Say no to authoritarianism, say yes to socialism. Free Palestine 🇵🇸 Everyone deserves Human Rights
I agree with the views of Israeli Historians Ilan Pappe, Avi Schlaim that a One-State solution is the only permanent solution. I still support a Two-State solution in the meantime, as a foundation for Palestinian emancipation, but the on-the-ground reality of the settlements dividing the West Bank into hundreds of enclaves eats away at the viability of a permanent Two-State solution. Religion is not the primary element of the conflict, despite the religious ferver of many settlers and rhetoric of Israeli officials. The primary element is still the expulsion and domination of the native Palestinians through the use of Settlements and Apartheid. There cannot be a ‘democratic’ Jewish State (an ethnostate), without a Jewish majority, which presents what is called the ‘demographic problem.’ in the words of Ben-Gurion:
There can be no stable and strong Jewish State so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60 percent. - Ben-Gurion in an address to the central committee of the Histadrut on 30 December 1947
I don’t believe the Israeli Government would ever agree to a One or Two State Solution, not unless there is enough internal secular and external international pressure.
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
Claiming ancestral history does not justify ethnic cleansing, Settler Colonialism, or the existence of an ethnostate. ‘Transfer’ has always been fundamental to Zionism. Zionism is not Judaism, despite, as Israeli Adi Callai puts it, its weaponization of antisemitism. Jewish people have lived in historic Palestine for generations, despite the mass ethnic cleansing of Jewish people by the Romans during the Jewish-Roman Wars. Which is exactly why a Secular State, based on religious tolerance and equal rights, is the right way to end this conflict.
10 myths of Israel by Ilan Pappe, summerized and full book
Oh my bad, I thought “I see an argument in favor of the settlements that I’m actually agreeing with” meant you agreed with the settlements.
My view on Zionism is that it is fundamentally a settler colonial ideology, one founded and currently engaged in ethnic cleansing. And that the Apartheid Regime needs to change into a Secular One-State with equal rights and right of return for everyone
Can I ask which part of the settlements you agree with?
I don’t know what constitutes leftist in Israel right now, but I do respect Ofer Cassif, Ilan Pappe, Norman Finkelstein, Avi Schlaim, and any anti-zionist Israelis who are fighting for the equal rights of Palestinians.
I won’t ascribe these views as yours, but I will argue against them from a pro-palestinian standpoint.
Settlements and Security:
Israel does justify the settlements and military bases in the West Bank in the name of Security. However, the reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.
This type of settlement, where the native population gets ‘Transferred’ to make room for the settlers, is a long standing practice. See: The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948, the Transfer Committee, and the JNF which led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate, before the mass ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948: Plan Dalet, Declassified Massacres of 1948, and Details of Plan C (May 1946) and Plan D (March 1948) . Further, declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967: Haaretz, Forward; while the peace process was exploited to continue de-facto annexation of the West Bank via Settlements (Oslo Accord Sources: MEE, NYT, Haaretz, AJ). The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.
The settlements represent land-grabbing, and land-grabbing and peace-making don’t go together, it is one or the other. By its actions, if not always in its rhetoric, Israel has opted for land-grabbing and as we speak Israel is expanding settlements. So, Israel has been systematically destroying the basis for a viable Palestinian state and this is the declared objective of the Likud and Netanyahu who used to pretend to accept a two-state solution. In the lead up to the last election, he said there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. The expansion of settlements and the wall mean that there cannot be a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity. The most that the Palestinians can hope for is Bantustans, a series of enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements and Israeli military bases.
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
State violence – official and otherwise – is part and parcel of Israel’s apartheid regime, which aims to create a Jewish-only space between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The regime treats land as a resource designed to serve the Jewish public, and accordingly uses it almost exclusively to develop and expand existing Jewish residential communities and to build new ones. At the same time, the regime fragments Palestinian space, dispossesses Palestinians of their land and relegates them to living in small, over-populated enclaves.
The apartheid regime is based on organized, systemic violence against Palestinians, which is carried out by numerous agents: the government, the military, the Civil Administration, the Supreme Court, the Israel Police, the Israel Security Agency, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and others. Settlers are another item on this list, and the state incorporates their violence into its own official acts of violence. Settler violence sometimes precedes instances of official violence by Israeli authorities, and at other times is incorporated into them. Like state violence, settler violence is organized, institutionalized, well-equipped and implemented in order to achieve a defined strategic goal.
