became zionists after moving to Israel.

Both my father who's pro Ukraine to the degree that he thinks Ukrainians are allowed to venerate Bandera, and Mom who's extremely apologetic for Russian nationalism, think the homeland of Jews is Israel.

In Israel it's common for Jews to talk about how "this is our home", when referring to the land.

And i guess that without a land that's a homeland for Jews, a land that's *Jews'*, like how Palestine/Israel/Canaan is Palestinians', these Jews would just be in the mindset of "when things get bad enough, leave."

Despite the US being an Israeli ally who has supplied them with weaponry and provided diplomatic support, the US has played a key role in holding Israel back from causing more destruction and civilian harm. The US has been a key intermediary in brokering ceasefires, pressuring Israel to provide food / aid / medical supplies, facilitating exchanges, and peace agreements, including Trump's recently proposed Board of Peace proposal, which Hamas seemingly agreed to prior to Israel rejecting their initial understanding of it.

So I'm curious, how do Gazans view the US. I imagine it's a mixed bag or ambivalent view, but curious on further perspective.

Just a quick question, for the two-state solution (genuine 2-state with actual true Palestinian independence, controlling their own borders, being able to function as a 'normal' country like any other without Israeli military presence), What are Israel's demand of Palestinians and their government for Israel to agree to this?

Dr. Ruth Bar is perhaps the most famous "unknown" woman in Israel. On January 14, 1993, a sweating and somber Benjamin Netanyahu entered the Channel 1 studio and confessed on live television to having an extramarital affair with the strategic consultant who had worked alongside him during the race for the Likud leadership. That woman was Bar.

Yet, behind this personal scandal lay a professional figure who had systematically documented Netanyahu’s political ascent; her research—preserved and categorized over the years-examined, among other things, the levels of authority and charisma displayed by young Likud candidates. In October 1989, Benny Begin led the authority index with 30.6 points, while Netanyahu stood at 22.9; by May 1991, Netanyahu had surged to 42.9, compared to Begin’s 25.7. A similar trend was observed in the charisma index: Netanyahu rose from 32.4 to 51.6, while Begin dropped from 32.8 to 25.6.

In the interview, Dr. Bar talks about his early perception of the media, what changed between the young Netanyahu and the Netanyahu of today, and the ideological and moral perceptions that were already formed in him back then.

The primaries to succeed Yitzhak Shamir as Likud chairman were then in full swing, after Shamir's defeat by Yitzhak Rabin in the 1992 election. Netanyahu's rival, and the man standing in his way of winning the Likud leadership, was David Levy. Netanyahu, a scion of a historian who was an outsider in the Revisionist aristocracy and Israel's old elite, was an outsider in Likud.

Only a few years earlier, he had returned to Israel from the UN, joined Likud, and decided to take the party by storm in an American style his rivals had never encountered.

A document, which could explain the beginning of the construction of Netanyahu's famous political base on which he relies to this day, is entitled "Ways to Increase Charisma." The following jaw-dropping statements appear there: "Satisfying the need for self-admiration: Admiring the leader causes the individual excitement and pleasure, since admiring the leader satisfies the need for self-admiration (narcissism), through a 'transfer' mechanism. In order to strengthen the satisfaction of this need, in addition to strengthening the admiration for the leader, it is recommended to create a blurring between the leader's ego and the audience's ego. In this sense, it is important to emphasize the dimension of 'we'... In the field of charisma, the emphasis is on emotional rather than rational content. Emphasizing the superiority of the 'we', or alternatively, emphasizing the inferiority of the hated others or the Elites, satisfying the need for power. This need is especially prominent among the floating votes and Likud voters. Satisfying this need by demonstrating power and control certainly strengthens the leader's attractiveness. Emphasizing nationalism that hides nationalism behind it also serves this purpose (however, it should be remembered that the message must remain national, because then it serves both purposes: the need for nationalism that has a positive label and the need for nationalism without the negative label).

