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"We as American Jews believe that 'never again' means never again for anyone, and that includes Palestinians," said JVP, referring to the refrain repeated by the Jewish American community regarding the need to prevent genocide. "'Never again' is this very moment."
Something so common sense will surely fall on deaf ears.
Didn't you know? Those American Jews are being antisemitic for daring to oppose genocide.
Still, it doesn't go without saying. They might ignore it, but they can't pretend nobody said anything.
Isn’t pretending nobody said anything the basis for modern politics at this point?
I asked once why the law (Jewish religious law) said don’t kill, steal etc then said of Amallites not to leave one alive, man, woman or child. The answer? “Jewish law doesn’t apply to gentiles.”
Thinking about this some more, I have a feeling you misinterpreted what "Jewish law doesn't apply to gentiles" means. If I, a Jew, eat bacon, it's considered a sin. If a non-Jew eats bacon, it's not considered a sin. Jewish laws (restrictions, observances, etc) don't apply to non-Jews. It doesn't mean that Jews are allowed to treat non-Jews however they want with no repercussions.
This isn't quite true. First of all, I'm guessing you mean the Amalekites. The reason they are singled out is because they followed the Israelites during the Exodus from Egypt. They attacked from the rear to target the slowest people - the elderly and children. This gave them a "special status" so to speak with a commandment to wipe them out.
That being said, there are no Amalekites nowadays. There might be spiritual successors of them - people who want to wipe out all Jews no matter what and who will start with the elderly and children - but these people don't get "Amalekite treatment."
Apart from this exception (which, again, has no relevance in the modern world), Jewish law absolutely applies to how we treat non-Jews.
I appreciate the work they do to cut through the mandatory pro-Israel dialogue in the states. “Not in our name!” ❤️
And for their efforts, the ADL labels Jewish Voice for Peace an extremist anti-Semitic hate group. 😂
I'm not surprised. I remember they had that position a few years back too. Little has changed unfortunately.
Cease fire wont stop the humanitarian crisis that sparked this. They need water and power and humanitarian aid that israel has blocked.
Israel has the world's sympathy and support but if they retaliate brutally and massively that sympathy and support will shift to the Palestinians.
I think it already has.
I think it's very confused and polarized. Neither side is even remotely in the right at this point, and those who suffer have almost no agency. The only third rail here is the Israeli people. They can make the madness stop.
The civilians on both sides aren't in the right? I misunderstand you, and am being genuine here. Morality/ethics of a conflict can't just be measured and analyzed by the actions and consequences of the combatants. The people caught in the middle, whether Palestinian or Jewish are the real losers in this. War has no real victor..
I find it so crazy that people can pick sides in this conflict. I don't know if there's a nation, military or people in the middle east that doesn't have the blood of thousands of innocent civilians on their hands. With how brutal every single conflict is its no wonder that the survivors feel the need to pick up arms and continue the cycle of pain and suffering
Since Israel has already killed at least twice the number of Palestine civilians than the number of Israeli citizen that were killed by Hamas, this is absolutely true.
Every single time this type of shit plays out the same way. Outrage at whichever Palestinian group did whatever. Outrage at Israel's response. Then people taking what they think are reasonable sides in a religious war, then finally things calm back down to the fucked up status quo. I see no reason this will be any different.
I think there are four factors at play here. They're mixed together in an extremely messy fashion and overlap quite a bit, but they are:
The people on both sides fear for their safety. The Palestinians fear the Israeli government and military taking action against them. The Israeli people fear rocket attacks and raids like the one that just happened. When a populace lives in fear, it leads to -
Extremist groups are in charge. You have Hamas on one side whose stated goal is to kill all Jews. (Not just in Israel, but across the world.) You have the right wing Israeli government on the other side who push for horrible actions against the Palestinians in the name of "safety."
Foreign interference. Iran on one side is arming/helping Hamas. On the other side, evangelical Christians help the settlers and push the Israeli government because they think Jesus will come back if Israel suffers a big enough attack. (Peace would prevent that attack and stop Jesus from returning.)
A long and bloody history. Both sides remember when they were killed by the other side. Both sides refuse to leave the past in the past and intend on making the other side pay. The problem here is that the cycle of violence never breaks. If you always have to attack because "they did X to us" then they will feel like they always need to attack because you did Y to them. It goes around and around and never changes no matter how much everyone suffers.
How do you untangle this mess? If I knew that, I'd have the Nobel Peace Prize. I wish I did know. I'd set the peace prize aside in a second, tell the world what to do, and stop it all. Unfortunately, I'm no diplomat. (Some of the best diplomats have failed in this arena.) I can see what's going on, but I have no clue how to stop it.
The best I can think of is that perhaps UN security forces need to move in. Not to attack one side or another, but to keep both sides away from each other. Sort of like the national version of putting two kids who were fighting in time out until things cool down. But again, I'm no diplomat so for all I know that would make things worse.
You act as though both sides are equivalent.
They are not. Israel is an apartheid state. Palestinians are legally deprived of human rights and restricted to ghettos. Hamas is merely an extremist group that offers Palestinians something, even if its something they cannot deliver on and have no legitimate means of achieving. Palestinians have been massacred by Israel since its inception. Israelis have occasionally died in comparatively small numbers from Hamas attacks. Hamas is not Palestine though. And hamas has no legal power within the Israeli state. The Israeli state is entirely responsible for the current state of affairs and for the ongoing violence.