Civilian Deaths and Human Shields:
Israel does deliberately targets civilian areas. From in general with the Dahiya Doctrine to multiple systems deployed in Gaza to do so: ‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza, Lavender, and Where’s Daddy. When it comes to Israeli Soldiers and Civilians, there is also the use of the Hannibal Directive, which was also used on Oct 7th.
Hundreds of Genocide Scholars have described this ethnic cleansing campaign as genocide because of the deliberate targeting of children/civilians and expressed intent by Israeli officials: “A Textbook Case of Genocide”: Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal Decries Israel’s Assault on Gaza, 800+ Legal Scholars Say Israel May Be Perpetrating ‘Crime of Genocide’ in Gaza , Law for Palestine Releases Database with 500+ Instances of Israeli Incitement to Genocide – Continuously Updated.
On the subject of Human Shields, there are some independent reports for past conflicts of Hamas jeopardizing the safety of civilians via Rocket fire in dense urban areas, two instances during Oct 7th, but no independent verification since then so far. None of which absolve Israel of the crime of targeting civilians under international law:
Intentionally utilizing the presence of civilians or other protected persons to render certain areas immune from military attack is prohibited under international law. Amnesty International was not able to establish whether or not the fighters’ presence in the camps was intended to shield themselves from military attacks. However, under international humanitarian law, even if one party uses “human shields”, or is otherwise unlawfully endangering civilians, this does not absolve the opposing party from complying with its obligations to distinguish between military objectives and civilians or civilian objects, to refrain from carrying out indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks, and to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and civilian objects.
Additionally, there is extensive independent verification of Israel using Palestinians as Human Shields: IDF uses Human Shields, including Children (2013 Report), and in the latest war Israel “Systematically” Uses Gaza Children as Human Shields, Rights Group Finds
Admittedly, I don’t know much about the details of the history of ISIS. But from what I understand I agree, the material conditions that resulted from the US’s invasion of Iraq was a major significant factor in the rise of ISIS
I consider all ambitions to form an ethnostate a flavor of Fascism
Since at latest 2004, a significant goal of the group has been the foundation of a Sunni Islamic state.
Depends on the root cause. If the terrorism comes from a place of desperation for liberation or emancipation, addressing the underlying material conditions would prevent that kind of terrorism. A great example of that is Apartheid South Africa and Ireland. On the other hand, if the terrorism comes from a place of Fascism, like ISIS or the KKK, I think funding progressive and democratic opposition and also education would have the most positive effect. Holding the terrorists responsible for their actions and jailing them accordingly is really important, but to solve the underlying cause is critical to end it entirely. Otherwise, if the root cause isn’t addressed, there is no reason to believe the terrorism will stop.
A Moka pot is a cheap and easy way to make espresso. I got mine for less than $5. Of course a fancy espresso machine is going to make higher quality espresso, but for the price you can’t go wrong with a Moka pot
Here’s another article that has more sources
It’s important to keep in mind that nothing is really ‘static,’ the molecules consisting of the plastic and food are still vibrating and decaying into its local environment due to entropy, everything is to some extent. While strong and resilient, plastic molecules will still ‘leech’ out. The concern is more to what extent. High temperatures and liquids would be the highest risk factor, while low temperatures and solids would be much lower.
I think storing solids in plastic at room or cold temperatures are fine. But I avoid microwaving or storing hot items in plastic and opt for glass or ceramic instead. Our entire bodies are already compromised with micro plastics so for me it’s just about minimizing exposure when I can
The heat releases BPA from the plastic which will leech into the food
https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2024/02/427161/how-to-limit-microplastics-dangers
Considering the reality of the Apartheid and Occupation, I’d say some kind of violent retaliation was bound to happen. I don’t think the date itself is of any significance, more about the circumstances and opportunity. Although, you could also look into the how the security failure came to be to better understand why it happened then.
The only way I see this conflict ending, after reading the works of Ilan Pappe and other Historians, is a Secular One-State solution where both Israelis and Palestinians have equal rights and Right of Return in the whole of Historical Palestine. That’s what I advocate for, at least
In terms of the reasons why they chose to attack, these are the three main reasons. Which you can find more about in the three different analysis articles below. In terms of the exact date, I’d say it was due to the shift in IDF forces in the region at that time.
