Until 1995, when Israeli PM Rabin was assassinated by a right winger, they were moving towards a two state solution, to the point of the IDF forcibly removing their own Jewish settlements from the lands of the prospective Palestinian state.
After the assassination, Netanyahu became the next PM, and has served in the position for most of the time since, asides most of a decade in the 2000s where other Likud politicians held it. He reversed the policy of settler removal.
Try not to conflate the entire country with the crazy right winger leadership they have currently. The same leadership of strongmen that catastrophically failed to keep them safe back in October, which is the one single thing such a man says he is supposed to be good at.
All that said, I also support Palestinian entry as a UN member state, and am tired of the US unfairly favoring its treaty ally in this case.
It seems contradictory to me to say it has always been pursing genocide, when one of the elected politicians was moving in the other direction for years. A bit selective.
Perhaps we could look at the voter tallys in 1996, where Netanyahu won 1,501,023 to 1,471,566, and the events that were influencing the Israeli public at the time? It certainly doesn’t help when there’s 14 suicide bombings happening in Israel between 1993 and 1995 during the peace process. Being bombed generally does drive people towards militarism.
Regardless of the past, though, Israel is there now. With its nuclear arsenal, it will not be destroyed any time soon unless Iran somehow nukes it off the map through its missile defense. So, negotiation seems necessary.
The issue isn’t Netanyahu. Well he’s a compounding issue but the core problem is that everyone but the leftest of lefties stopped believing in the peace process after Rabin’s assassination. As the Haaretz said: Yigal Amir won. The right-wing approach to security, “antagonise Palestinians into submission”, never got challenged by anyone since Rabin’s death. Maybe it’ll now get challenged as October 7th happened on the right’s watch, so obviously they can’t provide security, but don’t expect the Israeli people to realise that in a fortnight, so far little is happening: The press is self-censoring because they know no Israeli wants to even look at what the IDF is doing in Gaza and the West Bank, protests are about Netanyahu’s corruption (which is pretty much the only thing distinguishing him and Gantz, not politics) as well as families of hostages complaining about the Kahanites being more interested in killing Arabs than getting their relatives back. It’s not (necessarily) the war they’re opposed to but the priorities.
when one of the elected politicians was moving in the other direction for years. A bit selective.
Yeah and what did it result in? Same thing as every other “negotiation” from the last 75 years, More Genocidal Nazis slowly taking over Palestinian land while the Palestinians have to wait for the “peaceful negotiations”.
The only difference between past israel and current israel is that current israel got so arrogant that they are forgetting to hide their Nazism. They are now flaunting what they have been doing for the past 75 years thinking themselves so much in the right that nobody will disagree with them.
Pretending that israel has ever had good-will to come to a peaceful conclusion is pure delusion. Israel is an Ethnostate deeply rooted in Apartheid. You cannot create an Ethnostate pecaefully just like the Nazis weren’t peacefully expanding their Lebensraum.
somehow, at some point in the conversation, the word “nuance” here has become double speak for Neo-liberal-style negotiations.
but yeah, big picture, it’s Nazi-O-Clock!
I’m not sure about this ethnostate claim, when over 20% of Israel’s citizens are of Arabic descent, and are not required to have Jewish heritage or faith. They can vote, own business and have the same legal protections as non-Arab citizens. These are not in Gaza or the West Bank, but living in Israel’s internationally recognized borders.
Unlike in pretty much all other countries in the World, Israel separates Nationality from Citizenship and there are more rights on the latter than on the former.
Further, uniquelly in the World Israel has different kinds of Citizenship such as Israeli Jew Citizienship and Israeli Arab Citizenship and the former has more rights than the latter.
As with every other piece of hasbara propaganda, those massive bollocks you’re parroting are a meaningless façade for external consumption that hides the reality of a State were Apartheid is so deeply entrenched that by law non-Jews have a second class kind of citizenship with less rights than Jews who have a different class of citizenship.
