u/Routine-Equipment572

I've always hear that every day you go without speaking a language, you get worse at it. It's logical — this is basically how memory works. The more you study, the better you learn. Long periods of not studying mean forgetting.

But here's the thing — I've had completely different experiences learning languages.

For instance, I learned Spanish for around 7 years. Most of it school years, but I also lived with native speakers for six months. By the end, I was pretty good at Spanish. I could hold my own in one on one conversations with clear speakers, though I still couldn't follow group conversations, or people who spoke fast or with heavy accents. I was nowhere near native speaker level, but I didn't feel like I was "learning" Spanish anymore so much as using it.

Then I ended up not using Spanish at all for like 4 years. I go on an international trip and find myself surrounded by Spanish speakers. And here's the weird thing: in the month I was there, my Spnaish improved far faster than it had in say, a month of time I spent living with Spanish speakers 4 years before. All of a sudden, I could follow group conversations. I could understand people with all different accents.

So as far as I can tell, the 4 year pause didn't hurt. If anything, it helped.

Today, I'm learning a different TL. I studied for two years, and then more or less stopped. For the last six months or so, I have continued to watch Youtube videos in my TL every day or two, usually for five minutes or so. Have the odd conversation in it every few months.

So in theory, I should be getting worse at my TL. But I think I'm getting better, or at least staying stable. I understood a group conversation for the first time after I stopped studying, and I had a fairly long and elaborate conversation with someone in my TL a month ago.

So I'm wondering if this assumption that you automatically get worse at languages each day you don't speak them isn't the whole story. I even wonder if pauses could help with language learning, since as far as I can tell, that's what happened with me.

Now, I'm talking about two languages I was pretty good at when I stopped. I don't think that would would for languages where I was earlier in the process. In fact, it didn't — I gave up a TL after getting to a low/intermediate level, and I just got worse at it as time went on, today only remember pieces.

What do you think? Have any of you had experiences like this?

I've heard some Pro-Palestinians (mostly Westerners) say that the goal of the Pro-Palestinian movement is to create a one state new country, where all Jews and Palestinians will be equal citizens, and it will be a vibrant democracy, and everyone will be free.

Israelis will often say that if this were to happen, Palestinians will go on a murder rampage to try and kill or displace all the Jews and establish an Arab supremacist dictatorship.

Pro-Palestinians respond something like "That's racist, Palestinians aren't evil" or whatever.I think Pro-Palestinians are fundamentally misunderstanding how Palestinian society works when they say that.

Palestinian society — really Arab society more generally, but especially Palestinian — is not centralized like Israeli society is. There is no universal authority with a monopoly on violence in Palestinian society. Instead, you have various militant groups appear grow and try to take over, disappear, fight with other groups, whatever. The most powerful Arab militant groups are the ones who successfully take over, not like, enlightened Englishmen wanting to establish Roman-style republics.

That means that as long as, even say, 1% of Palestinian society who want to conquer this new country and rule it as a dictatorship (probably killing or displacing the Jews, let's be real) and is willing to take arms up to do it, then those 50,000 people will form militias and form and try to conquer.

So ... Who is going to stop them? You need a military force stronger than them to stop them.

Presumably this would be the new country's half Muslim half Jewish police/army. So you are imagining that this new country has somehow conducted a brand new country identity so powerful that everyone in the country identifies more with the country than being Jewish/Muslim, and the Muslims and Jews in the army will die to defend their new country. Can you tell me how this is supposed to happen?

Because it seems obvious to me this simply isn't ever going to happen. Most Palestinians, including the ones in this army, are not going to sacrifice their own lives and the lives other other Muslims to save Jews for the sake of the integrity of this yet-to-exist country. Probably Jews won't either.

So when violence inevitably breaks out between Jews and Muslims, the Muslims in the army will take the Muslim side, and the Jews will take the Jewish side. Civil War. Basically 1948 all over again, except with much more powerful weapons and more decades of animosity. Expect millions to die.

