Israel/Palestine thread
Think this merits its own thread...
Discuss my fellow 2+2ers..
AM YISRAEL CHAI.
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Dun, Mon,
Besides people who still believe in the tooth fairy, who thought more than a handful of the hostages are still alive and who thinks most of them died to the hands of Palestinians? Israel made their decision early on in the campaign that the hostages lives were secondary to Israel's vengeance and it's pretty easy to argue they weren't wrong. As you've said plenty of times, Israel had created the incentive structure to take hostages. Now, not so much. And what reason is there for Hamas to
Hamas did not say they executed the hostages ofc. Dun, like usual is lying. what they actually said is that 3 were shot and they were investigating.
Ive been told repeatedly that it is perfectly ok for the perpetrators to investigate themselves.
'On verge of an explosion'
The emergence of a new generation of local armed groups, mostly in the refugee camps of the northern West Bank, dates back to about 2021, with the first group appearing in Jenin.
But the war in Gaza has fanned the flames of rebellion in other cities, from Tulkarem to Qalqilya and, more recently, Tubas.
Israel’s security crackdown, the actions of violent groups of Jewish settlers and the belief that the Palestinian Authority is powerless to protect them have all added to an atmosphere of mounting tension.
“They're very frustrated with Israel, they're very frustrated with the Palestinian Authority and they're looking for an outlet to this frustration,” the Israeli security official said.
The PA health ministry says more than 600 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since last October. As many as 10,000 have been arrested, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society.
At least 18 Israelis, including 12 security forces personnel, have also been killed in the West Bank.
On Saturday, one Israeli was killed and another injured when Palestinian gunmen opened fire near the Israeli settlement of Mehola.
Later in the day, Hamas said it had carried out the attack in retaliation for the Israeli air strike which killed dozens of Palestinians sheltering in a school in Gaza City.
Some veteran observers fear that armed clashes could erupt into a full-scale uprising, or intifada.
“If it goes into an intifada, this is a much, much bigger problem,” Gen Israel Ziv, former head of the IDF’s Operations Division, told me.
“Militarily, we handle things better or worse. But when it goes into an intifada, it's a totally different story. And it might go there.”
looking for an outlet to this frustration,” the Israeli security official said.
bbc is such trash
Dun, Mon,
Besides people who still believe in the tooth fairy, who thought more than a handful of the hostages are still alive and who thinks most of them died to the hands of Palestinians? Israel made their decision early on in the campaign that the hostages lives were secondary to Israel's vengeance and it's pretty easy to argue they weren't wrong. As you've said plenty of times, Israel had created the incentive structure to take hostages. Now, not so much. And what reason is there for Hamas to
I dont think this is correct analysis. I think there are a lot of Muslims and liberals who want Hamas to be the good guys and are emotionally invested in it; so they will believe any obvious lie to rationalize they are the good guys.
If you interview Muslims in the Middle East today, many of them will deny there were any atrocities committed on 10/7 at all (many polls and interviews have demonstrated this). They are eager to believe anything, no matter how clearly false, that reinforces their own belief they are the good guys. And Hamas understands this. So Hamas gives out an official release saying they didn't commit any atrocities on 10/7 and they didn't kill any of the hostages, and their sycophants accept everything at face value, and everyone is good with that.
I think you underestimate how important PR is, especially for brutal authoritarians like Hamas. It is counterintuitive, but autocratic governments like Hamas tend to suck really bad and make bad decisions for their people, so it is more important for them to have good PR to deflect. Liberal democracies dont have to rely so much on PR; they can just stand on their policies and results. In some ways liberal democracies are less a slave to mob opinion than dictatorships are.
I am trying to wrap my head around this Temple Mount thing:
As far as I can tell the facts are:
1. This site has been considered the Holiest place in the Jewish faith for thousands of years
2. Despite this place already being the Holiest place in the jewish faith, Muslims decided to make the exact same place Holy (or if you believe in such things God did)
3. Once it became Holy for Muslims, Jews have been outlawed from visiting the site, especially praying there. This prohibition was variably enforced by different Muslim regimes who controlled the region the last 1000 years or so.