They’re both said to be Israelis (as there is but one nationality) and if one ignores all the rest they’re both as you say “Israel’s citizens”, they’re just de jure different kinds of Iraeli citiziens with different rights and, as I said in the beginning, most rights there are linked to Citizenship, not Nationality, so for example Israeli Arab Citizens can be denied the right to live in certain places whilst Israeli Jew Citizens cannot.
And to preempt the usual hasbara response to this disclosure: those Arabs don’t live there because it’s such a great situation, they still live there even though they are second class citizens because they’ve always lived there as they were born there on what was their family’s land before it was stollen from them.
This idea of a difference between nationality and citizenship is admittedly new to me. Can you provide a citation to a reputable source that explains it in more detail?
Israelis are not alone in using propaganda, so a neutral source, preferably. Or the law itself, I can run it through a translator.
Actually I was a bit wrong (I had been told this by others but only research the details now to provide you with references) so here are the corrections:
First I had it the other way around - it’s the nationality that has Jewish and non-Jewish, not citizenship. Specifically Israeli nationality is only for Jews and it’s for any Jew independently of were they are born source
Second, it’s not all Arabs that are discriminated by law when it it comes to citizenship, it’s only some who, although born in the territory of Israel are seldom given Israeli Citizenship when they ask. This applies not only to the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza but, more shockingly, Jerusalem source. This is why once in a while you get news of Arabs being evicted from their houses in Jerusalem: they were never actually given Israeli citizenship even though they were born in Israel and if they apply they are unlikelly to get it as per Israeli law they have no right of birth to it.
And then of course there are plenty of sources refering to Israeli Arabs being treated as second class citizens, such as this Bloomberg article
PS: I also remembered how some of the details I listed above, such as how Israeli Arabs can be refused license to live in certain places, came from a Documentary I saw on TV years ago. If I remember it correctly it’s done via a scheme which is a bit like “housing associations” but for for larger areas (towns?) were people have to apply to them to be allowed to go live there and in many places Israeli Arabs are simply never accepted so they can’t go live in those places.
That Haaretz article is saddening. I cannot in good faith blame Israel for not giving citizenship to people who do not want it and don’t apply for it, but reading some of the excuses they gave for denying applications is telling.
a) Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people in which the state of Israel was established.
b) The state of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, in which it actualizes its natural, religious, and historical right for self-determination.
c) The actualization of the right of national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.
…
The state views Jewish settlement as a national value and will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development.
Furthermore, two million Palestinians live within pre-1967 Israel borders with the ability to vote. Three
million Palestinians live under military occupation in the West Bank. Two million Palestinians survive in what was an open air prison and now is one big death camp. All Jews, including those in the West Bank, enjoy full rights.
Arab families are greatly over-represented among Israel’s poor: over half
of Arab families in Israel are classified as poor, compared to an average
poverty rate of one-fifth among all families in Israel. Arab towns and
villages are heavily over-represented in the lowest socio-economic
rankings, and the unrecognized Arab Bedouin villages in the Naqab are
the poorest communities in the state
Direct state policy measures to reduce poverty disproportionately target
Jewish citizens, with the result that poverty rates have fallen far more
sharply among Jewish citizens than among their Arab counterparts, and
inequalities have consequently persisted.
Admissions committees operate in around 700 agricultural and
community towns and filter out Arab applicants, on the basis of their
“social unsuitability”, from future residency in these towns. The operation
of admissions committees contributes to the institutionalization of racially-
segregated towns and villages throughout the state and perpetuates
unequal access to the land.
The Jewish National Fund (JNF)—a body with quasi-state authority that
operates solely for the interests of the Jewish people and controls 13%
of the land in the state—continues to wield decisive influence over land
policy in Israel, having been allocated six of a total of 13 members of the
newly-established Land Authority Council.
Arab towns and villages in Israel suffer from severe overcrowding, with Arab municipalities exercising jurisdiction over only 2.5% of the total area of the
state. Since 1948, the State of Israel has established approximately 600 Jewish
municipalities, whereas no new Arab village, town or city has ever been built.