Now some will say: "Don't worry, an international force will make sure it's all fine." But you'd need an international force to conquer the country indefinitely for that to work.

My question to Pro-Palestinians is: How practically, step by step, do you imagine this working? This new bi-ethnic national identity that makes most Muslims support killing other Muslims to preserve partial Jewish power — how does this come about? And given that no other Arab countries are democracies with equal rights for minorities, why should Israelis bet their lives on that this will be the first?

I've heard people say Israel is trying to kill all the Palestinians.

My question: Why is it taking so long?

Israel has had a military force capable of killing or at least displacing most Palestinians for most of the last 70 years. We can all agree on that, right? So why haven't they don't it yet? The Palestinian population has grown every year for the last century. If Israel is trying to kill them all, why are there more of them every year?

Do IDF soldiers just not know how to use guns?

Some people will say Israel isn't trying to kill all the Palestinians, just the Gazans. But that has the same problem: Why aren't all or at least most of the Gazans dead yet? It's been over two years. About 75,000 Palestinians have died. That's about 70 Gazans dying a day, including militants. This is sad, but it's not the work of an army trying to kill as many civilians as possible. Angry mobs with axes can kill thousands in a day, how is it that the Israeli army, with all its might, can only kill 70?

Do IDF soldiers just not know how to use guns?

Some will say — well, Israel simply hasn't killed all the Palestinians yet because it's afraid of international blowback. So they think Israel is sneakily pretending not to kill all the Palestinians ... by not killing all the Palestinians? lol.

Some may say, well, even though only a couple hundred at most people have died of hunger during this war — which is, by the way, the normal global average even for countries at peace — all the Palestinians will drop dead of famine any day now. But like — that's not how famines work, and frankly, it's hard for me to believe anyone believes that. I don't hear this explanation so often anymore, I think everyone's figured out the Gazans aren't starving to death. But you never know, could get this retro explanation for kicks.

Some will say, "Actually, there must be hundreds of thousands/ millions buried beneath the rubble and it's all literally being covered up."

To which I say — there's really no way to convince a conspiracy theorist of anything because they dismiss any data they disagree with as "part of the conspiracy." These are the same people who believe the earth is flat.

People who say that Israeli is trying to kill all the Palestinians: are you knowingly saying this exaggerated thing to like, tell a white lie to help Palestinians, or express your anger, or something?

Or if you really believe this, then please explain: if Israel is a powerful military force, and Palestinians are weak and defenseless victims, and Israel is trying to kill them all, then why aren't they dead yet? (I'd prefer if you answer that question instead of posting a miscellaneous bag of unrelated "Israel bad" points, but you do you.)

We talk a lot about Israelis and Palestinians on here, but I'd like to take a look at the way the international community affects the conflict. I suspect they are ENTIRELY responsible for keeping it going all this time. The international community is the power that truly moves this conflict, and Israelis and Palestinians merely puppets for them to play with:

In Ottoman times:

Status of Jews: powerless people living in empires they do not control (frequently being displaced so effectively stateless)

Status of Palestinians: powerless people living in empires they do not control

THEN the international community goes on yet another series of rampages against Jews, many of whom start fleeing to the only homeland they've ever had — eretz Israel, currently a rural part of the Ottoman Empire. Status remains:

Status of Jews: powerless people living in empires they do not control

Status of Palestinians: powerless people living in empires they do not control

THEN the international community promises both Arabs and Jews the chance to no longer be powerless and take back sovereignty in their homeland.

Status of Jews: powerless but hoping for sovereignty soon

Status of Palestinians: powerless but hoping for sovereignty soon

THEN the International community, taking a shred of responsibility for probably the first time ever, tries to come up with plans for both Arabs and Jews to have sovereignty. Arabs and Jews cannot come to an agreement (this one really is on the locals, rather than the international community.). So the international community abandons its experiment with taking responsibility and leaves the Jews and Muslims to fight it out. They have a war. Borders are drawn.

