In the past 24 hours, two reports out of Israel have pointed to a striking conclusion: that the failure to prevent Hamas’s murderous assault on southern Israel rests in significant part with the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

First, the Washington Post’s Noga Tarnopolsky and Shira Rubin wrote a lengthy dispatch on the many policy failures that allowed Hamas to break through. They find that, in addition to myriad unforgivable intelligence and military mistakes — especially shocking given Israel’s reputation in both fields — there were serious political problems. Distracted by both the fight to seize control over Israel’s judiciary and their effort to deepen Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Netanyahu and his cabinet allowed military readiness to degrade and left outposts on the Gaza border in the south unmanned.

“There was a need for more soldiers, so where did they take them from? From the Gaza border, where they thought it was calm … not surprising that Hamas and Islamic Jihad noticed the low staffing at the border,” Aharon Zeevi Farkash, the former head of the Israel Defense Forces’ military intelligence, said in comments reported by the Post.

Second, a columnist at Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper unearthed evidence that Netanyahu has intentionally propped up Hamas rule in Gaza — seeing Palestinian extremism as a bulwark against a two-state solution to the conflict.

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” the prime minister reportedly said at a 2019 meeting of his Likud party. “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

These exact comments have not yet been confirmed by other sources. But the Times of Israel’s Tal Schneider wrote on Sunday that Netanyahu’s reported words “are in line with the policy that he implemented,” which did little to challenge and in some ways bolstered Hamas’s control over the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Schneider notes, “the same messaging was repeated by right-wing commentators, who may have received briefings on the matter or talked to Likud higher-ups and understood the message.” Some Netanyahu confidants have said the same thing, as have outside experts.

Put together, these two pieces tell a larger story: that the strategic vision of Netanyahu’s far-right government is a failure.

The notion that Israel can deliver security for its citizens by dividing and conquering Palestinians, crushing them into submission as a kind of colonial overlord, is both immoral and counterproductive on its own terms. Recognizing this reality will be crucial to formulating not only a humane response to Hamas’s atrocity, but an effective one.

The far right’s theory of security failed

In 2017, Israeli far-right parliamentarian Bezalel Smotrich proposed what he termed a “decisive plan” to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Smotrich, who is now serving as finance minister in Netanyahu’s cabinet, argued (correctly) that the root of the conflict was competing claims to the same land from two distinct national groups. But, unlike his centrist peers, Smotrich claimed that these ambitions were incommensurable: that no territorial compromise could ever be reached between Israelis and Palestinians. In such a zero-sum conflict, one side has to win and the other has to lose.

The key to Israel winning such a total victory, he wrote, is simple: Break the Palestinians’ spirit.

“Terrorism derives from hope — a hope to weaken us,” Smotrich argued. “The statement that the Arab yearning for national expression in the Land of Israel cannot be ‘repressed’ is incorrect.”

Doing this, he continued, begins by annexing the West Bank and rapidly expanding Jewish settlements there. Once Israel has declared its intention to never let that land go, and created realities on the ground that make its withdrawal unimaginable, the Palestinians will reconcile themselves to the new reality — accept a second-class form of citizenship, leave voluntarily, or attempt violent resistance and be crushed.

Smotrich has used his time in Netanyahu’s cabinet to try to implement this plan — working both to de facto annex the West Bank and to rapidly expand Jewish settlement. The result has been the exact opposite of what Smotrich thought would happen: Atrocities by emboldened settler extremists ignited Palestinian anger. Atrocities committed by Palestinians led to settler retaliation, creating an unstable situation requiring a significant redeployment of Israel Defense Forces resources to the West Bank — whose raids themselves became a source of Palestinian grievance.

And that, per the Washington Post, is why those troops weren’t on Gaza’s border. Israel’s forces, who should have been defending against terrorists in Gaza, had been dragged to the West Bank as a consequence, at least in part, of the far right’s ideological project.

