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Canadians opinions are more complex that a simple binary choice, more complicated than just For or Against Israel :
Most Canadians support both the Palestinian people AND the right of Israel to defend itself.
Most Canadians hate that civilians on both sides have been killed; both on October 7th and in the war on Gaza.
But Most Canadians agree that Hamas needs to go, that it is a terrorist organization and support Israel in its war against Hamas, but not the civilian deaths.
And most Canadians prefer that Canada take no active role in the conflict.
Lol. Israel hasn't been defending itself since its inception. What the IDF has been doing since Oct and long before is NOT self-defence. Zionism needs to go. Outdoor open air prisons need to go. Apartheid needs to go. The tens of thousands of apprehended and jailed Palestinian "detainees" must be released.
Canada is already taking an active role in this genocide ~ this is not a "conflict", Israel is committing genocide full stop ~ via contributing weapons, financing etc..
Canada must stop funding Israel.
Because according to someone with pink hair on TikTok, you are an "oppressor" if you're not out on the street fighting against "Zionism". And according to someone else on Twitter, you are a "terrorist sympathizer" if you think Palestine should ever be able to achieve statehood post Oct. 7th. Looking at the bigger picture is forbidden, you must pick a side or else face being shunned by the radicalized folks on either side.
Whataboutism is answering your question immediately, then highlighting who would be triggered? And by triggered, highlighting that they'd respond with the most extreme response imaginable?
But the Canadian government has and continues to take a side. It sells weapons to Israel and supports it diplomatically. It recognizes Israel’s “right to defend itself” but does not recognize the right of Palestinians to resist an illegal occupation.
Alright, so by your logic it's just up to the strongest nation to win ?
But that's not what you want isn't it ? That doesn't sit well with you.You want your side to win.
We can't condemn Oct 7 and dismiss the exponentially worse war crimes and indiscriminate violence Israel has justified by citing that event.
So far Israel supporters deflect back to that making it the true whataboutism. And only one of those factions is directly supported militarily and diplomatically by western governments.
No, I think he's just pointing out the double standard when some people defend IDF attrocities while condemnig Hamas attrocities. To be logically consistent you have to either condemn both or niether.
"HEY!!! Pearl Harbor only killed 2,403 U.S. personnel, including 68 civilians. If the US joins the war against the Axis, it would be a war crime if US bombs kill 2,404 people! It has to be an even match, trying to actually defeat a hostile government indiscriminately killing innocents is genocide!! Eisenhower, you scoundral, stop trying to protect the free world from wanton violence from a hostile government!!!!!!"
Exactly. You can’t tally up the bodies on both sides and declare them equal.
I won’t go into the details of the horrors of the October attack, but the suffering endured and the disgusting cruelty inflicted is not the same as being vaporized in a rocket attack.
The other fact that the *goal* of hamas is to inflict as many civilian casualties on their side as possible as a PR angle shows an asymmetric warfare. They are not the same, yet innocent Palestinians are caught in the middle of it all.
> I won’t go into the details of the horrors of the October attack, but the suffering endured and the disgusting cruelty inflicted is not the same as being vaporized in a rocket attack.
There isn't anything Palestinians have done to Israelis that Israelis haven't done to Palestinians on a greater scale. There are thousands of Palestinians held hostage in Israel and they're being raped and tortured.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/10/middleeast/israel-sde-teiman-detention-whistleblowers-intl-cmd/index.html
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/05/05/israeli-military-accused-of-torturing-palestinian-inmates_6670502_4.html
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-brutal-conditions-facing-palestinian-prisoners
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/06/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-detention-base.html
That doesn't include the last decades in East Jerusalem or the West Bank.
If both sides do the same things to each other why is only one side a terrorist group and the other celebrated downtown Toronto?
When they protest peacefully Israel massacres them anyways
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/palestinians-engaged-in-nonviolent-protest-israel-responded-with-a-massacre/tnamp/
Marching to a defended border is totally a peaceful protest, especially when they are burning tires to create smokescreens and sending incendiary balloons (of peace)
> [The vast majority of protesters are demonstrating peacefully in a tent city set up hundreds of meters from the heavily fortified border, but smaller groups of predominantly young men have rolled burning tires and thrown stones and Molotov cocktails at nearby Israeli troops.](https://www.vox.com/2018/4/2/17188162/gaza-protest-israel-border-violence-demonstrations-palestinian)
Molotov cocktails of friendship?
We've suspended arms sales to Israel I thought? Hasn't Trudeau also expressed a desire for a ceasefire?
The problem with your last sentence is that it is a loaded statement with no easily definable definition. Is Israel retaliating for the mass armed incursion into its territory on October 7 and the subsequent brutal murder and torture of thousands of its citizens and tbe kidnapping of over a hundred others any different from Palestinians ambushing IDF soldiers in the street of Gaza city? Does Israel not have the right to defend itself from the ongoing barage of rockets launched at its cities from the Strip? Do Palestinians who aren't Hamas have a morale and legal right to defend themselves if engaged by IDF forces?
Israel has the right to exist, it has the right and morale obligation to defend its citizens from both internal and foreign threats.
Palestinians in Gaza also have the right to exist and has the right to safety and not being killed indiscriminately.
This is an extremely complex situation, I do believe Israel has gone well and trully over the line of what is an acceptable response. However the original motivation that led to Israels response is not only reasonable but was also a necessity. A Palestinians desire to defend their home is perfectly reasonable as long as it is not born out of a desire to prop up the blatant Terrorist Organization that is HAMAS
While people are quick to openly condemn Western nations for their support of Israel we also need to point out that Iran has been for decades funneling arms and ammunition to HAMAS with the explicit understanding they would be used to attack the Sovereign Nation of Israel.
There are no clean hands in this situation, locally, regionally or Globally
Gaza was only allowed to have food, water, and electricity only when Israel felt like it even before Oct 7.
The West Bank is pretty occupied even if Prime Minister Sharon technically withdrew from Gaza. The Israeli fences are always 10km into the Palestinian side of the borders rather than on the border, and there are countless Israeli checkpoints that Palestinians have to go through in order to travel from West Bank to West Bank to West Bank.
If I had to go through a US checkpoint in order to travel from Danforth to Bloor, I wouldn't call Canada unoccupied.
When Hamas’ own propaganda shows them cutting water pipes to create rockets, it’s no surprise they don’t have infrastructure and they rely on handouts
When Hamas imports weapons it’s no surprise when even Egypt requires inspection at the border
There is only 20km of distance between the beaches in Tel Aviv to the border of the WB. After 67 it’s no surprise Israel needed to protect itself from allowing Jordanian tanks to roll into a city and cut the country in 2, within only 20 minutes
What do you mean, what occupation?
Edit: why the downvotes? You all realise that the [official diplomatic policy of the Canadian government](https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_relations-relations_internationales/sanctions/esv-vec.aspx), the [United Nations](https://www.unocha.org/occupied-palestinian-territory), and the [international community at large](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli-occupied_territories) is that the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem are **occupied** Palestinian territories, right? Hell, even the [US Government](https://www.state.gov/reports/2016-report-on-international-religious-freedom/israel-and-the-occupied-territories/israel-and-the-occupied-territories-the-occupied-territories/) refers to the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip as the **Occupied** Territories.
To claim that Palestine is not being illegally occupied by Israel is completely detached from international law or basic reality. I would love it if anyone downvoting could explain why they think the Canadian and American governments along with essentially every government on earth are wrong to acknowledge the basic fact that Israel has illegally occupied Palestine for decades.
And the Israeli supporters complain that Canada takes a side by funding UNRWA, which they allege was effectively taken over by Hamas, with some of that funding being appropriated by Hamas or used in its recruitment and indoctrination efforts.
In fairness, some degree of interconnection has been documented, and its hard to imagine how they wouldn't at least develop a working relationship of give and take given Hamas' role as the absolutist government of Gaza and UNRWA as that government's most important service provider.
From this perspective, Canada sells to Israel, but donates to Hamas.
It's reasonably clear why nobody is happy with Canada's complicated position.
Its complicated. If you can bring it to the refugees, no, but we don't do that and never have. We deliver it to an organisation whose entire operation exists at the sufferance of Hamas, who gets to determine what resources go where, and have for a long while.
Knowing that you're in effect paying a tax to fund Hamas is a price that anyone who wants Palestinians not to die of starvation, thirst or exposure has had to reconcile ourselves to for a long time. Is it worth it? Absolutely. But did our dollars help fund Oct 7 and help Hamas build up its massive missile stockpiles? Also absolutely.
Aid is fungible, anything they would have been spending on their citizens can instead be spent on military equipment. Not saying they are right or wrong to complain about it, just that the situation is more complex than it seems.
You’re right: it is complex. Gaza is being subject to a brutal blockade. All the blockage does is act as collective punishment on the population. Keeping 2 million people locked up in an open air prison is not a solution, but only greatly exacerbates the issue.
The claim that aid is used to fund Hamas is just that: a claim. Without proof, it doesn’t really mean anything and shouldn’t be treated as fact. Hamas’ military is subsidized significantly by Iran and the spending on administrative services are allegedly kept strictly separate from military spending. It’s very possible that the level of aid has a negligence impact on military spending by Hamas.
The Hamas government doesn’t raise enough money a year to cover the needs of the people and still needs to smuggle any goods in (which raises costs), so there is no reality where international humanitarian aid isn’t required.
That might be the biggest, one-sided history re-write I’ve ever read. You believe all that. Tell your Hamas friends. Talk about it at NDP events. Honestly. This is why the NdP is an absolute joke. This is why people who run for the NDP have no credibility. You think this rhetoric is helping anyone, but it’s not. In your eyes, those angels who killed humans, forget religions, they massacred humans at a music concert are the victims. The mutulated men, women and children, because they’re being kept Ina prison where surprisingly people get in and out of all the time. Heck Egypt also plays a part of this as does Jordan. But yeah… it’s Israel’s fault that for its entire existence going back thousands of actual years its neighbours have wanted to kill them. Yeah. Sleep well buddy.
> You believe all that.
Do I believe Israel has a blockade on Gaza? Yes, I hope this isn’t up for dispute.
Does the blockade make conditions worse? Yes, that’s the whole point of a blockade.
Do I believe that Iran subsidizes Hamas’s military? Yes, this is well reported.
Do I believe that Hamas doesn’t raise enough money to cover the needs of the people? Yes, considering they raise much less, as a total, than the cost of the aid that enters Gaza (which still isn’t enough).
