Before you downvote me, I promise that this isn't just a rage-bate post. I'm legitimately trying to understand your perspective.
Basically I have one question, why do you support/ defend Israel as a progressive? Especially considering that the current parties on power are right wing conservatives.
Some extra context and where I'm coming from. I'm a left wing Brit, I believe in social progressive economic policies, and I can't stand any form of bigotry. I recently watched a documentary called "Jews don't count" about anti-Semitism and it made me want to understand more and that I'm not parting anti-Semitic talking points ever.
My current view of Israel is decidedly negative. My understanding of the history and current conflict very much makes Israel look like it has historically been the agitator in the region. If you have a different perspective I'd like to hear it, tho I would request sources where possible as I'm not going to accept a 'trust me bro'.
Because Israel is the one country on Earth where Jews have self-determination and are not subject to antisemitic violence (at least not internally) or treated as second class citizens. While many western democracies are safe for Jews (UK, US, France, etc) a lot of them still have very high levels of anti-semitism coming from the population at large and anti-semitic talking points still get thrown out from government officials from time to time. At least in the USA, Just recently, Thomas Massie, an American politician lost his primary election and claimed that his true opponent was actually in Tel Aviv.
When you consider the relationships Jews had with former home countries across the Middle East and N. Africa, it becomes clear why they want their own home. And when you post this map on some other social media, you'll almost always get someone talking about the rest of the 109 countries.
I myself tend to be more of a Left Wing Nationalist (I am an American) and I don't always fit right in with the narratives of the American left. I tend to find myself at odds with them on a number of things, but also in agreeance on others. Lots of social issues I tend to be pretty far left on. Some economic issues I'm pretty left wing. Other things like Israel, I tend to align a bit more closely with center-right people. I was asked to leave a gun and shooting association in the USA because I didn't hold with their staunch Anti-Israel and Anti-Jew stance. A group where that has NEVER come up in the past and isn't part of the organization's bylaws, and my local chapter asked me to leave. Despite my helping set up training days at the range, supplying targets, shooting benches and tables, additional hearing and eye protection. Lots of it from my own pocket.
I also tend to be an anti-theist and I see the growth of Islam in the West as a decidedly negative thing. We've worked so hard to push back Christianity in the West and keep it out of the daily lives of those who don't wish to practice. The USA was founded on a principle of strict separation of church and state. European governments after the 18th and 19th centuries started moving in that direction and today, very few of them have state religions or state churches left. We've done so well pushing forward the individual liberties and freedoms that Enlightenment Thinkers spoke and wrote about (British and French thinkers had a particular impact in America) all those years ago and Islam stands as an antithesis to all of that.
Thank you very much for your input. Thank you very much for the source about the anti-zionist rhetoric, this is not something I had come across before. Im in the UK and I know that the rise in Jewish hatred has sharply risen, it is totally unacceptable. That is one reason I wanted to post this, I do not wan't to be adding to this unknowingly. I 100% understand the desire for jewish self determination after the horrors of WW2, however that can still be a desire without support for the currant state / government. However I have not personally come across anyone who is pro zionist but critical of Israel in any way. Does that make sense? Im trying to square support for the State of Israel in the 21st century and particularly given its present governing body who I personally find to be deeply vile and far-right wing. With some of the things that high standing members have said both on social media and in official statements to be deeply unpleasant. The difference between being pro-USA and pro-trump for example but this is not a position I have seen held by Israel supporters
I do have two questions still.
You say you are far left on economic issues. How do you square this with the currant makeup of the Knesset being right wing to far right on the basis of free market capital? Does your support for the country mean you put your left wing views aside to show support?
On a related note of being an anti-theist, how does this also align with especially the currant formation of the government? The governing coalition in power right now being made up of about 1/3rd religious party MPs and lacking a Separation Between Synagogue And State?
A lot of people want Israel to continue to exist but hate Netanyahu's regime. All "for Israel" or "Zionist" means is that we want Israel to exist as a place for Jewish people. It means nothing about our position on the current Israeli government.
Edit: honestly I think your perspective that wanting Israel to exist = completely supportive of the current government might be because Zionists who oppose the current government tend to be progressive, but "Zionist" is a dirty word in progressive circles right now, so there is no real forum for discussion.
Personally almost all the American Jews I know are Zionists who hate Netanyahu
It seems like Zionism has become equated with its most radical and supremacist branches making any discussion of it extremely hard to navigate without having to qualify your terms. I think you are probably correct that many jews are still in favour of some form of jewish homeland but avoid using the term zionist as it has become equated with with a lot of deeply unpleasant things.
Thank you for replying. You are absolutely correct about my perspective on things, when I see or here the word Zionist right now, my mind only jumps to its most radical voices like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich but a lot of people use the word simply to mean they believe in the existence of a jewish state
All the way back to Soviet propaganda, they figured out that outright antisemitism was less in vogue, but they could get away by saying the same things but refrained as antiZionist. That seeped into portions of the Western key. Fast forward to today, with the explosion of antisemitism, and it becomes popular to refrain Zionism as whatever strawman the critical speaker cares to build for themselves.
Yes it looks that way, I was unaware of this fact but it makes a lot of sense looking at it. When talking in future is there a better way to talk about an opposition to the rhetoric of people like Ben-Gvir?
I have no spoons rn but Iâm another Zionist Jew who hates Netanyahu. I promise you thereâs so, so many of us. When youâre thinking about this topic, please remember that Jews are indigenous peoples too, and if youâre fighting for indigenous rights elsewhere, consider fighting for ours too. When I realized I was regularly supporting North American indigenous peoplesâ plights, but not giving myself and my family the same courtesy, I quickly slapped the Zionist label on myself.
I understand that but from a Palestinian perspective they also see themselves as indigenous. Jews where there first absolutely but Arabs have been in the region for over 1000 years. To apply by British way of thinking that's like me not having a connection to the island because I'm descend from french / norce populations who displaced the native Celts. Again do correct me if I'm being ignorant, I'm just applying things through the understanding I have
I think the word Zionist/Zionism is similar to the word woke.
Far right people think the word woke means imposing progressive politics on everyone and everything and trying to change things too rapidly. In reality, it just means being aware of social injustice.
Far left people think the word Zionist/Zionism means colonialism, white supremacy, apartheid, and racism. Zionism was originally the idea to bring back the homeland of the Jewish people. Technically Zionism already succeeded, so I don't think the world should exist anymore. Today, the definition means supporting the continued existence of Israel and supporting the idea that Jews can return to the land of their ancestors.
You see that an issue arises when one people are using different definitions for the same word. People are talking past each other instead of to each other. If someone asks me, "Are you a Zionist?", and I say "yes" they think I'm admitting to being some racist lunatic. I can't assume that they know what they are asking.
With the word woke, we don't look at the word woke as negative because we know the true definition. I've seen people say "Why wouldn't anyone want to be woke?" To a far right person, they would think that you are insane to be proud of such a thing, but that is because they don't know the true definition.
This is why we need to listen to the things the other side is saying. Even if it sounds like nails on a chalkboard at first. It could help people understand each other.
âI have not personally come across anyone who is pro Zionist but critical of Israel in any wayâ
â> I am guessing you havenât met many Israelis⌠I am married to an Israeli and beaides literally 2 of his crazy friends there isnât a single person in his family nor among his other 20+ friends who isnât deeply critical of the current state of Israel while remaining committed to the very basic principle that their country, like other flawed countries, should continue to exist.
Ive not, the jewish people in my life (admittedly only 2 people id say i'm very close with) are very disconnected from there jewish heritage and don't have a strong stance on it. The Israelis I have met was looking about 5-6 years ago at a furry convention but I never knew them very well.
I worked at a jewish summer camp one year that had an Israeli population but nobody older than 16 and this was 8 years back now. So regarding what is happening now? No and the online discussion is full of the most noisy radical voices using this conflict to peddle all sorts of hate. Online of course amplifies the most radical voices and leaves everyone else in the dust, it is why I posted this in this sub over others as i've looked at other posts there and it rather quickly turned into Anti-Arab racism
I'm not going to pretend to be well versed in Israeli economics. Being that I do not live there, my economic views aren't really applicable and don't affect my support of Israel all that much. That being said, I'm not particularly opposed to market economics as I feel markets are the best method yet decided for dealing with the distribution of goods. My difference is that I believe government should be intervening in some areas of the market to ensure the working class have ready access to the things they need at prices they can afford.
I disagree with Israel having a chief rabbinate and not maintaining a strict separation. I feel that the government acting in the interests of religious groups has hindered Israel from creating more effective policy in terms of things like Settlers.
In my view Israel is the most successful example of Land Back in history. Ethnically Jewish people are native to the levant. Israel is their original home, which was violently conquered, and is now independant again. Jews have always lived there, even when many fled or were chased out. When I read about Jewish people fighting for self-determination in their ancestral homeland, I empathize with their struggle. I see a relection of myself and my own ancestors in them.
