Serious The Politics Thread

[SittinGamer]

Just chiming in to say that this hasn't been glorification of violence or whatever, but merely the fact that violence will follow when peaceful protest has been shown to not work.

I sure am glad we simply had a sit down talk with the guy who murdered 6 million Jews and numerous other racial/ethic/sexual/gender minorities and made him simply see the error of his ways and stop his senseless string of violence and domination. Oh wait, that isn't how the genocide ended, is it?

 

[adjectivenoun]

Just chiming in to say that this hasn't been glorification of violence or whatever, but merely the fact that violence will follow when peaceful protest has been shown to not work.

I sure am glad we simply had a sit down talk with the guy who murdered 6 million Jews and numerous other racial/ethic/sexual/gender minorities and made him simply see the error of his ways and stop his senseless string of violence and domination. Oh wait, that isn't how the genocide ended, is it?

I'll expand on this: If you're pushing for change in your own country, rather than going to war with another country, peaceful and violent forms of action often work in tandem. MLK's peaceful solutions were appealing to power in large part because the alternative was dealing with his substantially more violent allies. It's easy for power to ignore or suppress peaceful protest when there's nothing backing it up.

 

[gvmgvm40]

I will start with the assessment you make in the middle that I support a 2 state solution. This is incorrect, and I agree with your opinion that it's frankly impossible under the current condition, as both sides have great hatred and fear towards the other. I may disagree with which side has a larger population that believes that the other side should be genocided, but I'm not sure if this is something I'd want to get into right now as it's very difficult to talk about without judgement.

I'd argue that the main thing that matters is not hypotheticals about "which side has a larger population that believes that the other side should be genocided", but it is which government has advanced weaponry to murder civillians by tens and hundreds of thousands, which government has tacit approval from the international community to do so, and which country is currently doing so. If you look at actually what happened and what's happening now, then clearly one side has been utilizing violence and murdering civillians at an exponentially greater rate. This doesn't mean murdering civillians is okay if the weaker side does it, but if you're against violence, then at least look at it concretely instead of abstracting.

That being said, my hot take is that I agree that in the long run, once Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza over, a bi-national one-state solution (like in Bosnia), where all current inhabitants of historical Palestine are subject to the same laws and have equal rights, has better odds of happening compared to a two-state solution. The West Bank is too fractured by now to be a viable state, and the settlements are too populous to make disengagement viable at this point (not to mention that many of the settlers have been there for 3 generations or more). Israel aimed at creating "facts on the ground" to make a Palestinian state unviable--and they have succeded. People might be in denial for now, but the ship for a two-state solution has already sailed. What remains is asking for legal equality, instead of the current status quo where one population enjoys civil rights, while the other is under brutal military rule, subject to arbitrary arrests and "administrative detention", widespread torture in prisons, wanton destruction and seizure of property and fields, no accountability in murders by settlers and military personnel, checkpoints and road closures to limit travel between cities, preferential access to vital water sources, etc etc. Israel de facto controls the entire territory between the river and the sea (and realistically, I don't think that's going to change in any possible alternate future), but it applies different sets of laws to different groups of people. I believe we have a term for this.

 

[Divine Retribution]

I'll expand on this: If you're pushing for change in your own country, rather than going to war with another country, peaceful and violent forms of action often work in tandem. MLK's peaceful solutions were appealing to power in large part because the alternative was dealing with his substantially more violent allies. It's easy for power to ignore or suppress peaceful protest when there's nothing backing it up.

MLK was a staunch advocate for reparations and democratic socialism among many other things that don't seem very appealing to power in large. People like to overlook the fact that large portions of American society hated MLK when he was actually alive; only about 41% of Americans polled had a favorable opinion of him around the time he died. Neoliberal necromantic magic has brought him back from the dead and cleansed him of basically every opinion that he had besides the one speech he ever gave (liberals quote a single thing MLK ever said outside of the I Have a Dream speech challenge: impossible) but I guarantee you if he was still alive he'd be considered a radical communist agitator or something both by the GOP and most liberals.

That said, I do agree with your overall point aside from using MLK as an example. The Black Panthers (among many others) were just as instrumental in the advancement of civil rights because they gave the movement teeth.

 

[adjectivenoun]

MLK was a staunch advocate for reparations and democratic socialism among many other things that don't seem very appealing to power in large. People like to overlook the fact that large portions of American society hated MLK when he was actually alive; only about 41% of Americans polled had a favorable opinion of him around the time he died. Neoliberal necromantic magic has brought him back from the dead and cleansed him of basically every opinion that he had besides the one speech he ever gave (liberals quote a single thing MLK ever said outside of the I Have a Dream speech challenge: impossible) but I guarantee you if he was still alive he'd be considered a radical communist agitator or something both by the GOP and most liberals.

That said, I do agree with your overall point aside from using MLK as an example. The Black Panthers (among many others) were just as instrumental in the advancement of civil rights because they gave the movement teeth.