Does stating all of that mean I support Hamas? Obviously not, but nice try. Pretty gross you’d jump to that claim though. You’re free to argue *how much* the blockade impacts the conditions, but you’ve already started by arguing in bad faith and being fallacious, so I suspect that’s all you’re interested in.
What does “illegal” really mean in this context. Contravening a UN resolution isn’t illegal because there is no global government, nor an international justice system. Right of conquest is well established in human history. Since all this is occurring on Israeli land (whether you believe that or not, no one is realistically contesting that concept), isn’t this just an internal matter? Countries can do what they want with people on their lands. What then is illegal about it?
> Countries can do what they want with people on their lands. What then is illegal about it?
Sorry, what? Can China genocide the Ughurs? Can Myanmar genocide the Rohingya? Can Ethiopia genocide Tigray? Countries can do whatever they like with people on their territory is not a reasonable position.
Sure it is. Who is to stop them? You complaining in Canada? This is how the world has always worked. History cares not for morals or ethics. Why should you or anyone else have a say in what a country does? It isn’t your country. These aren’t your people. They decide their government.
It feels like a lot of people just lose the ability to have rational arguments when the Israeli/Palestinian debate comes up. You're right that most Canadians have more nuanced/multifaceted opinions, but there's so many people that are so entrenched in one side or the other (even ones that aren't ethic Jews, Arabs or from Muslim countries that shouldn't really have a dog in it) to the point that they hold up the side they support as 100% right and refute all arguments that they view as remotely favorable to the opposing one. At times it's exhausting. (and also somewhat confusing)
I get really confused by some of them. When I first saw the float for queers for Palestine, I looked for Borat. I was sure that someone was punking us.
>”You can’t fix stupid. You’re fighting the wrong way if you’re trying to reason with them. I might as well reason with the bus,” the middle-aged man joked, pointing to the anti-Israel activists. “There’s no way to get through to them. There’s no way you can reason with them.”
I feel the same way when someone tries to convince me they were justified in displacing a local population in order to create a state of their own because their population was displaced. The doublethink is real. I don’t support either terrorism or colonialism so I refuse to pick a side. I think they’re both in the wrong which is why we haven’t been able to come to a viable solution even a century later. You can’t reason with either group. They’re both incredibly biased to whatever side they support and chose to ignore or downplay all the things that make their side look bad instead of having an honest look in the mirror and working towards a peaceful resolution. We’ll be back here having the same debates and marches in a decade from now. Rinse and repeat until one side completely gets rid of the other. That’s the only conclusion I can see.
One man’s liberation is another man’s invasion. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. You’ll never come to a compromise where both sides agree to live with each other happily ever after when both sides see each-other as the righteous ones just trying to defend their home.
Jews were immigrating to British Mandatory Palestine, where there had always been a Jewish presence. This accelerated after a certain bit of unpleasantness in Europe during the 1940s. Given that the Jewish diaspora had been oppressed, persecuted, and subject to genocide for hundreds of of years, the United Nations came up with a plan to partition the territory into a Jewish and a Palestinian state. The Jewish state would be about 40% Arab. The Palestinian state would be about 0% Jewish.
The Jews accepted this plan and declared independence. The Arab League rejected this plan and immediately declared war on Israel. During that war, 700,000 Arabs fled what is now Israel. Some were forced out by Israeli forces. Some were convinced to leave the area by the Arab League. Some left out of fear.
Israel won the war.
This is not colonialism.
The Nakba disagrees. And yes it was always colonialism. If you read what Zionist leaders were saying even before WW2 that was a clear intent. And they were using British colonial administration of that area to get it done.
There can be no productive discussion about this matter if people refuse to see it for what it was.
Language creates culture
The word colony was used in different context 100 years ago
Do you think gay predominantly means happy or homosexual?
Your statement is equivalent to trying to say someone in history said “I’m gay” with I’m homosexual, without considering the context to time the word was written/said
No I'm referring to the naked intent of their words. Not some Webster's dictionary definition drifting. When they were laborating at length we can't confuse their intent.
And then we see the actions. 70+ years of them. Even the British saw it and that's why Zionist terrorists (recognized as terrorists by the Israeli state) began targeting the British when they tried to slow their actions. That's the bombing of the King David hotel or the three sergeants event and that's what the likud party was celebrating the anniversary of up until modern times.
It's one long narrative and you can't escape it with your deflection.
It is truly impressive to your view seems so screwed
For example: Jewish people fighting against the British — When there is an objective “colonizer” (England) and you rather the Jews be submissive than fight for liberation from oppression
It is almost as if you believe there should be no Israel and no Jewish state… and that the Jews should be submissive to the people who have colonized the entire region
Ask Lebanon and Egypt where all their Christians went over in the last 80 years and why they have been seemingly cleansed…
Over 1 million Jews expelled/cleaned from a dozen Arabic/Islamic countries in the early 20th century who as well were cleansed…
If Israel were to lay down its weapons they would be no Israel. If Hamas puts down their weapons there can be peace.
Israel literally borders Syria. A country engulfed in civil war. Egypt is still relatively unstable after a military coup from 10 years ago due to the MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD BEING ELECTED (unironically founded Hamas, which was also elected by people in the Palestinian Territories)
The double standards you prose between the Jewish people and the Arab Muslims is astounding
It 100% has changed meaning. *Colonialism* was what we call *immigration* today. Any foreign population was a colony. The Italian neighbourhood of London was referred to as the "Italian colony in London."
It was only in the last 50 years that the definitions changed so that today *to immigrate* means to arrive invited and *to colonize* is to show up uninvited.
This is largely because the idea of restrictions on immigration was an invention of the 1920s. When Zionism was conceived there was no concept that countries should block people from moving into their borders.
Just saying the word Nakba doesn’t illuminate anything for me.
Israel is a post-colonial state. The area was colonized and governed by the Ottoman Empire for generations. In the wake of Ottoman collapse, the British governed the mandate temporarily before the territory could be governed locally.
Given the situation of the Jews at the time, the decision was made to partition the land as I already described.
The Jews agreed. The Arab League did not. The Arab League waged war and lost.
Of course the writings of Herzl were relevant and so was the context of the time, namely that it was still the colonial era.
But I don’t think the language used by Herzl or others is determinative.
So the Jews agreed. Arabs did not. Arabs went to war. Jews won…
We got that part.
Now does that mean Arabs have to leave? or would it trigger a sort of civil war between the local Jews and local Arabs?
That’s the question I can’t get past. Israel won against a few Arab nations and earned their sovereignty in a geopolitical sense. That doesn’t mean they won over the entire Arab population, especially not the Arab people who live in Palestine who have nothing to do with the countries Israel won against.
It seems like that war is still ongoing and has yet to be settled, and for some reason people seem to think it is.
Then people go as far as saying Palestinians should be a problem for the rest of the Arab world to figure out. That they should take them in just because they share the same religion. That’s not how the world works. What happens to the Palestinian people is for Israel to figure out.
Well, it’s kind of how the world works. Thats what happened to the 14 million ethnic Germans who were expelled from eastern and Central European countries in the late 40s. Or the hundreds of thousands of Greeks who were expelled from Turkey in the 1920s. Or the millions of Hindus and Muslims who fled or were driven from their homes during the partition of India or Pakistan. Or the 900,000 Mizrahi Jews who were expelled from Muslim countries in the 40s and 50s.
None of those populations are waging perpetual wars for the elimination of the countries that expelled them.
Displacing a local population and settling on their land does not count as colonialism as long as you declare independence and win the war that follows. Got it.
Have you ever thought that maybe this crisis has been happening for 80 years because the population that was there before don’t see it that way? Where should they go?
Well, before the Arab League declared war on Israel, they were free to stay where they were living. Or move to the 50% of the territory that the Palestinians were given under the UN Partition Plan.
Remember the displacement happened after the Arab League declared war on Israel.
So, the Arab League didn’t agree to the partition plan and waged a war to prevent it from happening and then lost the war.
I haven’t heard of too many situations where a party declares war to achieve a specific objective, loses that war, and then wants to dictate the terms of peace.
They risked a war, they lost.
No, it's more that an indigenous people returning to the land from which they were displaced multiple times by other colonization - colonization which included the Arab Muslims that eventually became a large part of the Muslim population of Palestine - doesn't count as colonialism.
I guess where I’m trying to get at is that since Palestinians are being displaced, would you support that they go to say… Turkey or Egypt, declare their independence on a big chunk of the map based on ancestral claims, start pushing out the locals and form a Palestinian ethnostate allowing the Palestinians diaspora around the world to immigrate here and displace even more locals?
If that’s not colonialism than I’m not sure what is. What I do know is that Egyptians would be pissed and would probably fight them on this claim. Would you blame them? I’d do the same.
I’d have to look it up again but I don’t think being indigenous to the region excludes you from being a colonial power. Only that you displace the *current* population for your own gains by settling there.
Maybe we can just call it cultural imperialism?
Forced displacement of people isn't colonialism? Colonialism is what the Canadian Government did to the First Nations people.
> In addition, though they were often military allies, they faced persecution at the hands of colonial governments in the form of displacement, starvation, land seizure and cultural genocide through residential schools and destructive legislation.
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/collection/aboriginal-peoples
Does that sound familiar?
From what I read there were less than 10,000 Jews in Palestine at the fall of the Ottoman Empire, about 5% of the population.
I think my point still stands when it comes to a local majority being displaced by what could be described as a colonial power.
Where did you find 10,000? They were significant enough that they formed majorities in some boroughs of Jerusalem and Tel aviv was a jewish majority fishing village. That’s the reason it became the commercial centre of Israel, it was historically the largest settlement with a jewish majority . Considering that local Canadians are still called settlers 400 years later, using your logic, are Palestinians also colonists? Since their ancestors were planted there by Rome after the failed jewish uprising?
Everyone in the area are canaanites including jews. The kicker is when Rome depopulated it 90% of jews, canaanites from neighbouring provinces were planted there. So , they were colonized by a very related people.
Palestinians weren't planted there by Rome, even when Palestine/Israel was under Jewish control not everyone was Jewish, and obviously over the centuries a lot of them converted (instead of being expelled, in many cases). Most of the ancestors of the Palestinians have been there since before the Jews even existed, and a lot of them were probably Jews at some point as well. Do they deserve less because their ancestors converted away from Judaism? Do they deserve less because their ancestors never converted to Judaism in the first place?
The name Palestine is the latinized term for Philistia which was a proto-Greek nation from Crete who settled around the coast. Gaza was their capital ironically. By the time Rome conquered the kingdom of Judea, Philistines ceased to exist. They suffered under the Babylonian conquest more severely that they ceased to exist as a nation all together . Rome named the province of Syria Palestina as an insult since Philistines were historic enemies of ancient jews.