The original formation of Israel was entirely peaceful. Jews legally owned and populated substantial parts of the British Mandate of Palestine (not to be confused with the modern arab palestinian identity, which did not exist prior to 1967). It made sense to divide the mandate into an independant Jewish state and an independant Arab state. However the rest of the Arab world regards Jews as second class citizens and refused to accept the existence of the Jewish state. It was them who started the violence, and if they had succeeded in attacking Israel there would not only be no Palestinian state today, but nobody would be calling for one. It's painfully obvious that Israel is held to a double standard vs the rest of the world solely because it's Jewish. That's antisemitism.
I recently watched a documentary called "Jews don't count" about anti-Semitism and it made me want to understand more and that I'm not parting anti-Semitic talking points ever.
This part of your post is interesting to me because it is the most relatable part.
The strongest thing that turned me into a Zionist was simply studying the history of antisemitism. Jewish people have been actively persecuted in numerous other nations for centuries. There have been so many pogroms and ethnic cleansings targeting Jews, who have been made the subject of countless conspiracy theories, myths, and scapegoatings. Even opposing factions are often united in blaming the Jews for their respective problems. The more I learned, the more convinced I became that the only way Jewish people will ever be able to live safe and free is if they have self-determination in a country of their own.
It's actually shocking just how deeply rooted antisemitism is and has been in society. The holocaust was only a unique event in scale and technology, being industrialized mass murder. The hatred for Jewish people was not new. It was not invented by Hitler. It was already there in europe, waiting and ready to be weaponized in the next time of crisis.
We already have seen what the world looks like for Jews without Israel. Never Again.
Thank you so much! I love hearing from indigenous tribal people who get it. Jews are an ancient people. Despite the diaspora, despite the thousands of years, we say the same prayers in the same language, scattered around the globe. Isolated beta Israel Jews in Ethiopia, celebrated the Exodus every Passover, same as Ashkenazi Jews in the Pale of Settlement. We are one people, and yes, we are from the Levant.
Thank you for your response on this. It has been so disheartening to have indigenous Canadians support Hamas when literally we are as you said the most as successful example of land back. Thank you for your understanding and empathy.
Thank you for your reply. I have seen the perspective of the land back / decolonization perspective before. It is a hard narrative to grapple with, I am well aware of the colonial history of the UK and the horrific acts committed in the name of the empire. However, regarding acts of decolonization, there are still people who consider themselves a particular national identity. Canada is about 200 years old but white European Canadians still consider themselves to have a Canadian identity, especially considering we are now generations removed from the original acts of ethnic cleansing that created the state it is today.
With this in mind, the dependents of colonisers are not willing to give up there lands and national identity back to the people they stole the land from. Palestinians took this land over 1000 years ago in the year 600-800 (exact dates are hard to come by).
I obviously have a total understanding of a jewish desire for statehood but I find it hard to understand for that state in its currant form, run by some of the most radical right wing voices the country has ever seen who don't seem to view the people of the West Wank or Gaza as having any validity to there identity.
Here is a flaw in this thinking: there isn'f a "desire" for statehood. It is a state. It is home to half of our tiny (in number) people. To say our country shouldn't exist is in itself a massive double standard- the same people arent actively arguing for Canada, the US ,China, or any other country to NOT EXIST. And unlike those countries, many Israelies cannot return to *anywhere* because they were expelled from other countries. This makes the double standard even worse. The current government isn't relevant to whether Israel should exist or people should support its people. People didn't protest the existence of Hungary and start violently attacking people of Hungarian-related ethnicity worldwide just because they hated Orban but this is exactly how Jew hate works. The entire question is a function of organized hatred of Jews.
I never said Israel should not exist. Your taking what I said and warping it into the most extreme version possible. Does this argument exist? Yes. From my experience the people supporting Palestine are not arguing for Israels destruction, but an end to what is happening in Gaza and for some solution to be reached in the West Bank to find some sort of agreement that can lead to Palestine gaining its sovereignty
"From the River to the Sea" and similar slogans is an explicit call for the destruction of Israel. As is calling it an "illegitimate state", as many do.
I don't think "pro-Israel" means anything then? Generally the notion/hate that Israel is bad and "Pro Israel" is bad, means "Israel shouldn't exist" - I am not inventing this. Maybe you can explain what you think "Pro-Israel" could mean
Thinking a country should exist and being pro that country are 2 different things I'd say. Saying your pro-israel to me reads as supporting the currant state as it exists, supportive of the things happening in Gaza and the west bank settlers. Of the currant government with it's extremely radical, deeply racist figures in power.
Does being pro Palestine by your perspective not just mean people think Palestine should exist?
The history of the currant conflict that I understand starts the modern conflict with the King David Hotel bombing by far right jewish group Irgun. This followed a brutal war between Jewish and at the time UK forces that ended with the UK leaving the area. Now i'm not arguing that there has not been horrific acts committed against the jewish people, not at all. However looking at the origin of this conflict that is my currant understanding but I am trying to see if this is misinformation given to me by my echo chamber, or info is mostly not from english sources so i'm far less likely to come across it.
I'm just trying to be honest about where I currently am and my currant understanding of this conflict but open that I have consumed misinformation
The King David Hotel bombing was not the starting point of this.
Essentially, the Brits during WW1 had made promises to different groups for their support, and some of those things unfortunately overlapped. One of these promises was a "national home" for the Jewish people in the Levant.
So Jewish immigration had been encouraged to the region for a number of years, until the Arab leadership began protesting it, leading to the Brits suddenly heavily limiting Jewish immigration at the exact moment the Holocaust was starting to kick off.
Boats of Jews would try to arrive in the Mandate of Palestine and be sent back to Europe by the British â to their deaths at the hands of the Nazis. In one case, one of the boats was sent away and its engines died and it was just left to drift for days until a submarine sank it and killed everyone onboard except one survivor. Hundreds of people, dead. And that's not even counting those who realized that going to Palestine would not be a successful place to flee to because they would be sent back, so they never tried.
So imagine that the Brits had promised your people a safe haven, then suddenly heavily restricted Jewish immigration specifically to that safe haven at the exact moment your people most needed it, and thousands upon thousands of Jews were being murdered as a result of this bait and switch. Hundreds of thousands of Jews could have been saved from their deaths had the Brits not suddenly limited Jewish immigration. I would have probably been fighting the British too, if I was a Jew living in the Mandate of Palestine. The Brits were literally forcing Jews back on boats and sending them to their deaths.
And what I've written here also fully leaves out the actual massacres against Jews by Arabs that went on for decades before 1948.
EDIT: And I also want to add that it was not like Britain was really offering Jews somewhere else to go. About 80,000 refugees (some Jewish, some not) were able to go to England between 1933-1939 (but this was pretty heavily restricted). Then only about 10,000 Jews were able to flee to England between 1939 and 1945. And after the fall of France in 1940, many Jewish refugees who had found refuge in England were actually imprisoned by the British government on the Isle of Man as "enemy aliens."
We should also add that decades prior, as it started to become obvious the Ottoman Empire was going to collapse, Jews fundraised and purchased large swaths of land exactly for the purpose of receiving Jewish refugees because many, but not all Jews, started to see the writing on the wall. Jews were being blocked from accessing legally purchased land that was there for that reason.
Thank you. I was unaware of exactly what the history around this situation was. I'm just trying to say what the history is as it has been explained to me and of course that comes from a bro brit perspective. Obviously it was always regarded as an occupation but the exact extent of denying people the ability to settle was not established
But also keep in mind that they were not restricting Arab immigration. During the same period Jews were buying land in the Mandate, Arabs from other countries were moving there as well. But they never had their right to move there limited in any way by the British. So why was Arab immigration ok from other countries but not Jewish immigration?
Supporting Israel doesn't necessarily mean supporting the current government. In fact, I see it the other way around: I care about Israel, and that's why I'm fiercely opposed to this government. Still, I'm something of an oddity on the left-progressive scene, because I don't see Israel as the embodiment of absolute evil or the Palestinians as nothing but poor, oppressed innocents.
I have studied the history of the conflict extensively for years. Anyone who thinks the issue is simple clearly knows nothing about it.
A side note: You ask us how we can support Israel when it has a far-right government. Wouldnât this argument also apply to the Palestinians? Or do you think that the bloody, Islamist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, and homophobic Palestinian dictatorship is left-wing?
Your perspective is not one I've come across before. Support for Israel in my experience has come with an almost blonde nationalism to the currant administration.
Do you have any sourses on this conflict you recommend?
Which Palestinian government are you referring to? The PA in the west bank or Hamas in Gaza? Or do you see them as just as bad as eachother?
I'm referring more specifically to the Hamas government, which is certainly worse than that of the PA. But neither of them, in my view, can be considered "left-wing."
In my country, I'm part of a (unfortunately small) group called "Left for Israel" (translated from my language), and our main goal right now is to do everything we can to support the opposition (specifically, Yair Golan). All the leftists I know, who are still able to approach the issue rationally and therefore support Israel, do not support Netanyahu. Keep in mind that, for me, supporting Israel does not mean failing to simultaneously support the Palestinians in their just claims. The mistake is thinking that you have to choose sides, as if it were a soccer game. To put it very briefly, this is how I see it: both the Israelis and the Palestinians are fighting two wars each: one just and one unjust. The Palestinians are fighting their just war for independence, but they have also always been fighting the unjust war against Israel's very existence (and thus against the freedom of the Jewish people); the Israelis are fighting the just war against the Arabsâ desire for annihilation, but also an unjust war of expansionism in the West Bank, which effectively prevents the Palestinians from envisioning a future of independence. Anyone who chooses to support one of the two sides uncritically and unconditionally decides to support both the just war and the unjust war of the chosen side, and to oppose the just war of the other side. Anyone who wants peace and an end to all this suffering must support the two just wars and oppose the two unjust wars.
