I’m well aware of the definition of genocide. My point was that the threshold for accusing Israel of genocide is very, very low.

LOL “commit so many genocides”

That just shows how meaningless the word is now. I’ll bet you didn’t know that anti-Zionists were accusing Israel of genocide during the 2014 war with Hamas - a war that lasted 6 weeks and had a death toll of a whopping 2300.

Your perspective on the conflict is totally warped. Israel is not the bully. We’re talking about a tiny country of 9 million people that you can drive across in 3 hours at its widest point. It is surrounded by Arab nations that have tried to destroy it several times, and for the past 30 years has been bullied by the proxies of the genocidal Iranian regime. Iran is the real bully in the Middle East.

Have you been living in a Hamas tunnel for the past year?

I could spend hours filling this sub with examples. I’m not going to play your game though.

I haven’t been on Lemmy very long, but it’s become painfully clear this site is just an echo chamber for Marxists and anti-Zionists.

LOL at “pro Hamas mobs” - people who dress up like Hamas, celebrate 10/7, call to globalize the intifada (which is exactly what happened in Amsterdam), and openly express sympathy for Hamas ARE PRO-HAMAS.

This is hilariously hypocritical.

Pro-Hamas mobs have been marching on our streets and occupying our college campuses for over a year, screaming genocidal chants and telling Jews to go back to Poland. Our businesses and synagogues have been vandalized, firebombed, and shot at. But now all of a sudden one group of unruly soccer fans and you’re all, “Well, they were saying bad stuff, they got what’s coming to them.”

By the way, this was a planned and coordinated attack. Not a spontaneous angry response. https://x.com/stop_jew_hate/status/1854881566553411612

You have just repeated anti-Zionist propaganda.

First, Jews have lived uninterrupted in the region for thousands of years. Jews and Arabs are both indigenous to the land.

Second, Zionism is about a return to our ancestral homeland. It was a spiritual movement with Judaism for thousands of years before it was ever a political movement.

Third, the Jews who migrated to Palestine did not kick our or kill people to establish a homeland. That’s not how Israel was created. They purchased land legally from the Ottoman Empire and absentee Arab landlords. The violence was started by local Arabs reacting to the mass migration and fueled by the Arab Nazi put in charge of Jerusalem by the British, Amin Al-Husseini, in the 1920’s.

Fourth, the war that led to mass displacement of Arabs in 1948 was started the Arabs. Conflict had been going on for decades before that, which is why the British proposed partition, but it was a local conflict. The Arab League rejected partition to establish an Arab state because they preferred to simply destroy Israel. They failed.

Fifth, it might surprise you to know that after Israel re-took Gaza and the West Bank from Egypt and Jordan in 1967 they offered to negotiate a land for peace deal with the PLO. The PLO refused because they adopted the Khartoum Resolution: No recognition of Israel, no peace with Israel, no negotiation with Israel. See a pattern here? So the result was Israel got stuck occupying the two territories full of angry and belligerent Arabs.

Israel has made some terrible mistakes in how they have handled things but the history is kind of important here. Your version of events is a narrative that has been spun by Israel’s enemies to vilify it and garner international sympathy for the anti-Zionist cause (which has worked very, very effectively). Do you know about the genesis of the term ‘Nakba’ for example? It was coined by a Syrian intellectual in reference to the embarrassing loss of the Arab armies to the Jewish state and the “catastrophic” impact that loss would have on pan-Arab nationalism. It had nothing to do with the displacement of Arab Palestinians. It was appropriated for propaganda purposes 20 years later when Arafat and the PLO emerged.

Oh, one more thing. Did you know that the PLO was formed in 1964 and carried out its first terror attack in Israel in 1965? Notice the dates, years before the 1967 war and before Israel came to occupy Gaza and the WB. So it clearly never was about occupation or settlements. It has always been about the mere presence of a Jewish state on Muslim lands. Everything else is propaganda.

Load of horse-crap.

Sorry, but we don’t need to be deprogrammed out of our Zionism. Most Jews are Zionists, not because they’ve been brainwashed but because they believe in the idea of self-determination in our ancestral homeland. That’s all Zionism is. Everything else you hear about it is nothing but propaganda designed to vilify it.

Anyone who claims to believe in ethnic self-determination should support Zionism. And those of you who don’t might want to reflect on why you support ethnic nationalism for Palestinians but not for Jews.