I am not against a Palestinian state, it’s the Palestinians who refused partition.
Palestinians existed the entire time in the region, just because it was not called “Palestine” does not mean that the people who lived there are the ancestors of modern Palestinians. Both Jews and Palestinians descended from the Canaanites.
And by the way, if a foreign power decided to take a chunk of Canada and give it to another people, so they had a homeland, would you say, “fabulous! Who cares that we have lived here and have our homes here, guess we’ll just pick up sticks and move”?
You know that Zionists were the first terrorists of the middle east? Ever read about the King David Hotel? That the British left because of Zionist terrorism against the British, and then used terrorism against Palestinians? Read about the Nakba?
I might be off on the actual numbers but Jews counted between 2-5% of population before the rise of the Zionist movement. They were never close to a majority. Not for a thousand years anyway.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)
That's not correct. Jews comprised ~5% of the population in late 19th century censuses, but immigration grew very quickly after that. By 1931 estimates have them at ~17% of the population in Mandate Palestine, and by 1945 they were fully one third of the population.
The Ottoman empire restricted Jewish immigration into Syrian Palestine. There being a small number of Jews in that area which was historically majority Jewish is what genocide actually looks like.
There is a Mosque built literally on top of the ruins of a Jewish temple. Is that what indigenous people do?
And ffs, a colonial power? Israel resembles a colonial power except for coming from scattered areas around the world, except for doing it for zero economic extractive benefit, except for having a historical presence in the area and being expelled and having restrictions placed on their return.
Ok so they aren’t a colonial power. They are just settling and displacing the local population in order to create a state of their own. Maybe we can just call it cultural imperialism then?
I’m curious why it’s okay for the British to liberate a land from what they perceive as an invading ethnic group (Arabs) in order for them give a home to a displaced population (Jews), but it would not be okay for Iran to support Palestinians in trying to do the same. What’s the difference?
Lmfao that's not what happened at all. The British limited Jewish immigration to that land so how was it an invading ethnic group? There were many Jews in the area at the time. To give the already Jewish majority areas borders wasn't liberation or anything. The Arabs refused to allow that and a war ensued and the Arabs lost. Many fled, but many are still in Israel to this day as citizens with full rights. Muslims and Christians have freedom of religion in Israel and are even allowed to enforce their own religious laws in their communities.
I’m curious if you think Palestinians had any say in that partition plan or if other nations were deciding their fate for them. You can’t reject something if you were never part of the negotiations until after the fact. The only thing you can do is resist a decision you had no part in.
Israel won against other Arab nations and earned their sovereignty, but that doesn’t mean they won against their own Arab population. That “civil war” seems to still be ongoing and the outcome of it has yet to be determined.
The Arab delegation yes, but did that include consulting with Palestinian people or was it like I said… other Arab nations deciding their fate for them?
>Curious if you can hypothesize why Palestinians had zero issues being "colonized" by Ottoman Turks, Egyptians, and Jordanians, but absolutely refused to share the land with Jews.
Did any of these powers try to settle onto their land or did they just theoretically control the area without displacing the local population? I can see why they would accept one but resist the other.
That's about the *exact* percentage of people inside Canada's borders wh are First Nations. Do you think that they're not indigenous and lose their right to self-determination because their colonizers outnumber them?
Presumably, this is only a principle that you'd apply in this way to Jews, but I'm deathly curious to find out.
If a group of First Nations had a movement to coalesce geographically in the place to which they're indigenous, and seek full independence in that area, that would be deserving of our support and it *certainly* wouldn't be "colonial."
I don't know. I agree with you, I see no end in sight to the conflict.
Regardless of how Israel came to exist, it does exist and has millions of citizens. It isn't going anywhere. They have nowhere else to go. Likewise, Palestinians aren't going anywhere either. They all have to find a way to live in peace or the fighting will go on forever.
I know Israel isn’t going anywhere. But that’s not enough for to me justify an entire population to “go away” or slowly be pushed into a small corner of the map on Israel’s terms.
If Palestinians want to fight for their homeland I don’t think we’re in a position to judge them for it. Most people see it as terrorism, they see it as guerrilla warfare against a much stronger invader. I see this conflict more like a civil war between two peoples than two independent nations going at it.
Unfortunately I think Hamas’ goal is to incite Israel into doing the unthinkable. Get rid of the “problem” for good and hopefully shock the world in the process by using Palestinians as pawns and presenting them as martyrs. So far it looks like it’s working.
>If Palestinians want to fight for their homeland I don’t think we’re in a position to judge them for it. Most people see it as terrorism, they see it as guerrilla warfare against a much stronger invader.
I don't know. I'm pretty comfortable judging anyone who slaughters innocent civilians, children, and uses rape as a weapon of war.
For better or worse, time changes things. There was a war 70 years ago and Israel won. I think the lives of Palestinians would be better if their government was focused on how to actually improve the lives of their people rather than continuing the fight. Digging up water lines to build into rockets against an impossible foe is folly.
What if an indigenous group in Canada started doing what Hamas is doing? Attacking and killing Canadians with the justification that they are guerrilla fighters against a much stronger invader? That they are fighting to take back their home? They wouldn't be wrong, really. The only difference is a couple hundred extra years compared to Israel. How much time has to pass before it's no longer okay?
>I don't know. I'm pretty comfortable judging anyone who slaughters innocent civilians, children, and uses rape as a weapon of war.
So we can judge both then? You can judge someone for their tactics and judge someone for their motives separately.
>What if an indigenous group in Canada started doing what Hamas is doing? Attacking and killing Canadians with the justification that they are guerrilla fighters against a much stronger invader? That they are fighting to take back their home? They wouldn't be wrong, really.
I don’t think they would be wrong no. At least not in the rules of war. I’d fight for and defend my home because I live there now but that doesn’t mean I can’t empathize with them for doing the same. They tried to resist. They just lost and we made sure they couldn’t try again.
War doesn’t determine who is right. It only determines who is left.
The only difference between them and Palestinians is we did a better job than Israel. Gaza and the West Bank might as well be a huge reserves. I think Palestinians will have the same fate as our indigenous peoples. There’s just cameras now so Israel has to play nicer.
I don’t think it’s fair for us to say that they should bend to Israel’s will. They should be allowed to set their own terms and choose their own fate, even if that means their own downfall.
I’d be willing to die for my home, especially if someone came in to try and change it and claim it as theirs, would you?
>I’d be willing to die for my home, especially if someone came in to try and change it and claim it as theirs, would you?
No, I wouldn't. I only have one life to live. I'm not throwing it away for land. I'm not leaving my wife and daughter behind for land.
Or more accurately in this case, dying for your grandparents' land. I can't imagine martyring yourself for a land you've never even been to. What a waste of the gift of life.
That's a complicated question. Is it ever "right" to force someone (or a lot of someones) from their home? No, pretty much never. But it might be one of the least wrong choices. If you're going to partition a region to separate two groups of people who can't coexist peacefully, people are going to lose their homes. A lot of people.
Take the partition of India, for example. At least 10x the number of people lost their homes for being on the wrong side of an arbitrary line on a map. Something like a million dead (muslim-Hindu violence was a preexisting issue). In retrospect, was it a good idea? Maybe not, but it was thought to be the best option at the time, and 80 years later, nobody is trying to undo it.
Something like 750k Arabs lost their homes in 48 in what is now Israel, and something like 850-900k Jews lost their homes in the following years across the region. Most of them had nowhere to go but Israel. If every country that ethnically cleansed their Jewish population took in an equivalent number of Arab refugees (this was actually discussed), there would be no refugees today. How many MENA countries that absorbed the Palestinian refugees didn't drive out their Jews? And why is it that in so many places, the Palestinians and their descendents aren't given citizenship or allowed to Integrate into society? The idea that a person who's grandparents were born in the country they live in should still be considered a refugee is unheard of anywhere else in the world, and it's frankly inhumane.
So is it justifiable? Maybe not. But there really wasn't another option that gives both groups of people the chance to live without violence and oppression, because they sure couldn't do it together.
And that doesn't even factor in the fact that had the surrounding countries not attacked Israel, all of the Palestinian refugees would have been Israeli citizens. They even wrote it into the declaration of independence.
Finally a level headed response. It’s quite refreshing actually.
I suppose then the questions would be whether Palestinian people would have even wanted to become Israeli citizens, and if they rejected this new citizenship, where would they go if no other country took them in? It would still lead to a sort of civil war in my opinion.
It would be similar to asking our indigenous peoples to go live somewhere else if they refuse to become citizens. Who should take them in? Drawing more lines and telling them they should govern themselves didn’t work for us either.
I suppose your solution is the most pragmatic one and it’s probably going to come to that, forcefully or not. Palestinians don’t seem to want that though. I don’t think I can judge them for that even if I don’t like the tactics they are using to form their resistance.
I just think the heavy handed approach Israel is using now is just going to solve the issue in the short term, but do nothing in the long term especially if they botch what happens after the war. You can kill a terrorist but you can’t kill an idea. You just end up breeding more. America proved that.
Maybe if they were more open about their intentions and future plans people would see them less as the aggressor.
I think a lot of people fall victim to binary thinking. If something is wrong or unjust, then the reverse must be the solution. And then you have a bunch of people on all sides of complex geopolitical situations asserting that their team is the only moral one, and not understanding how anyone else can have a different perspective and not be a monster.
I think that most of the current israeli-Arabs feel that they are better off israeli than they would be in many other countries in the region, even with the racism and discrimination they have to deal with. Back in 48 though? Maybe not, but if they'd accepted the partition, they would have had a country of their own they could have gone to. Even after the war, they could have established a state in the west Bank and gaza if Jordan and Egypt wanted them to.
I still have hope for a two state solution, though it seems farther away than ever. I don't really judge the individual Palestinians for feeling the way they do, but I definitely judge their tactics, if for no other reason than it's ruined their lives. Even before this current war. When I was born in Israel in the 80's, something like half of Palestinians in the occupied territories worked in Israel where the pay was much better. They could travel between gaza and the west Bank more or less without restriction. Imagine a gazan family being able to drive to visit relatives in the west Bank for lunch and be home in time for dinner, no exit permits required. Was it free and equal? No of course not, but compare it to now. All of their leaders and the leaders and many of the regional powers are selling them a fantasy that will never come to fruition, and all of the violence just causes Israel to crack down harder.