Israel is currently intensifying its efforts to forcibly evacuate the
unrecognized villages in the Naqab (referred to as “illegal clusters”),
including by demolishing entire villages, as recently witnessed in the
repeated demolition of the village of Al-Araqib. In pursuing this policy,
the state has rejected the option of affording recognition to these villages,
many of which predate the establishment of Israel. Between 75,000 and
90,000 Arab Bedouin live in the unrecognized villages in the Naqab, whom
the state characterizes as “trespassers on state land”.
State funding to Arab schools in Israel falls far behind that provided to
Jewish schools. According to official state data published in 2004, the state
provides three times as much funding to Jewish students as to Arab pupils.
This underfunding is reflected in many areas, including relatively large
class sizes and poor infrastructure and facilities.
A series of Israeli laws institute a range of restrictions on freedom
of movement, freedom of speech, and access to the political system,
including ideological limitations on the platforms of political parties and
severe restrictions on travel by MKs to Arab states classified as “enemy
states”. Such laws are used predominantly to curb the political freedoms
of Palestinian citizens and their elected representatives and are steadily
shrinking the space for political action available to them
Even the roots of Israel are established in violent acts of what can only be described as terrorism. Of course one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. Israel is one of the main originators of the car bomb. But you can read more about the Irgung gangs and terrorism committed by Israel’s founders if you choose.
Buda’s wagon was, in essence, the prototype car bomb: the first use of an inconspicuous vehicle, anonymous in almost any urban setting, to transport large quantities of high explosive into precise range of a high-value target. It was not replicated, as far as I have been able to determine, until January 12, 1947 when the Stern Gang drove a truckload of explosives into a British police station in Haifa, Palestine, killing 4 and injuring 140. The Stern Gang (a pro-fascist splinter group led by Avraham Stern that broke away from the right-wing Zionist paramilitary Irgun) would soon use truck and car bombs to kill Palestinians as well: a creative atrocity immediately reciprocated by British deserters fighting on the side of Palestinian nationalists.
No, there are certainly innocents in Gaza. However, there are also innocents in Israel. You may have chosen your side, but I am not fighting in this war. Frankly, it’s consistently been too difficult to determine the truth.
edit: Actually, that’s not true. I find I do get involved in the information side of the conflict, except I have to consistently fight against both of the sides. It’s very troubling.
Last time I checked you were claiming israel is not an Apartheid state so you might want to work on that information thing a bit more before providing insightful comments
I really don’t think you are in any place to be telling anyone to check their info, when the modlogs show that you’ve had 6 posts removed for misinformation in the past 11 days, along with being banned for antisemitism. You share op-ed nonsense and pass it off as legitimate news, and have your shit removed for that too.
You really have no place to call anyone out for their claims.
If you can find me an unbiased assessment of it, from people that acknowledge Israel’s claims to exist by its 1967 borders and for people of Jewish descent to move to within those 1967 borders if they want, I happily will.
To whatever extent Israeli civilians are more moderate, they’ve never truly been able to affect change. Israel’s history only started with a terrorist campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Rabin’s efforts are truly exceptional in Israel’s history, and he was murdered for it. The return to genocide is simply a return to the norm.
Even if Israeli moderates were to win political power, it would only be temporary. Israeli terrorists saw no problem ethnically cleansing the land to invent their own state with only people they approved of, and if popular sentiment turns away, they no doubt would do it again to remove the new “undesirables”.
There decades since Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination and Israel has lurched only further to the right. One of the greatest obstacles to peace has been Israel’s continual land grabs and illegal settlement building. That has pretty much been cemented as nationalist policy. Ben Gvir is a psychopath and his rise is telling of how far Israel has embraced religious fanaticism.