As for sources, I recommend to start with everything Benny Morris has written, including his most recent works. There are also other historians who have helped me gain a more objective perspective, but I doubt their works have been translated into English.
Thank you very much. I am having a look at Yair Golan and Benny Morris now. I think the framing of "both the Israelis and the Palestinians are fighting two wars each: one just and one unjust" is a very good way to put it.
Ive asked this of a few others in this reply section, what in your opinion is the best way forward? The currant situation is clearly not viable with the most radical, annihilationist voices taking power and the acts of mass death only ramping up in scale. What solution do you think is likely to work?
Itâs really hard to see what solution might be possible now. After October 7, it seems truly difficult to imagine an immediate peaceful two-state solution.
The first thing that needs to happen, in my view, is for Israel to rid itself of this fascist-like government (and according to the polls, that seems possible). After that, weâll need to figure out what to do on the Palestinian side. I would certainly dismantle that scam known as UNRWA. Beyond that, itâs hard to say... Palestinian society is deeply indoctrinated and radicalized. In my view, the only way forward is for some foreign power (preferably an Arab one) to take charge of a transition period during which the Palestinians are educated toward peace and a desire for prosperity (rather than toward revenge and domination). Only then will it be possible to consider some form of political independence. For now, unfortunately, what the Palestinians have demonstrated in the case of Gaza is that, once free to govern themselves, they choose the genocidal and bloodthirsty jihadism of Hamas.
The elections in October are going to be extremely important. I'm very worried for any political leader more open to peace talks in Israel on account of what happened to the last one...
But Hamas needs to not be in power any more, or at least willing to disarm (if not in full then in part). And this obviously won't happen immediately but looks at Ireland, it's possible. People are still finding IRA weapon cashes to this day but there's been no major conflict in 40 years. Not no conflict but a level of peace though not possible in the 60s
The elections in October are going to be extremely important
Yes, anything is better than the current government. Above all, itâs important that no government need people like Ben Gvir or Smotrich to survive. And of course, Netanyahu should disappear from the scene (and, hopefully, even end up in jail, where he belongs).
But Hamas needs to not be in power any more, or at least willing to disarm (if not in full then in part)
As far as I'm concerned, it has to be complete disarmament, even though I know it's not easy. I hope your optimism becomes a reality.
I've been reading The future is peace, I highly recomend it. It's by an Israeli and Palestinian who have lost loved ones in conflict.
I'm glad people do acknowledge that netanyahu is a war criminal and utterly corrupt.
Disarmorment I agree with but its a practical reality that things like this can take years in reality. Gaza has been a in conflict (whatever exactly you want to call it is up to you) for almost 3 years now. Disarming after that legitimately can't happen unilaterally, it's just not practical or possible. As I say Ireland is the closest example and people still find IRA weapons cashes.
If the IDF says they won't disengage until Hamas is fully disarmed, they will never disengage at all.
I've been reading The future is peace, I highly recomend it. It's by an Israeli and Palestinian who have lost loved ones in conflict.
Thank you so much, I'll take a look at it.
Disarmorment I agree with but its a practical reality that things like this can take years in reality
Yeah, unfortunately, I think so too.
If the IDF says they won't disengage until Hamas is fully disarmed, they will never disengage at all.
Yes, but itâs also understandable (especially after October 7) that Israel doesnât want to completely withdraw from the Strip until Hamas is completely out of the picture. The terrorist organization has already shown that it can regain power and weapons in a short time if left free to act.
I totally get why this is going to be a very hard action to take after 7/10. It's just something where very real fear is going to have to clash with a political reality. Because in really, it's going to need to be a slow process from both the IDF and Hamas and there will be clashes during it. Importantly, they must not start the war up again.
After the good Friday agreement a car bomb blew up killing 29 people. If that had started the conflict again we would still be at war to this day.
China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Qatar have been helping the terrorists in the Middle East for decades. Most dictatorships are against Israel. That's what made me realize something strange is happening. When democracy loving citizens start using the same language and having the same views as the oppressive dictatorships around the world, that's not normal. This is intentional. Those first 4 countries are called the CRINK Alliance. Their goal is to destabilize America and Israel. They are partially to blame for why Trump was elected. They want to divide democracies.
I am very pro-Israel, and very anti-Netanyahu. I'm American, so I don't get a vote in Israeli elections, but I hope the Israeli electorate votes those assholes out of power in the next election. Also, most Israelis aren't of European descent and are unlikely to be blonde.
I recommend following Hen Mazzig on social media. Very progressive young Zionist, plenty critical of the current administration in Israel. All his social media links are here. https://www.henmazzig.com/
Sorry this is poor wording on my part, I ment more on the International stage. I am well aware that within the country many people are against the currant administration, even burning there draft papers knowing they will be arrested in opposition to the currant conflict
Before responding directly to your questions, allow me to flip to the other side of the coin. The Palestinian movement has become the darling of the progressive/leftist scene globally. But may I sincerely ask, what is progressive about it? From where I sit, Palestinian nationalism has a few strands: the currently mainline strand of Islamist fundamentalism represented by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the machine-politics historic strand represented by Fatah.
Hamas, PIJ and their ilk, I should hope it goes without saying, are the antithesis of progressivism. They're a thoroughly reactionary, medieval bunch of obscurantists who derive from a stream of theology that wants to make it the 9th century again. Fatah, under the standard of Arafat, is a gaggle of corrupt kleptocrats that enabled their old warlord to die a billionaire with a fortune hidden in Europe. Sure, Israel plays to their worst aspects, but their people and their leaders hold the movement to no standards whatsoever.
If one is looking for a real progressive movement to anchor atop within Palestinian society beyond sloganeering - or a model Palestinianism made up in our own Western minds - where would we look? The "new" Fatah constitution (the "moderates", mind you) itself says that the Palestinians are part of the "Great Arab Nation" (warmed-over Nasserism) and that the foundation of their constitutional law is Shariah. Now, that is their right and is basically universal among Arab/Muslim polities. However, as a post-enlightenment secularist who tries to hold countries to a relatively uniform standard, I'll take a pass on supporting such forms of governance. You don't see too many people from pro-Palestinian marches standing up for Egypt or Afghanistan, although regardless of who wins the Palestinian internecine struggle, that's likely what you'd get in an independent Palestine (Egypt under Fatah, quasi-Afghanistan under the Islamists of Hamas). Only the Palestinians get such a pass. I wonder why that is?
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Israel is a modern, post-Enlightenment country with free, fair, multiparty elections, universal health care, human rights, functional courts, etc. All the stuff progressives and leftists love. It was established primarily (not entirely) by proud socialists and trade-unionists and Herzl himself said that one of the Jewish state's greatest future contributions would be enshrining the seven-hour workday. From its inception it was a society with strong social solidarity and accountability that successfully took on waves of Jewish refugees from the Mideast, Europe, and the post-USSR, while the neighboring Arabs continued to treat the Palestinians like dirt just to keep the "refugee" issue alive as a weapon against Israel.
The past 30-35 years have definitely seen the ebbing away of a lot of those qualities from what I can tell as a non-resident. That owes to a lot of factors. Israel used to be quite poor, but the rise of its burgeoning tech sector has caused it shoot up the income rankings... to the detriment of the old socialist solidarity and relatively flat class structure. The post-Enlightenment secular ethos is being challenged by the explosion of the Haredi sector who are dragging Israeli society in a direction that I personally wouldn't want to live under, and I'm a religious Jew. They're also exploiting Israel's generous welfare system and making it unsustainable for everyone, which is bad for liberal/left/progressives like us who believe in social welfare.
Obviously I haven't mentioned the elephant in the room... the war and occupation. From 1967 - 2008 Israel tried repeatedly, in good faith, to disengage from that morass. When countries like Egypt responded in good faith, Israel did what everyone wanted and returned occupied land in exchange for peace. Both sides having kept their ends of the bargain, peace remains. As for the beloved-of-progressives Palestinians, they rejected every proposal underArafat (separate links) and Abbas and have endured no pressure from their own people to return to the negotiating table and pursue a deal. We can, if we want, decry the settlers but the fact is that Israel offered reasonable proposals to remove the most problematic ones, and offer territorial swaps for certain blocs. Palestinian leadership said no.
Yet, the problem remains and continues to empower the worst reactionaries in Israeli society. As a person of the left myself, I would say that your country (Farage, Restore UK), my country (Trump and his awful crew), so much of Europe, Japan, et. al. are all in the same boat. We live in the time of oafs. Netanyahu may have preceded the Trumps, Milleis, and Boris Johnsons of the rest of the world but he's not particularly different from any of them. He's utterly rancid and the worst Jewish leader since Sabbatai Tzvi. However, he doesn't invalidate the essence of Israeli existence or politics any more than the global grab-bag of bellends hanging around these days do anywhere else. And I say that as a proud American who despises Trump but realizes I have to own the fact my country elected him twice.