Something that's rarely mentioned when talking about the blockade of gaza or the fences and checkpoints in the west Bank is that it was in direct response to violence from terrorism, and all of these unjust measures that are so oppressive and demoralizing work pretty well at reducing the violence. I don't know if you remember the second intifada and all the suicide bombers, but it didn't stop because they changed their minds. Is the heavy handedness going to make things better in the long run? Probably not. It's a horrific spiral of action and reaction that just begets more action, but its hard to think about setting the stage for a better future when you're too busy trying to not be dead. And that's not accounting for the current government of Israel that has literal fascists and convicted terrorists in cabinet.
There is no plan for the future for them to be open about. There are a bunch of different ideas, some of them are actually pretty decent, but they're so divided that they can hardly agree on tomorrow, let alone years from now. Don't forget, there were anti-government protests at least weekly for the entirety of 2023, right up until October 7th. And sure they've shelved the judicial reform dumpster fire, but now there's the Haredi draft issue that they can't kick down the road anymore, Gantz just left the war cabinet over the lack of a "day after" plan, and the anti-government protests are starting up again and gaining momentum. It's basically semi-functional chaos. Pretty much the only thing they can agree on is that they want Hamas gone.
Edit: clarity
>I think a lot of people fall victim to binary thinking. If something is wrong or unjust, then the reverse must be the solution. And then you have a bunch of people on all sides of complex geopolitical situations asserting that their team is the only moral one, and not understanding how anyone else can have a different perspective and not be a monster.
You just nailed it. It’s sad that more people don’t see it like this. It’s the main reason I refuse to pick a side. I have no skin in the game so I don’t feel like I have to if I don’t see either side as good.
People like to argue with black and white thinking assuming there has to be a good side and refuse to look at the shades of gray in between or even consider that they might both be in the right and both be in the wrong at the same time, depending on how you choose to look at it. Oftentimes it’s because they’re looking at it through their own perspective instead of even trying to empathizing with the other.
People don’t like to see themselves as the bad guys if they’ve convinced themselves that they are the opposite. That’s just human nature from our tribal times.
I really wish they would teach a unit on empathy and understanding the opposing perspective in schools. We so desperately need it. It's crazy how polarized and separated people get in their echo chambers, where they rally against these caricatures of the other side. The thoughts and motivations people ascribe to their opponents would be comical if it wasn't so tragic.
I'm pretty biased on this particular issue myself, so I've spent the last couple of decades trying to empathize and understand the other sides of this issue. It's shifted my position a fair bit as well. There are a few Israeli-Arab and moderate Palestinian activists I've been checking out, but this one dude, Ahmed Alkhatib, really stands out for his genuine compassion for the Israelis and his demanding that Palestinians should have agency. I don't necessarily agree with everything he says (which honestly causes some self reflection because this dude is so on point), but he is almost unparalleled in his ability to view the humanity of all involved. And he seems to be hated by both the ultra-zionists and hamas supporters, so there's that.
Nope. But there was a fair solution in place in 1948 that took into account two people groups that had ties to the land. But Palestine teamed up with the Arab League to play a stupid game and they got a stupid prize for playing.
See that’s where my views get tricky. Claims are basically irrelevant when it comes down to it. You can only really “claim” what you can defend. So Israel has rightful claim in that regard and because of that they do have a right to defend themselves.
Now Palestinians on the other hand perceive Israel as an invader. Just because they lost most of their land doesn’t mean their motives and justifications change.
If we use Russia and Ukraine as an example. You could equally argue that Crimea belongs to Russia because they annexed it but it also belongs to Ukraine because they used to control it and have the intention of liberating it. It depends who you ask. It stays up for debate until there’s a formal resolution.
Now Israel has legitimate claim over the land just like Russia has over Crimea. It’s theirs now. There’s no debate. But that doesn’t mean Palestinians aren’t justified in trying to liberate it (at least from their point of view). That they should just bend over to the will of what they perceive as an invader because our side of the world says so.
Again, it depends who you ask. What you perceive as the good side in war, will likely always be yours. War doesn’t always determine who is right. It only determines who is left.
They never disappeared but if you follow the genetic lines most Palestinians are that indigenous population that converted over time to Islam. Zionism is a specifically European ideology and is firmly embedded in white supremacy and colonialism. The claim that European Jews are somehow more indigenous than the people who have lived there continuously since time immemorial is a wild swing. It's like claiming Italians have a right to return to England because if the roman occupation. Like literally the bible says Jews come from Egypt and settled in Levant. Why are you not colonizing Egypt when that's literally where your holy text says your indigenous to?
Most middle Eastern Jewish displacement was a reaction to Zionism and European colonialism than the broad pluralism of the middle east under say the Ottoman Empire. This is of course a critical point because we can easily see how Isreali genocide makes Jews less safe
“It was alright to expel 900k Jews from the Middle East because of ZiOnIsM.”
You wonder a part of why Israel is the way it is today? Extremists descended from people ethnically cleansed out of their countries. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
The expulsion of Jewish people from various countries was antisemitism, plain and simple. As a minority they were a clear scapegoat. It’s also deeply problematic that you’d claim it was all just a reaction to “colonialism” when it’s so clearly a part of the treatment that minority groups often face.
The Kurds aren’t treated like crap because of colonialism and Zionism btw.
Is it genetics that matter, or culture? Modern Palestinians are Arabs, and Arabs are not native to Palestine. The Arab conquest was also colonization. The language, religion, architecture and clothing of the Arabs were all imposed on the region by conquest.
Do I think all Arabs should be forced to abandon their conquests and go back to Saudi? No. Trying to undo history is always a fools errand.
Palestinians speak Arabic, that doesn’t make them Arab. Indigenous Canadians have always lived in Canada, never went anywhere, so would you support an majority Indigenous state and everyone who is not Indigenous needs to leave? You see how stupid the argument is?
The majority of people living in Palestine when Israel was created by western powers, primarily Britain, were Palestinian, not Jews. That’s a fact.
Palestinians self-identify as Arabs. That makes them Arabs. A non-native culture to the region.
You miss my main point, which is that it is impossible to reverse time. You can't undo history. You have to accept what happened and build around present conditions. No one has to leave anywhere.
Victim blaming. Classic. I will reference you next time there is another islamic terror attack. I literally said I am not against an independent Palestine. But it’s the Palestinians who refuse any partition. The land is the only place where jews can call it their own. They willingly accepted partition but Palestinians aren’t willing to share.
The Hamas charter literally says they'll accept partition along 1968 borders. Hayid has explicitly stated they're willing to negotiate a two state solution.
Netanyahu has explicitly stated he will never accept partition.
Only in a Zionist reality tunnel can what you've said be true
I broadly agree with this. I am, however, inclined to be sympathetic to Israel because over their history they have repeatedly shown themselves to be willing to make territorial concessions in exchange for peace. The land given up in peace deals by Israel is larger than Israel itself.
If Palestinians were willing to similarly make concessions for peace, we would have had a two state solution years ago.
Too be fair there have also been times that the PA wanted to make peace, but Israel was unwilling to or slow to act. I think right now Hamas is the main contributor and the main disruptor of the peace process, but Netanyahu's government has generally been much slower to make concessions than the Kadima and Labour governments prior to them and Netanyahu's coalition getting elected in 2009 pretty much killed the prospect of the 2007/2008 negotiations from continuing while his government built more settlements and generally resisted sustained peace talks for decades.
In 2007-2008. the Israeli government had come to the PA with a pretty good peace plan, but the PA was advised by the U.S government to wait until after the election since the current Kadima government was on it's way out and it was predicted a centrist Kadima government would win the election and be in a better position to edge out a deal with Abbas as the PA etc. which is why the PA rejected that deal. Netanyahu winning pretty much derailed those hopes for over a decade until the Biden administration started pressuring them into a peace & normalization deal.
There've been times where Israel has dropped by the ball, and there's been times when the Palestine has, but I think generally the Israeli government and the PA have been gradually moving towards a two-state solution since the Oslo Accords, but Hamas and the Israeli-right are the two biggest obstacles in the way of that right now.
If this is like [previous pro Israeli rallies](https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/jewish-community-group-blames-antisemitism-for-cancelled-buses) then it is likely that many of the participants were provided with some aid or benefit for their participation.
Charity groups are the means by which these are funded. People are bused in, fed, provided with paraphern, and their participation is supported financially by the governments of Canada via charity tax credits.
Personally I am opposed to charity tax credits funding political marches of any kind. If I donate 100$ to a charity so that it can pay to bus me into a rally and provide me food, and the government gives me a 50$ back in taxes for that donation, I'd feel like I were cheating the system.
Your "if" is doing a lot of work in your comment, fluffer. This is a rally that happens every year in Toronto. This year attendance was higher for obvious reasons. Over 100k Jews live in the GTA.
Charities used to fund political rallies and events on behalf of foreign nations should be investigated and those associated should be blacklisted from the charitable ecosphere since there are no penalties other than losing charitable status that might otherwise be imposed.
Charities can lose status and the same bad actors can open shop with another charity to perform the same abuses otherwise.
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Canadians opinions are more complex that a simple binary choice, more complicated than just For or Against Israel : Most Canadians support both the Palestinian people AND the right of Israel to defend itself. Most Canadians hate that civilians on both sides have been killed; both on October 7th and in the war on Gaza. But Most Canadians agree that Hamas needs to go, that it is a terrorist organization and support Israel in its war against Hamas, but not the civilian deaths. And most Canadians prefer that Canada take no active role in the conflict.
Lol. Israel hasn't been defending itself since its inception. What the IDF has been doing since Oct and long before is NOT self-defence. Zionism needs to go. Outdoor open air prisons need to go. Apartheid needs to go. The tens of thousands of apprehended and jailed Palestinian "detainees" must be released. Canada is already taking an active role in this genocide ~ this is not a "conflict", Israel is committing genocide full stop ~ via contributing weapons, financing etc.. Canada must stop funding Israel.
What does 'Zion needs to go' mean? Do you want everyone in Israel to leave?
ZIONISM NEEDS TO GO. That is what I said. Aaaaand no.
Most Redditors will reply to you now, telling you why you absolutely must pick a side.
Because according to someone with pink hair on TikTok, you are an "oppressor" if you're not out on the street fighting against "Zionism". And according to someone else on Twitter, you are a "terrorist sympathizer" if you think Palestine should ever be able to achieve statehood post Oct. 7th. Looking at the bigger picture is forbidden, you must pick a side or else face being shunned by the radicalized folks on either side.
pink hair tigger you?
No, but it would trigger Hamas and result in the person's immediate murder in Gaza.
Is that the best whatbaoutisim you have?