No one, however, offends liberal and centrist Israelis quite like Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir, who entered parliament in 2021, leads a far-right party called Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power. His role model and ideological wellspring has long been Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn rabbi who moved to Israel in 1971 and, during a single term in the Knesset, tested the moral limits of the country. Israeli politicians strive to reconcile Israel’s identities as a Jewish state and a democracy. Kahane argued that “the idea of a democratic Jewish state is nonsense.” In his view, demographic trends would inevitably turn Israel’s non-Jews into a majority, and so the ideal solution was “the immediate transfer of the Arabs.” To Kahane, Arabs were “dogs” who “must sit quietly or get the hell out.” His rhetoric was so virulent that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle used to walk out of the Knesset when he spoke. His party, Kach (Thus), was finally barred from parliament in 1988. Jewish Power is an ideological offshoot of Kach; Ben-Gvir served as a Kach youth leader and has called Kahane a “saint.”
Ben-Gvir, who is forty-six, has been convicted on at least eight charges, including supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism, compiling a criminal record so long that, when he appeared before a judge, “we had to change the ink on the printer,” Dvir Kariv, a former official in the Shin Bet intelligence agency, told me. As recently as last October, Netanyahu refused to share a stage with him, or even to be seen with him in photographs. But a series of disappointing elections persuaded Netanyahu to change his mind.
I would still blame the entire country as long as thing like “aliyah” exist. The fact that any jewish person or a convert can immigrate to a stolen land is crazy to me.
Never is a strong word.
Until 1995, when Israeli PM Rabin was assassinated by a right winger, they were moving towards a two state solution, to the point of the IDF forcibly removing their own Jewish settlements from the lands of the prospective Palestinian state.
After the assassination, Netanyahu became the next PM, and has served in the position for most of the time since, asides most of a decade in the 2000s where other Likud politicians held it. He reversed the policy of settler removal.
Try not to conflate the entire country with the crazy right winger leadership they have currently. The same leadership of strongmen that catastrophically failed to keep them safe back in October, which is the one single thing such a man says he is supposed to be good at.
All that said, I also support Palestinian entry as a UN member state, and am tired of the US unfairly favoring its treaty ally in this case.
This is israel. It is what is has always been. A Nazi Apartheid state.
It seems contradictory to me to say it has always been pursing genocide, when one of the elected politicians was moving in the other direction for years. A bit selective.
Perhaps we could look at the voter tallys in 1996, where Netanyahu won 1,501,023 to 1,471,566, and the events that were influencing the Israeli public at the time? It certainly doesn’t help when there’s 14 suicide bombings happening in Israel between 1993 and 1995 during the peace process. Being bombed generally does drive people towards militarism.
Regardless of the past, though, Israel is there now. With its nuclear arsenal, it will not be destroyed any time soon unless Iran somehow nukes it off the map through its missile defense. So, negotiation seems necessary.
The issue isn’t Netanyahu. Well he’s a compounding issue but the core problem is that everyone but the leftest of lefties stopped believing in the peace process after Rabin’s assassination. As the Haaretz said: Yigal Amir won. The right-wing approach to security, “antagonise Palestinians into submission”, never got challenged by anyone since Rabin’s death. Maybe it’ll now get challenged as October 7th happened on the right’s watch, so obviously they can’t provide security, but don’t expect the Israeli people to realise that in a fortnight, so far little is happening: The press is self-censoring because they know no Israeli wants to even look at what the IDF is doing in Gaza and the West Bank, protests are about Netanyahu’s corruption (which is pretty much the only thing distinguishing him and Gantz, not politics) as well as families of hostages complaining about the Kahanites being more interested in killing Arabs than getting their relatives back. It’s not (necessarily) the war they’re opposed to but the priorities.
Yeah and what did it result in? Same thing as every other “negotiation” from the last 75 years, More Genocidal Nazis slowly taking over Palestinian land while the Palestinians have to wait for the “peaceful negotiations”.
The only difference between past israel and current israel is that current israel got so arrogant that they are forgetting to hide their Nazism. They are now flaunting what they have been doing for the past 75 years thinking themselves so much in the right that nobody will disagree with them.