In fairness to Smotrich, he did admit in his 2017 proposal that his favored policies would likely meet with violent resistance: “In the first stage, it is likely that the Arab terror efforts will only increase.” This, he argued, would represent “a last desperate attempt to actualize their goals.”

Yet the current Hamas attack, and the longer history of Israel-Gaza, does not appear to track such a trajectory. Israel has besieged Gaza for about 16 years, and fought multiple wars with Hamas and other Palestinian militants in the strip. They were not under imminent risk of being stamped out by Israel prior to this attack, nor is there any evidence that Hamas leadership believed this was the final window to try to stop Israel from seizing control of the West Bank. Calling Palestinian terrorism a pure product of “hope” is a simple ideological construction at war with a more complex reality.

A notable thing about Smotrich’s 2017 document is that it contains exactly zero proposals for dealing with Gaza. In his mind, the conflict will be decided in the West Bank — specifically, by Israel’s successful assertion of full control. Gaza is basically an afterthought, discussed only as offhand evidence that the Palestinians can’t be trusted to govern themselves.

This omission was always an obvious problem, one of many in Smotrich’s cruel thinking. But now it points to something more: an indictment of not just Smotrich, but the government he serves in. Netanyahu’s failure

Israel’s prime minister is not as ideological as Smotrich. Netanyahu’s primary political concerns at present are maintaining power and staying out of jail. He has elevated extremists like Smotrich to the cabinet not purely out of ideological affinity, but because they’re the ones who would back his assault on the independence of the Israeli judiciary.

But at the same time, his approach to the Palestinians has long evidenced the same basic assumption as Smotrich’s “decisive plan”: that they can and must be crushed.

Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, with three distinct stints in office: 1996-1999, 2009-2021, and 2022-today. During this time, he has been consistently hostile to Palestinian national aspirations — either outright opposing a two-state solution to the conflict or at most paying insincere lip service to it.

It’s not for nothing that Smotrich wrote in his 2017 document that “in democratic terms, there is no daylight between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the plan before you.” He assessed, as the prime minister’s actions have borne out, that Netanyahu never had any intention of granting Palestinians true self-determination.

This is why Netanyahu reportedly saw Hamas rule in Gaza as something of an asset. So long as the Palestinians remain divided among themselves — Hamas in charge of Gaza and the moderate Fatah faction in power in the West Bank — then a peace agreement is likely impossible: You can’t come to a negotiated settlement without a unified negotiating partner. The terrorist threat Hamas poses, on this thinking, can be managed; the endless blockade and periodic military operations, euphemistically called “mowing the grass,” can keep the danger posed by Hamas within acceptable parameters.

One of the key differences between Smotrich and Netanyahu is that the former was less subtle. While Smotrich’s plan aimed for a “decisive” defeat of the Palestinians announced through formal West Bank annexation, Netanyahu basically aimed to keep slowly entrenching the status quo of Israeli control forever. He presided over a gradual pressure campaign, one where Israel incrementally expands its presence in the West Bank while Palestinians are prevented from mounting anything but token resistance.

Netanyahu’s approach grew out of events on the ground. When the peace process pushed by left-wing parties in power in the 1990s failed, giving rise to the terrorist violence of Second Intifada, many ordinary Jewish Israelis concluded that the Palestinians simply couldn’t be negotiated with and moved to the right. The center of political gravity shifted away from long-term solutions to the conflict and toward an approach of simply learning to manage it as best as possible.

This does not mean most Israeli Jews became ideological right-wingers; they are not, polling suggests, fully committed to the project of expanding settlements or West Bank annexation. Mostly, they wanted Netanyahu and the right to keep them safe in a way that the left seemingly couldn’t. The prime minister, in recognition of this reality, campaigned first and foremost on security — earning the moniker, perhaps self-claimed, of “Mr. Security.”

Hamas’s attack on Saturday, a mass slaughter of Israeli civilians without precedent in Israeli history, exposed a basic contradiction in this image in the most agonizing way. Simply put, there is no way now to argue that the right-wing ideological project has delivered the security most Israelis crave.