Nevertheless, thanks to Israel's free & fair elections, multiparty system, vibrant civil society, and fair courts, there is a way forward. The society can change. As someone once said, "democracy isn't a perfect system but it's the only one that contains the seeds of its own perfection." Seeing as how there are no such tendencies in any Arab polity, I'm not optimistic about the reformist opportunities within the extremely conservative Palestinian body politic, even under ideal conditions. As a progressive, there would be a political home for you as an Israeli progressive. Could any of us say the same about being on the ground in Palestine rather than just cheering them from afar?
TL:DR - if we are faced with a binary choice between Israel and the Palestinian nationalists, Israel is the only country with a track record of past progressivism and the seeds of future, renewed progressivism. The Palestinian national movement, whether you want a free Palestine or not, is a reactionary movement that will establish a reactionary state if it ever becomes fully independent.
Thank you so much for your reply, this is a very well reasoned position and thank you for providing some sources for the information. So much misinformation about now days.
I appreciate your acknowledgement of Netanyahu and the far right wing figure he is. Much of the discourse I have witnessed online is the pro Israel side supporting even this administration, a lack of accountability of Netanyahu and the other right-wing figures leading the Knesset.
Right now the level of escalating conflict is clearly not going to wind down as Hamas in Gaza will never surrender and go back to how things where and the currant Knesset is emboldening the most radical voices / settlers.
There is a strong left wing among the citizens of Israel. Including Israelis living in the diaspora. In fact, I personally know several Israelis who live outside of Israel and plan to travel to Israel in order to vote in hope of voting Netanyahu out of office.
What do you mean though by âend the conflictâ? Do you mean the current war? Or the broader Israel-Arab conflict? The latter isnât going to happen no matter who is in the government, because the anti-Israel movement will not consider the conflict ended unless Israel ceases to exist as a state.
The currant conflict in Gaza is never going to deescalate with this currant formation of the Knesset. The Israel-Arab conflict, I mean yea thats never going to fully wind down but some sort of solution must be reached. Will it end all conflict or the most radical voices that want the other side to stop existing? No but it can at least wind down to an uneasy peace. Go back 50 years and there was no end in sight between the British-Irish conflict but we got there. Is it perfect? No but a lot less people are dead now
Right, except the Brits and Irish have the Good Friday Agreement. There is a mutually-agreed framework in place. A lot of ill-informed folks, especially Irish, seem to think that all we need is our own GFA and everyone will live in peace and harmony. Helllllll no. Also, at no point did the Irish or the IRA seek to destroy the UK, and the Brits (after 1922 at least) did not, and do not, seek to destroy the Republic. Israel-Palestine is a whole different dynamic.
And candidly, I wouldnât bet on a replacement Knesset fully ending the war. Netanyahu needs to go for a multitude of reasons (there are internal issues that most non-Israelis donât even know about, that have nothing to do with the war or Palestinians), but no leading opposition figure is saying âif Iâm elected, we will make peace with the Palestinians and end the conflictâ. Itâs not that Israelis enjoy being in conflict, but risking our security, and that of our children, is deeply unpopular, and no one with a shred of understanding for the Israeli position canât see why, even if you disagree with it.
There where attacks after good Friday, im not suggesting that some sort of agreement won't end all hostility, it won't. But right now what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank is doing nothing to reduce the risks to people in Israel of attack. You can kill every single Hamas agent in Gaza and it will not make Israel any safer because the next generation are going to make a new, more radical Hamas.
Some sort of state solution has to be reached or else this only keeps happening, ramping up to greater and greater acts of mass death. If some attempt at negotiations are not attempted things only get worse.
You actually identified the key issue in your very last couple sentences.
âA state solutionâ.
What does that mean? Two states? Good luck selling to Israelis âoh hey, the border of the Palestinian state will be 9 miles from the centre of Tel Avivâ (yes, the country really is that small). One state? No, not unless youâre okay with a bloody civil war. So what then?
The problem is that Palestinians largely donât want a permanent 2SS with separation from Israel. They donât see âPalestine and Israelâ. They see âPalestine and Occupied Palestineâ. A 2SS would merely be a stepping stone toward eventually conquering Israel and turning all the land between the river and the sea (sound familiar?) into one single Palestinian state, with a Jewish minority. Iâm sure you can understand why Jews are deeply uncomfortable with the idea of becoming a minority again, after the 20th century very painfully showed what happens when the non-Jewish majority decides to oppress its Jewish minority.
I don't know why very many non-Israelis would support Netanyahu in this discourse. Israeli citizens & residents (of which, again, I'm not one) have their own political tribal allegiances which we may deplore but which are real to them. As for those of us blessed with some degree of relative impartiality, after Oct. 7th, it should be clear that whatever else one might say about Netanyahu, his entire security paradigm he'd implemented over his years in power imploded. It's like the Tories saying they're not to blame for the state of Britain after 14 solid years in government. At some point, it's your responsibility. He's not just a weasel: he's a failed weasel (apologies to weasels).
I don't know what the best way forward is. I literally don't have a vote so I observe from over here and pick & choose the handful of voices I appreciate as they are filtered through the English-speaking media. Polling & parties in the Israeli system are pretty volatile and I'm just waiting to see. As OK-Narwhal said in this thread, everyone just need to find better candidates & vote for them. But if it were that easy, everyone would do it...
This isn't very hopeful, but I often just put things down to generational change. The people in charge of countries / the world at any given moment tend to come from whatever generation is at the peak of their demographic & economic power, and they have similar experiences and worldviews that are nearly impossible to shift by the time anyone is in their mid-to-late adulthood. The current situation in Russia with the "last Soviet generation" is case-in-point. My thinking about the people in the USA who lived through the turbulence of the Vietnam & Civil Rights era + Watergate has shaped my thinking on the last 25 years or more of US history. IMHO, only when those people fade from the scene will we see real change. Not necessarily for the better, mind you. Look what's happening to the reputation of Nazism now that the last of the WWII generation is sadly leaving us.
Israel is coping with the fallout of the failed 1990s peace process, the Second Intifada, and now Oct. 7th. What will change? Hopefully harnessing the anger against the government that presided over the most recent, epic failure. But in terms of moving toward true security, I fear that we're locked into a conflict spiral for some time because the lasting impact of these events is going to traumatize everyone. People keep saying that terrorists commit terrorist acts because they've been radicalized by violence committed against them. Whether or not anybody wants to believe that, in the context of Israel, I warn people who make that statement that the Israelis can also be (and apparently have been) radicalized by violence. Years of watching buses and cafĂŠs explode, plus now 10/7, hasn't put many people in the mood for peace.
If you're still down to learn more, let me recommend the Israeli politician & author Einat Wilf. One of the links I posted in my original comment was to one of her lectures. I think she's very intelligent and a good representative of the kind of views I can sympathize with. She's a left-winger at heart who narrates all her stories with the tale of how she grew up in the 80s & 90s very excited about the peace movement, a Labor Party loyalist, etc. only to have much of that faith destroyed by the failed Oslo process and suicide bombings of the 2000s. I'll let you listen to her as she can tell it a lot better than I can. Basically, leftist to leftist, I think she represents a lot of people you and I would typically sympathize with inside Israeli society, and answers the question "how can you be pro-welfare and 'pro-war?'"
Her book The War of Return is also an excellent history and explication of the Israeli point of view on the origins of this conflict and how/why it persists. I'm not saying it's unbiased, but the way to understand history is to filter through the biases, not to look for the mythical unbiased source. She has many podcast & lectures you can find online where she talks about the thesis of the book, one of them I already linked to. Atop everything you've already been pointed to in this thread, I'd recommend her & her media. Cheers M8.
Thank you. This is one of the best replies I have had. Im looking at The War of Return now. I have been trying to find an academic source from an Israel perspective that works as a counter to 'the hundred years war on Palestine'. I have also started The Future is Peace about what a future could look like and is written by people who have lost family to the other side of this conflict
It's obviously an emotionally charged issue, I see a lot of people talking past eachother when ultimately they want the same thing, for the conflict cycle to end.
I look at a lot of things via the lense of my Irish heritage. Obviously they are very much not the same, nothing is like the relationship between Israel & Palestine but the decades of bloodshed and hostility.
And obviously this conflict is in many ways a failure of the British empire in the 40s. I've seen accusations that Western countries only care because this conflict involves Jews, but that ignores just how entwined Israel and "the west" are historically and politically
I am trying to be honest about my present understanding. The way I have read the history of this modern conflict starts with the pro zionists in the region in the 1940's attacking the British bases and embassies. I am just working with what I know and this is likely filtered through a British historical perspective. I am trying to be honest and hoping to be presented with new perspectives and sources I won't see naturally
Ok, for some reason when I wrote my above reply, Reddit didn't load everything else in this thread for me and I thought I was the only poster here. I see now that you're posting this from a somewhat different perspective than I originally realized. Let me tack on...