Multiple people are getting hung up on the world "appealing," which indicates to me that I ought to clarify: I don't think that MLK was a terribly beloved figure when he was alive, nor do I think that he would be so if he was still alive today. When I describe his movement as "appealing" to power as a consequence of the more violent strains of the movement, what I mean is that it was more tempting for power to negotiate with him when the alternative was dealing with the Black Panthers (and others). Power is never going to find someone demanding that it give up ground to be personally appealing, but it can find such people pragmatically appealing in the right circumstances.

 

[Cancel cult]

how tf can you be innocent of being a part of the genocide of the native americans while being in the fucking american military in this time period

propaganda. how are the soldiers supposed to object to genocides they don't know exist.

 

[adjectivenoun]

propaganda. how are the soldiers supposed to object to genocides they don't know exist.

Not every soldier in the US military may have been actively fighting Native Americans at the time, but I'm not sure how any of them couldn't have known about it at all. Even the propaganda at the time essentially boiled down to justifications for why it was acceptable for settlers to eject them from their land and claim it as their own.

 

[Cancel cult]

Not every soldier in the US military may have been actively fighting Native Americans at the time, but I'm not sure how any of them couldn't have known about it at all. Even the propaganda at the time essentially boiled down to justifications for why it was acceptable for settlers to eject them from their land and claim it as their own.

I'd say that's enough. The soldiers weren't signing up to commit genocide, they were signing up to "defend their land from the savages that attacked us first." I'd be willing to bet that a lot of soldiers didn't know what they were signing up for until it was too late.

 

[ant4456]

propaganda. how are the soldiers supposed to object to genocides they don't know exist.

Ah sorry mate, before we go into conflict I just wanna all of your soldiers here "Hey, do you believe in the genocide of us, a concept that wasn't even fully established until the fucking 1940s because genocide was just the thing colonialists did back then?"

Oh hey soldiers paid to kill my people just gotta make sure and check that every single one of you has an informed view on the conflict before I am allowed to defend my territory, family and life, or else someone in 2024 is going to say I'm just as bad as you

(Funnily, if you did actually explain what a genocide was they'd probably think it was based because they literally did want to do that anyways so. I don't think you get how actively racist American society was.)

 

[Cancel cult]

Ah sorry mate, before we go into conflict I just wanna all of your soldiers here "Hey, do you believe in the genocide of us, a concept that wasn't even fully established until the fucking 1940s because genocide was just the thing colonialists did back then?"

Oh hey soldiers paid to kill my people just gotta make sure and check that every single one of you has an informed view on the conflict before I am allowed to defend my territory, family and life, or else someone in 2024 is going to say I'm just as bad as you

(Funnily, if you did actually explain what a genocide was they'd probably think it was based because they literally did want to do that anyways so. I don't think you get how actively racist American society was.)

First of all, at no point did I take issue with fighting in self defense. I took issue with the retaliation.

Second of all, when did I say that that made the Native Americans just as bad as the Americans. And to clarify what I mean by that, when I say Native Americans in this instance, I mean the Native Americans that chose to take revenge, and likewise for the Americans. I've noticed you've said "we did this" a lot, when I didn't commit genocide, and neither did you (I hope).

 

[Divine Retribution]

The problem with conversations like this is the way they're framed inherently minimalizes the damage done by oppressive imperialist forces. In a vacuum I think most people will agree killing innocent non-combatant civilians is morally wrong regardless of the circumstances; certainly nobody participating in this conversation has said otherwise. The problem lies with the fact that we killed more innocent non-combatant indigenous people by several orders of magnitude than the other way around. Giving equal attention or condemnation to "both sides" obfuscates that fact.

To give an extreme example, I think most people would agree, in a vacuum, that liberated Polish citizens beating accused Nazi collaborators to death in the streets without a trial is probably not a great thing, but it pales so far in comparison to the crimes committed by the Nazis that giving it anything more than a passing mention when discussing WWII and the holocaust would (or at least should) come across as, at the very least, tactless and tone-deaf.

That's what we do when we discuss things like indigenous violence against American settlers, or Palestinian violence against Israelis. Should it be condemned? Yeah, sure, but why are we discussing it when those groups are (or were) subject to far greater violence that we don't seem to want to talk about, or even acknowledge?

I'd say that's enough. The soldiers weren't signing up to commit genocide, they were signing up to "defend their land from the savages that attacked us first." I'd be willing to bet that a lot of soldiers didn't know what they were signing up for until it was too late.

Being an armed, uniformed member of the military on land you stole from a people you genocided is inherently a violent act, regardless of how you personally percieve the conflict. The very way you framed it is nauseatingly American-centric, given that you seem to spare little sympathy for the indigenous people who fought believing (correctly, I'd say) that they were defending their land from the white invaders who sought to wipe them out. Why does an American soldier having a certain perspective when enlisting to fight indigenous people clear their conscience, but not the other way around? It doesn't cease to be self-defense just because the guy attacking you thinks he has a good reason for it.

I've noticed you've said "we did this" a lot, when I didn't commit genocide, and neither did you (I hope).

Don't be juvenile. You know what they meant, and if you earnestly didn't then I'm sorry but you're ill-equipped to even participate in this discussion. Assuming you're a non-indigenous U.S. citizen, you benefit from the genocides suffered by indigenous people.