4. From 1948 to 1967 when Jordan was in control, Jews were prohibited from the entire area. And many Jewish synagogues and Holy Relics were destroyed and defiled by Jordanians. And the Muslim world generally had zero problem with this religious intolerance by their side.
5. When Israel recaptured the site in 1967; an informal status quo was established where Muslims still had free reign to visit and pray at the site, but Jews were severely restricted (despite it being their most Holy site and Israel physically controlling it)
6. In recent years, including today (which happens to be a Holy Day related to the Temple in some fashion) some in the Israeli religious right have insisted at going to the Mount and even praying there.
7. The Muslim world gets outraged.
--Did I miss anything? I obviously have my biases, but how is the general Muslim world position not completely intolerant and unreasonable? Can anyone make any argument the Muslim world appear to be in the moral right with respect to their attitudes towards the Mount? Or do we just accept that Islam/Muslims are not tolerant, and everyone else has to bend over backwards to accommodate their prejudices?
--Getting mad at Jews for praying at their Holy site, which was the case for thousands of years before Islam even became a thing, almost seems like blaming the victims.
What exactly am I missing here?
Yeah, we can't really prove it either way although they could just say they died in an airstrike at any random time if they want to kill hostages and not admit to it.
I am trying to wrap my head around this Temple Mount thing:
As far as I can tell the facts are:
1. This site has been considered the Holiest place in the Jewish faith for thousands of years
2. Despite this place already being the Holiest place in the jewish faith, Muslims decided to make the exact same place Holy (or if you believe in such things God did)
3. Once it became Holy for Muslims, Jews have been outlawed from visiting the site, especially praying there. This prohibition was variably en
Yeah it's a weird one. Talk about Israel being tolerant to the extreme to not have taken the place over. Completely status quo for the conquerors to build their places of worship on top of the conqueree's holy sites so nothing out of the ordinary there but to the victor goes the spoils so you would think Israel wouldn't take this line.
I guess if they knock down al aqsa and erect the 3rd temple they must know it will unite all of Islam against them. Like even the Malaysian Muslims getting handies in KL Karaoke clubs may take up arms against the Jews.
Romans destroyed it and the Muslims put a mosque nearby like 600 years later. as usual, Dun leaves out critical elements of the story.
Romans destroyed it and the Muslims put a mosque nearby like 600 years later. as usual, Dun leaves out critical elements of the story.
In what way are those details critical? Do they make the mainstream Muslim position in 2024 any more morally defensible? Muslims of today are very aware this is the site of the ancient Jewish Temple the Romans destroyed that they built their own Holy site on top of, and are completely indifferent to this while making extreme demands to accommodate their own faith.
In what way are those details critical? Do they make the mainstream Muslim position in 2024 any more morally defensible? Muslims of today are very aware this is the site of the ancient Jewish Temple, and are completely indifferent to this while making extreme demands to accommodate their own faith.
We'd have to dig up the records but the Jews and Muslims fought side by side against the crusaders. Were the Jews able to worship at temple mount then? If not and it's been literally 1,000's of years since Jews last worshipped there, why should the Muslims change the rules now? Seems like their best play to holding onto the place is exactly what they're doing.
Need Raifiki to come in and put some context to it all.
Can't we just Google the minutes of the last few meetings of the 1.8 billion Muslims to find out what they decided and why?
oh we are doing moral defense now? Israel has destroyed tons of holy sites and killed tons of priests/Imamas/whatever. dont even get me started on how many holy things the USA has destroyed.
the funny part is that again, the Muslims didnt destroy the second temple.
We'd have to dig up the records but the Jews and Muslims fought side by side against the crusaders. Were the Jews able to worship at temple mount then? If not and it's been literally 1,000's of years since Jews last worshipped there, why should the Muslims change the rules now? Seems like their best play to holding onto the place is exactly what they're doing.
Need Raifiki to come in and put some context to it all.
If you are a Muslim supremacist, I can understand why you wouldn't want to change the rules/status quo. But as an outside observer I cant help but notice the complete double standard going on. I really dont see how it is morally defensible at all for Muslims to be outraged for Jews praying at their own holiest site in their own country*. Yet here we are.