First, the policies of the far-right Israeli government enabling settler violence in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem led to a sense of desperation among Palestinians and growing demands for a reaction. At the same time, the rising tensions in the West Bank caused by these policies necessitated the shift of Israeli forces away from the south and into the north to guard the settlements. This gave Hamas both a justification and an opportunity to attack.
Second, the Hamas leadership felt compelled to act due to the acceleration of Arab-Israeli normalisation. In recent years, this process further diminished the significance of the Palestinian issue for Arab leaders who became less keen on pressuring Israel on this matter.
Third, Hamas was emboldened after it managed to repair its ties with Iran. In recent years, the movement had to reconsider the political position it assumed in the wake of the Arab Spring in 2011, in opposition to Iran and its ally, the Syrian regime.
Before October 7, the group not only limited its own rocket attacks on Israel but also publicly punished those who instigated attacks within Gaza to break the fragile ceasefires. Hamas has let the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fight Israel alone, not joining the fray between Israel and the PIJ in August 2022 or in May 2023.
At the same time, there was incendiary far-right political rhetoric and rising levels of violence against Palestinians. Both 2021 and 2022 set records as the deadliest years for Palestinians, as the Netanyahu government green-lit the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and settlers themselves conducted pogroms against Palestinians.
Israel’s focus on the West Bank may also have created an operational opportunity for Hamas. According to Uzi Ben Yitzhak, a retired Israeli general, the Israeli government has deployed most of the regular IDF forces to the West Bank to manage the situation there, leaving only a skeleton force at the Gaza border. The effort to secure permanent Israeli control over the West Bank, in this assessment, created conditions where a Hamas surprise attack could actually succeed.
Yeah, I don’t watch them too much but I do support that channel.
Also GDF when it comes to imperialist/colonialist conflicts, Leeja Miller on any US issues from a legal lense, and Hasan Piker on political commentary
When I gave the books Manufacturing Consent and Consequences of Capitalism a fair chance, and learned about the brutal reality of our foreign policy that goes completely ignored in our history books
Also finding the channel Knowing Better on YouTube and learning much more about the history of Slavery and Native Americans
I think it is a little bit. People who own up and admit to their mistake shouldn’t be downvoted. Everyone makes mistakes, but it’s not always easy to admit. That’s why sharing sources is important too
I added the link, those quotes show why most historians consider the comparison of the Nakba and Jewish exodus from the Muslim world to be a false equivalence. While there were certainly pogroms, the vast majority of Jewish immigrants were able to sell their possessions and willingly move. This is in contrast to the Nakba, where all 800,000 Palestinians were forcibly removed by a deliberate ethnic cleansing campaign. Whether you recognize it or not, when you bring up the exodus as a reaction to the Nakba with the conclusion that both sides are bad, the point of that argument is a justification for the Nakba.
If you’re Iraqi, how do you not see that all the different Arab countries have their own interests? While there was some semblance of pan-Islamism and pan-arabism during the British Mandate, it ultimately was a failed project. Jordan, Egypt, and other countries were not operating on the ‘behalf of Palestine,’ and their actions are not the fault of Palestinians.
You bring up the 1913 Pogroms and the 1930s Riots in Palestine in reaction to the Nakba too, as if they were fueled by Antisemitism instead of anti-settler-colonialism. Even the commissions done by the British disagree with that.
The Concept of forcible transfer the native Palestinians population was central to Zionism since the 1880s when Palestine was chosen as the location. During the British Mandate, around a 100,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced by land purchases (unlike previous land purchases, where peasants would normally continue working and living on the land). Ben-Gurion used Partition as a tactic to dissuade the British from considering a Bi-National Secular State, and instead create a causi-belli for the beginning of a Jewish ethnostate within Palestine. The Nakba, or Plan Dalet, was deliberately planned for over a year. That ethnic cleansing campaign is directly responsible for the Palestinian Occupied Territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza. The 1967 war was a deliberate tactic for Israel to take control of those areas and begin the never ending occupation, once those policies were practiced on the Palestinian population that remained in the Green Line after the Nakba.
So what are you trying to agrue? Because none of that is false.