 

[Adeleine]

Adding onto DR's points of "Indigenous people also have narratives impacting their choices to commit or not commit violence, just like settlers" and "Indigenous violence is far less impactful than settler violence", I'll tack something else. Even when some minority of indigenous individuals have predominantly bad and wrong narratives for committing violence in settler wars, those narratives are formed under enormous external psychological strain. It's a lot easier to talk about morals and ethics when people aren't actively trying to exterminate you, when you're typing on a computer about hypothetical situations. Really think about how you would react if somebody did something horrible to somebody you care about, and then add on even more pressure from broad efforts to destroy your country and culture. Even when people do horrible things, when they're under tremendous pressure from horrible treatment that isn't their fault in any way, we can afford them compassion and understanding.

 

[Eroil]

I'd argue that the main thing that matters is not hypotheticals about "which side has a larger population that believes that the other side should be genocided", but it is which government has advanced weaponry to murder civillians by tens and hundreds of thousands, which government has tacit approval from the international community to do so, and which country is currently doing so. If you look at actually what happened and what's happening now, then clearly one side has been utilizing violence and murdering civillians at an exponentially greater rate. This doesn't mean murdering civillians is okay if the weaker side does it, but if you're against violence, then at least look at it concretely instead of abstracting.

That being said, my hot take is that I agree that in the long run, once Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza over, a bi-national one-state solution (like in Bosnia), where all current inhabitants of historical Palestine are subject to the same laws and have equal rights, has better odds of happening compared to a two-state solution. The West Bank is too fractured by now to be a viable state, and the settlements are too populous to make disengagement viable at this point (not to mention that many of the settlers have been there for 3 generations or more). Israel aimed at creating "facts on the ground" to make a Palestinian state unviable--and they have succeded. People might be in denial for now, but the ship for a two-state solution has already sailed. What remains is asking for legal equality, instead of the current status quo where one population enjoys civil rights, while the other is under brutal military rule, subject to arbitrary arrests and "administrative detention", widespread torture in prisons, wanton destruction and seizure of property and fields, no accountability in murders by settlers and military personnel, checkpoints and road closures to limit travel between cities, preferential access to vital water sources, etc etc. Israel de facto controls the entire territory between the river and the sea (and realistically, I don't think that's going to change in any possible alternate future), but it applies different sets of laws to different groups of people. I believe we have a term for this.

I think you make some fair points, some I do disagree with or see things differently on, but can respect generally. Some points to seem to be misguided to me, I'll try to explain all that I see as such. Anything I don't mention I likely agree on.

I wasn't trying to abstract with the point you've mentioned above, and it was more of a sidenote. Regardless I can see how it wasn't completely relevant to the discussion, but I felt the need to mention it after it was seemed to me that they suggested a different reality from what I personally know. Of course murder and kidnapping of innocents is not to be accepted when done by either side. I do not support the Israeli goverment's actions, and most Israelies believe similarly from my knowledge.

Regarding the 2nd part, some things I want to comment on. Again I do agree that a 2 state solution is not really a possibility, or at least in the coming 4-5 decades or so, unless serious changes come about worldwide or anything of that sort.
While a complete disengagement of the settlements in the west bank is very unlikely, disengagment of some kind of some parts of the west bank is not impossible at all, for newer settlements created by more extrimist Israeli coalitions later on. There is precedent for such actions being made.
While I don't think that would mean a two state solution to be that much more possible after such possible disengagments (there are plenty of other issues) it could allow Palestians to have more areas more isolated from the Jewish population.
Equality is of course a very imporant issue to discuss regarding this topic. That said, I think it is important to note an important distinction between Palestians that live inside the territory of Israel and are Israeli citizens, and ones that live outside of it in Gaza or the west bank. There's quite the big difference, while racism and discrimination does still affect Israeli Palestinians, they still have full rights including the right to vote and have Palestinian representitives in the Israeli parlament. In the goverment preceding the current one there was even a Palestinian party taking part of the govermental coalition, though that was the first time to happen in Israel's history.
Of course things are still far from being ideal, but things were looking up for the Palestinian population preceding the war, for the most part. The latest goverment being elected definetly did not help however, and furthered the tensions after a period of slow but significant improvements.

 

[Adeleine]

Of course murder and kidnapping of innocents is not to be accepted when done by either side. I do not support the Israeli goverment's actions, and most Israelies believe similarly from my knowledge.

The underlined part is probably not true, given a Pew poll in Israel a couple months ago. 71% of respondents said Israel's actions in the war were correct or not going far enough.

If we exclude Arab respondents from the sample, since they are very likely to have views on the conflict that deviate from the status quo, the picture worsens considerably. Among Jewish respondents, the percentage who said Israel was going too far was four.

This is not to discount the Jewish residents of Israel who do oppose the war, and even actively protest against it. If anything, the unpopularity of their position speaks more to their fortitude. But that opposition to the war does strongly seem to be unpopular.

 

[Eroil]

The underlined part is probably not true, given a Pew poll in Israel a couple months ago. 71% of respondents said Israel's actions in the war were correct or not going far enough.