The more Israel deepens its control over the West Bank, spreading settlements across its lands, the more Palestinians resent them — and the more Israel has to devote its military resources to repressing Palestinians rather than protecting Israel inside its borders.

Nor is there any long-run hope that the Palestinians will simply give up. Hamas’s willingness to engage in brutal violence, sure to be met with an overwhelming response from Israel — one that has reportedly taken the lives of hundreds of people in Gaza so far — indicates that even 16 years of blockade can’t end the incentive for terrorism.

If the failure of the peace process exposed problems in the left’s vision for the conflict, the Hamas attack has exposed the fundamental emptiness of the right’s. The more you hurt ordinary Palestinians, the more you give succor to the extremist visions of monsters like Hamas. The more you draw Israel into the West Bank, the more you entangle Israelis in a system of domination over Palestinians — one that will ultimately deliver nothing but heartbreak for anyone involved.

To be clear: I am not saying Israelis brought these attacks on themselves, that it’s some kind of moral chickens coming home to roost. Nor am I saying that Netanyahu, in place of Hamas, bears moral responsibility for Hamas’s horrifying atrocities against civilians.

What I am saying is that Netanyahu’s policy — visiting harm on the Palestinians in the name of protecting Israelis — is a terrible one. It is both morally indefensible and strategically counterproductive. It is no concession to Hamas, nor legitimation of its violence, to recognize this reality.

After last weekend’s events, it’s exceedingly obvious that trying to crush the Palestinians through settlement and division is not helping anyone. It’s time for a change.

  • IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world
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    This is key:

    "This does not mean most Israeli Jews became ideological right-wingers; they are not, polling suggests, fully committed to the project of expanding settlements or West Bank annexation. Mostly, they wanted Netanyahu and the right to keep them safe in a way that the left seemingly couldn’t. The prime minister, in recognition of this reality, campaigned first and foremost on security — earning the moniker, perhaps self-claimed, of “Mr. Security.”

    Hamas’s attack on Saturday, a mass slaughter of Israeli civilians without precedent in Israeli history, exposed a basic contradiction in this image in the most agonizing way. Simply put, there is no way now to argue that the right-wing ideological project has delivered the security most Israelis crave."

    I hope there are enough moderate Israelis out there who can push for a different approach because oppression, theft of land, and brutality isn’t a way forward if the aim is to stop bloodshed from both sides.

    • AdmiralShat@programming.dev
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      There are plenty of moderate people in the US, but we waged a war for twenty fucking years after 9/11.

      All of human history up until this day points towards a great ramping of war efforts to slaughter everyone they can get their hands on

      • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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        The actual amount of Afghanis and Iraqis killed by coalition troops and mercenaries is pretty low. The vast, vast majority of casualties of the “War on Terror” came from disruption of services and the “Civil War” stage of the Iraq invasion which saw a hundred factions fighting each other as the US+allies mostly sat around in the Green Zone. Largely because death wasn’t the point, control and power was, and as long as the oil flowed the US’s goals were achieved.

        I’m not saying that death toll isn’t ultimately the US’s fault, but I am saying your point simply isn’t true, the horrors of the past operated on a scale modern humans very rarely understand at any real level, and mass death simply isn’t the goal that often.

        Like, the Japanese invasion of China in WW2 killed twenty million people alone, and most Americans are barely aware it was a front of the war.

        Even if you believe the absolute worst of the claims of the modern Uyghur genocide, also not ethnic cleansing, it’s an attempt to eradicate the culture and faith that makes them troublesome to control for the CCP. Death, yet again, is not the point, control is.

        Honestly this attack from Hamas is notable precisely because killing civilians seems largely to be the point, whatever justification they feel they have.

          • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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            Those million deaths are mostly the casualties from the civil war stage of the Iraq occupation, and were not the direct result of coalition violence.

            Most, as mentioned, were casualties from sectarian violence and loss of service. Insurgent on insurgent action. Not even really Iraqis vs Iraqis tbh, given the large number of foreign volunteer fighters.