Any normal conflict would have ended then and there.

BUT the international Arabs cannot stomach the outcome of their war, so THEY invade too to keep the war going.

The thing about this conflict: the international community keeps it like this. You see, the international community has struck a bargain with itself: It stops Israel from destroying Palestine, but it also demands Palestine continue to try to destroy Israel. So the cycle continues.

That's why the international community spends the next 70 years giving Jews and Muslims money and weapons to fight each other with. They give encouragement and fill their airwaves with propaganda, and parade in the streets about it, and brainwash kids in schools around the world, and do everything they possibly can to keep this fight going.

Israelis and Palestinians bear some responsibility for this conflict, but in my opinion, the international community bears MOST of the responsibility.

A heck of a lot of arguments of Israel/Palestine end up focusing on words. Specifically, this exchange:

Pro-Palestinian: *accuses Israel of genocide/apartheid/[insert other evil-sounding buzzword that isn't used in most other wars or conflicts where Israel isn't involved]"

Someone: That's not what a [buzzword] is.

Sometimes, then then argue about the definition of [buzzword], compare it to other conflicts to try and understand why those aren't called [buzzword], etc.

But other times, the Pro-Palestinian will say something like "Why are you getting hung up on language, babies are dying," etc. It seems like they are saying that using the wrong word is the right thing to do because it draws attention to the problem and thus could saves lives.

Pro-Palestinians — am I getting this right? Do you primarily use these words because you know they will attract attention and therefore help Palestinians, or express your anger/disgust, or something, rather than because you think they are true?

And if not — I'd like for you to help me understand what you mean by those words.

By using this language, it feels like Pro-Palestinians seem to be are accusing Israelis of heinous crimes that Israelis have never committed in order to justify attacking them. But I have also started to wonder if Pro-Palestinians simply have completely different understanding of these words.

I invite you to explain in your own words (I want to understand what you think):

1. What is a "genocide"?
2. How is what Israel is doing is a genocide while other conflicts that have similar features are not?
3. What is apartheid?
4. How is what Israel is doing is apartheid while other conflicts that have similar features are not?
5. What is an ethnostate?
6. How is Israel an "ethnostate" while other countries with similar features are not?

Feel free to explain a different buzzword as well. Colonizer, ethnic cleansing, etc.

I request that you please do not use buzzwords to explain other buzzwords (try using language like "kills" "immigrates" etc. instead of explaining jargon with more jargon)

It's weird right? Like when I think of other humanitarian movements, I can't think of any with large numbers of overseas allies who expressed a bunch of anger. The focus was all on concern for suffering civilians, not hatred for the party responsible.

Sure, many humanitarian things are natural disaster related things and so don't apply... But it's hard to think of any humanitarian movement, conflict-related or not, whose supporters were more angry than concerned.

• Like, there was the Free Tibet movement ... Maybe Tibetans themselves are really furious at China, but I just did not see a bunch of Europeans pouring red paint on Chinese flags or marching out into the streets in support of Tibet on the day Tibetans massacred Chinese.
• What else? The genocide in Darfur. I'd go to rallies for that and never even learn the name of the group committing the genocide, let alone see a bunch of rage at them.
• Syrian civil war ... the international community didn't even care about that one enough to take to the streets at all. More of a practical, "donate to help" thing, couldn't tell you who was doing the attacking.

Like I'm sure you can find examples of the people actually going through the humanitarian crisis being angry. But usually that anger doesn't extend to foreign humanitarians abroad

Edit: If you have family or friends experiencing a crisis, of course you are emotional. If you are a gay person in Iran, you might be angry at your government because your government attacks you. But you don't typically start feeling angry at the Chinese government, for instance, because they didn't harm you.