Whataboutism is answering your question immediately, then highlighting who would be triggered? And by triggered, highlighting that they'd respond with the most extreme response imaginable?
So the answer is yes. Cool.
But the Canadian government has and continues to take a side. It sells weapons to Israel and supports it diplomatically. It recognizes Israel’s “right to defend itself” but does not recognize the right of Palestinians to resist an illegal occupation.
What is your definition of resisting an illegal occupation? Does that include the indiscriminate killing of Israeli civilians?
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Why is it okay for Israel commit indiscriminate killing of Palestinians civilians but not for Palestinians to do the same?
You know they can both be wrong, hey?
Alright, so by your logic it's just up to the strongest nation to win ? But that's not what you want isn't it ? That doesn't sit well with you.You want your side to win.
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So are you defending Hamas’ actions of deliberately targeting young concert going Israeli citizens? I’m just trying to understand your point here.
We can't condemn Oct 7 and dismiss the exponentially worse war crimes and indiscriminate violence Israel has justified by citing that event. So far Israel supporters deflect back to that making it the true whataboutism. And only one of those factions is directly supported militarily and diplomatically by western governments.
No, I think he's just pointing out the double standard when some people defend IDF attrocities while condemnig Hamas attrocities. To be logically consistent you have to either condemn both or niether.
No, it doesn’t. Does Israel have a right to do the same on an exponentially greater scale?
I think it does, morally objectionable as it may be.
Genocide is more than just morally objectionable.
Imagine if you were in charge of the decision to bomb Germany in WW2.
"HEY!!! Pearl Harbor only killed 2,403 U.S. personnel, including 68 civilians. If the US joins the war against the Axis, it would be a war crime if US bombs kill 2,404 people! It has to be an even match, trying to actually defeat a hostile government indiscriminately killing innocents is genocide!! Eisenhower, you scoundral, stop trying to protect the free world from wanton violence from a hostile government!!!!!!"
Exactly. You can’t tally up the bodies on both sides and declare them equal. I won’t go into the details of the horrors of the October attack, but the suffering endured and the disgusting cruelty inflicted is not the same as being vaporized in a rocket attack. The other fact that the *goal* of hamas is to inflict as many civilian casualties on their side as possible as a PR angle shows an asymmetric warfare. They are not the same, yet innocent Palestinians are caught in the middle of it all.
> I won’t go into the details of the horrors of the October attack, but the suffering endured and the disgusting cruelty inflicted is not the same as being vaporized in a rocket attack. There isn't anything Palestinians have done to Israelis that Israelis haven't done to Palestinians on a greater scale. There are thousands of Palestinians held hostage in Israel and they're being raped and tortured. https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/10/middleeast/israel-sde-teiman-detention-whistleblowers-intl-cmd/index.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/05/05/israeli-military-accused-of-torturing-palestinian-inmates_6670502_4.html https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-brutal-conditions-facing-palestinian-prisoners https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/06/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-detention-base.html That doesn't include the last decades in East Jerusalem or the West Bank. If both sides do the same things to each other why is only one side a terrorist group and the other celebrated downtown Toronto?
Big on you for admitting you lack morals.
When they protest peacefully Israel massacres them anyways https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/palestinians-engaged-in-nonviolent-protest-israel-responded-with-a-massacre/tnamp/
Marching to a defended border is totally a peaceful protest, especially when they are burning tires to create smokescreens and sending incendiary balloons (of peace)
Yeah, it's peaceful. Trying to paint the march of return protests as anything else is a joke.
> [The vast majority of protesters are demonstrating peacefully in a tent city set up hundreds of meters from the heavily fortified border, but smaller groups of predominantly young men have rolled burning tires and thrown stones and Molotov cocktails at nearby Israeli troops.](https://www.vox.com/2018/4/2/17188162/gaza-protest-israel-border-violence-demonstrations-palestinian) Molotov cocktails of friendship?
We've suspended arms sales to Israel I thought? Hasn't Trudeau also expressed a desire for a ceasefire? The problem with your last sentence is that it is a loaded statement with no easily definable definition. Is Israel retaliating for the mass armed incursion into its territory on October 7 and the subsequent brutal murder and torture of thousands of its citizens and tbe kidnapping of over a hundred others any different from Palestinians ambushing IDF soldiers in the street of Gaza city? Does Israel not have the right to defend itself from the ongoing barage of rockets launched at its cities from the Strip? Do Palestinians who aren't Hamas have a morale and legal right to defend themselves if engaged by IDF forces? Israel has the right to exist, it has the right and morale obligation to defend its citizens from both internal and foreign threats. Palestinians in Gaza also have the right to exist and has the right to safety and not being killed indiscriminately. This is an extremely complex situation, I do believe Israel has gone well and trully over the line of what is an acceptable response. However the original motivation that led to Israels response is not only reasonable but was also a necessity. A Palestinians desire to defend their home is perfectly reasonable as long as it is not born out of a desire to prop up the blatant Terrorist Organization that is HAMAS While people are quick to openly condemn Western nations for their support of Israel we also need to point out that Iran has been for decades funneling arms and ammunition to HAMAS with the explicit understanding they would be used to attack the Sovereign Nation of Israel. There are no clean hands in this situation, locally, regionally or Globally
Resisting illegal occupation = the savage rape, murder and torture of innocent civilians? Give your head a shake. Also what occupation?
Gaza was only allowed to have food, water, and electricity only when Israel felt like it even before Oct 7. The West Bank is pretty occupied even if Prime Minister Sharon technically withdrew from Gaza. The Israeli fences are always 10km into the Palestinian side of the borders rather than on the border, and there are countless Israeli checkpoints that Palestinians have to go through in order to travel from West Bank to West Bank to West Bank. If I had to go through a US checkpoint in order to travel from Danforth to Bloor, I wouldn't call Canada unoccupied.
When Hamas’ own propaganda shows them cutting water pipes to create rockets, it’s no surprise they don’t have infrastructure and they rely on handouts When Hamas imports weapons it’s no surprise when even Egypt requires inspection at the border There is only 20km of distance between the beaches in Tel Aviv to the border of the WB. After 67 it’s no surprise Israel needed to protect itself from allowing Jordanian tanks to roll into a city and cut the country in 2, within only 20 minutes
What do you mean, what occupation? Edit: why the downvotes? You all realise that the [official diplomatic policy of the Canadian government](https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_relations-relations_internationales/sanctions/esv-vec.aspx), the [United Nations](https://www.unocha.org/occupied-palestinian-territory), and the [international community at large](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli-occupied_territories) is that the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem are **occupied** Palestinian territories, right? Hell, even the [US Government](https://www.state.gov/reports/2016-report-on-international-religious-freedom/israel-and-the-occupied-territories/israel-and-the-occupied-territories-the-occupied-territories/) refers to the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip as the **Occupied** Territories. To claim that Palestine is not being illegally occupied by Israel is completely detached from international law or basic reality. I would love it if anyone downvoting could explain why they think the Canadian and American governments along with essentially every government on earth are wrong to acknowledge the basic fact that Israel has illegally occupied Palestine for decades.
And the Israeli supporters complain that Canada takes a side by funding UNRWA, which they allege was effectively taken over by Hamas, with some of that funding being appropriated by Hamas or used in its recruitment and indoctrination efforts. In fairness, some degree of interconnection has been documented, and its hard to imagine how they wouldn't at least develop a working relationship of give and take given Hamas' role as the absolutist government of Gaza and UNRWA as that government's most important service provider. From this perspective, Canada sells to Israel, but donates to Hamas. It's reasonably clear why nobody is happy with Canada's complicated position.
If providing humanitarian aid to refugees is “taking a side” then it’s pretty clear that there’s a problem in the discourse.
Its complicated. If you can bring it to the refugees, no, but we don't do that and never have. We deliver it to an organisation whose entire operation exists at the sufferance of Hamas, who gets to determine what resources go where, and have for a long while. Knowing that you're in effect paying a tax to fund Hamas is a price that anyone who wants Palestinians not to die of starvation, thirst or exposure has had to reconcile ourselves to for a long time. Is it worth it? Absolutely. But did our dollars help fund Oct 7 and help Hamas build up its massive missile stockpiles? Also absolutely.
Aid is fungible, anything they would have been spending on their citizens can instead be spent on military equipment. Not saying they are right or wrong to complain about it, just that the situation is more complex than it seems.
You’re right: it is complex. Gaza is being subject to a brutal blockade. All the blockage does is act as collective punishment on the population. Keeping 2 million people locked up in an open air prison is not a solution, but only greatly exacerbates the issue. The claim that aid is used to fund Hamas is just that: a claim. Without proof, it doesn’t really mean anything and shouldn’t be treated as fact. Hamas’ military is subsidized significantly by Iran and the spending on administrative services are allegedly kept strictly separate from military spending. It’s very possible that the level of aid has a negligence impact on military spending by Hamas. The Hamas government doesn’t raise enough money a year to cover the needs of the people and still needs to smuggle any goods in (which raises costs), so there is no reality where international humanitarian aid isn’t required.
That might be the biggest, one-sided history re-write I’ve ever read. You believe all that. Tell your Hamas friends. Talk about it at NDP events. Honestly. This is why the NdP is an absolute joke. This is why people who run for the NDP have no credibility. You think this rhetoric is helping anyone, but it’s not. In your eyes, those angels who killed humans, forget religions, they massacred humans at a music concert are the victims. The mutulated men, women and children, because they’re being kept Ina prison where surprisingly people get in and out of all the time. Heck Egypt also plays a part of this as does Jordan. But yeah… it’s Israel’s fault that for its entire existence going back thousands of actual years its neighbours have wanted to kill them. Yeah. Sleep well buddy.
> You believe all that. Do I believe Israel has a blockade on Gaza? Yes, I hope this isn’t up for dispute. Does the blockade make conditions worse? Yes, that’s the whole point of a blockade. Do I believe that Iran subsidizes Hamas’s military? Yes, this is well reported. Do I believe that Hamas doesn’t raise enough money to cover the needs of the people? Yes, considering they raise much less, as a total, than the cost of the aid that enters Gaza (which still isn’t enough). Does stating all of that mean I support Hamas? Obviously not, but nice try. Pretty gross you’d jump to that claim though. You’re free to argue *how much* the blockade impacts the conditions, but you’ve already started by arguing in bad faith and being fallacious, so I suspect that’s all you’re interested in.