            America’s fault for both destabilizing the region and not enforcing order in the mess they created, but not the result of coalition troops gunning people down in the streets.

        • Dkarma@lemmy.world
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          "The actual amount of Afghanis and Iraqis killed by coalition troops and mercenaries is pretty low. "

          Over a million people is not pretty low. Go smoke some more crack.

          • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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            Those million deaths are mostly the casualties from the civil war stage of the Iraq occupation, and were not the direct result of coalition violence.

            Most, as mentioned, were casualties from sectarian violence and loss of service. Insurgent on insurgent action. Not even really Iraqis vs Iraqis tbh, given the large number of foreign volunteer fighters.

            America’s fault for both destabilizing the region and not enforcing order in the mess they created, but not the result of coalition troops gunning people down in the streets.

      • fubo@lemmy.world
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        There are plenty of moderate people in the US, but we waged a war for twenty fucking years after 9/11.

        The Iraq war was plainly illegitimate, based on a tissue of lies. 9/11 was not a legitimate casus belli for invading Iraq, and the WMD thing was simply a hoax.

        I am not so convinced about the Afghan war. 9/11 was a mass murder perpetrated by Al-Qaeda on American soil, and the Taliban were hosting and working with Al-Qaeda. However, the “nation building” efforts were never going to work.

        • Krono@lemmy.today
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          After 9/11, the Taliban wanted to negotiate with the US in order to extradite Osama Bin Laden. Their demands were simple:

          1. Stop bombing us.
          2. Give us some evidence that Bin Laden is guilty.

          Bush said ‘we dont negotiate with terrists lol’ and ramped up the bombing of Afghanistan, leading to the brutal invasion. Later we executed Bin Laden without a trial.

          I’m not sure how you could consider any of that legitimate.

          Bush rejects Taliban offer to hand Bin Laden over - The Guardian

          • TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
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            This is a pretty well-debunked canard. 1) The Taliban knew OBL was guilty since AQ had basically admitted it and whatever else you can say about them, they aren’t stupid, and 2) their offer was to extradite him to a third neutral country --no candidate was ever named – that would ostensibly put him on trial free of US influence.

            The entire offer was absurd.

        • dx1@lemmy.world
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          I’ve seen this claim about “beheadings of babies” being circulated in the last day in regard to the Hamas/Israel situation. Biden “confirmed” it but then representatives walked back claims that he had even claimed to see proof. So again it’s one of these situations where thousands of lives are being sacrificed behind “proof” that the public cannot see. It may have happened, it may not have, but how on earth are we supposed to know without proof?

          The mentality people have that we should just take it on faith is absolutely baffling to me. We have stringent standards for proof in the criminal trial of a single person, but when it comes to waging wars against countries of millions of people, the standards drop down to zero. There is so much danger in just entrusting people in power to dictate to the public what happened and what didn’t and not have any way to verify it. The stakes are beyond reasoning so the standard for proof to justify any actions should be absolute.

        • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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          The Saudi Royal family was behind it, and we never attacked them because of the petrodollar.

    • dangblingus@lemmy.world
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      Respectfully, anyone pushing for an ethnostate is a nationalistic right wing person by definition.

      • steakmeout@aussie.zone
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        Respectfully, everyone is living in a world where the Overton Window has already moved to the right substantially. Roe v Wade being overturned, Trump holding sway over Republican voters despite being a clearly contentious demagogue, England and Brexit, England leaving a succession of ever-worsening Tories in power. Etc etc.

        I’m not playing whataboutism, I’m illustrating a point.

    • madcaesar@lemmy.world
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      Obama killed Bin Laden.

      Bush let the largest terrorist attack ever on US soil happen.

      Yet people were calling for Republicans to keep us safe…

      Conservatives all over the world seem to be dumb as bricks, including Israel.

    • Wrench@lemmy.world
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      Unfortunately, human nature is to go the other direction. This event will lead to more extreme view points. Those that professed compassion and understanding are likely to join the hate train if a loved one was brutally killed or maimed.