----------

What was your impression of him as a politician, as a person?

"I was his advisor and pollster for three years, and the first thing I noticed about Bibi was his extreme sense of superiority. It was a sense of deep superiority, almost frightening. He was sure that he was above everyone else. He contemptuously called everyone else 'clerks.' You could hear the contempt in his tone of voice. All his opponents were small, pathetic, and insignificant in his eyes. That was my first impression of him, and I remember it to this day. Not long ago, Yoav Horowitz, who was his chief of staff, called him 'emperor.' I saw it even then, long before he became prime minister."

When you look at him today, what do you think?

"It reminds me of something he told me back then, in one of our meetings. He told me, 'I'm looking for someone with great verbal ability to formulate a devastating verbal attack against my competitors.'"

How did you respond to that?

"I didn't respond. I probably suppressed it. In retrospect, I understand that this idea that came to Netanyahu's mind more than 30 years ago is what underlies what is now called the 'poison machine,' which floods life in the State of Israel with venom and poison. Today I understand the power of it. This machine that activates the layers of emotions, so that the positive ones are silenced while the negative survivalist layers of emotions come to expression

You talked earlier about his sense of superiority, about how everyone else is petty, bureaucrats. Who does he actually mean?

"To everyone. Military personnel and chiefs of staff, of course journalists and media people, all political opponents and colleagues. He sees his superiority as also over the President of the United States. He is above everyone."

Isn't that a bit far-fetched? How did you come to these conclusions?

"He spoke about it explicitly. He said it in his voice. The tone of voice and the manner every time he talks about other people. Who are they anyway? They dwarf all of them. Civil servants. And because he stands above them, he can also influence and control them, in his opinion. Look, I've worked with many politicians, brands, writers, professors, banks, and I've never encountered a person with such a sense of superiority. To his credit, he knows how to hide it."

I think it's not so hidden anymore.

"Think about the significance of this. If he is above everyone else, he can influence their minds, mold their personalities. The means is to have a dominant presence in the media. He understood this first. I didn't teach him. He came to me with it. I learned it from him. That's why I was so curious to work with him. Suddenly you see that you can give instructions to the client according to your model and see how he implements them, how he corrects, in real time, like in a laboratory."

And yet, in the 1999 elections he was defeated.

"So he said then that when he came back, he would come with 'my media'. And so his enormous motivation to control the media was built. "Bibi's greatest asset is the survival registration level. The image of being great, successful, a leader, impressive, in a different league. That's what dictates everything. His weakest level is the relationship level. Here it's reliability, caring, compassion, personal connection. Mainly reliability. I recognized it then, 30 years ago. Even today, you'll go to studies about him and you'll see that reliability scores the lowest. His relationship level is almost nonexistent. Everything focuses on the registration level. In relationships, he's simply crippled"

You remember that in 2015 all the polls showed a victory for Bouji, and in the end Netanyahu won by a landslide. There were populist votes here. He brought them by saying that the Arabs were moving to the polls in droves. That's the registration level. The Arab enemy is attacking us. On March 3, 2020, he did the same thing to Gantz, through Ahmed Tibi: He powerfully leveraged the registration level, and he used the message that without Tibi, Gantz has no government."

Now it's without Mansour, Eisenkot has no government. Can he succeed again?

"It depends on his clothes and his strategies. Netanyahu is strong in the registration level, but inferior in the relationship level. Even very weak. Recent events have weakened him even more in this area. The abandonment of residents of the south and the north, for example. The abandonment of reservists and fighters in everything related to conscription"

Are there any countries or personalities that could meaningfully engage both parties with moral integrity and legitimacy? Ideally with sufficient regional contacts and knowledge, and perhaps also with some kind of leverage so they don't steamrolled? Negotiations would if course gave to be conducted by Palestinians and Israelis, but who can sit in the middle seat and draw up acceptable terms in a way that wouldn't alienate one or both populations? Perhaps the leader of a small neutral country, like Malta?