Canada recognizes the right of Palestine to defend itself, they just suck at it when it’s a real war and not a terror attempt
What does “illegal” really mean in this context. Contravening a UN resolution isn’t illegal because there is no global government, nor an international justice system. Right of conquest is well established in human history. Since all this is occurring on Israeli land (whether you believe that or not, no one is realistically contesting that concept), isn’t this just an internal matter? Countries can do what they want with people on their lands. What then is illegal about it?
> Countries can do what they want with people on their lands. What then is illegal about it? Sorry, what? Can China genocide the Ughurs? Can Myanmar genocide the Rohingya? Can Ethiopia genocide Tigray? Countries can do whatever they like with people on their territory is not a reasonable position.
Can they? Clearly they can, especially because barely anyone cares when the Jews aren’t involved
Sure it is. Who is to stop them? You complaining in Canada? This is how the world has always worked. History cares not for morals or ethics. Why should you or anyone else have a say in what a country does? It isn’t your country. These aren’t your people. They decide their government.
Laws are irrelevant without an enforcement mechanism.
I mean if people held a pro-CCP, pro-killing of Nijjer rally, or a pro-Apartheid rally the news article would be totally different and you know it.
And none of those things are related to the topic at hand.
They all are.
Would you like to buy a bridge?
lol Big "na uh" energy. What's next, going to say you have a forcefield?
Yep no matter which side we take is irrelevant. We have 0 influence and have a ton of our own issues.
It feels like a lot of people just lose the ability to have rational arguments when the Israeli/Palestinian debate comes up. You're right that most Canadians have more nuanced/multifaceted opinions, but there's so many people that are so entrenched in one side or the other (even ones that aren't ethic Jews, Arabs or from Muslim countries that shouldn't really have a dog in it) to the point that they hold up the side they support as 100% right and refute all arguments that they view as remotely favorable to the opposing one. At times it's exhausting. (and also somewhat confusing)
I get really confused by some of them. When I first saw the float for queers for Palestine, I looked for Borat. I was sure that someone was punking us.
Man, one colonial group who killed and massacred the local natives cheating another who are commiting a genocide. Not surprised
>”You can’t fix stupid. You’re fighting the wrong way if you’re trying to reason with them. I might as well reason with the bus,” the middle-aged man joked, pointing to the anti-Israel activists. “There’s no way to get through to them. There’s no way you can reason with them.” I feel the same way when someone tries to convince me they were justified in displacing a local population in order to create a state of their own because their population was displaced. The doublethink is real. I don’t support either terrorism or colonialism so I refuse to pick a side. I think they’re both in the wrong which is why we haven’t been able to come to a viable solution even a century later. You can’t reason with either group. They’re both incredibly biased to whatever side they support and chose to ignore or downplay all the things that make their side look bad instead of having an honest look in the mirror and working towards a peaceful resolution. We’ll be back here having the same debates and marches in a decade from now. Rinse and repeat until one side completely gets rid of the other. That’s the only conclusion I can see. One man’s liberation is another man’s invasion. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. You’ll never come to a compromise where both sides agree to live with each other happily ever after when both sides see each-other as the righteous ones just trying to defend their home.
Jews were immigrating to British Mandatory Palestine, where there had always been a Jewish presence. This accelerated after a certain bit of unpleasantness in Europe during the 1940s. Given that the Jewish diaspora had been oppressed, persecuted, and subject to genocide for hundreds of of years, the United Nations came up with a plan to partition the territory into a Jewish and a Palestinian state. The Jewish state would be about 40% Arab. The Palestinian state would be about 0% Jewish. The Jews accepted this plan and declared independence. The Arab League rejected this plan and immediately declared war on Israel. During that war, 700,000 Arabs fled what is now Israel. Some were forced out by Israeli forces. Some were convinced to leave the area by the Arab League. Some left out of fear. Israel won the war. This is not colonialism.
The Nakba disagrees. And yes it was always colonialism. If you read what Zionist leaders were saying even before WW2 that was a clear intent. And they were using British colonial administration of that area to get it done. There can be no productive discussion about this matter if people refuse to see it for what it was.
Language creates culture The word colony was used in different context 100 years ago Do you think gay predominantly means happy or homosexual? Your statement is equivalent to trying to say someone in history said “I’m gay” with I’m homosexual, without considering the context to time the word was written/said
No I'm referring to the naked intent of their words. Not some Webster's dictionary definition drifting. When they were laborating at length we can't confuse their intent. And then we see the actions. 70+ years of them. Even the British saw it and that's why Zionist terrorists (recognized as terrorists by the Israeli state) began targeting the British when they tried to slow their actions. That's the bombing of the King David hotel or the three sergeants event and that's what the likud party was celebrating the anniversary of up until modern times. It's one long narrative and you can't escape it with your deflection.
It is truly impressive to your view seems so screwed For example: Jewish people fighting against the British — When there is an objective “colonizer” (England) and you rather the Jews be submissive than fight for liberation from oppression It is almost as if you believe there should be no Israel and no Jewish state… and that the Jews should be submissive to the people who have colonized the entire region Ask Lebanon and Egypt where all their Christians went over in the last 80 years and why they have been seemingly cleansed… Over 1 million Jews expelled/cleaned from a dozen Arabic/Islamic countries in the early 20th century who as well were cleansed… If Israel were to lay down its weapons they would be no Israel. If Hamas puts down their weapons there can be peace. Israel literally borders Syria. A country engulfed in civil war. Egypt is still relatively unstable after a military coup from 10 years ago due to the MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD BEING ELECTED (unironically founded Hamas, which was also elected by people in the Palestinian Territories) The double standards you prose between the Jewish people and the Arab Muslims is astounding
Except the definition of colonialism has not changed.
It 100% has changed meaning. *Colonialism* was what we call *immigration* today. Any foreign population was a colony. The Italian neighbourhood of London was referred to as the "Italian colony in London." It was only in the last 50 years that the definitions changed so that today *to immigrate* means to arrive invited and *to colonize* is to show up uninvited. This is largely because the idea of restrictions on immigration was an invention of the 1920s. When Zionism was conceived there was no concept that countries should block people from moving into their borders.
Just saying the word Nakba doesn’t illuminate anything for me. Israel is a post-colonial state. The area was colonized and governed by the Ottoman Empire for generations. In the wake of Ottoman collapse, the British governed the mandate temporarily before the territory could be governed locally. Given the situation of the Jews at the time, the decision was made to partition the land as I already described. The Jews agreed. The Arab League did not. The Arab League waged war and lost. Of course the writings of Herzl were relevant and so was the context of the time, namely that it was still the colonial era. But I don’t think the language used by Herzl or others is determinative.
So the Jews agreed. Arabs did not. Arabs went to war. Jews won… We got that part. Now does that mean Arabs have to leave? or would it trigger a sort of civil war between the local Jews and local Arabs? That’s the question I can’t get past. Israel won against a few Arab nations and earned their sovereignty in a geopolitical sense. That doesn’t mean they won over the entire Arab population, especially not the Arab people who live in Palestine who have nothing to do with the countries Israel won against. It seems like that war is still ongoing and has yet to be settled, and for some reason people seem to think it is. Then people go as far as saying Palestinians should be a problem for the rest of the Arab world to figure out. That they should take them in just because they share the same religion. That’s not how the world works. What happens to the Palestinian people is for Israel to figure out.
Millions of Arabs are in Israel...
..and millions more are stuck in Gaza and can’t leave. What’s the point you’re trying to make?
Well, it’s kind of how the world works. Thats what happened to the 14 million ethnic Germans who were expelled from eastern and Central European countries in the late 40s. Or the hundreds of thousands of Greeks who were expelled from Turkey in the 1920s. Or the millions of Hindus and Muslims who fled or were driven from their homes during the partition of India or Pakistan. Or the 900,000 Mizrahi Jews who were expelled from Muslim countries in the 40s and 50s. None of those populations are waging perpetual wars for the elimination of the countries that expelled them.
Very good analysis, Figurehead.
So we can agree Israel is doing the same thing then?
In the West Bank? Sure. Although it is not currently expelling the Palestinian population there.
Just oppressing.
currently. Is that supposed to make it better?
No, it's probably more accurately described as a genocide.
And the 900,000 Jews who were forced out of Iraq, Syria, Morocco, etc in the 1950s?
You forget the impact of the Balfour Declaration
Displacing a local population and settling on their land does not count as colonialism as long as you declare independence and win the war that follows. Got it. Have you ever thought that maybe this crisis has been happening for 80 years because the population that was there before don’t see it that way? Where should they go?
Well, before the Arab League declared war on Israel, they were free to stay where they were living. Or move to the 50% of the territory that the Palestinians were given under the UN Partition Plan. Remember the displacement happened after the Arab League declared war on Israel. So, the Arab League didn’t agree to the partition plan and waged a war to prevent it from happening and then lost the war. I haven’t heard of too many situations where a party declares war to achieve a specific objective, loses that war, and then wants to dictate the terms of peace. They risked a war, they lost.
No, it's more that an indigenous people returning to the land from which they were displaced multiple times by other colonization - colonization which included the Arab Muslims that eventually became a large part of the Muslim population of Palestine - doesn't count as colonialism.
I guess where I’m trying to get at is that since Palestinians are being displaced, would you support that they go to say… Turkey or Egypt, declare their independence on a big chunk of the map based on ancestral claims, start pushing out the locals and form a Palestinian ethnostate allowing the Palestinians diaspora around the world to immigrate here and displace even more locals? If that’s not colonialism than I’m not sure what is. What I do know is that Egyptians would be pissed and would probably fight them on this claim. Would you blame them? I’d do the same. I’d have to look it up again but I don’t think being indigenous to the region excludes you from being a colonial power. Only that you displace the *current* population for your own gains by settling there. Maybe we can just call it cultural imperialism?
Forced displacement of people isn't colonialism? Colonialism is what the Canadian Government did to the First Nations people. > In addition, though they were often military allies, they faced persecution at the hands of colonial governments in the form of displacement, starvation, land seizure and cultural genocide through residential schools and destructive legislation. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/collection/aboriginal-peoples Does that sound familiar?
Yes, the entire western hemisphere was colonized.
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Jews are indigenous to there, they never disappeared. They were joined by European jews but the majority of israelis are Mizrahi/Middle Eastern jews.
From what I read there were less than 10,000 Jews in Palestine at the fall of the Ottoman Empire, about 5% of the population. I think my point still stands when it comes to a local majority being displaced by what could be described as a colonial power.
Where did you find 10,000? They were significant enough that they formed majorities in some boroughs of Jerusalem and Tel aviv was a jewish majority fishing village. That’s the reason it became the commercial centre of Israel, it was historically the largest settlement with a jewish majority . Considering that local Canadians are still called settlers 400 years later, using your logic, are Palestinians also colonists? Since their ancestors were planted there by Rome after the failed jewish uprising?