    • jarfil@lemmy.world
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      oppression, theft of land, and brutality isn’t a way forward if the aim is to stop bloodshed from both sides.

      Unfortunately, the aim is to:

      • from the one side, to have a State of Israel on land promised by the British to the Arabs
      • on the other, to have an Islamic State on land taken by the Zionists from the British
      • on another, to have the Armageddon begin and trigger the second coming of Christ
      • on still another, to have all the infidels exterminated and have the whole world convert to Islam

      Stopping bloodshed is not part of either side, some of the sides are actually asking for more bloodshed 🤦

      • SwampYankee@mander.xyz
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        from the one side, to have a State of Israel on land promised by the British to the Arabs

        on the other, to have an Islamic State on land taken by the Zionists from the British

        This is a little confused… The British promised a state to both. The land the Jews lived on was purchased from absentee landlords who didn’t care who was living on it, first from the Ottoman Empire and later from Britain. The partition plan was proposed to make good on Britain’s dual promises - it won a vote in the UN despite the entire Arab League voting against it. Jews celebrated, Arabs protested, there was a civil war that turned into the Israeli war for independence, and the British decided they weren’t going to enforce the partition plan and fucked off to drink tea and reminisce about the good old days of starving Indians to death and getting the Chinese addicted to opium.

      • IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world
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        It does seem hopeless but I grew up during “the troubles” in Ireland, there was a long time where it seemed peace was an impossibility.

        • dx1@lemmy.world
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          Still ended up in the situation where a big chunk of Ireland wanted to stay with the British and became “Northern Ireland”. That still seems so strange to me, although I get how people would be derascinated like that.

          But, if nothing else, proves that independence for an oppressed people is a gigantic step in the right direction. Israel’s always reasoning that it would present an “existential threat” and all this, but somehow I think keeping a population in an open air prison isn’t making them more friendly.

    • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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      I hope there are enough moderate Israelis out there who can push for a different approach because oppression, theft of land, and brutality isn’t a way forward if the aim is to stop bloodshed from both sides.

      Unfortunately anyone with a moderate voice is usually shouted down and ostracised with references to Israelis who have been killed. This has been a running theme with Israel (not the people, the country), in line with calling everyone who criticises them anti-semites, but it seems to have particularly stepped up recently.

      I saw a news reporter asking a hard question to someone about Israel’s attacks, an Israeli politician next to him jumped in and talked the reporter down (without answering the question). You could see the anger building in him, if he wasn’t in front of a dozen cameras he would have been full blown raging. It’s incredibly difficult to talk reason when people act like that, and without anyone saying it reason can easily die.

    • PatFusty@lemm.ee
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      How would that realistically look like without Isreal waging war with almost the entire Middle East?

      The ‘middle ground’ for Hamas is “kill all the jews in their land and destroy the Israeli state”.

      Edit: how about instead of merely downvoting you guys respond with a thought of a potential solution that doesnt end with Israel getting completely butt fucked. This whole invasion was just an exercise for people brainstorm on how to shit on Israel regardless of the outcome.

        • PatFusty@lemm.ee
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          Hamas wants all of Israeli territory. The PLO is fighting to regain the property it had prior to 1917. Do you really think that Israel not pushing back is a “good enough” solution? What borders do you think the Palestenians will be content with when like 70% of their land had been effectively taken.

          • fubo@lemmy.world
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            The PLO is fighting to regain the property it had prior to 1917.

            The PLO didn’t have any land in 1917, as it didn’t exist until 1963.

            • PatFusty@lemm.ee
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              Sorry I meant the peoples of Palestine not the organization made as a retaliation to anti palestanian nationalism.

          • NoIWontPickaName@kbin.social
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            It’s a first step. Can you really be mad at someone whose land was given away by someone else and then the people it was given to keep stealing more.

            Straight up, i don’t see why Israel is a country still.