View attachment 666460

If we exclude Arab respondents from the sample, since they are very likely to have views on the conflict that deviate from the status quo, the picture worsens considerably. Among Jewish respondents, the percentage who said Israel was going too far was four.

View attachment 666461

This is not to discount the Jewish residents of Israel who do oppose the war, and even actively protest against it. If anything, the unpopularity of their position speaks more to their fortitude. But that opposition to the war does strongly seem to be unpopular.

Valid points, but I think there's an important distinction between polls specifically regarding the war effort, and polls regarding the unpopularity of the government itself. There's a clear separation to be made between the war effort itself and the battle against Hamas, to all decisions made by the government regarding the war. I think a different set of questions could wildly impact the result. The mentality of opposition to the current government's actions have gone worse and worse over the months since March, and to my knowledge a belief that a ceasefire has to take place is the most common belief as of now. A certain influential more left leaning party also left the government after it deemed that there's no use staying in such a government that is incredibly slow to take meaningful steps in order to reach a solution.
Around 70% of the population believed that an election should take place soon, according to a study in January. As things have largely kept worsening, I believe that the percent is very likely higher nowadays.

 

[gvmgvm40]

Regarding the 2nd part, some things I want to comment on. Again I do agree that a 2 state solution is not really a possibility, or at least in the coming 4-5 decades or so, unless serious changes come about worldwide or anything of that sort.
While a complete disengagement of the settlements in the west bank is very unlikely, disengagment of some kind of some parts of the west bank is not impossible at all, for newer settlements created by more extrimist Israeli coalitions later on. There is precedent for such actions being made.
While I don't think that would mean a two state solution to be that much more possible after such possible disengagments (there are plenty of other issues) it could allow Palestians to have more areas more isolated from the Jewish population.

Equality is of course a very imporant issue to discuss regarding this topic. That said, I think it is important to note an important distinction between Palestians that live inside the territory of Israel and are Israeli citizens, and ones that live outside of it in Gaza or the west bank. There's quite the big difference, while racism and discrimination does still affect Israeli Palestinians, they still have full rights including the right to vote and have Palestinian representitives in the Israeli parlament. In the goverment preceding the current one there was even a Palestinian party taking part of the govermental coalition, though that was the first time to happen in Israel's history.

I don't disagree with most of this. I know the difference between Palestinians in Israel and WB/Gaza (and East Jerusalem, which is in between the two as permanent residents), but that's my point actually, bear with me here.

Unless the Yellowstone caldera goes off and takes half of the US with it, the absolute best I can see happening out of Israel's goodwill in the foreseeable future is actually something like the Trump plan:

Israel won't give up Palestine's outer borders from now on (the Jordan Valley and now the Philadelphi corridor), won't give up East Jerusalem, won't give up the settlement blocs close to the '67 borders, and obviously won't accept right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. All of these are non-starters for any Israeli government in any possible scenario. Even if some smaller settlements/outposts are evacuated, the best you'll get is multiple disconnected "municipalities" that are enclaves within Israeli-controlled territory and surrounded by the Israeli separation wall and border checkpoints. Is this desirable? Can you really call this a two-state solution? I'm not Palestinian, but I don't think so. These "municipalities" will really have no more rights than actual municipalities do: they will be demilitarized, they can't control their borders, they can't control their airspace and territorial waters, they probably won't even have their own currency and monetary policy. In such conditions what kind of an economic policy can you have? It'll be more like autonomous municipalities surrounded by Israel than an actual, fully independent state. To be blunt, it's a legal fiction that a Palestinian state exists now and it's a legal fiction that a Palestinian "state" would exist then. There's a diplomatic apparatus and limited autonomy without any of the things we associate with actual states. Without a military defeat and/or serious pressure following a drastic change in the international power balance, Israel will not allow it, and really, I don't foresee either of these happening.

One thing I'll contest here is whether even "allow Palestians to have more areas more isolated from the Jewish population" is a desirable or even possible thing. Obviously the economy of the West Bank is entangled with Israel's economy. People really can't really conceptualize how small the West Bank is. East-to-west at it's widest it's barely 30 miles, if you exclude the Jordan Valley and look at the densely populated parts (like in the above map) it's more like 20 miles maximum. The densely populated parts of the central West Bank, with the most important cities, going from Hebron in the south to Bethlehem, East Jerusalem, and then Ramallah to the north, is barely as big as NYC proper combined. It's a tiny tiny area.

Obviously you cannot put up zigzagging walls like this in such a small area and expect the enclaves to be self-sufficient and independent, it defies logic. Obviously Palestinians will go and work in Israeli-controlled settlements, obviously they'll be reliant on Israeli "imports" (imports coming from, like, two blocks over), obviously Israelis will employ Palestinians and buy Palestinian agricultural goods. If you divide such a small land in such a byzantine manner it can't possibly be otherwise. Look at the settlements and the wall path, and then look at the scales on these maps! Both scales are 3 km, or like 1.8 miles, that's how small an area is divided in such an intricate, surgical way.