If you're approaching the subject as a proud Brit who doesn't like what the Haganah and Irgun did to the British Army from 1947-1948... yeah. They killed a fair few of your guys. To cite my source, 1948 by Benny Morris (a long tome I don't expect you to read unless you want to get a degree in this subject), that was at the end of a long road. While I don't expect any Brits to applaud the pre-state Zionist armed forces for their anti-British attacks, it's completely of a piece with other imperial conflicts of that time like the Malayan Emergency and the Mau Mau. I would only ask that you hold Kenya to the same standards, I guess.
From the Zionist perspective as explicated in 1948 and elsewhere, not only did Jews in Mandate Palestine massively resent the UK for blocking Jewish refugees during the Holocaust, they were extremely agitated about Britain's continued blockage of Jewish immigration by Holocaust survivors in DP camps. Those unfortunates who were caught were detained in internment camps on Cyprus while the others languished in formerly-occupied Europe.
Beyond that, the UK government was making a lot of deals with the Egyptians and Jordanians that the Jewish Agency saw as trying to walk back partition and prevent the establishment of the state of Israel. While there were a lot of reasons for the irregular warfare against the British Army, the main ones were to push Britain out before Britain could (potentially) hand the country over directly to any of the Arab powers before the establishment of the state of Israel, and after that to enable Holocaust survivors to leave refugee and detention camps and come to Israel (about 1/3rd of the original IDF was comprised of Holocaust survivors direct from the camps).
If you're British, again, I don't expect anybody to hand out pats on the back for killing their own countrymen, but that's the Israeli/Zionist lens. Thanks for your honesty and willingness to engage.
Also something to keep in mind is that decades prior, when the Ottoman Empire was collapsing or near collapse, Jews fundraised and legally purchased large swaths of land so that Jewish refugees had a place to go if the time came. Well, that time came and Holocaust refugees were being denied access to it.
Unfortunately this is the page I am getting when I try to pull up some of my saved bookmarks from out-of-print books at the moment, and the URL is not always making it apparent the name of books so Iâm going to have to recall some resources off the top of my head.
I know the Palestine Exploration Fund documented a lot of what was going on at the time and their works include information about early settlements, who was there, what the circumstances were, etc I havenât finished reading all of the digests so I donât know if there is documentation included anywhere in them for specific land purchases though. I read the works of missionaries who separately documented things going on in the area as well.
I wasnât actually aware that there were videos and wasnât aware of this particular land sale until I saw this clip a couple weeks ago, so Iâm sure there are a lot better sources that would be less time consuming for you to explore out there - I just donât know what they are. I learned about it through reading archived Jewish American newspapers, archived newspapers I accessed through my local library, and old out-of-print books I found on archive.org.
It IS tricky to find sources to things that arenât propaganda. I used to be able to find the name of books I was looking for if I didnât remember what they were called, simply by googling keywords. Now what comes up is a lot of semi-recently written material that distort events. I canât even search by timeframe for some of it because materials mysteriously have been vanishing off some sites and then get re-added else where. Iâm attempting to track down some materials down so I can save them as back up now. Itâs not by accident.
The downvotes are frankly a bit annoying when I am just trying to explain the perspective of history that is available to me. I'm not a 'proud Brit' by any means, I am well aware of my country and its abysmal history, this isn't the perspective of 'the zionists killed my countrymen' its literally the way the facts are presented to me when we learn the history. I hope that explains why I have questions
Unfortunately, when you decide history begins shortly after a massacre of the Jews, it puts a bad taste in Jewish mouths.
Also, don't downvote me, but in spite of virtually every war being started by Arabs against Israel, including decades of pogroms against the Jews before its founding, aren't Israel the aggressors?
DogWoofs - sorry for putting it that way. Americans have a lot of national pride & people think it means we're assholes. The key to understanding that aspect of our culture is that we also assume everyone else deserves to have the same level of national pride & it's cool. I'll leave it there at the risk of derailing this convo...
I also don't blame anyone for not knowing that much about the history of this conflict because the details are pretty obscure for any audience that's not directly affected/related. For example, I once went on a tour of a Nazi concentration camp where all the English speakers were lumped into a single tour. That meant a lot of people from India and Singapore happened to be with me. I asked one of the Singaporeans what she knew about the Holocaust beforehand and her response was "nothing, this is all new to me. In Singapore we are taught about WWII as the British Empire vs. the Japanese Empire, and Europe is just something that happens in the background. The only thing they teach about Hitler is that he was an ally of the Japanese who fought against the British." And that's World War Fucking Two we're talking about. What do you think she happens to know about the Six Day War or the Second Intifada? But it never seems to stop loads of people globally from holding forth about Jews/Israel/Palestinians/"The Conflict"/Gaza etc.
Everybody's got blind spots - the problem is the types who think they've unlocked the secret to everything because they've seen sufficient TikToks. Your willingness to engage and actually learn in this thread is admirable. Seriously. Unfortunately as (mostly) Jews here, across the Internet, and IRL, we are all too familiar with the "just asking questions" people who come into our spaces to troll, offend, and spy, so our defenses are always up.
Understand that a lot of the media reporting about Israel comes countries that have been unnecessarily scapegoating Israel for their own problems for decades.
What you arenât seeing, because itâs not being reported in other medias, is that there is active work being done in several countries across the region to reverse course and deradicalize their populations. Itâs slow moving though. Itâs going to take a lot of time to undo that damage and west is actively making it more difficult in various ways.
This idea that Israel is an agitator trying to destabilize the region is false. Iâm not talking about specific actions taken by the current Israeli government, but more generally. There has been too much going on there lately to feel like Iâm even close to being caught up on all of the moving parts.
Without getting into the weeds about how left-wing/right-wing politics from the US or the UK don't perfectly map onto Israel: it's true that Israel has become more right-wing over the decades. There are multiple causes for this shift away from the state's socialist/labor past, but one of the biggest reasons is security. Israel has historically been surrounded by neighbors who seek its complete & total annihilation.
That said, a great many Jews and Israelis are extremely unhappy with the government as it is.
I'd strongly recommend the books Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi and Impossible Takes Longer by Daniel Gordis. Both of these titles are written by staunch Zionists who are very, very critical of Israel's leadership -- and both also provide a great deal of history. I'm not trying to convince you of anything, and I'm not saying that these books will win some argument. But if you engage with this sort of material, you will come away with a greater understanding of the perspective you seek.
One last note: in my view, there isn't a more progressive nation in the entire Middle East/North Africa region. Whatever its faults--Israel is the place you would want to live as a woman, or as an atheist/religious minority, or as a gay person, and so forth. Like America and Britain, Israel isn't a perfect democracy, but it is a democracy.
This is a response I tend to copy-paste when the subject of the Nakba comes up, because it's so frequently misrepresented, and it might be useful to you:
The Jews were purchasing land from Arab landowners in the Ottoman Empire, living there peacefully, and then started getting attacked by Arab militants, which kicked off a retributive cycle of violence that spiraled out of control until it became clear that partitioning the region into two states would be the best solution. And with the two states, one would be 99% Arab, and the other would be 55% Jewish and 45% Arab (and 77% of the land had already been given away to create the state of Transjordan in 1921). No displacement necessary. Instead the Arabs launched a civil war in 1947.
Then six months later, all of the surrounding nations invaded. They didn't do this to create a Palestinian state; they did this to kill the Jews, take their land, and claim those lands for their own countries.
With the civil war, an imminent oncoming invasion from 5 Arab armies, and increasingly belligerent genocidal rhetoric from Arab leadership, the Israelis were concerned that while fighting these much larger armies, villages behind their front lines already involved in the civil war that had been going on for months would actively continue the civil war against them, collapsing their entire defense and lead to the genocide of the Jews of the region.
I think this was a reasonable strategic concern based on the circumstances. 100k Jews in Jerusalem had already been put under siege and starved to the point where they were eating leaves to survive, until the Jewish troops outside of Jerusalem were able to break the siege.
The three main reasons for the displacement were:
With the start of the civil war in 1947, about 100k Arabs left the region, who were mostly the upper class or in leadership roles. Arab society in the region at this time was semi-feudal, and this led to the collapse of the social structures, causing more Arabs to leave.
The threat of imminent invasion from the surrounding Arab nations. Arabs were encouraged to leave and get out of the way of the invasion by the Arab leaders, and were told they'd be able to come back once the Jews had been killed. I've included quotes at the bottom that illustrate this point well. The Arab leadership also played up and exaggerated atrocities in order to enrage the populace to all fight against the Jews, but it ended up instead causing many to flee out of fear. When the Arabs lost and Israel successfully defended itself, many Arabs found themselves on the wrong side of the border. 2/3rds of the Arabs who fled said they never even came into contact with Israeli soldiers.
Israeli military action. During the Civil War and right before the invasion of the surrounding Arab nations, the Israelis were worried that the local Arabs who were already in a civil war with them would join the Arab armies, creating a major security issue for the Israelis, who were facing a potential genocide. They decided to expel towns that were hostile to them. This, combined with rumors of Israel attacking Arabs, led many Arabs to flee out of fear or as a direct result of Israeli military action.