            • PatFusty@lemm.ee
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              I understand that Israel was kind of just given the land but thats ancient history now. Hamas has said anyone and everyone in Israel is an enemy because of some stupid ancestral ties… Would you prefer all the zionist jews to pack up and leave? There is no middle ground. At this point its either all the jews in Israel are killed or palestine/ lebanon /jordan/ etc accept that Israel needs to be left alone.

              I am on the complete opposite side of you. I believe Hamas is a terrorist and anyone that thinks that their actions are justified are getting brainwashed.

              • NoIWontPickaName@kbin.social
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                Oh no, what happened was 100% a terrorist attack and not justified.

                Short term, The middle ground is to retreat back to the land that was stolen and given to you, all land that has changed hands since then is put under international control as a buffer state DMZ.

                Long term, improve living conditions in Gaza and the West Bank while using the DMZ to allow people to safely mix and learn more about each other while forming new positive relationship.

                I grant you that it is a hard solution, and it will probably only happen after someone detonates a nuke and the international community stands together and does it by force.

                It’s a benevolent dictatorship situation and the only way to stop the bloodshed is with so much of a third party in between that extremists on both sides are afraid to do anything so as not to bring the hamner of god down upon them.

      • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺@feddit.de
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        You claim Israel to wage war against almost thr entire middle east. That is just ludicrious. Where are the Syrian, Jordanian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Egyptian, Saudi, Quatari, Kuwaiti, Omari, Jemeni, Lybian, Algerian, Tunisian, Moroccan, Sudanese and Iranian forces?

        The best that can be claimed is Israel being at war with Hamas now and having had skirmishes with Hezbollah and Iran, albeit these were entirely Israeli attacks in Iran.

      • fkn@lemmy.world
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        The reality of the current situation is that Palestine is probably going to cease to exist… And you are asking about a solution where Israel doesn’t cease to exist?

        I’m confused.

      • hassanmckusick@lemmy.discothe.quest
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        The ‘middle ground’ for Hamas is “kill all the jews in their land and destroy the Israeli state”.

        In the original charter Hamas doesn’t even mention the Jewish people, they just say they want the Palestinian land back. And in the updated charter Hamas agrees to the 1967 borders and a 2 state system.

        It’s the PIJ who hasn’t accepted a 2 state system.

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          I understand that Hamas tried to fool the world with the charter revision but lets look back at the classics. Classics such as

          “The Jews are the most despicable and contemptible nation to crawl upon the face of the Earth, because they have displayed hostility to Allah. Allah will kill the Jews in the hell of the world to come, just like they killed the believers in the hell of this world.” - Atallah Abu Al-Subh, 2011

          Or

          “The movement participates in politics and diplomacy and all types of work, but it insists on the choice of jihad and resistance. This choice is Hamas’s greater and first strategy… This is Hamas. Hamas is not changing its skin.” - Khaled Mashaal, 2017

          Or what about this great one

          “The Jews are the cancer spreading all over the world…the Jews are a virus like AIDS hitting humankind…Jews are responsible for all wars and conflicts” - Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris, 2005

          How about this

          “There are Jews everywhere. We must attack every Jew on planet Earth! We must slaughter and kill them, with Allah’s help. We will lacerate and tear them to pieces.” - Fathi Hammad, 2019

          Theres just so many to pick from

          “the Quran tells us to remove the jews in their entirety… Removing the Jews from the land they occupied in 1948 is an immutable principle because it appears in the Book of Allah.” - Mahmoud Zatar, 2017

          Do you honestly think the real goal is to move back to the green line or is it to just overthrow all of Israel and basically mass murder of Jews?

          • hassanmckusick@lemmy.discothe.quest
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            I appreciate the sources

            1st quote talks about the nation and not the Jewish peoples. “God will punish you in the afterlife” is not an actionable threat.