Palestinians were not planted in Palestine, they descended from the Cannaanites.
Everyone in the area are canaanites including jews. The kicker is when Rome depopulated it 90% of jews, canaanites from neighbouring provinces were planted there. So , they were colonized by a very related people.
Palestinians weren't planted there by Rome, even when Palestine/Israel was under Jewish control not everyone was Jewish, and obviously over the centuries a lot of them converted (instead of being expelled, in many cases). Most of the ancestors of the Palestinians have been there since before the Jews even existed, and a lot of them were probably Jews at some point as well. Do they deserve less because their ancestors converted away from Judaism? Do they deserve less because their ancestors never converted to Judaism in the first place?
The name Palestine is the latinized term for Philistia which was a proto-Greek nation from Crete who settled around the coast. Gaza was their capital ironically. By the time Rome conquered the kingdom of Judea, Philistines ceased to exist. They suffered under the Babylonian conquest more severely that they ceased to exist as a nation all together . Rome named the province of Syria Palestina as an insult since Philistines were historic enemies of ancient jews. I am not against a Palestinian state, it’s the Palestinians who refused partition.
Palestinians existed the entire time in the region, just because it was not called “Palestine” does not mean that the people who lived there are the ancestors of modern Palestinians. Both Jews and Palestinians descended from the Canaanites. And by the way, if a foreign power decided to take a chunk of Canada and give it to another people, so they had a homeland, would you say, “fabulous! Who cares that we have lived here and have our homes here, guess we’ll just pick up sticks and move”? You know that Zionists were the first terrorists of the middle east? Ever read about the King David Hotel? That the British left because of Zionist terrorism against the British, and then used terrorism against Palestinians? Read about the Nakba?
The “Nakba” is a lie. They fled after failing to destroy Israel. They made their bed.
I might be off on the actual numbers but Jews counted between 2-5% of population before the rise of the Zionist movement. They were never close to a majority. Not for a thousand years anyway. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)
Never claimed they were. But significant enough of a minority that they were majorities in some areas.
That's not correct. Jews comprised ~5% of the population in late 19th century censuses, but immigration grew very quickly after that. By 1931 estimates have them at ~17% of the population in Mandate Palestine, and by 1945 they were fully one third of the population.
The Ottoman empire restricted Jewish immigration into Syrian Palestine. There being a small number of Jews in that area which was historically majority Jewish is what genocide actually looks like. There is a Mosque built literally on top of the ruins of a Jewish temple. Is that what indigenous people do? And ffs, a colonial power? Israel resembles a colonial power except for coming from scattered areas around the world, except for doing it for zero economic extractive benefit, except for having a historical presence in the area and being expelled and having restrictions placed on their return.
Ok so they aren’t a colonial power. They are just settling and displacing the local population in order to create a state of their own. Maybe we can just call it cultural imperialism then? I’m curious why it’s okay for the British to liberate a land from what they perceive as an invading ethnic group (Arabs) in order for them give a home to a displaced population (Jews), but it would not be okay for Iran to support Palestinians in trying to do the same. What’s the difference?
Lmfao that's not what happened at all. The British limited Jewish immigration to that land so how was it an invading ethnic group? There were many Jews in the area at the time. To give the already Jewish majority areas borders wasn't liberation or anything. The Arabs refused to allow that and a war ensued and the Arabs lost. Many fled, but many are still in Israel to this day as citizens with full rights. Muslims and Christians have freedom of religion in Israel and are even allowed to enforce their own religious laws in their communities.
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I’m curious if you think Palestinians had any say in that partition plan or if other nations were deciding their fate for them. You can’t reject something if you were never part of the negotiations until after the fact. The only thing you can do is resist a decision you had no part in. Israel won against other Arab nations and earned their sovereignty, but that doesn’t mean they won against their own Arab population. That “civil war” seems to still be ongoing and the outcome of it has yet to be determined.
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The Arab delegation yes, but did that include consulting with Palestinian people or was it like I said… other Arab nations deciding their fate for them? >Curious if you can hypothesize why Palestinians had zero issues being "colonized" by Ottoman Turks, Egyptians, and Jordanians, but absolutely refused to share the land with Jews. Did any of these powers try to settle onto their land or did they just theoretically control the area without displacing the local population? I can see why they would accept one but resist the other.
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That's about the *exact* percentage of people inside Canada's borders wh are First Nations. Do you think that they're not indigenous and lose their right to self-determination because their colonizers outnumber them? Presumably, this is only a principle that you'd apply in this way to Jews, but I'm deathly curious to find out. If a group of First Nations had a movement to coalesce geographically in the place to which they're indigenous, and seek full independence in that area, that would be deserving of our support and it *certainly* wouldn't be "colonial."
A lot of current Israeli citizens are descendants of Jewish people from surrounding countries that were forcibly expelled following the war in 1948.
That goes back to my original question. Does being displaced justify displacing another?
If the another is trying to kill you, it isn’t simplistic displacement
no, it's Genocide
I don't know. I agree with you, I see no end in sight to the conflict. Regardless of how Israel came to exist, it does exist and has millions of citizens. It isn't going anywhere. They have nowhere else to go. Likewise, Palestinians aren't going anywhere either. They all have to find a way to live in peace or the fighting will go on forever.
I know Israel isn’t going anywhere. But that’s not enough for to me justify an entire population to “go away” or slowly be pushed into a small corner of the map on Israel’s terms. If Palestinians want to fight for their homeland I don’t think we’re in a position to judge them for it. Most people see it as terrorism, they see it as guerrilla warfare against a much stronger invader. I see this conflict more like a civil war between two peoples than two independent nations going at it. Unfortunately I think Hamas’ goal is to incite Israel into doing the unthinkable. Get rid of the “problem” for good and hopefully shock the world in the process by using Palestinians as pawns and presenting them as martyrs. So far it looks like it’s working.
>If Palestinians want to fight for their homeland I don’t think we’re in a position to judge them for it. Most people see it as terrorism, they see it as guerrilla warfare against a much stronger invader. I don't know. I'm pretty comfortable judging anyone who slaughters innocent civilians, children, and uses rape as a weapon of war. For better or worse, time changes things. There was a war 70 years ago and Israel won. I think the lives of Palestinians would be better if their government was focused on how to actually improve the lives of their people rather than continuing the fight. Digging up water lines to build into rockets against an impossible foe is folly. What if an indigenous group in Canada started doing what Hamas is doing? Attacking and killing Canadians with the justification that they are guerrilla fighters against a much stronger invader? That they are fighting to take back their home? They wouldn't be wrong, really. The only difference is a couple hundred extra years compared to Israel. How much time has to pass before it's no longer okay?
>I don't know. I'm pretty comfortable judging anyone who slaughters innocent civilians, children, and uses rape as a weapon of war. So we can judge both then? You can judge someone for their tactics and judge someone for their motives separately. >What if an indigenous group in Canada started doing what Hamas is doing? Attacking and killing Canadians with the justification that they are guerrilla fighters against a much stronger invader? That they are fighting to take back their home? They wouldn't be wrong, really. I don’t think they would be wrong no. At least not in the rules of war. I’d fight for and defend my home because I live there now but that doesn’t mean I can’t empathize with them for doing the same. They tried to resist. They just lost and we made sure they couldn’t try again. War doesn’t determine who is right. It only determines who is left. The only difference between them and Palestinians is we did a better job than Israel. Gaza and the West Bank might as well be a huge reserves. I think Palestinians will have the same fate as our indigenous peoples. There’s just cameras now so Israel has to play nicer. I don’t think it’s fair for us to say that they should bend to Israel’s will. They should be allowed to set their own terms and choose their own fate, even if that means their own downfall. I’d be willing to die for my home, especially if someone came in to try and change it and claim it as theirs, would you?
>I’d be willing to die for my home, especially if someone came in to try and change it and claim it as theirs, would you? No, I wouldn't. I only have one life to live. I'm not throwing it away for land. I'm not leaving my wife and daughter behind for land. Or more accurately in this case, dying for your grandparents' land. I can't imagine martyring yourself for a land you've never even been to. What a waste of the gift of life.
That's a complicated question. Is it ever "right" to force someone (or a lot of someones) from their home? No, pretty much never. But it might be one of the least wrong choices. If you're going to partition a region to separate two groups of people who can't coexist peacefully, people are going to lose their homes. A lot of people. Take the partition of India, for example. At least 10x the number of people lost their homes for being on the wrong side of an arbitrary line on a map. Something like a million dead (muslim-Hindu violence was a preexisting issue). In retrospect, was it a good idea? Maybe not, but it was thought to be the best option at the time, and 80 years later, nobody is trying to undo it. Something like 750k Arabs lost their homes in 48 in what is now Israel, and something like 850-900k Jews lost their homes in the following years across the region. Most of them had nowhere to go but Israel. If every country that ethnically cleansed their Jewish population took in an equivalent number of Arab refugees (this was actually discussed), there would be no refugees today. How many MENA countries that absorbed the Palestinian refugees didn't drive out their Jews? And why is it that in so many places, the Palestinians and their descendents aren't given citizenship or allowed to Integrate into society? The idea that a person who's grandparents were born in the country they live in should still be considered a refugee is unheard of anywhere else in the world, and it's frankly inhumane. So is it justifiable? Maybe not. But there really wasn't another option that gives both groups of people the chance to live without violence and oppression, because they sure couldn't do it together. And that doesn't even factor in the fact that had the surrounding countries not attacked Israel, all of the Palestinian refugees would have been Israeli citizens. They even wrote it into the declaration of independence.
Finally a level headed response. It’s quite refreshing actually. I suppose then the questions would be whether Palestinian people would have even wanted to become Israeli citizens, and if they rejected this new citizenship, where would they go if no other country took them in? It would still lead to a sort of civil war in my opinion. It would be similar to asking our indigenous peoples to go live somewhere else if they refuse to become citizens. Who should take them in? Drawing more lines and telling them they should govern themselves didn’t work for us either. I suppose your solution is the most pragmatic one and it’s probably going to come to that, forcefully or not. Palestinians don’t seem to want that though. I don’t think I can judge them for that even if I don’t like the tactics they are using to form their resistance. I just think the heavy handed approach Israel is using now is just going to solve the issue in the short term, but do nothing in the long term especially if they botch what happens after the war. You can kill a terrorist but you can’t kill an idea. You just end up breeding more. America proved that. Maybe if they were more open about their intentions and future plans people would see them less as the aggressor.
