838
Rescuers recover more than 260 bodies at music festival attacked by Hamas
(www.independent.co.uk)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
838 points (100.0% liked)
World News
38969 readers
2325 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Honest question because maybe what I think is the answer is not actually the answer.
How much land does Israel currently occupy that is outside the bounds of what was originally agreed as belonging to them?
The 1967 borders are the most recent broadly recognized boundaries. After the Six Days War, Israel gained control of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and Gaza.
As of today, East Jerusalem is a diverse but uneasy mix of Jews and Palestinians. Israel maintains that a unified Jerusalem is its capital, and this is the de facto situation. According to general peace plans, an eventual Palestinian state is meant to have East Jerusalem as its capital, so this is an obvious conflict point.
The West Bank is divided into three areas: A - administered by the Palestinian Authority, B - jointly administered by the PA and Israel, and C - administered by Israel. Israel has been increasingly building more and more settlements within Area C, which are widely recognized as illegal and being incredibly counter-productive towards peace. The Israelis who move there are often extremely nationalistic and often commit violence against the Palestinians. The IDF routinely conducts operations throughout all areas in order to ostensibly maintain security, though they'll always prioritize Israeli lives over Palestinians.
The naive and now utterly hopeless idealistic peace plan is the creation of a Palestinian state consisting of the West Bank and Gaza with a capital in East Jerusalem, with the city being managed by a bi-national coalition of both governments. Israeli settlements within the West Bank would be either abandoned or annexed into Israel with an equal amount of land being swapped from Israel to Palestine. Some kind of stable passage would be created to connect Gaza and the West Bank.
One issue is that a not-small portion of Israelis believe themselves to be entitled to the entire land by virtue of religion, and see continued settlement of the West Bank as furthering this goal. These people suck and aren't that much better than Hamas, though they're not quite as barbaric. The much harder issue is that no Israeli will never allow this solution to happen unless Israel's security is guaranteed, and there is simply zero trust in that, especially now. Israel will not allow itself to sit next to a state run by terrorists that are hell-bent on killing every Jew in the country.
On the matter of international law, Israel justifies its actions by accurately stating that no internationally recognized state lays claim to the West Bank - Jordan withdrew all claims in 1967 - and as such they have a right to settle it. Essentially no other countries have recognized that claim, and there has always been a general agreement that the West Bank will form the basis of a future Palestinian state. Israel certainly hasn't acted in a way that furthers this, but as I said before, its red line is that it will not tolerate security threats to its existence. Militant Palestinian groups attacking Israel only makes peace more and more impossible.
So long as many Palestinians see the mere existence every Jew in Israel as a crime and a target, Israel will see every Palestinian as a potential threat, and the fact of the matter is that Israel holds the guns.
Kbin refuses to let me expand your comment to see anything after the sentence beginning with "the naive and now utterly..."
But this isn't doing much to make me more sympathetic to the Israeli plight, and is more or less what I thought. I assumed I must have been wrong or misinformed, but you seem to have confirmed I really shouldn't have much sympathy for Israel overall, even if I agree this attack on a music festival seems hard to specifically defend.
Weird, I'm also from Kbin. Also unfortunate, given that the rest contains a lot more context.
Ultimately though, I think the desire to label one side and fundamentally right and the other wrong is simply far too simplistic to be useful. Anyone interested in peace will criticize both sides as neither has done very much to move towards peace; Israel is just a lot better at protecting its citizens from harm. But fundamentally, peace will be impossible so long as Israel's safety is threatened, and any acts that threaten that only make peace impossible.
Apologies I missed this reply yesterday.
It happens from time to time, I'm not sure why. I tried turning off KES previously to see if it was somehow misbehaving, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.
I did go read the rest this morning on lemmy directly.
I see your points, but coming at it from the angle of what do we do today, I still come away feeling like the obvious answer (I say that recognizing this war is thousands of years old and no such thing will happen) is for Israel to stop these settlements.
Until they do, Palestinians have a pretty valid claim that Israel is the instigator and these actions (or, one would hope, more focused actions) are required to preserve their homes and community.
Pull back the settlements, take whatever measures are deemed necessary to secure the border, and leave them the fuck alone. The whole angle about no one else claiming that land feels pretextual to me, and feeds my perception that Israel is just ratcheting up the pressure to provoke the Palestinians so they can claim they are justified when the level the place by actions like OP.
I'm not by any means raging at you, I appreciate the explanation, but it sure feels to me like a situation where it's easy to paint the Palestinians with a broad brush, but also hard to understand how anyone thinks what Israel is doing here is right.
Without a doubt, I think the settlements are abhorrent and incredibly counter-productive to peace. They're not recognized by literally any other country for that express reason.
However, that does not justify the actions that took place over the weekend. If the aim was military resistance to Israel and a desire to assert independence, there are plenty of military targets surrounding Gaza that could have been attacked. Instead, they mostly went into civilian settings and simply murdered as many people as possible, while also raping and kidnapping many. I just read a report about babies being decapitated. You've probably already heard about the plans to livestream the executions of hostages.
These actions cannot be defended or justified, ever. They can be explained, and I do think it's not wrong to say that some of Israel's actions have contributed towards the environment decaying so much that they became more possible (though it's beyond tactless to say if that's your first thought in the face of the events). But it is possible to analyze the context of these events while still condemning them, which is something many many progressives have utterly failed to do. I saw just this morning someone I'd considered a friend talk about how it should be impossible to support Palestinians without supporting Hamas and all actions they deem necessary, and that any attempts to talk about nuance are a deliberate western strategy to distract.
Given what has happened, which was, again, a deliberate attempt to kill as many Israeli citizens as possible, I do think Israel is justified in taking steps to ensure that this never happens again, and it's tragic that many innocent people are going to suffer because of that. However, Hamas could at any time give up hostages and de-militarize, and there would be no further bloodshed, whereas if Israel laid down arms, it would be a second Holocaust, as evidenced by this past weekend.
I think my ultimate position, which I've come to realize is not as universal as I thought, is that I believe there is no cause so righteous that it can ever justify the murder, kidnapping, and rape of innocent civilians. You can explain and understand the context that leads to the build-up of anger and resentment that ultimately causes such a violent outburst - and I dearly hope Israel does take valuable lessons moving forward, though I'd be surprised - but those actions can never be accepted, and retaliation to ensure that they do not re-occur is justified.
(For whatever reason I had to go read your comment on Lemmy again.)
I completely agree that there are no good guys here, and targeting an explicitly non-military target like a music festival is not something to be justified.
They can't just be explained, they can be easily explained, I think.
As everyone keeps pointing out, Israel is far stronger militarily and likely could ethnic cleanse Gaza if they chose (edit:and seem to be often lauded for their restraint in not being worse than they are to the Palestinians). And that sounds great until you wonder then why don't they use their strength in a way that doesn't escalate? They can choose not to ratchet things up, but from what I'm reading they already have. And I think we also agree that the continued existence of the settlements is an unending provocation.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-gaza-area-bombed-after-warning-to-move
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-bombs-egypt-border-crossing-it-had-touted-as-an-escape-route-for-besieged-palestinians/ar-AA1hYfk2
That's not "we're going in to get whoever did this and we're not being too polite about it", that's pretty wanton targeting of civilians. You don't create more people who want to fight fair doing those things, especially when your side is NOT the "barely subsisting" side, but rather the side that possesses the technology and skill to be far more surgical if they chose.
I've lived my entire life in the US and I have uncritically accepted our relationship with Israel for most of my life. But their actions are no easier to defend than Hamas' actions in some cases, IMO.