Pretending that israel has ever had good-will to come to a peaceful conclusion is pure delusion. Israel is an Ethnostate deeply rooted in Apartheid. You cannot create an Ethnostate pecaefully just like the Nazis weren’t peacefully expanding their Lebensraum.
nuance won’t hurt you, I promise <3
Do we look at the Holocaust with nuance as well? Should the Jews have tried to negotiate with Adolf Hitler?
When someone decides to do Ethinc Cleansing to create an Ethnostate it’s Nazi-O-Clock. All nuance goes out the window.
somehow, at some point in the conversation, the word “nuance” here has become double speak for Neo-liberal-style negotiations. but yeah, big picture, it’s Nazi-O-Clock!
I’m not sure about this ethnostate claim, when over 20% of Israel’s citizens are of Arabic descent, and are not required to have Jewish heritage or faith. They can vote, own business and have the same legal protections as non-Arab citizens. These are not in Gaza or the West Bank, but living in Israel’s internationally recognized borders.
Unlike in pretty much all other countries in the World, Israel separates Nationality from Citizenship and there are more rights on the latter than on the former.
Further, uniquelly in the World Israel has different kinds of Citizenship such as Israeli Jew Citizienship and Israeli Arab Citizenship and the former has more rights than the latter.
As with every other piece of hasbara propaganda, those massive bollocks you’re parroting are a meaningless façade for external consumption that hides the reality of a State were Apartheid is so deeply entrenched that by law non-Jews have a second class kind of citizenship with less rights than Jews who have a different class of citizenship.
They’re both said to be Israelis (as there is but one nationality) and if one ignores all the rest they’re both as you say “Israel’s citizens”, they’re just de jure different kinds of Iraeli citiziens with different rights and, as I said in the beginning, most rights there are linked to Citizenship, not Nationality, so for example Israeli Arab Citizens can be denied the right to live in certain places whilst Israeli Jew Citizens cannot.
And to preempt the usual hasbara response to this disclosure: those Arabs don’t live there because it’s such a great situation, they still live there even though they are second class citizens because they’ve always lived there as they were born there on what was their family’s land before it was stollen from them.
This idea of a difference between nationality and citizenship is admittedly new to me. Can you provide a citation to a reputable source that explains it in more detail?
Israelis are not alone in using propaganda, so a neutral source, preferably. Or the law itself, I can run it through a translator.
Actually I was a bit wrong (I had been told this by others but only research the details now to provide you with references) so here are the corrections:
And then of course there are plenty of sources refering to Israeli Arabs being treated as second class citizens, such as this Bloomberg article
PS: I also remembered how some of the details I listed above, such as how Israeli Arabs can be refused license to live in certain places, came from a Documentary I saw on TV years ago. If I remember it correctly it’s done via a scheme which is a bit like “housing associations” but for for larger areas (towns?) were people have to apply to them to be allowed to go live there and in many places Israeli Arabs are simply never accepted so they can’t go live in those places.
Thank you.
That Haaretz article is saddening. I cannot in good faith blame Israel for not giving citizenship to people who do not want it and don’t apply for it, but reading some of the excuses they gave for denying applications is telling.
Was the documentary “Roadmap to Apartheid”?
Israel’s own law states that it is an ethnostate. One of it’s foundational laws reads:
Furthermore, two million Palestinians live within pre-1967 Israel borders with the ability to vote. Three million Palestinians live under military occupation in the West Bank. Two million Palestinians survive in what was an open air prison and now is one big death camp. All Jews, including those in the West Bank, enjoy full rights.
More details of the racial inequities:
That clause C is fairly damning, I suppose you’re right. While that law seems to be fairly new, the law is the law.
Even the roots of Israel are established in violent acts of what can only be described as terrorism. Of course one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. Israel is one of the main originators of the car bomb. But you can read more about the Irgung gangs and terrorism committed by Israel’s founders if you choose.