The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948
Transfer Committee and the JNF led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate.
Israel Martial Law and Defence (Emergency) Regulations practiced in the occupied territories after 1967
Those weren’t ignored, they were addressed with the last link. Palestinians are not responsible for the Jewish exodus. Your argument is trying justify the Israeli Apartheid and Genocide by conflating Palestinians with all Arabs/Muslims and conflating all Jewish people with Israel.
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction.
Forced expulsion of Palestinians has been central to Zionism since the 1880’s
There are a lot of factors of the Jewish exodus from the Muslim world, but your conflating of the two as justification or minimization of the Nakba doesn’t work; unless you somehow think all Arabs or Muslims are the same. But it’s pretty clear your racist towards Palestinians or Arabs or Muslims when your argument boils down to ‘they are violent primitives and deserve to die,’ just going straight to dehumanization and ignoring all material conditions of Apartheid
Iraqi-born Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, speaking of the wave of Iraqi Jewish migration to Israel, concludes that, even though Iraqi Jews were “victims of the Israeli-Arab conflict”, Iraqi Jews aren’t refugees, saying “nobody expelled us from Iraq, nobody told us that we were unwanted.” He restated that case in a review of Martin Gilbert’s book, In Ishmael’s House.
Yehuda Shenhav has criticized the analogy between Jewish emigration from Arab countries and the Palestinian exodus. He also says “The unfounded, immoral analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi immigrants needlessly embroils members of these two groups in a dispute, degrades the dignity of many Mizrahi Jews, and harms prospects for genuine Jewish-Arab reconciliation.” He has stated that “the campaign’s proponents hope their efforts will prevent conferral of what is called a ‘right of return’ on Palestinians, and reduce the size of the compensation Israel is liable to be asked to pay in exchange for Palestinian property appropriated by the state guardian of ‘lost’ assets.”
Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath has rejected the comparison, arguing that while there is a superficial similarity, the ideological and historical significance of the two population movements are entirely different. Porath points out that the immigration of Jews from Arab countries to Israel, expelled or not, was the “fulfilment of a national dream”. He also argues that the achievement of this Zionist goal was only made possible through the endeavors of the Jewish Agency’s agents, teachers, and instructors working in various Arab countries since the 1930s. Porath contrasts this with the Palestinian Arabs’ flight of 1948 as completely different. He describes the outcome of the Palestinian’s flight as an “unwanted national calamity” that was accompanied by “unending personal tragedies”. The result was "the collapse of the Palestinian community, the fragmentation of a people, and the loss of a country that had in the past been mostly Arabic-speaking and Islamic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world
No, they weren’t the same thing. Zionist Land Purchases were unlike anything prior, leading to the forced expulsion of over hundreds thousand Palestinians under the British Mandate. This, along with the Zionist leadership being very open about the Concept of Transfer since the 1880s, stocked Palestinian fears of being violently forced out of their homes by these new arrivals. There is a lot of context that gets ignored during these events, and it’s not easy to summarize. I’ll include a few paragraphs but if you want more context I suggest you read the whole chapter.
The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948
Transfer Committee and the JNF led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate.
The fear over control of the Temple Mount and a failure by leadership on both sides to quell the fears (and instead, incite them) sparked the terrible pogroms of Jewish Settlements.
In 1928, this meant simultaneously calling for the defence of Jerusalem and discouraging direct action on the ground. But the Palestinian masses found this kind of co-opted nationalism impossible. They lived near the holy places and saw Jews praying there in unprecedented numbers, which they saw as part of a larger scheme to ‘de-Islamize’ Palestine. A minor incident concerning prayer arrangements near the Wailing Wall, the western wall of the Haram, sparked violence that soon swept through Palestine as a whole in 1929. In all, 300 Jews and a similar number of Palestinians were killed.
The spillover of anger from Jerusalem into the countryside and other towns was not a co-ordinated plan by the leadership. Rather, it started with uprooted Palestinians who had lost their agricultural base for various reasons, including the capitalization of crops and the Jewish purchase of land. These former peasants lived on the urban margins, from where they participated in what to them was their first ever political, and violent, action. Their dismal conditions were not the fault of Zionism, but it was easy to connect Zionist activity in Jerusalem with the purchase of land or with an aggressive segregationist policy in the labour market.