            2nd quote is a response to an assassination an Israeli spy was eventually tried and allegedly confessed. If you’re not racist “jihad” just means “fighting”. Again nothing about “Kill all jews”

            3rd quote How is this dude connected to Hamas? I can’t even find evidence of him being alive after 2006. This quote is gross and I won’t defend it but I ask that people keep in mind the context, Gaza was being invaded by Israel, not the other way around.

            4th quote is from an unreliable far right news organization with a history of lying to support Israel and make Muslims look bad. Here is a more reliable source where Hamas condemns Hammad’s words https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/2019-07-16/ty-article/hamas-rebuffs-leaders-call-for-worldwide-attacks-on-jews/0000017f-db37-db22-a17f-ffb70cac0000

            5th quote is not actually featured verbatim in the article. You paraphrased everything before the “…”. But again it’s just saying Hamas wants the land back and came a month before the new charter

  • Rapidcreek@reddthat.com
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    Golda Meir lost her position due to intel failures regarding Yom Kippur war. this was a shocking failure of intelligence and basic border control. Meir lost her position only after the guns stopped firing.

    A similar thing happened to Menachem Begin, who was forced into retirement after the failure of the Lebanon invasion in 1982 and the international opprobrium heaped Israel’s way after it essentially winked at a massacre of Palestinian civilians by Lebanese Christian militiamen later that year. But again, Begin was only forced out after Israel had pulled back to defensive positions in Southern Lebanon and its forces were no longer engaged in heavy combat.

    Bibi is so busy trying to undo Israeli liberty and stay out of jail he did botch this and fate will not treat him kindly.

    • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.world
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      A similar thing happened to Menachem Begin, who was forced into retirement after the failure of the Lebanon invasion in 1982 and the international opprobrium heaped Israel’s way after it essentially winked at a massacre of Palestinian civilians by Lebanese Christian militiamen later that year.

      Learned a new word today…

      op·pro·bri·um /əˈprōbrēəm/ noun harsh criticism or censure. “his films and the critical opprobrium they have generated”

      the public disgrace arising from someone’s shameful conduct. “the opprobrium of being closely associated with gangsters”

    • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺@feddit.de
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      Israel not so much winked at the massacre but directly supported the infrastructure for it despite knowing it was to happen. Israel wanted the massacre that killed more people in a way equally gruesome to the current Hamas terror. But of course that gave no tangible repercussions, just stern words.

      I highly recommend the move “Waltz with Bashir” where the movie maker is working through his own Trauma and involvement in Israels support of the massacre as young soldier.

  • lath@lemmy.world
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    The Israelian people will eventually need to put their foot down and redress the current situation else they’ll lose their nazist victim card and instead become the nazists of this century. And few countries will dare to look kindly at them then.

    • Proteus@lemmy.world
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      Thank you for saying this. Calling for evacuation, then blocking the exits, is cruel and dishonest. Depriving civilians of basic utilities is certainly inhumane. The calls to kill ‘human animals’ rings of some Nazi messaging. The right-wing government is losing credibility and those whose support it is as well. Please, folks, let’s remember that it’s oppression and bigotry that is the real enemy here. #PeaceNow #religionandbigotry

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      If they keep up the blockade of water, food and fuel to Gaza, the pictures of emaciated people - little more than skin and bones - dying of thirst and starvation, that will make everybody be shocked at the inhumanity of the perpetrators for the rest of the century, will have come from Gaza with the Israeli as the perpetrators.

      Considering that the average age in Gaza is 19, unlike in the pictures that documented the disgusting acts of the Nazis which were mostly pictures of grown men, these ones will mainly have children.

      • Syndic@feddit.de
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        Exactly. Leningrad 2.0 certainly wouldn’t look good for Israel.

    • Squizzy@lemmy.world
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      I hope they do turn around but my view of them is exactly this right now. They are the oppressors, they prop up an apartheid state and the world continues to allow it.

    • jcit878@lemmy.world
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      and who did the palestinians elect? (when they last had elections mind you)

        • jcit878@lemmy.world
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          well you could have googled that, im sure you did but didnt like the result.