International humanitarian movements, on the other hand, are a totally different animal. They are made of strangers abroad moved by pity, not anger. They pity the poor/hurt/hungry/dead people they are focusing on — but they do not typically steal their anger and wear it as theirs.

Heck, look at the comments online about Israel. Can you honestly say the people who write about it sound like they aren't filled to the brim with fury?

Like, when's the last time someone burned an old woman alive on the street in the U.S. for a "humanitarian movement"? When's the last time a "humanitarian" bombed a synogogue or church or mosque?

SOOOOOOOO

I gotta say, it sure seems like this is a hate movement pretending to be a humanitarian movement. I think that's what most of the Pro-Palestinian movement is getting out of this. I think it's an outlet for anger for them. They want to unleash their fury, but they want an excuse to do it that lets them think they are might hero warriors. They need something that they can call a humanitarian movement but functions much more like an angry mob.

That's part of why so many Jews see the Pro-Palestinians movement as obvious antisemitism. They can call it "humanitarian" all they want, but Jews know an angry mob after Jews when they see one. The rage Pro-Palestinians display is not something I've ever seen in a "humanitarian" movement. It does, however, look exactly like a mob of peasants grabbing their pitchforks to go burns some Jews in order to "save the children."

Pro-Palestinians, I'm sure some of you aren't like this. But can you honestly look at your movement and not find it a little weird how obsessed people are at "raging at the evil enemy" rather than on the people they're supposedly supporting?

Before the British arrived, there were variety of different overlapping ethnic groups living in what is now Israel/Palestine. The area (called "Greater Syria" in Arabic and included what is now Syria, Israel, and Lebanon) including Jews, Arabs, Turks, Circassians, Bedouins, Druze, Muslims, Christians, etc. etc. Plenty of recent immigrants and families who had been there for thousands of years in most of these groups.

Arab Muslims were the majority in all the Middle East, including in Greater Syria, thanks to the earlier Arab Islamic conquests. Some Jews had been there for thousands of year, a bunch came after the Spanish Inquisition in the 1400s/1500s, and numbers really started rising in the 1800s and through the 1900s fleeing pogroms in Europe. Jews probably were a majority in Jerusalem by the mid-1800s. Same probably true for a lot of towns and cities, but no one was keeping track — this was a rural, unimportant area of the Ottoman Empire. Maybe around half of Muslims (again, no accurate numbers available) in this small piece of Greater Syria were new immigrants during this time too.

By the time Britain and France were about to hand over the entire Middle East to local rule in the 20th century, there were hundreds of thousands of Jews living there, making them a demographic majority in certain (still very small) parts of what was Greater Syria, including what is now the Israeli coast, central Israel, Jerusalem, and northern Israel. Both Jews and Arabs were well-aware that they might be about to get their own countries, and they both worked with and fought with European powers over that at the time.

When Britain and France started drawing borders for the entire Middle East, they drew a circle around the Jewish area and called it "Jewish state (Israel today)" and drew circle around the much larger Muslim areas and called them "Arab state (Palestine today)" "Jordan" "Saudi Arabia" "Iraq" and "Syria." They also drew a circle around the Christian part and called it "Lebanon." And they drew a circle around the Hindu area and called it "India" and a circle around the Muslim area near India and called it "Pakistan."

A whole bunch of these new countries started fighting each other after Britain left, with India/Pakistan being the biggest wars.

The reason I write this all is that people so often act like Israel's creation in the Middle East was somehow unique, when it was the opposite. Weird, right? I think they have some alternative view of history going on.

If you were Europe while it was dividing up the Middle East, what would you have done differently? Would you have give Kurds a state? Druze? Made the whole thing one giant Arab Muslim state?

I recently wrote a post comparing Israel/Palestine to Native American reservations. I got a lot of pushback because people fairly pointed out that these two situations are very different in too many ways. So I am going to try to explain this in a more direct way:

When one side in a war is attacking you, you often want to take control of the area they are attacking you from, so they can't attack you from it anymore. This is called "occupation."