So like even if "independence" was possible under these conditions, it would still leave the Palestinian enclaves reliant on Israel for pretty much everything. If we're talking about such an entangled area that's going to be reliant on Israel either way, wouldn't it make more sense to accept the current reality that Israel controls this land either way, and ask for a binational state with the same civil rights for West Bank (and Gaza?) Palestinians that Palestinians in Israel enjoy? The Israeli state can't have its cake and eat it too: you unilaterally took the land, now take the population as well. Equal rights for people who live on the same land is a more realistic ask than entertaining land swaps and enclaves that still leave you reliant on Israel anyway. This probably won't endear me to anyone really, but the more I read, the more a two-state solution seems like a chimera to me.

 

[Adeleine]

Of course murder and kidnapping of innocents is not to be accepted when done by either side. I do not support the Israeli goverment's actions, and most Israelies believe similarly from my knowledge.

This was your original claim. Taking both of these statements together, the meaning of your second sentence is "most Israelis think the government's terrible actions towards Palestinians, like murder and kidnapping of innocents, are unacceptable." The point of my post was to show that, to the contrary, the majority of Israelis tolerate the government's terrible actions towards Palestinians. My evidence for this claim was a recent poll which showed that, when asked about the dominant expression of Israeli cruelty towards Palestinians today, four percent of the dominant cultural group thought this expression of cruelty went too far. Four percent. You were statistically more likely to be a millionaire in the United States than an Israeli who thought the Gaza war is going too far, and that war went (and is going) beyond too far in its destruction and malice. I assume you agree on that "beyond too far" part, at least – if you don't, that would explain your reaction to my post, and that opens up a separate discussion.

But anyway, assuming we're on the same page about the war:

Why did I say all this?

Valid points, but I think there's an important distinction between polls specifically regarding the war effort, and polls regarding the unpopularity of the government itself. There's a clear separation to be made between the war effort itself and the battle against Hamas, to all decisions made by the government regarding the war. I think a different set of questions could wildly impact the result. The mentality of opposition to the current government's actions have gone worse and worse over the months since March, and to my knowledge a belief that a ceasefire has to take place is the most common belief as of now. A certain influential more left leaning party also left the government after it deemed that there's no use staying in such a government that is incredibly slow to take meaningful steps in order to reach a solution.
Around 70% of the population believed that an election should take place soon, according to a study in January. As things have largely kept worsening, I believe that the percent is very likely higher nowadays.

Because, in the face of evidence that strong, the counterpoints you made in response strike me as tangential and minor. Saying that the results could be different if they asked "Did all war-related decisions made by the government go too far?" versus "Is the military response going too far?," looks out of touch. Even if that's a valid bone of contention–I think it's semantic quibbling to the vast majority of respondents–it's not going to change the percent of war objectors from four to twenty. And twenty would still be a clear minority.

Relatedly, quick research suggests that non-Arab Israeli support for a ceasefire is primarily unrelated to the point of our conversation, the cruelty against Palestinians and whether Israelis support that cruelty. (Given my original poll was conducted in March-April, it would be unexpected if cruelty was the primary reason this group supported a ceasefire – if opposition to the war's cruelty hung that low for six months after the war started, and then opposition to cruelty spiked ten times over in a handful of months to become mainstream). Instead, the ceasefire support is primarily about returning the hostages, it seems. Even then, with the intense incentive of returning national citizen hostages from a war enemy, only a 60% majority advocated for a ceasefire per the second linked (June) article. Unlike the percent of non-Arab Israelis who supported the government's actions in the war (or thought they should go farther), that 60% is not overwhelming.

Also from the June article – more than 20% of Jewish Israelis wanted Israel to actively conquer the entire Gaza Strip. If this extreme hardline position has 20% of the dominant cultural group's support, and only a 60% majority supports a ceasefire when national hostages are on the line, one can assume the median non-Arab position does not intrinsically object to the war's cruelty towards Palestinians.

This post took me about an hour to write, which was frustrating because your post struck me as so tangential and so easy to write, leaving me a lot of work to sift through the pieces and present a compelling counter, not missing the forest to get stuck in the semi-plausible vaguely-relevant trees you left. If you respond to this and I see a similar situation arise, I will probably not respond again.

 

[Chou Toshio]

Opinions that are morally vapid hold no weight, deserve no respect no matter how politely articulated.

Obsessions with neutrality, preference for philosophical/idealistic over historical/material—

These types of dialogues only ever advantage the oppressor over the oppressed.

 

[S.A.C. Martin]

I am coming back to this thread and it is pretty difficult not to feel pretty disgusted at some of the views that have been expressed by particular members (however I am grateful to them for at least expressing themselves in a peaceful, and reasonable matter).

I want to make one thing abundantly clear. You can’t “both sides” a genocide. Here is the definition of genocide under the genocide convention:

https://www.un.org/en/genocidepreve...n and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.pdf

Article I
The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in
time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to
punish.

Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article III
The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.

Article IV
Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be
punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private
individuals.

Article V
The Contracting Parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective
Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present
Convention, and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of
genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.

Article VI
Persons charged with genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall
be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was
committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect
to those Contracting Parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction.