The British army was slow to respond to the unrest. The 1920s had been quiet, apart from limited outbursts of violence in Jerusalem in 1920 and Jaffa in 1921. These had seemed inevitable in a mixed community, and quite normal in the vast British Empire. But the events of 1929 exceeded the level of containable violence, and the British government decided in 1930 to appoint a commission of inquiry, the Shaw Commission. After touring the country, its members pointed out the deterioration in the peasants’ living conditions and reported the growing frustration among a large number of Palestinians with British pro-Zionist policy.
1929 Riots: Forward and 972Mag
The 1936-39 revolt began as a protest against the British Mandate and Zionist Expansion, and escalated in violence as the protests were met with lethal force.
One of the problems was the leadership vacuum in rural Palestine, and the failure of most attempts to fill it. One of these attempts was that of Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a Syrian preacher who settled in Haifa in the mid 1920s. Many history books assert that Izz al-Din al-Qassam ignited the 1936 revolt by fusing Islamic dogmas with national ideology. But his recipe for revolution was welcomed only among a particular segment of the population. This was the poor of the cities and the unfortunate inhabitants of harat al-tanc, the shanty neighbourhoods that surrounded towns such as Haifa. In 1933, Izz al-Din al-Qassam initiated a guerrilla war in the north, recruiting fighters from around Haifa and leading them to the surrounding hills, attacking any Jews or British soldiers they encountered on the way. In 1935, al-Din al-Qassam was killed by the British army, but this was enough to make him a martyr and provide an example of a new kind of resistance.
While the expansion of Zionist settlement gave the nationalist notables a chance to reach a wider audience, there was still no genuine solidarity with the peasants, apart from rare displays of unity and firmness of purpose. Such a moment took place in March 1933 in Jaffa, where leaders of all the political factions joined in a united call for a concrete campaign of sustained pressure on the British government to change its policy. Five hundred representatives of the Palestinian elite, in a rare show of resolve, declared their intention of boycotting British and Zionist commodities, and for the first time ever rejected the legitimacy of the Mandate in the land of Palestine.
In May 1936, the Arab Higher Committee declared a general strike and organized nationwide demonstrations, the principal one held in Jerusalem, where about 2,000 demonstrators gathered inside the walls of the Old City. The demonstrations became more violent three weeks later, when British police opened fire on demonstrators in Jaffa.
At first the magnitude and nature of the protests impressed the British. They appointed a commission of inquiry, headed by Lord Peel, who visited Palestine in 1937 before making his recommendations. His commission recommended the annexation of most of Palestine to Transjordan, and urged the maintenance of a direct British presence in vital strategic positions such as Haifa and the newly built airport in Lydda, as well as in the Negev. A small portion of the land was designated as a future Jewish state. This plan was rejected, not of course by Prince Abdullah in Transjordan; but in a way it was endorsed by Ben-Gurion, who had the foresight to understand that you take what you are given when the balance of power is not yet in your favour. For Ben-Gurion, the proposal was a basis for negotiations, not a final map, hence his willingness to be content with such a small portion of Palestine.
1936-1939 Revolt: JVL, Britannica, MEE
The Jewish exodus from the Muslim world was also not the same
Criticism of the Human Rights Abuses of the Israeli State and Anti-zionism are not antisemitism. You are choosing to be willfully ignorant. Israel does NOT represent all Jewish people, nor does their actions. There have been prominent Jewish people extremely critical of Zionism since it’s inception, are you seriously saying they are antisemitic too?
Israel is the one that intentionally conflates the two in order to deflect from criticizm. When Israel commits war crimes, or human rights abuses, or land grabbing, they are the ones that claim they do so for all Jewish people. When Zionist actions are criticized, they call it antisemitic. The conflation of the two is genuinely antisemitic, as the actions of Israel in no way represent all Jewish people.
If you don’t want to be naive, I suggest you read the reports by human rights organizations. They are not antisemitic, unless you think advocates for a Secular Bi-National State with equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians is also antisemitic, which is insane.
Year before Oct 7 - Jewish Voice for Peace
2023 is ‘deadliest year’ for Palestinian children say human rights groups (Oct 6th)
Progressive Democrats will and do. Neoliberal ones do not as they only care about the donor class