Over the land 100 years or so, Arabs have continuously attacked Israel from Gaza and the West Bank. In response, Israel eventually occupied that land. That is why Palestinians live under occupation. They don't yet really have an independent country because they are still at war. Occupations end when wars end.

In occupations, the occupiers do not usually give out citizenship to the people they are occupying. For instance, when the U.S. occupied Afghanistan, it did not give Afghans U.S.. citizenship. Afghans do not have the same rights Americans do. The U.S. set up checkpoints in occupied Afghanistan just like Israel set up checkpoints in occupied Palestine.

Apartheid is different. Apartheid is basically a set of racist laws intended to keep a race economically and social down. That means things like separate parks, beaches, buses, trains, hospitals, toilets. Jobs reserved only for white people. Zero ability to vote for one race, etc.

Israel is not any of that. Israel is a standard occupying power. That's why all its "different rules for different people" are nationality (not race) related, all war related, and all exactly the same things that occupying powers frequently do in their occupied territories: checkpoints, military court, raids.

I know some people will say "Why quibble with the vocabulary? Living under either apartheid or occupation is bad."

Here's the thing: If you accuse a country of apartheid, that's accusing them of a special, unique kind of evil that even most conflicts never touch. If you accuse Israel of such a heinous crime, then you are essentially lying to try and convince others that because Israel is so uniquely "evil," is is uniquely deserving of your wrath and probably of being wiped off the earth. Of course people are going to defend themselves if they think you are trying to kill or displace them.

So if that's not what you are trying to do, if you actually want to have a conversation about the real situation on the ground, then use the right words. Otherwise, people will correct you instead of engaging with the conversation you wanted you wanted to have in the first place. Same goes for "genocide," "colonizer," "ethnostate" "open-air prison," etc. You're smart. Use your own words and show you know what you are talking about instead of relying on evil-sounding buzzwords.

As I see it, the accusations of "apartheid" against Israel make very little sense. I won't go into detail here, but basically Israel exhibits none of the cornerstones of apartheid South Africa. Israel has no two sets of laws based on race (it's based on citizenship), and more importantly, the "different laws" are entirely about military responses to war and terrorism, which is why they are all exclusively things like checkpoints, laws about attacking civilians, etc., not some sort of Jim Crow/Aprtheid racial hierarchy where one race isn't allowed to have good jobs or run for political office or something.

But when you point this out, Pro-Palestinians tend to say something like "anytime there are two sets of rules for two populations ruled by the same power, that's apartheid." Doesn't matter if the two groups are citizens v. noncitizens rather than ethnicity or race. Doesn't matter if the rules are security measures made to deal with 70 years of constant war, not Jim Crowe style laws made to preserve racial hierarchy.

I've pointed out that the same rules apply to virtually every military occupation, and no one calls them apartheid, but I've heard Pro-Palestinians respond that this doesn't "count" because the Israeli occupation has "gone on too long". Never heard of "occupation" turning into "apartheid" in history based on some random moments where that "switches", but sure, okay. Let's say apartheid, by Pro-Palestinian definition, means "two groups of people living under the same country's authority under different laws for generations." Sure. Why not.

In that case, Native American reservations are very clearly apartheid — far more than Israel. On Native American reservations, Natives are subject to different laws than non-Natives. Therefore, it's apartheid, and Native American reservations must be dismantled. Right?

I expect some people will say something like "but it's different because Natives Americans aren't currently dying in a genocide/evil settlers/ oppressors/ indigenous v. colonizer/etc. etc. But then then have basically admitted that "apartheid" by their own definition is not relevant, and it's just "Israel bad" for every other reason they can throw at the wall.

I've noticed that Pro-Pallies virtually always present 1948 as "Jews showed up to a land of peaceful Arabs and then violently displaced them for no reason/because Zionism told them to."