Article VII
Genocide and the other acts enumerated in article III shall not be considered as political
crimes for the purpose of extradition.
The Contracting Parties pledge themselves in such cases to grant extradition in
accordance with their laws and treaties in force.

Article VIII
Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take
such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the
prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in
article III.

Article IX
Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or
fulfilment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a
State for genocide or for any of the other acts enumerated in article III, shall be
submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the
dispute.

Article X
The present Convention, of which the Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish
texts are equally authentic, shall bear the date of 9 December 1948.

Article XI
The present Convention shall be open until 31 December 1949 for signature on behalf of
any Member of the United Nations and of any non-member State to which an invitation
to sign has been addressed by the General Assembly.
The present Convention shall be ratified, and the instruments of ratification shall be
deposited with the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
After 1 January 1950, the present Convention may be acceded to on behalf of any
Member of the United Nations and of any non-member State which has received an
invitation as aforesaid.
Instruments of accession shall be deposited with the Secretary-General of the United
Nations.

Article XII
Any Contracting Party may at any time, by notification addressed to the Secretary-
General of the United Nations, extend the application of the present Convention to all or
any of the territories for the conduct of whose foreign relations that Contracting Party is
responsible.

Article XIII
On the day when the first twenty instruments of ratification or accession have been
deposited, the Secretary-General shall draw up a procès-verbal and transmit a copy
thereof to each Member of the United Nations and to each of the non-member States
contemplated in article XI.

The present Convention shall come into force on the ninetieth day following the date of
deposit of the twentieth instrument of ratification or accession.
Any ratification or accession effected subsequent to the latter date shall become
effective on the ninetieth day following the deposit of the instrument of ratification or
accession.

Article XIV
The present Convention shall remain in effect for a period of ten years as from the date
of its coming into force.
It shall thereafter remain in force for successive periods of five years for such
Contracting Parties as have not denounced it at least six months before the expiration
of the current period.
Denunciation shall be effected by a written notification addressed to the Secretary-
General of the United Nations.

Article XV
If, as a result of denunciations, the number of Parties to the present Convention should
become less than sixteen, the Convention shall cease to be in force as from the date on
which the last of these denunciations shall become effective.

Article XVI
A request for the revision of the present Convention may be made at any time by any
Contracting Party by means of a notification in writing addressed to the Secretary-
General.

The General Assembly shall decide upon the steps, if any, to be taken in respect of such
request.

Article XVII
The Secretary-General of the United Nations shall notify all Members of the United
Nations and the non-member States contemplated in article XI of the following:
(a) Signatures, ratifications and accessions received in accordance with article XI;
(b) Notifications received in accordance with article XII;
(c) The date upon which the present Convention comes into force in accordance with
article XIII;
(d) Denunciations received in accordance with article XIV;
(e) The abrogation of the Convention in accordance with article XV;
(f) Notifications received in accordance with article XVI.
Article XVIII
The original of the present Convention shall be deposited in the archives of the United
Nations.
A certified copy of the Convention shall be transmitted to each Member of the United
Nations and to each of the non-member States contemplated in article XI.

Article XIX
The present Convention shall be registered by the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the date of its coming into force.

The genocide convention is pretty clear on what constitutes a genocide, and Israel/Israelis have been slow walking towards post October 7th since 1948, by killing Palestinians, preventing births, occupying and annexing land, causing serious bodily harm (we now have new definitions for amputated children that have popped up in the recent conflict/genocide - it’s not a war, war is conducted between two opposing armies).

So with those definitions considered, let‘s talk about the “thousands of years of history” line.

It’s an abysmal line of argument, and utterly disgusting.

It effectively boils down to “my religious text is more important than yours” by way of argument for legitimacy on the land. Which I am sure, if the opposite was to be true, if the Quran was used to legitimise annexing sections of other countries, there would be worldwide, widespread condemnation of such nonsense. Which it is.

No one, by the way, at any time has said that the suffering of those who practice Judaism isn’t real. There is obvious recorded history about the forced migration of the religion and its followers from the middle East (leaving behind, by the way, Palestinian Jews and Christians and Muslims, all living alongside each other in genuine and real harmony, against a backdrop of other conflicts which pop up from the Ottoman and European armies and empires doing their best to run around the globe and carve up other people’s lands) but Palestine, Palestinians, was the not the antisemitic hotbed that it is constantly, wrongly, portrayed in western media.

So we get to 1948 and the British Mandate in Palestine is ended early, stopping the introduction of various UN resolutions and UN led proposals at the time. Zionists conduct a range of terrorist activities, including the Nakba - which means catastrophe, for anyone who is bothering to try and “both sides” this properly and do their research and not just take the Israeli line of the Yom Ha'atzmaut (their independence day which they celebrate, whilst Palestinians mourn it) in which thousands of Palestinians were killed, forced from their homes, and other atrocities besides the forced displacement.

Which continues on, and on, and on, until today, with 5 million Palestinians forced into VERY small spaces of their original land, now having, with everything that has gone on, the highest population densities on the planet, with no running water, no sewage treatment, rubbish piling up, with polio and other diseases spreading, with constant bombing, drone strikes, sniper fire, use of white phosphorous and more.