Buda’s wagon was, in essence, the prototype car bomb: the first use of an inconspicuous vehicle, anonymous in almost any urban setting, to transport large quantities of high explosive into precise range of a high-value target. It was not replicated, as far as I have been able to determine, until January 12, 1947 when the Stern Gang drove a truckload of explosives into a British police station in Haifa, Palestine, killing 4 and injuring 140. The Stern Gang (a pro-fascist splinter group led by Avraham Stern that broke away from the right-wing Zionist paramilitary Irgun) would soon use truck and car bombs to kill Palestinians as well: a creative atrocity immediately reciprocated by British deserters fighting on the side of Palestinian nationalists.
And there it is. From “israel wasn’t always trying to steal land” turns into “well israel not really an Apartheid state”.
Three comments further and I’m going to read about how there are no innocents in Gaza.
No, there are certainly innocents in Gaza. However, there are also innocents in Israel. You may have chosen your side, but I am not fighting in this war. Frankly, it’s consistently been too difficult to determine the truth.
edit: Actually, that’s not true. I find I do get involved in the information side of the conflict, except I have to consistently fight against both of the sides. It’s very troubling.
Last time I checked you were claiming israel is not an Apartheid state so you might want to work on that information thing a bit more before providing insightful comments
I really don’t think you are in any place to be telling anyone to check their info, when the modlogs show that you’ve had 6 posts removed for misinformation in the past 11 days, along with being banned for antisemitism. You share op-ed nonsense and pass it off as legitimate news, and have your shit removed for that too.
You really have no place to call anyone out for their claims.
If you can find me an unbiased assessment of it, from people that acknowledge Israel’s claims to exist by its 1967 borders and for people of Jewish descent to move to within those 1967 borders if they want, I happily will.
To whatever extent Israeli civilians are more moderate, they’ve never truly been able to affect change. Israel’s history only started with a terrorist campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Rabin’s efforts are truly exceptional in Israel’s history, and he was murdered for it. The return to genocide is simply a return to the norm.
Even if Israeli moderates were to win political power, it would only be temporary. Israeli terrorists saw no problem ethnically cleansing the land to invent their own state with only people they approved of, and if popular sentiment turns away, they no doubt would do it again to remove the new “undesirables”.
Thank you for reminding about the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
Not enough people realize the extent and level of religious fanaticism that exists in Israel.
There decades since Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination and Israel has lurched only further to the right. One of the greatest obstacles to peace has been Israel’s continual land grabs and illegal settlement building. That has pretty much been cemented as nationalist policy. Ben Gvir is a psychopath and his rise is telling of how far Israel has embraced religious fanaticism.
No one, however, offends liberal and centrist Israelis quite like Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir, who entered parliament in 2021, leads a far-right party called Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power. His role model and ideological wellspring has long been Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn rabbi who moved to Israel in 1971 and, during a single term in the Knesset, tested the moral limits of the country. Israeli politicians strive to reconcile Israel’s identities as a Jewish state and a democracy. Kahane argued that “the idea of a democratic Jewish state is nonsense.” In his view, demographic trends would inevitably turn Israel’s non-Jews into a majority, and so the ideal solution was “the immediate transfer of the Arabs.” To Kahane, Arabs were “dogs” who “must sit quietly or get the hell out.” His rhetoric was so virulent that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle used to walk out of the Knesset when he spoke. His party, Kach (Thus), was finally barred from parliament in 1988. Jewish Power is an ideological offshoot of Kach; Ben-Gvir served as a Kach youth leader and has called Kahane a “saint.”
Ben-Gvir, who is forty-six, has been convicted on at least eight charges, including supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism, compiling a criminal record so long that, when he appeared before a judge, “we had to change the ink on the printer,” Dvir Kariv, a former official in the Shin Bet intelligence agency, told me. As recently as last October, Netanyahu refused to share a stage with him, or even to be seen with him in photographs. But a series of disappointing elections persuaded Netanyahu to change his mind.
I would still blame the entire country as long as thing like “aliyah” exist. The fact that any jewish person or a convert can immigrate to a stolen land is crazy to me.