Of course, anyone with a basic grasp of history knows that didn't happen. If anything, it was the other way around: Jews showed up peacefully in the 1800s and early 1900s, and Arabs responded by frequently raping and massacring and displacing Jews, who only started fighting back decades later, in the 1930s.

Then in 1947, the conflict escalated into a full-scale war. In this war, guess what? The killings and displacements continued, and even grew. Palestinians and Jews both killed each other in similar numbers. They both displaced thousands of each other.

Some Pro-Pallies will say "but more Palestinians got displaced" but this is bad faith for a number of reasons. It's pretty obvious Arabs were more intent to displace Jews than the other way around, because Arabs displaced 100% of Jews from all area they conquered in the war, while Jews did not. Similar numbers of Jews and Palestinians were killed, so the fact that more Palestinians were displaced just reflects the fact that Palestinians had somewhere to escape to (the other Arab countries), while Jews had nowhere to go. And actually, in the end, more Jews were displaced than Arabs overall, because they entire Arab world ethnically cleansed their 1 million person Jewish population as revenge for the existence of Israel.

We can argue about a zillion little details about this war, but the fact that matters most to me is not that Pro-Pallies have different opinions about the details. It's that they pretend the war didn't even happen.

Instead, they create an alternative fantasy version where Arabs just sat around making friendship bracelets, while the evil Jews massacred and displaced them all because that's what Zionism says they should do (?). They say that Zionism somehow intrinsically means ethnically cleansing Arabs, implying that Zionists displaced Palestinians out of some intrinsic philosopher of Zionism, rather than acknowledging the obvious fact that displacements happened to Arabs because Arabs were actively killing and displacing Jews at the time. That's like saying England bombed Germany in WWII because of the philosophy of "Englishism" rather than that Germans were bombing them.

Decided to do one of these, why not?

I'm not a Pro-Palestinian, but I do think they are right about a couple things: 1) Palestinians deserve equal rights and citizenship for a real country (unlike what they are getting currently, whether they are in the West Bank or Lebanon). They overwhelmingly don't want Israeli citizenship though, so giving them Israeli citizenship is a non-starter (not to mention that Israelis don't want that either).

Before 10/7, I though a two-state solution was possible. Now, I don't. It seems obvious that Palestinians demand the whole of Israel rather than just the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is simply not going to give up the West Bank anymore because they see doing so as inviting more 10/7 genocidal attacks. So that idea is dead in the water. So is a one-state solution, which would just be a civil war for the same reasons.

So, here's my proposed solution: Israel annexes the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians are given some other citizenship — Syrian, Algerian, whatever. They are also given permanent residency status, enabling them and their children to stay where they are. They are also free to go to their country of citizenship. The ones who want to stay under Israeli rule stay. The ones who can't stand living under Israeli rule can leave.

That means that Palestinians would get more rights than most Jews who immigrated to Israel had: stay where you are as a non citizen under rule by a different ethnicity, or move to a country that already is your same ethnicity has agreed to give you citizenship. If this is fair for Jews, it's fair for Palestinians.

I've heard a ton of Pro-Palestinians and antisemites say that ancient Israel is some sort of myth. They'll say things like "Jews want Israel because they think God gave it to them 3,000 years ago," rather than the obvious fact that Jews are from Israel and they wanted to go back to their homeland.

I am wondering how deep this goes. After all, ancient Israel was not just some place mentioned in the Bible. Alexander the Great conquered ancient Israel. So did Rome. Do they believe Alexander the Great and Rome are imaginary too? What's the logic here?

Curious if Pro-Palestinians/antisemites have a whole flat-earth type backstory to how everything we think about ancient history is imaginary or something.

Edit: As some people have pointed out, there is a whole lot of historical revisionism fantasy going on in the Pro-Palestinian/Antisemitic movements. I've heard the same people say things like "Cleopatra was black" and "Jesus was Palestinian." I'm curious if these are just individual unhinged racist fantasies, or if they actually add up to a complete flat-earth style worldview.