The list of atrocities that Israel has enacted on the Palestinian people as its occupying power over 76 years is so long, that South Africa’s submission to the ICJ, which is limited by word length, required several appendixes and a large number of shortenings, just to make sure as much of the evidence was submitted as possible.

If the starting point is “over 2000 years ago Jews were forced from their homeland” then my immediate response to that morally bankrupt line of thinking is if you know about that displacement, and the actual antisemitic things which happened for centuries, and then you know about the holocaust, why on earth would you decide to enact an almost identical set of events on a people who were not responsible for any of that, but have been living on and tending to the land you claim is yours, for centuries?

When the history books come to be written on Israel/Palestine, the biggest question will be how “never again” became “never again for the Israelis” and not “never again for everyone”.

One thing I do want to make abundantly clear on top of all of this. This whole conflict isn’t along religious lines. If it was, you wouldn’t have Jewish Voice for Peace worldwide, you wouldn’t have the sheer incredible number of Jewish allies of Palestinians on any of the peace marches throughout the world.

That people who are Zionist, or somehow pro Zionist (what’s wrong with you?) play the biblical (yes biblical - not even the right religious book!) card of having some long ago claim to the land to justify the obvious and outright dehumanisation of an entire other population, forced displacement and genocide, whilst using their own forced displacement and genocide enacted on them to enable doing it, is one of the biggest, most twisted, awful and evil things I have seen in my lifetime.

But they only use the religious and dehumanising lines to justify the oppression and genocide. If they actually followed the various religious texts they use to justify all this, we probably would have had a state of Palestine and Israel, not an ethnostate, with two peoples living alongside each other in meaningful peace.

But you can’t live in peace when the biggest military in the world is funding the fourth biggest military in the world, whilst also supposedly mediating with a proscribed terrorist group (according to members of the western world, including my home, Great Britain) and basically doing what they have always done - pretend to be making peace while taking the land, more and more.

There is only one solution to this. You have to reverse this by making Israel change course. That won’t happen whilst the USA gives “ironclad support” for the genocide. So you have to make the USA change course. Which means Harris winning in November, then once she is in, mass protest, and don’t stop protesting until there is a change.

I am grateful to the younger generations of people worldwide, because my god how they are showing up us older generations as vile, useless, complicit genocide enablers. For shame.

So in short, for the Tl;DR version: no, you can’t both sides a genocide. No, you can’t justify atrocities for 76 years based on a religious text and your own persecution as a people. No, I don’t have to accept your baseless, disgusting twisted logic. Thank you.

 

[S.A.C. Martin]

Just chiming in to say that this hasn't been glorification of violence or whatever, but merely the fact that violence will follow when peaceful protest has been shown to not work.

I sure am glad we simply had a sit down talk with the guy who murdered 6 million Jews and numerous other racial/ethic/sexual/gender minorities and made him simply see the error of his ways and stop his senseless string of violence and domination. Oh wait, that isn't how the genocide ended, is it?

Just a point of info. We did have a sit down chat with the man who was about to murder millions of Jews, and millions of others directly and indirectly (like it is wild and mind blowing to me as a researcher just how evil the Nazi movement was in their industrial scale operation and war strategy to just kill so many people, and how difficult it is to actually pin down the exact numbers because of the record destroying operation they enacted near the end of the war) - this happened during the forced displacement and harassment and murders of Jews in the late 1930s in Germany.

It was called appeasement in the UK. Guess how that went!

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-...ituted in the hope of,as a policy of weakness.

Guess what? We are likely to look back on Israel’s history with the West and the UN and we will call all of those peace accords “appeasement” too, in years to come. For shame.

 

[S.A.C. Martin]

I don't disagree with most of this. I know the difference between Palestinians in Israel and WB/Gaza (and East Jerusalem, which is in between the two as permanent residents), but that's my point actually, bear with me here.

Unless the Yellowstone caldera goes off and takes half of the US with it, the absolute best I can see happening out of Israel's goodwill in the foreseeable future is actually something like the Trump plan:

View attachment 666458

Israel won't give up Palestine's outer borders from now on (the Jordan Valley and now the Philadelphi corridor), won't give up East Jerusalem, won't give up the settlement blocs close to the '67 borders, and obviously won't accept right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. All of these are non-starters for any Israeli government in any possible scenario. Even if some smaller settlements/outposts are evacuated, the best you'll get is multiple disconnected "municipalities" that are enclaves within Israeli-controlled territory and surrounded by the Israeli separation wall and border checkpoints. Is this desirable? Can you really call this a two-state solution? I'm not Palestinian, but I don't think so. These "municipalities" will really have no more rights than actual municipalities do: they will be demilitarized, they can't control their borders, they can't control their airspace and territorial waters, they probably won't even have their own currency and monetary policy. In such conditions what kind of an economic policy can you have? It'll be more like autonomous municipalities surrounded by Israel than an actual, fully independent state. To be blunt, it's a legal fiction that a Palestinian state exists now and it's a legal fiction that a Palestinian "state" would exist then. There's a diplomatic apparatus and limited autonomy without any of the things we associate with actual states. Without a military defeat and/or serious pressure following a drastic change in the international power balance, Israel will not allow it, and really, I don't foresee either of these happening.