          2006, Hamas. Median age currently 19.6 years (absolute tragedy).

          Why is Hamas not letting free elections take place? Oh thats right, you guys LOVE authoritarian violent regimes

          • NewDark@lemmings.world
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            It’s a literal concentration camp and you’re worried about the elections in it? Ask the Israeli government why they funded them in the first place if you’re concerned why they exist.

            • jcit878@lemmy.world
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              so a terrorist dictatorship which the people don’t even have a choice to vote out, is cool in your books. got it.

              yeah, I’m sure peace is on the cards with “leadership” like that

              • NewDark@lemmings.world
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                And the terrorist democracy is ensuring peace was never an option. The slow ethnic clensing that’s about to be a full scale genocide should be more than proof of that, but go ahead. Critique the governmental structure of a prison camp where half the population is children that know nothing but violence and dehumanization from their jailors.

                I hope you never have to experience half of their plight. Have some empathy.

                • jcit878@lemmy.world
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                  you know there’s a difference between empathy for the poor bastards forced to live in Palestine and supporting a bunch of jihaddis right? I have no idea how you can’t see that

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    /r/worldnews nuking any balanced comments on these threads. That site is so fucked.

    • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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      r/worldnews has always been a cesspit. r/animetitties is where you should be going.

      The story goes, r/worldnews had almost no moderation, and users complaining about the quality of posts there were saying it was so bad they could get away with posting anime titties. They did, iirc it went unnoticed for a little bit. Maybe the admin stepped in or something and eventually r/worldnews became what we know it as today, but someone also set up r/animetitties and it became a place for much less biased news moderation.

      Except on April Fool’s. I think you can guess what r/animetitties users do on April Fool’s.

  • cuenca@lemm.ee
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    People, it’s hard to believe but I’m also an expert on this topic. And I have an opinion - from the newspapers.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Distracted by both the fight to seize control over Israel’s judiciary and their effort to deepen Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Netanyahu and his cabinet allowed military readiness to degrade and left outposts on the Gaza border in the south unmanned.

    Second, a columnist at Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper unearthed evidence that Netanyahu has intentionally propped up Hamas rule in Gaza — seeing Palestinian extremism as a bulwark against a two-state solution to the conflict.

    But the Times of Israel’s Tal Schneider wrote on Sunday that Netanyahu’s reported words “are in line with the policy that he implemented,” which did little to challenge and in some ways bolstered Hamas’s control over the Gaza Strip.

    In fairness to Smotrich, he did admit in his 2017 proposal that his favored policies would likely meet with violent resistance: “In the first stage, it is likely that the Arab terror efforts will only increase.” This, he argued, would represent “a last desperate attempt to actualize their goals.”

    When the peace process pushed by left-wing parties in power in the 1990s failed, giving rise to the terrorist violence of Second Intifada, many ordinary Jewish Israelis concluded that the Palestinians simply couldn’t be negotiated with and moved to the right.

    Hamas’s willingness to engage in brutal violence, sure to be met with an overwhelming response from Israel — one that has reportedly taken the lives of hundreds of people in Gaza so far — indicates that even 16 years of blockade can’t end the incentive for terrorism.


    The original article contains 1,857 words, the summary contains 251 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • JasSmith@kbin.social
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    Of course when thousands of psychopath Palestinian terrorists murder countless innocent people, the real question is, “how can we blame Israel?” Vox really is the worst. Their front page is a litany of justifications for cutting heads off of babies. “Why did Hamas invade Israel?” “This Gaza war didn’t come out of nowhere.” “What a complete siege of Gaza will mean for Palestinians.” Pure unbridled propaganda.

    • barsoap@lemm.ee
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      Vox really is the worst

      Don’t shoot the re-reporter, “Bibi bred Hamas” is Haaretz and Times of Israel stuff. So instead of the thinly veiled antisemitism accusation towards Vox you want to go to the root of things, you want to call Israeli journalists self-hating Jews. Gosh you folks can’t even get your own narrative straight.