I was wrong, it was Einat Wilf from the episode in her podcast where she talks about an article she co-wrote with two peace-oriented Arabs shortly after the Abraham Accords were signed. The whole episode is worth a listen, but the particular comment I referenced comes up around 10:15.

Would love to read more about this if you have a reference or link!>

It was mentioned on a podcast, but I listen to a lot of them so I can’t quite remember which one it was on. I’ll have to go back and find it.

Some ambiguity here - did you mean folks disliking Hamas (which I provided the survey showing it’s at 52%) or folks who like Israel (using folks who dislike the US as a proxy, suggests less than half).>

I mean Palestinians who are willing to coexist peacefully with Israel. It isn’t just about whether they like Hamas or not, it’s about their ultimate goals.

The CSM article gives me some hope but I find it very odd that the mainstream media doesn’t seem interested in the story. The one article you can find about Gazans resisting Hamas is in the Christian Science Monitor. Bari Weiss (I think it was her) recently told a story about approaching the New York Times with an idea for an article on this very subject because she had done an interview with a Gazan who was speaking out against Hamas and in support of peace with Israel, and the NYT responded, “Nah, we’re not interested.” Almost as if Western liberal media is suppressing those stories to promote a particular decolonization narrative of the conflict…

No. What we’re seeing is actually the beginning of the end for the Iranian regime, and the dawn of a new era of peace in the Middle East.

I went back over my comments and can’t figure out what I said that you find so problematic. What could I have possibly said that is pushing you towards the anti-Zionist camp?

I am representative of centrist Zionists, which make up the vast majority. The problem is that people have been taught by extremist anti-Zionists that the right wing nutjobs in Israel are representative of Zionism, when they simply aren’t. It’s no different than me saying that Islam is a religion of terrorism. That would be blatant Islamophobia, wouldn’t it? But when it comes to Zionism, people think it’s okay to make sweeping generalizations and treat us all as racist fascist scum.

Every society has its extremists. Every single one. The difference with Israel is that Western progressives judge the entire country by its extremists.

I don’t doubt that there are some out there, all I’m saying is that I haven’t seen anything to suggest they’re not a small minority. Oppressed people have protested publicly in many other countries but we don’t hear anything from the Palestinians against Hamas. Why don’t we hear anything about underground Palestinian peace movements? Where are the videos of people denouncing Hamas? They’ve been decimated by the IDF and now Sinwar is dead, so why aren’t people taking to the streets to celebrate?

I’m no Coates expert, but I haven’t heard him express the idea that “The Holocaust doesn’t give Israelis the right to treat Palestinians this way.”. I’ve heard him say something to the effect of “The Holocaust perhaps explains why Israelis treat others they way they do”. Coates take doesn’t excuse Israel, but does attempt to humanize their reaction. That isn’t the same idea that you’re expressing.>

That’s precisely what he’s implying. His argument starts from the premise that Israel treats the Palestinians poorly, which is wrong, and then postulates a possible explanation for that treatment. But his implication is very clear: it might be an explanation, but it’s not an excuse or justification. My point is that his explanation is wrong. What he perceives as poor treatment of the Palestinians (heavy security, checkpoints, limitations on travel, etc) is not because of the Holocaust. It has nothing to do with the Holocaust. It’s because the Palestinians have been actively murdering Israeli civilians in terror attacks for 40 years. Which is also why his apartheid narrative (which is shared by all anti-Zionists) is inaccurate.

Are you suggesting that Israel doesn’t treat those of the Islamic faith differently that those of Jewish faith as the prime criteria for that different treatment? The “why” is irrelevant. That’s Coates’s point. Any excuse to treat people of a different faith worse is apartheid with extra steps (and rationalization).>

Correct. All citizens of Israel, whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Druze, etc, have equal rights as citizens. The Palestinians don’t because they’re not Israel citizens. It has nothing to do with religion or ethnicity. It has to do with citizenship. This is a very, very important point that people don’t understand about Israel (or choose to ignore).

If he wasn’t capable of being objective and controlling their emotions with a specific interviewee, he should have bowed out and let others do the interview. Are you sure you watched the interview? Dokoupil’s very first question (nearly a monologue in itself) included such treats as:>

I did watch the interview. The extremist backpack comment may have been a bit melodramatic but Coates’ perspective is an extreme left wing position. And asking him directly if he thinks Israel doesn’t have the right to exist is not a strawman. It’s a question. And a very fair one, since that is the perspective of many who share Coates’ perspective.