Even if you want to argue Jerusalem is occupied land, it still doesn't seem morally defensible to prohibit a religion from praying at their holiest site; especially when they are very accommodating to allow you to pray at the holy site you built on top of it.
And one would hope the millions of "moderate" Muslims living throughout the world, especially Western leaders who supposedly are tolerant and have liberal values, would see the hypocrisy of this position. But there doesn't seem to be much self awareness going on.
*Ironically, there seems to be some Jewish sects that dont think Jews should pray there, because the Temple needs to be properly sanctified first, but that is a completely different matter.
We'd have to dig up the records but the Jews and Muslims fought side by side against the crusaders. Were the Jews able to worship at temple mount then? If not and it's been literally 1,000's of years since Jews last worshipped there, why should the Muslims change the rules now? Seems like their best play to holding onto the place is exactly what they're doing.
Need Raifiki to come in and put some context to it all.
Byzantines actually banned the Jews from Jerusalem (except 1 day per year to mourn the destruction of the temple). The arabs actually allowed them back in the 7th century when they took Jerusalem and for like 4 centuries they could live in the city regularly and pray at the temple location whenever they felt like it.
When crusaders took jerusalem in 1099 they persecuted jews heavily.
The city changed hands several times between then, and the final mamluk conquest of the area 200 years later. It appears that when the dust settled there wasn't any jeish community left in jerusalem.
That changed with peace and a while later , under mamluk control, jews rebuilt a community in jerusalem.
Later with the ottomans (which helped jews against christian persecution) jews in jerusalem become more and more numerous making up to half of the population when the ottoman empire ceased to exist.
Afaik they could pray at the location of the temple both under mamluk and under ottoman rule.
Widespread harsh antisemitism among muslims started only in the 19th century, before that christians regularly were far worse for jews than the muslims
Widespread harsh antisemitism among muslims started only in the 19th century, before that christians regularly were far worse for jews than the muslims
I can accept Muslims have generally been much more tolerant of Jews than Christians historically. I dont really see how this is an acceptable reason to defend and normalize current Muslim antisemitism in the modern world though.
The closest to what I would consider a rational defense was made by Microbet. And he basically argued that Jews should hold themselves to higher standards, and hope (but not demand) the rest of the world comes around eventually.
So basically a Jewish moral supremacist position, where Israel's current actions are in complete violation of his desired Jewish moral supremacy.
is it coincidental that the USA is built on sacred Indian land? we are talking about defense of morality right?
No, it's not coincidental, it's a big F U to the locals. Like all those churches in south/central America that were built with the bricks from demolished indigenous temples/structures. Been going on for as long as we've had our dumb superstitious religions.
If you are a Muslim supremacist, I can understand why you wouldn't want to change the rules/status quo. But as an outside observer I cant help but notice the complete double standard going on. I really dont see how it is morally defensible at all for Muslims to be outraged for Jews praying at their own holiest site in their own country*. Yet here we are.
Even if you want to argue Jerusalem is occupied land, it still doesn't seem morally defensible to prohibit a religion from praying at their
They want their land back. Why would they give the conquerors **** if they don't have to?
I can accept Muslims have generally been much more tolerant of Jews than Christians historically. I dont really see how this is an acceptable reason to defend and normalize current Muslim antisemitism in the modern world though.
The closest to what I would consider a rational defense was made by Microbet. And he basically argued that Jews should hold themselves to higher standards, and hope (but not demand) the rest of the world comes around eventually.
So basically a Jewish moral supremacist
I am not defending anything in the present about what muslims and others want to do with the temple, i just gave a short historically summary of how things were in jerusalem before
To put it crudely: Israel fought for it's existence and it won. Then it worked with some serious success on political solutions. Netanyahu is risking all the hard fought for progress. That is insanity
So step 1 defeat Hamas.
I am really not sure what you're even arguing. Are you seriously saying Hamas is open to political solutions when it hasn't been defeated and really no reason to negotiate?
