this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
635 points (96.8% liked)

World News

39067 readers
2521 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I guess not strictly news - but with all of the vitriol I have seen in discussions on the Israel situation, that have boiled down to arguments over wording, I feel that this take from the BBC is worthy of some discussion.

Mods, feel free to remove if this is not newsy enough.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What they mean as that they could also say Israel is a terrorist state. That’s what some people think. And some people, specially those who have friends or family who have been killed in Palestina, might say that Hamas are defending their people and are not terrorists.
But you and me, citizens without voice, can call them terrorists (that’s what they are) but doing so we are somehow chosing a band in a conflict.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm not sure I'd call Israel a terrorist state, but absolutely an apartheid state.

If you live in Gaza, you really don't have a lot to lose by attacking Israeli non-combatants, because you have no hope, and the Israeli gov't keeps going farther and farther to the right. Gaza looks a lot like the Warsaw ghettos prior to rounding all the Jews up and murdering them. The uprisings in the Warsaw ghetto were punished with the same kind of wildly disproportionate force as we're already seeing Israel use against Gaza.

Hamas and Palestinian militants were, and are, wrong to target and murder non-combatants. And, at the same time, Israel has been doing exactly the same fucking thing for 20-odd years now; from 2008 through 2020, more than 120,000 Palestinians--mostly non-combatants--were wounded or killed by the Israeli military. In that same time period, 6,000 Israelis were wounded or killed by Palestinian militants.

Israel can not claim to be a democracy, because they refuse to give Palestinians a voice in government at all.

As an aside, the parallels between how Israel has treated Palestinians, and how the US has treated Native Americans is uncomfortable.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

As an aside, the parallels between how Israel has treated Palestinians, and how the US has treated Native Americans is uncomfortable.

Which is even more ironic when you realise that that's exactly where a certain mustachioed German dictator got his ideas from.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

IIRC, Hitler originally wanted to ship all the Jews out. Except that no one else wanted them either. Extermination became the "logical" conclusion.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m not sure I’d call Israel a terrorist state, but absolutely an apartheid state. [...] Israel can not claim to be a democracy, because they refuse to give Palestinians a voice in government at all.

There are two million Arab citizens of Israel, the vast majority of whom are Muslim. They vote. There are Arab Muslims in the Knesset.

This is a somewhat different situation from that of blacks in apartheid South Africa, who were denied civil rights on the basis of their race and ancestry.

I'm not saying Israeli society treats Arab Israeli citizens fairly or that there isn't social discrimination. I haven't been there; and from all reports there certainly is. But I think you're exaggerating ... or else understating how bad "actual" (South African) apartheid was.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

"Arab citizens of Israel" =/= Palestinians.

Given that Israelis can, and do, burn out Palestinians in the occupied areas in order to seize their land, and Israeli authorities do nothing, and even help the arsonists, I don't think that I'm overstating that. Moreover, the Arab voices in the Knesset are a minuscule minority; I think it's something like a total of 5 seats, while Likud and their far-right allies have 63 seats.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

While I get what you mean, I don't think it should automatically mean (even a lot of people think it does) that you can either say Hamas is a terrorist group or Israel is a terrorist state.

In my own view both are terrorist, both commit atrocities and the result of that are innocent lives lost from both sides.

I despise centrism so saying that hurts a little bit on the inside, but this is one of the rare cases where fighting at all is meaningless and both sides that are fighting (and commiting atrocities) are in the fault.