Palestinians have no state. They have no home. They are kept in ghettos. They are currently facing one of the largest humanitarian crises of the 21st century. The Israeli state could stop it all tomorrow. They could stop it all right now. Unconditionally grant equal citizenship to all Palestinians, return them their homes, give them 50% representation in the Israeli government, and formally condemn the racism and genocidal rhetoric of the Netanyahu administration and the many war crimes committed both by him and the IDF and the Israeli police force.
Its entirely up to Israel. Palestinians can do none of these things. Their only available recourse is extremism.
I agree with one caveat: the Palestinians can help themselves the same way India, South Africa, and other colonial peoples have. Non-violent resistance gets really good results in democracies. It's not easy, but it's less dangerous than attacking a modern military.
The hardest step is getting rid of Hamas, which is more like a mafia than a government. They're more interested in keeping their power and position with help from Iran. In South Africa, Nelson Mandela was a violent terrorist before he turned to 100% non-violence.
Here's an interesting article that no one will read:
I agree with one caveat: the Palestinians can help themselves the same way India, South Africa, and other colonial peoples have. Non-violent resistance gets really good results in democracies.
They tried. They tried a lot (well the first intifada also had a violent element but yk). The result was the Oslo accords, which were almost there until the then-PM was assassinated and Netenyahu who succeeded him just called the whole thing off. Since you mentioned India, the situation in Palestine is more like the troubles in Northern Ireland. You need people who actually care about human rights (many Israelis do, but enough don't that Netenyahu was/has been PM for a total of 16+ years).
The hardest step is getting rid of Hamas, which is more like a mafia than a government.
Hamas aren't actually 100% opposed to peace. They've already made three good faith efforts (2008 ceasefire, 2012 ceasefire, 2012-2013 united government), but in all three Israel actively rejected peace.
Edit: I know it's weird that a terrorist organization is being the (slightly) reasonable side here, but yeah the fact that the conflict went on for so long is on Israel's far-right party and Netenyahu specifically for rejecting peace time and time again. As soon as peace comes Hamas will either mellow out into an Islamist government or die off.
The result was the Oslo accords, which were almost there until the then-PM was assassinated and Netenyahu who succeeded him just called the whole thing off.
The reason why israeli people became more conservative during that time was due to Hamas executing several terrorist strikes during the Oslo Accords. Not surprisingly, the extremists on all sides hate peace -- prime minister Rabin was murdered by a Jewish extremist.
I can only think to part of a response Orwell had for pacifists:
I am not interested in pacifism as a ‘moral phenomenon’. If Mr Savage and others imagine that one can somehow ‘overcome’ the German army by lying on one’s back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen. As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there. Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.
Yeah, that's correct:
Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.
That's why I said democracies are vulnerable to non-violent resistance.
Democracies, like Israel, are the opposite of authoritarian governments. Developed democracies can withstand all the force you send at them because they rule with the consent of the governed and have much larger resources at their disposal.
They are more vulnerable to soft power. Hamas already has broadcast abilities. They should literally get rid of most weapons, and start broadcasting 24/7 about the hardships of living in the West Bank and Gaza. They have an unlimited amount of ammo because Israel genuinely makes people's lives terrible.
You are so delusional about this situation that you think somehow a one state solution could work at this point. A two state solution is the only answer but unfortunately the leadership on both sides right now would never let that happen and the leadership on one side in particular (Hamas) is set on full extermination of the other party.
How do you untangle this mess? If I knew that, I'd have the Nobel Peace Prize.
I wouldn't wish that on you. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin won the Nobel in 1994, and was assassinated for it the following year.
Not to simplify your points and overall message because I really appreciate your words and thoughts, but game theory would do a lot to explain point 4 pretty tidily. The fucked up thing about that, though is that the hate and division is so entrenched that the fact that these people have to deal with one another all the time, has no effect in how they treat each other.
Then again, this gets into some anthropological territory of how culture begats culture, and a culture of violence can never be anything else (me adlibbing here on theoretical anthro), but I digress.. The people that perpetrate the attacks are so far removed from the rank and file and every day experiences, and have so much to gain from continuing it, that why on Earth would they stop? To rational and reasonable people, it seems absurd, but so does how the Fossil Fuel industry persists in plunging us into extinction, so it all bears out, if you ask me.
I completely agree. Hamas' leadership isn't based in Gaza. Attacks on Gaza don't affect them because they're living in luxury (in Qatar IIRC). Meanwhile, they've cancelled all elections so the Palestinians can't just choose a new government.
And this applies to the outside influence as well. Iranians and evangelical Christians don't need to live with the chaos they help to thrive. They get to sit back, thousands of miles away, safe from any consequences. Since they don't suffer any consequences, why would they stop? And if they don't stop, it makes it that much harder to achieve peace.
I do. This time the scope has changed and a big army is going to engage. This isn't going to be tit for tat.
That's the way it happens most times. This time, though, will probably be very brutal with lots of blood on both sides.
Based