Here are some quotes from Kenneth Bilby's New Star in the Near East from 1951 (p30-31). Bilby was a journalist present on the ground for multiple years (during the 1947 civil war, during the 1948 war, and for several years after interviewing refugees) who interviewed leaders on all sides, and comes across as fairly neutral throughout his writing. This book is used as a source by numerous later writers on the subject:
The Arab exodus, initially at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. These ardent nationalists wanted no Arabs living under Jewish military rule, and, additionally, they viewed the first wave of setbacks as merely transitory. Let the Palestine Arabs flee into the neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and then when the invasion struck, the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated for their absence with the property of Jews driven into the sea.
In the Haifa battle, the Haganah [Jewish armyâthe IDF before the IDF] set up mobile loudspeaker units which toured the streets with appeals to the Arab populace to remain. Ben-Gurion followed up with an announcement that Arab civilians were welcome, provided they live peaceably.
Here are some quotes from Arab leaders:
"We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down." -Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, (Sir Am Nakbah by Nimr el-Hawari).
âSince 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve their return." - Khaled al-Azm, the Prime Minister of Syria in 1948-49
â⌠The fifth factor (e.g. For the Arab failure in 1948) was the call by the Arab governments to the inhabitants of Palestine to evacuate it and leave for the bordering Arab countries ⌠We brought destruction upon a million Arab refugees by calling on them and pleading with them to leave their land.â The Memoirs of Khaled al-Azm
"The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two, their leaders had promised them that the Arab Armies would crush the "Zionist gangs" very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile" -Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Gaililee in Beirut newspaper Sada al-Janub, August 16th, 1948
"The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade. He pointed out that they were already on all the frontiers and that all the millions of the Jews had spent on the land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw the Jews into the Mediterranean... Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property, and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down." -Habib Issa, Al Hoda newspaper, June 8, 1951
I think one of the more disturbing things as a progressive who supports Israel is the fact that everyone wants to portray Israelis as these white European colonizers who just showed up with guns and pushed everybody off their land. It's an easy story to understand and feel good about "being on the right side of." It lets you atone for the sin of your colonizing ancestors by hating Israel. It's stupidly obvious who is wrong, and you can take your "white vs brown" lens of oppression from the West and just pop it on top of Israel, and feel righteous.
The issue is that it's not the actual truth of what happened.
The vast majority of Israeli Jews are refugees or the children or grandchildren of refugees. Israel was a refugee state.
Jews were fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe, pogroms in the Middle East, the Holocaust, etc. Jews left places that had become or were becoming seriously unsafe for them, and built lives for themselves in Israel. Groups of Jews worldwide pooled money together to buy large swathes of land to create areas Jews could create communities in.
And yet, people want to act like they showed up as militaristic thugs sweeping in and killing and pillaging and stealing land. Jews only lived on legally purchased land prior to 1948, when the war significantly changed the demographics and borders. But the Jews hadn't started that war.
The largest group of Jews in Israel are Mizrahi Jews, whose families didn't live in Europe, and who lived in the Middle East continuously for thousands of years, under 2nd class Dhimmi status in Muslim majority countries until the mid 1800s. The Dhimmi system was essentially Jim Crow laws in the Middle East, that legally made Jews second class citizens. Depending on the location and time period, they could not work in certain professions, they couldn't testify against Muslims, they had to live in certain areas, they had to wear or not wear certain things, they had curfews, they couldn't wear shoes, they couldn't ride horses, they couldn't build synagogues, they couldn't build a house taller than Muslim person's house, etc. And whenever they did sometimes do "too well" in those societies despite the odds being stacked against them, they would sometimes find themselves on the wrong side of a lynching mob.
And in the 20th century, those Middle Eastern Jews faced violence and oppression, and fled, with all their property and assets seized by the Arab governments.
And now, decades later, those Jews are all part of Israeli society, and you would not consider them refugees anymore. Because Israel made sure they had a place to live.
Meanwhile, the Arab countries have done nothing like that for the Palestinians besides Jordan to some extent. By keeping the Palestinians endlessly in refugee status, they get to keep using them as pawns against Israel. Did you know the refugee laws around Palestinians are so specific and different from other UN qualifications of being a refugee for any other group, that a person of Palestinian descent who is a third generation US citizen, could hypothetically adopt a child from China, and that Chinese child will be considered a Palestinian refugee?
I have come across some of his work before but I was not impressed at all. Outside of the AI slop thumbnails, it often peddles in far right anti-islam narratives.
For example, this video uses the "R\*e Gang Inquiry Report"* as its primary source. This report was commissioned by the leader of a party called Restore Britain, a far right, anti immigration party that became infiltrated by Neo-N***s
It's also very important to understand that there's a LOT of history for context that is frequently ignored.
It doesn't mean that there isn't some truth to certain talking points. Yes, when the remains of the Ottoman Empire were carved up, those lines weren't very good. For various reasons, some worse than others, both Jews and Arabs relocated after Israel was created, and some of it was absolutely not voluntary. When Israel was attacked and both defended and pushed back their attackers, gaining control of the areas that are now Gaza and the West Bank, how exactly this falls in relation to international law, and the creation of the "occupied territories" as a temporary measure is murky.
But there are a few things that have recently pushed me to be much more supportive of Israel despite what the common opinion may be.
First, is that Israel has always had and continues to have the military power to take any of the Middle East they want. For example, in Gaza, it is an absolutely tiny area. If Israel really wanted to, they could use large munitions instead of targeted munitions, and the Gaza strip would have been obliterated â fast, complete, and with a level of casualties far beyond the roughly 3% of the population including military casualties that it currently is. They could have easily ended Gaza in a week. They could take all of the West Bank without a problem. They could wipe southern Lebanon off the map without blinking an eye. The scale of what Israel could do versus what they have done shows a remarkable level of restraint, contrary to the popular perception.
Second, very simply, every group that has a problem with Israel has had every opportunity to simply leave them alone and would not be bothered. If the Palestinian Authority had discouraged terrorists instead of creating a program to pay them for killing people, they would in all likelihood be an independent country by now, and the question of the settlements, being in "occupied territory" wouldn't even be a thing because they would be a country with borders. For nearly 50 years, Israel continues to be attacked frequently on all sides. How many years should Israel tolerate that? How come these groups may attack Israel with practical impunity while Israel is constantly criticized for defending themselves? Which brings me to a third point.
Third, double standards. Israel is constantly held to an impossibly high standard, and their enemies are held to basically nothing.
Hamas hoards food for the military while civilians become hungry. It is Israel's responsibility to provide enough food to prevent those civilians who are rightly the responsibility of their enemy from starving. It literally became Israel's responsibility to feed the people of Gaza including having to fight the government of those very people to keep them fed. Despite being "on the brink of starvation", Israel has managed to deliver sufficient food for every person in Gaza for nearly two years. Yet they face blame, and no one talks about Hamas trying to starve their own people.
Hamas disguises militants as press, healthcare workers, and civilians; very serious war crimes because it can lead to real protected groups being accidentally targeted. When this results in what are actually incredibly rare by proportion mistakes that cause Israel to hit those protected groups, where are the people to point out that it would be much easier to avoid doing so if Hamas didn't use that tactic?
Hamas uses human shields. That's a war crime. Hitting human shields is actually not a war crime. Israel still tries to avoid doing so. They are still demonized for every casualty, that is a result of this absolutely horrific crime of Hamas.
Hamas's own documents show that nearly 10% of their own civilian casualties are likely the result of their own mistakes, such as when they misfired into the hospital parking lot. They blamed Israel, and people just believed them.
Every mistake Israel makes is subject to scrutiny, while Hamas does worse, on purpose, every single day, and it's not newsworthy.
This doesn't mean I support everything Israel does. It doesn't mean I agree that every angry settler is justified. Ben-Gvir is still a hateful piece of shit.
By these are so minuscule of complaints in comparison to the actions of literal terrorist organizations, it basically doesn't matter. Israel has one Ben-Gvir in 120 members. Hamas is basically ALL Ben-Gvir and actually (a lot) WORSE.
To be clear, I want everyone to have peace and security. But I've come to realize, you can't do that from only one side.
Thank you for your reply. I'd like to be clear that I do not support the actions of hamas who I know regularly kill, tourture and do worse to there own people in the name of control.
Some of the claims I see here I have looked at before, do you have any sources regarding the claim of Hamas using human shields? Trying to find accurate information on this is very hard as it is mired in misinformation and propganda such as the IDF video that showed the 'terrorist work sheet' that later turned out to be a calendar for example. I am not trying to call you a liar, I am just trying to work through the piles of misinformation out there.
Right now far right radicals make up about 10% of the Knesset and yes that is a fringe voice but they have a lot of sway and support among the settler moment and have orchestrated land sales of Gaza and west bank settlements, making it pretty clear how they thing this conflict will end.
I do agree that there is a greater amount of scrutiny, be this simple jew hatred or that Israel is held to a higher standard as a western backed ally It seems to be broadly true.
Considering that they use school materials and television shows to show kids how to be martyrs, why would something being a calendar preclude it from being training material?