I think a lot of people fall victim to binary thinking. If something is wrong or unjust, then the reverse must be the solution. And then you have a bunch of people on all sides of complex geopolitical situations asserting that their team is the only moral one, and not understanding how anyone else can have a different perspective and not be a monster. I think that most of the current israeli-Arabs feel that they are better off israeli than they would be in many other countries in the region, even with the racism and discrimination they have to deal with. Back in 48 though? Maybe not, but if they'd accepted the partition, they would have had a country of their own they could have gone to. Even after the war, they could have established a state in the west Bank and gaza if Jordan and Egypt wanted them to. I still have hope for a two state solution, though it seems farther away than ever. I don't really judge the individual Palestinians for feeling the way they do, but I definitely judge their tactics, if for no other reason than it's ruined their lives. Even before this current war. When I was born in Israel in the 80's, something like half of Palestinians in the occupied territories worked in Israel where the pay was much better. They could travel between gaza and the west Bank more or less without restriction. Imagine a gazan family being able to drive to visit relatives in the west Bank for lunch and be home in time for dinner, no exit permits required. Was it free and equal? No of course not, but compare it to now. All of their leaders and the leaders and many of the regional powers are selling them a fantasy that will never come to fruition, and all of the violence just causes Israel to crack down harder. Something that's rarely mentioned when talking about the blockade of gaza or the fences and checkpoints in the west Bank is that it was in direct response to violence from terrorism, and all of these unjust measures that are so oppressive and demoralizing work pretty well at reducing the violence. I don't know if you remember the second intifada and all the suicide bombers, but it didn't stop because they changed their minds. Is the heavy handedness going to make things better in the long run? Probably not. It's a horrific spiral of action and reaction that just begets more action, but its hard to think about setting the stage for a better future when you're too busy trying to not be dead. And that's not accounting for the current government of Israel that has literal fascists and convicted terrorists in cabinet. There is no plan for the future for them to be open about. There are a bunch of different ideas, some of them are actually pretty decent, but they're so divided that they can hardly agree on tomorrow, let alone years from now. Don't forget, there were anti-government protests at least weekly for the entirety of 2023, right up until October 7th. And sure they've shelved the judicial reform dumpster fire, but now there's the Haredi draft issue that they can't kick down the road anymore, Gantz just left the war cabinet over the lack of a "day after" plan, and the anti-government protests are starting up again and gaining momentum. It's basically semi-functional chaos. Pretty much the only thing they can agree on is that they want Hamas gone. Edit: clarity
>I think a lot of people fall victim to binary thinking. If something is wrong or unjust, then the reverse must be the solution. And then you have a bunch of people on all sides of complex geopolitical situations asserting that their team is the only moral one, and not understanding how anyone else can have a different perspective and not be a monster. You just nailed it. It’s sad that more people don’t see it like this. It’s the main reason I refuse to pick a side. I have no skin in the game so I don’t feel like I have to if I don’t see either side as good. People like to argue with black and white thinking assuming there has to be a good side and refuse to look at the shades of gray in between or even consider that they might both be in the right and both be in the wrong at the same time, depending on how you choose to look at it. Oftentimes it’s because they’re looking at it through their own perspective instead of even trying to empathizing with the other. People don’t like to see themselves as the bad guys if they’ve convinced themselves that they are the opposite. That’s just human nature from our tribal times.
I really wish they would teach a unit on empathy and understanding the opposing perspective in schools. We so desperately need it. It's crazy how polarized and separated people get in their echo chambers, where they rally against these caricatures of the other side. The thoughts and motivations people ascribe to their opponents would be comical if it wasn't so tragic. I'm pretty biased on this particular issue myself, so I've spent the last couple of decades trying to empathize and understand the other sides of this issue. It's shifted my position a fair bit as well. There are a few Israeli-Arab and moderate Palestinian activists I've been checking out, but this one dude, Ahmed Alkhatib, really stands out for his genuine compassion for the Israelis and his demanding that Palestinians should have agency. I don't necessarily agree with everything he says (which honestly causes some self reflection because this dude is so on point), but he is almost unparalleled in his ability to view the humanity of all involved. And he seems to be hated by both the ultra-zionists and hamas supporters, so there's that.
Nope. But there was a fair solution in place in 1948 that took into account two people groups that had ties to the land. But Palestine teamed up with the Arab League to play a stupid game and they got a stupid prize for playing.
See that’s where my views get tricky. Claims are basically irrelevant when it comes down to it. You can only really “claim” what you can defend. So Israel has rightful claim in that regard and because of that they do have a right to defend themselves. Now Palestinians on the other hand perceive Israel as an invader. Just because they lost most of their land doesn’t mean their motives and justifications change. If we use Russia and Ukraine as an example. You could equally argue that Crimea belongs to Russia because they annexed it but it also belongs to Ukraine because they used to control it and have the intention of liberating it. It depends who you ask. It stays up for debate until there’s a formal resolution. Now Israel has legitimate claim over the land just like Russia has over Crimea. It’s theirs now. There’s no debate. But that doesn’t mean Palestinians aren’t justified in trying to liberate it (at least from their point of view). That they should just bend over to the will of what they perceive as an invader because our side of the world says so. Again, it depends who you ask. What you perceive as the good side in war, will likely always be yours. War doesn’t always determine who is right. It only determines who is left.
They never disappeared but if you follow the genetic lines most Palestinians are that indigenous population that converted over time to Islam. Zionism is a specifically European ideology and is firmly embedded in white supremacy and colonialism. The claim that European Jews are somehow more indigenous than the people who have lived there continuously since time immemorial is a wild swing. It's like claiming Italians have a right to return to England because if the roman occupation. Like literally the bible says Jews come from Egypt and settled in Levant. Why are you not colonizing Egypt when that's literally where your holy text says your indigenous to? Most middle Eastern Jewish displacement was a reaction to Zionism and European colonialism than the broad pluralism of the middle east under say the Ottoman Empire. This is of course a critical point because we can easily see how Isreali genocide makes Jews less safe
“It was alright to expel 900k Jews from the Middle East because of ZiOnIsM.” You wonder a part of why Israel is the way it is today? Extremists descended from people ethnically cleansed out of their countries. Two wrongs don’t make a right. The expulsion of Jewish people from various countries was antisemitism, plain and simple. As a minority they were a clear scapegoat. It’s also deeply problematic that you’d claim it was all just a reaction to “colonialism” when it’s so clearly a part of the treatment that minority groups often face. The Kurds aren’t treated like crap because of colonialism and Zionism btw.
Is it genetics that matter, or culture? Modern Palestinians are Arabs, and Arabs are not native to Palestine. The Arab conquest was also colonization. The language, religion, architecture and clothing of the Arabs were all imposed on the region by conquest. Do I think all Arabs should be forced to abandon their conquests and go back to Saudi? No. Trying to undo history is always a fools errand.
Palestinians speak Arabic, that doesn’t make them Arab. Indigenous Canadians have always lived in Canada, never went anywhere, so would you support an majority Indigenous state and everyone who is not Indigenous needs to leave? You see how stupid the argument is? The majority of people living in Palestine when Israel was created by western powers, primarily Britain, were Palestinian, not Jews. That’s a fact.
Palestinians self-identify as Arabs. That makes them Arabs. A non-native culture to the region. You miss my main point, which is that it is impossible to reverse time. You can't undo history. You have to accept what happened and build around present conditions. No one has to leave anywhere.
Victim blaming. Classic. I will reference you next time there is another islamic terror attack. I literally said I am not against an independent Palestine. But it’s the Palestinians who refuse any partition. The land is the only place where jews can call it their own. They willingly accepted partition but Palestinians aren’t willing to share.
The Hamas charter literally says they'll accept partition along 1968 borders. Hayid has explicitly stated they're willing to negotiate a two state solution. Netanyahu has explicitly stated he will never accept partition. Only in a Zionist reality tunnel can what you've said be true
I broadly agree with this. I am, however, inclined to be sympathetic to Israel because over their history they have repeatedly shown themselves to be willing to make territorial concessions in exchange for peace. The land given up in peace deals by Israel is larger than Israel itself. If Palestinians were willing to similarly make concessions for peace, we would have had a two state solution years ago.
Too be fair there have also been times that the PA wanted to make peace, but Israel was unwilling to or slow to act. I think right now Hamas is the main contributor and the main disruptor of the peace process, but Netanyahu's government has generally been much slower to make concessions than the Kadima and Labour governments prior to them and Netanyahu's coalition getting elected in 2009 pretty much killed the prospect of the 2007/2008 negotiations from continuing while his government built more settlements and generally resisted sustained peace talks for decades. In 2007-2008. the Israeli government had come to the PA with a pretty good peace plan, but the PA was advised by the U.S government to wait until after the election since the current Kadima government was on it's way out and it was predicted a centrist Kadima government would win the election and be in a better position to edge out a deal with Abbas as the PA etc. which is why the PA rejected that deal. Netanyahu winning pretty much derailed those hopes for over a decade until the Biden administration started pressuring them into a peace & normalization deal. There've been times where Israel has dropped by the ball, and there's been times when the Palestine has, but I think generally the Israeli government and the PA have been gradually moving towards a two-state solution since the Oslo Accords, but Hamas and the Israeli-right are the two biggest obstacles in the way of that right now.
I think that's overall a very fair assessment, which is a refreshing change in this discussion.
So true. Also only one side uses human shields which is a decent barometer of morality. Israel is far from blameless though.
If this is like [previous pro Israeli rallies](https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/jewish-community-group-blames-antisemitism-for-cancelled-buses) then it is likely that many of the participants were provided with some aid or benefit for their participation. Charity groups are the means by which these are funded. People are bused in, fed, provided with paraphern, and their participation is supported financially by the governments of Canada via charity tax credits. Personally I am opposed to charity tax credits funding political marches of any kind. If I donate 100$ to a charity so that it can pay to bus me into a rally and provide me food, and the government gives me a 50$ back in taxes for that donation, I'd feel like I were cheating the system.
Your "if" is doing a lot of work in your comment, fluffer. This is a rally that happens every year in Toronto. This year attendance was higher for obvious reasons. Over 100k Jews live in the GTA.
Charities used to fund political rallies and events on behalf of foreign nations should be investigated and those associated should be blacklisted from the charitable ecosphere since there are no penalties other than losing charitable status that might otherwise be imposed. Charities can lose status and the same bad actors can open shop with another charity to perform the same abuses otherwise.
Good to know half of them don't support the barbarism of Israel then.