There is literally nothing analogous about Israel and the colonization of the Americas, but for the sake of argument let me ask you this:

Do you think First Nations people (as we call them in Canada) would be justified in carrying out an endless campaign of terrorist violence against Canadian and American citizens in the futile hope that we would all decide to pack up and leave? If several hundred of them decided to maraud through towns in rural US or Canada, butchering entire families, burning people alive, sexually violating women, and then took a couple hundred people hostage, would your attitude be, “Meh, we did take their land.”

Your suggestion is that someone that “understood Israel” would find the Israel’s actions acceptable.>

That’s not what I said. I criticized them for expressing a perspective about Israel’s motives that are simply wrong. And this is a common attitude about Israel I hear all the time: “The Holocaust doesn’t give Israelis the right to treat Palestinians this way.” That’s simply not how Israelis think.

Dokoupil started his attack on Coates right out of the gate. Dokoupil left no room for thoughtful arguments with his strawman accusations.>

I’ll admit I haven’t read the book myself because I’m not going to give Coates my money, but I have now heard three different interviews about it. One of those interviews was about an hour long on the Ezra Klein podcast. So my impression is based on listening to him discuss Israel in these three different contexts.

He witnessed Israeli apartheid firsthand and was sharing that experience>

Wrong. He witnessed things that he *interpreted *as apartheid based on his own frame of reference and preconceived notions about Israel. The point is, he doesn’t have the knowledge of the history and the details - he literally describes seeing things and thinking, “That reminds me of apartheid.” For example, he describes having an IDF soldier approach him and ask him questions about his background and how that just feels wrong. Well, those soldiers are trained to do what they do for security purposes because the country has dealt with terrorism for decades.

I totally disagree that Dokoupil came across as “unhinged.” No doubt he was trying very hard to suppress his emotions about the book, but he did not get angry or aggressive or anything. I will give Coates credit, however. He does present himself very well. He comes across as very calm and thoughtful.

Then you’re not paying attention.

If that were the case then they wouldn’t have forcibly removed the Palestinians from their own lands stripped them of their homes and livelihoods.>

Are you referring to 1948, during the war started by the Arab League to destroy Israel? If the Arabs had accepted partition in 1937 or 1947, there wouldn’t have been a war. There would be a Jewish and a Palestinian state coexisting to this day. Zionism is nothing more than the belief in Jewish self-determination in our ancestral homeland. That’s it. It does not preclude anyone else’s existence or self-determination. That’s what defines Palestinian nationalism, not Zionism.

You’re welcome to explain to me why I’m wrong.>

As I said above, Israel didn’t start the war that led to the Nakba. The Arab League of Nations did. They lost that war. Twenty years later Egypt declared war again and Israel launched a pre-emptive strike to end it quickly. Six years later Arab countries attacked again, this time on the holiest day in Judaism. Israel won that war too. And now we have the war of 2023-2024, whatever it will be called, which was once again started by Hamas’s barbaric invasion and Hezbollah’s sympathy attacks from the north. There is a clear pattern in this history, and I didn’t even include the Arab violence against Jews that pre-dated 1947.

I hate it because it’s existence comes at the expense of others and they don’t seem to even want to stop.>

Except it doesn’t. See my first response above. The Arabs/Palestinians have had many opportunities to pursue peaceful coexistence and have chosen violence every time. That is simply because they refuse to accept the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East. There was no Palestinian nationalist movement until Israel was created. It is literally defined by its opposition to Israel’s existence.

Here’s one thing I can say with absolute certainty: If there was a magical way to eliminate the genocidal threats facing Israel and bring about peace in the Middle East without a single civilian death, Israel would take that option. Israel haters won’t accept that because they’ve been brainwashed to think that Israel is itself a genocidal threat, intent on taking over the Middle East. Which, for many people, is a reflection of some underlying antisemitic sentiments.

such as Gazans and Palestinians who just want to sit this one out and live their lives> I will be honest, though. I’m not sure how many of them would fit in this category. And that’s something I’m struggling with because I used to consider myself fairly left-wing and quite tolerant and respectful of diversity. But I just haven’t seen much if anything over the past 100 years to suggest that there is a critical mass of Palestinian people who are interested in peaceful coexistence. Quite the opposite, actually. But I think the coming days and weeks following Sinwar’s death will be very telling because this does represent the best opportunity the people of Gaza have since Israel’s withdrawal in 2005. Will they choose a different future for themselves, one that focuses on hope and peace? Or will they choose to continue the cycle of violence?