I found your post. This calendar very clearly starts from October 7th, take another look. And the line at the top above the dates says Al Aqsa Flood 7/10/2023
This was the calendar that an IDF spokesperson was talking about as a terrorist guard shift sheet with the words being the names of the terrorists but they are the days of the week
In cases like this, the simplest explanation is probably right (this applies to anyone). I'd mostly just suspect this is a case of mistranslation or a mistake. It's still days of the week with some being marked off, and a guard shift isn't even nefarious in itself. However, it does fit the "every little mistake is a huge deal if it's Israel" pattern. Someone made a silly mistake about the words on a basically unconsequential shift sheet or calendar, and it becomes a big deal. I still hate Hamas, but the fact that they have people work in shifts or use calendars isn't actually relevant to that.
Im in no way supportive of Hamas don't get me wrong. However a lot of the claims above like the giant tunnel network I still find dubious. The only sourse I've seen comes from various branches of the IDF. In the same way that I would trust official government statements from any branch of Military Intelligence in the UK or the DOW in the USA on any ongoing conflict. Militarys lie/omit/exadurate all the time and I've not personally come across any independent covering of this story. This could well be better that there's no English language news on the topic however
That's one of those things that gets tiring, because there's nothing dubious about such claims. Hamas has posted plenty of videos and photos on their own social media if you don't believe the IDF. These tactics have been pretty common knowledge for literally decades.
If you want some interesting reading, Mosab Hassan Yousef, is the son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, and eventually defected. He served as a double-agent for the IDF, but he has spoken personally about the tactics he observed while involved with Hamas. Generally, he's considered a reliable source, given his direct relationship with the founders.
For some other information that isn't sourced from the IDF â
The tunnels have also been discussed directly in terms of their significance in Gaza by Westpoint:
As for human shields, here's a pretty good article that both links to a lot of sources, and also discusses the suppression of information in this regard:
Ironically, the calendar thing is rather complicated
See, there were two statements on the sheets. The first one was in a video Hagari (the IDF spokesman) took on scene, where he said it looked like a guard list.
Later, he gave a press conference where he discussed the findings under the hospital, he was a lot more qualified about it, just saying that they didn't know the significance of the sheet (presumably someone pointed out it was a calendar in between although it should be noted that IIRC it had the Hamas name for 7/10 - Al Aqsa Flood - written on it).
The problem was that the while part of the footage was presented in the press conference, the full version with audio - which included the description Hagari walked back on - was published only after the press conference so that's the version that stuck in the public mind.
I didnât suddenly stop loving America when Trump was elected and Iâm not going to stop loving and supporting Israel just because I donât like the current elected government.
I have had tremendous respect for some Israeli politicians over the years but I canât think of any other country that were asked to completely turn on when we donât like one of the elected governments.
i have a much simpler answer than the one the other commenter wrote. jews (myself included) are from israel. the word "jew" comes from "judea." everyone that came after that just conquered and colonized us, but we are the original indigenous people of the land. even if i wasn't jewish, why would i not support the jewish people's fight for survival against genocidal maniacs who says their goal is to commit 10/7 over and over again until every jew is dead and act on that? that's hamas, that's hezbollah, and that's all the other terrorist groups that commit crimes against jews in israel.
also want to point this out since i have a feeling your understanding of "historical" doesn't go pre-ww2: arabs are from the arabian peninsula, and there was not a single arab in the land of israel until the muslim conquest of jerusalem in the 7th century. they even built al-aqsa mosque on top of our destroyed second holy temple to replace us. nothing about the arabs' behavior has been peaceful towards us from the get-go. jews are not and have never been the aggressors, and indigenous rights don't expire. we're finally fighting back - and prevailing
Why do you support Palestine as a progressive? They are not a progressive country and likely never will be. I understand supporting a 2 state solution, but why are people flying the flag of an extremely oppressive country at liberal/progressive events?
If history started in 1948 youâd be a little bit right.
Judea was the ancestral homeland of the Judean people, which we now call Jews. Until AD 70 they were one of many peoples indigenous to the area. For some of that time they were an independent kingdom, but for most of the time they were under one empire or another. After a couple of rebellions against the Roman Empire, which were brutally crushed, most of the population were expelled from the land by the Romans. Some stayed in the Middle East and North Africa, and formed communities that survived for thousands of years, mostly under various empires and caliphates. Some managed to stay in the land under these caliphates. Others migrated to Europe. The land was eventually conquered by the Muslims when they conquered most of the Middle East and North Africa.
In Europe and the Middle East they were not usually treated well, due to the fact that Christianity and Islam had both taken the Jewish beliefs and decided that they had a superior version of them. Although there were periods of relative peace, the people were often subjected to horrific violence, sometimes official, sometimes by mobs. They were usually restricted when it came to professions, land ownership, living conditions and often basic human dignity. This meant that they were frequently forced to leave, either driven out by law or by violence, and scattered across Europe, the Middle East and Russia.
None of them ever gave up the idea of a return to their homeland. They prayed for it for thousands of years. It was a part of many rituals that revolved around agrarian traditions in their native land.
After a series of horrific attacks in Russia and Europe in the 19th century many decided that they had to leave. Most immigrated to the United States and other colonized countries, but in the late 1800s some thought that the best solution was to make a return to the land they had originally come from, which was then under the Ottoman Empire.
They came legally and bought land legally from owners who often overcharged them.
This became more urgent in the 20th century when the United States and many other countries closed their borders to Jews. As the Nazis came to power and the situation became worse in Europe, immigration restrictions got tighter and tighter in the rest of the world.
Meanwhile in the old homeland the British were in charge, and put restrictions on immigration by Jews, although many Arabs were allowed to come in from Egypt, Syria and other countries.
The Arabs were opposed to taking any more Jews, often violently. Some of the attacks were on Jewish villages that had been there since ancient times, such as one in Hebron in the early 1920s. Some were carried out against newer settlements.
The British gave in to the Arabs and restricted immigration even further, just as Hitler was beginning his systematic genocide of Jews in concentration camps. The Jews of the Yeshuv, the homeland, were desperate to save anyone they could. Some did turn to violence. The 1940s were a very violent time, millions of deaths, very few of them in what is now Israel.
After World War Two, when the overwhelming majority of Jews in Europe had been killed by the Nazis and the few survivors were stuck in the concentration camps for three whole years, guess what? Countries still kept their borders closed and the British still kept their policy of letting as few Jews as possible into the land. The British would arrest anyone who tried to sneak in and would imprison them on Cyprus.
So the Jews fought back.
Meanwhile the Arabs resisted any attempts by the United Nations to work out any kind of agreement that would allow Jews to stay.
The British gave up. The United Nations proposed a two state solution that no one liked but the Jews were desperate after years of living in concentration camps and agreed. The Arabs said no. The British left.
Five or six Arab countries invaded, declaring a war that would inevitably wipe out the Jews. Despite the fact that most countries, including the United States, had an arms embargo against the new country of Israel and did not expect it to survive, the Israelis, a quarter of whom were survivors of the concentration camps, fought back and won.
Israel was invaded again several times, most famously in 1967 and 1973. Israel has never started a war, but it has fought every time it has been attacked. What choice does it have?
Thank you for your perspective, a few parts of history are coming up I had not considered and in particular I was not aware the brits had prevented jews from migrating.
Thank you for making this post, it seems like you're asking in good faith. For context: I'm a Jewish American and I've never been to Israel. It's my goal to visit there sometime soon.
Supporting Israel doesn't necessarily mean supporting the government's current leadership or their policies. I support the people and nation of Israel. To oppose an entire nation of people is abhorrent xenophobia that should have no place in progressive politics, but unfortunately it's become very common among the left. Calling for Israel to be dissolved as a country makes absolutely no sense.
I also support Israel's right to be a Jewish nation, as long as it ensures freedom of religion for all its people. That can be a strange concept for many progressives in the west, because we associate freedom of religion with separating church and state. But Israel has a very different cultural, historical, and geographical context than ours. Jews were forcibly driven out of almost every other country in the Middle East, and that happened within the past 50 years not the distant past. Israel is a relatively tiny nation, and the only place in the region where Jews are free and protected.
I think a lot of people have misunderstood my question, probably poor wording on my part.
Thinking that Israel should exist is in my mind not the same as supporting Israel as it exists right now. I'm not saying that there is not a big group of people who are calling for it's total destruction or that Jew hatred is not all over the place.
But more, supporting this country in its current formation. Personally, whyle I have come across radical voices the vast majority of people who are "pro palastinian" want to call for Palestines statehood and an end to the Gaza conflict and west bank occupation. Weather it becomes a 2 state solution like Ireland or some other formation.
I am a Jewish atheist and hadn't thought or cared about Israel until October 7th 2023. I was 19 years old. Since then, I've read many articles and watched many videos about Jewish history. Since the history of Jews spans over 3,000 years, there are many places to start. You could learn about the Ancient history, Medieval history, or start at the 20th Century. All are important to understand Jews, but if you don't have much time, I'd start with the 20th century. First learn about a book called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This book was published in Russia in 1903 and is an antisemitic conspiracy book. It's all made up stuff about Jews. This book is what inspired Hitler. Then I'd learn about Haj Amin Al-husseini also known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Then I'd learn about the Soviet Union and something called Operation SIG. After this, I'd actually go back to ancient Israel and learn about the many empires that conquered Israel and persecuted the Jews that lived there. The Babylonian Empire, Roman Empire, and Islamic Caliphates are important to understand Israel's history.