One thing I'll contest here is whether even "allow Palestians to have more areas more isolated from the Jewish population" is a desirable or even possible thing. Obviously the economy of the West Bank is entangled with Israel's economy. People really can't really conceptualize how small the West Bank is. East-to-west at it's widest it's barely 30 miles, if you exclude the Jordan Valley and look at the densely populated parts (like in the above map) it's more like 20 miles maximum. The densely populated parts of the central West Bank, with the most important cities, going from Hebron in the south to Bethlehem, East Jerusalem, and then Ramallah to the north, is barely as big as NYC proper combined. It's a tiny tiny area.

Obviously you cannot put up zigzagging walls like this in such a small area and expect the enclaves to be self-sufficient and independent, it defies logic. Obviously Palestinians will go and work in Israeli-controlled settlements, obviously they'll be reliant on Israeli "imports" (imports coming from, like, two blocks over), obviously Israelis will employ Palestinians and buy Palestinian agricultural goods. If you divide such a small land in such a byzantine manner it can't possibly be otherwise. Look at the settlements and the wall path, and then look at the scales on these maps! Both scales are 3 km, or like 1.8 miles, that's how small an area is divided in such an intricate, surgical way.

View attachment 666465View attachment 666469

So like even if "independence" was possible under these conditions, it would still leave the Palestinian enclaves reliant on Israel for pretty much everything. If we're talking about such an entangled area that's going to be reliant on Israel either way, wouldn't it make more sense to accept the current reality that Israel controls this land either way, and ask for a binational state with the same civil rights for West Bank (and Gaza?) Palestinians that Palestinians in Israel enjoy? The Israeli state can't have its cake and eat it too: you unilaterally took the land, now take the population as well. Equal rights for people who live on the same land is a more realistic ask than entertaining land swaps and enclaves that still leave you reliant on Israel anyway. This probably won't endear me to anyone really, but the more I read, the more a two-state solution seems like a chimera to me.

The issue with this is you are asking Palestinians to give up their universal right to self determination that virtually everyone else enjoys (Catalans, the Irish in Northern Ireland and others aside).

I agree that the apartheid should be ended. I personally think the only way we get to peace is Israel withdrawing beyond the 1967 borders and Palestine being finally recognised as a full member of the United Nations.

Israel will find that having a close neighbour can be peaceful, if they choose to be peaceful. The Palestinians have endured 76 years of occupation, repression and genocide. They want peace. They have known no kind of peace since 1948.

But that requires the ultra far right in the USA to stop warmongering, which isn’t going to happen without strong, powerful push back (and, complicating things more, the left in the USA appear to echo much of the pro Israeli line of thinking on the far right).

You can’t change this and make peace without changing the direction of travel in the USA and Israel.

And yes, you can withdraw Israeli settlers from beyond the borders, it has happened before in Gaza and can happen so again. But we’re nowhere near that right now.

 

[adjectivenoun]

It effectively boils down to “my religious text is more important than yours” by way of argument for legitimacy on the land. Which I am sure, if the opposite was to be true, if the Quran was used to legitimise annexing sections of other countries, there would be worldwide, widespread condemnation of such nonsense. Which it is.

Boosting this and adding that, beyond whatever religious claims to the land that Israel and Palestine are making, I am broadly uninterested in arguments that stretch back thousands of years in an effort to make claims about who is really entitled to live on a particular piece of land. Palestine was there before Israel, Israel is committing atrocities in an effort to forcibly take the land from Palestine, and Israel has demonstrated a total unwillingness to peacefully coexist with Palestine in the long term, so I don't especially care that the Israelites lived on that land thousands of years ago. Even if you think that this entitles them to the land from an idealist perspective, I do not believe that it is possible for a material analysis of the conflict to arrive at the conclusion that Israel is in the right in good faith. The levels of tangible harm are simply not comparable.

Connecting this to the earlier discussion about Native Americans, I see a similar argument used when discussing potential reparations for them: "Well, the Native Americans fought each other before Europeans arrived, so who's really entitled to the land?" I don't find this argument compelling because, while Native Americans certainly did not exist in perfect harmony with each other before European settlement, whatever harm they did to each other is almost definitely not comparable to the systemic harm inflicted by settlement. That, to me, is far and away the most important thing.

 

[BIG ASHLEY]

all this talk of historical precedent and not a single mention of coconut trees. nature is healing

 

[Chou Toshio]

I used to work in Market Research— industry knows, sometimes insight comes from qualitative even more than quantitative. Sometimes you just need to believe the words coming out of the person’s mouth.

We are so far beyond trying to analyze what Israeli society wants. Just believe them.

 

[S.A.C. Martin]

I used to work in Market Research— industry knows, sometimes insight comes from qualitative even more than quantitative. Sometimes you just need to believe the words coming out of the person mouth.

We are so far beyond trying to analyze what Israeli society wants. Just believe them.

I hadn’t seen that before. That’s awful.

So how can we - the western world - ignore this?

This is full on genocide and murder being called for.

Unacceptable. Just appalling.