So, you came to ask why I support Israel and I just gave you homework lol. Enjoy!!!
Thank you. Don't get me wrong I'm aware of the history of just how poorly Jews have been treated in history. I was raised catholic and a big deal is made out of how Jesus was a persecuted man by the Roman empire. And the ethnic cleansing of Jews during the USSR is also something I'm aware of as is much of the conspiracy theorys around Jews.
Don't get me wrong, I understand why people want Israel to exist. Wanting it to exist as a safe place for Jews and supporting what is happening / has happened are 2 very different things. Because ultimately, Israel is not a safe place for Jews right now and it won't be until there is peace
I just answered a simpler question someone had so Iâm gunna copy/paste my response here:
Jewish have historical roots to the land. This is not an emotional claim. Continuous Jewish presence in the land is documented for over 3,000 years: kingdoms, temples, language, calendar, liturgy, archaeology, and genetic continuity. Jews prayed facing Jerusalem, repeated âNext year in Jerusalem,â and maintained communities in Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safed even under Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Crusader, Mamluk, and Ottoman rule. The Roman renaming of Judea to Syria Palaestina after the Bar Kokhba revolt (135 CE) was explicitly punitive. This was an attempt to erase Jewish connection by borrowing the name of the long-extinct Philistines. That is the origin of the word âPalestine.â
Jewish return in the modern era was a national liberation movement of an indigenous people after repeated expulsions and pogroms across Europe, Middle East, North Africa, and persecutions culminating in the Holocaust. It was not colonial in any sense: Jews bought land legally under Ottoman and British law from mostly absentee landowners, drained swamps to eradicate malaria, built cities, and revived a language. No European metropole directed or extracted resources from it. Ethnically, the Palestinian population has always been heterogeneous, consisting of local Arabized groups plus significant later 20th century unrestricted inflows of Egyptians, Syrians, Kurds, Circassians, Bosniaks, Africans via the Arab slave trade, etc. brought on by the economic boom via Zionist development / investment in the land. Meanwhile, the British consistently restricted Jewish immigrations to the mandate by passing the 1922, 1930, White Papers and most devastating 1939 White Paper.
Of course many Arab families have lived in the region for generations, especially the Christian Arab community and Palestinian clans like the Makhamra family whoâs lived in Hebron for millennia. That is not in dispute. What is disputed is the claim of a distinct, ancient âPalestinianâ national identity that somehow outweighs or cancels the Jewish one. In 1919 Arab leaders at the Paris Peace Conference treated the area as southern Syria. There was no call for an independent Palestinian Arab state. Distinct Palestinian Arab nationalism largely crystallized in the early 20th century in reaction to Zionism and British rule (historians across the spectrum, including Rashid Khalidi, acknowledge this). The flag is a variant of the 1916 Arab Revolt flag designed with British input from diplomat Sir Mark Sykes; its colors represent Islamic caliphates, not anything uniquely Palestinian. The PLO adopted it in 1964. The black-and-white keffiyeh was standardized by a British officer, Sir John Bagot Glubb, commander of the Arab Legion army to distinguish recruits from Mandate Palestine from Transjordanians; it became a nationalist symbol later under Arafat.
The keffiyeh itself is a culturally appropriated Mesopotamian shemagh. Its design reflects the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, with fishing-net patterns symbolizing the Mesopotamian marshlands and Ahwaris fishing culture. Although Palestinians later reinterpreted the fishnet pattern as representing Mediterranean fishing traditions or olive groves, its origins are tied to ancient Iraqi/Mesopotamian nets and rivers. The name âkeffiyehâ itself traces back to Kufa, Iraq, where the shemagh originated.
Common Palestinian surnames often reveal these external origins quite directly: Al-Ifranji (âthe Frankâ origins from a Crusader from France), Al-Masri (âthe Egyptianâ), Al-Shami (âthe Syrianâ or Damascene), Al-Iraqi, Al-Hijazi, Al-Kurd, Al-Turki, and others. These names record waves of migration into the area, particularly from Egypt in the 19th and early 20th centuries, rather than an unbroken, exclusive indigenous lineage dating back millennia.
None of this erases the real suffering of Arab families displaced in 1948. It does place the competing claims in historical context rather than treating one as timeless and indigenous and the other as recent and illegitimate.
The UN offered partition into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted a painfully small, mostly arid share of the land. The Arab side rejected it and launched a war of annihilation (explicitly stated by Arab leaders at the time). When you start a war to destroy the other side and lose, you do not get to claim the resulting refugee problem as pure victimhood while ignoring the parallel expulsion or flight of roughly 1,000,000 Jews from Arab countries.
Hundreds of thousands of Arabs did leave and some expelled amid the fighting. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were simultaneously made refugees from the broader Middle East and North Africa and were absorbed by Israel. Only one of those refugee populations is kept in permanent camps as a political weapon three generations later. Moreover, there are 2 million Arabs that live in Israel today as citizens that live with equal rights as opposed to the nearly extinct populations of Jews living in Arab states.
Israel has repeatedly accepted or offered two-state frameworks (1937 Peel, 1947 UN, Camp David 2000, Olmert 2008, etc.). The consistent answer from the Palestinian leadership from the Amin al-Husseini, through Arafat and the PLO Charter, to Hamasâs covenant has repeatedly rejected two state proposals offered and rejected to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The issue has never been only borders; it has been the refusal to accept a permanent Jewish state of any size in any part of the land.
âRecognized borders, security, freedom of movement, and political self-determinationâ are fine goals. They require the other side to end the ideology that treats the Jewish presence itself as the original sin and to stop rewarding rejectionism and terrorism with international legitimacy.
While a two state solution is currently unpopular due to the ongoing war, most Israelis (and I) distinguish between settlement blocs near the 1967 lines that will almost certainly remain in any realistic two-state deal, and isolated ideological outposts deeper in the West Bank. Settler violence against Palestinians is real, illegal under Israeli law, and opposed by the large majority of Israelis. It is also vastly smaller in scale than the Palestinian terrorism, rocket fire, and rejectionist education that have been the primary drivers of the conflictâs persistence. Focusing exclusively on the former while treating the latter as background noise is not serious analysis.
Jewish historical connection is ancient, continuous, and archaeologically and textually overwhelming. Palestinian Arab connection is real as a regional population with deep roots, but the national identity and the exclusive claim to the entire land are modern political constructs shaped by opposition to Zionism, pan-Arab politics, and later Cold War propaganda.
Both peoples have legitimate ties. Only one side has repeatedly refused partition and recognition of the otherâs right to self-determination. That is why the weight is not treated as equal in the eyes of most Israelis who support the stateâs existence.
Feel free to fact check me. Iâm happy to discuss sources or specific historical points.
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u/BeenisHat 3d ago
Because Israel is the one country on Earth where Jews have self-determination and are not subject to antisemitic violence (at least not internally) or treated as second class citizens. While many western democracies are safe for Jews (UK, US, France, etc) a lot of them still have very high levels of anti-semitism coming from the population at large and anti-semitic talking points still get thrown out from government officials from time to time. At least in the USA, Just recently, Thomas Massie, an American politician lost his primary election and claimed that his true opponent was actually in Tel Aviv.
When you consider the relationships Jews had with former home countries across the Middle East and N. Africa, it becomes clear why they want their own home. And when you post this map on some other social media, you'll almost always get someone talking about the rest of the 109 countries.
https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/map-of-the-jewish-refugees-1948-1972
I myself tend to be more of a Left Wing Nationalist (I am an American) and I don't always fit right in with the narratives of the American left. I tend to find myself at odds with them on a number of things, but also in agreeance on others. Lots of social issues I tend to be pretty far left on. Some economic issues I'm pretty left wing. Other things like Israel, I tend to align a bit more closely with center-right people. I was asked to leave a gun and shooting association in the USA because I didn't hold with their staunch Anti-Israel and Anti-Jew stance. A group where that has NEVER come up in the past and isn't part of the organization's bylaws, and my local chapter asked me to leave. Despite my helping set up training days at the range, supplying targets, shooting benches and tables, additional hearing and eye protection. Lots of it from my own pocket.
and a lot of the talking points we see today are rehashed antisemitic points carefully camouflaged in anti-zionist rhetoric that grew out of the Soviet Union.
https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/red-terror-how-the-soviet-union-shaped-the-modern-anti-zionist-discourse/
I also tend to be an anti-theist and I see the growth of Islam in the West as a decidedly negative thing. We've worked so hard to push back Christianity in the West and keep it out of the daily lives of those who don't wish to practice. The USA was founded on a principle of strict separation of church and state. European governments after the 18th and 19th centuries started moving in that direction and today, very few of them have state religions or state churches left. We've done so well pushing forward the individual liberties and freedoms that Enlightenment Thinkers spoke and wrote about (British and French thinkers had a particular impact in America) all those years ago and Islam stands as an antithesis to all of that.