r/IsraelPalestine

A genuine question What more does Israel actually have to do for its actions to be called a genocide? What haven’t they done yet that doesn't make it a genocide? If what Israel actions are not genocide what do we call it then?

To be completely clear I condemn the Hamas attack on October 7th But it makes no sense that their actions are labeled terrorism while Israel's massive systematic destruction isn't. Surely when the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity such as starvation as a method of warfare and intentionally targeting civilians you cannot look at the scale of this and say it's just a "conflict" or "to destroy hamas"

Furthermore the scale of global legal consensus is massive major independent bodies like the UN CoI, CERD, UNSR, FIDH, Euro-Med Monitor, Amnesty International, IAGS, UNHR, the Lemkin Institute, PHRI and B'Tselem along side +800 genocide experts and dozens of countries have all accused Israel of committing or being complicit in genocide. You can't tell me it's just a simple "conflict" or to "destroy Hamas" when the entire global legal framework is sounding the alarm

when there is 73000+ Palestinians civilians killed mostly women and children including 21000+ children causing serious bodily or mental harm with 172000+ injured with permanent disabilities and deliberately inflicting conditions of life to destroy the Gazans through complete blockade on food water medicine fuel causing starvation of 2.3 million civilians and preventing births through destruction of reproductive health services maternity wards and high rates of miscarriages premature births and when there is 84% of hospitals in gaza are either destroyed, damaged or forced out of service, when every school in Gaza have been attacked and when the The UN Secretary General says nowhere is safe everywhere is a potential killing zone and when even schools, hospitals and designated shelters have been targeted this is NOT just a conflict

The same performative woke communists who claim all Israeli citizens are "genocidal babykillers" (note they are not even just talking about current IDF soldiers during the Gaza war, but all civilians).

The War on Terror (killed 4.5 million of which 1 million were direct military deaths) is much less justified than the Gaza war. After 9/11, the USA could have merely increased Airport Security & it would have been enough, as Al Qaeda was not ruling Canada or Mexico & the USA is not surrounded by enemies in all directions (like Hezbollah from the top & Houthis from the bottom, who started attacking on Oct 8). Israel had far more security reasons to start a war. Israel knew who (Hamas) did it & where they were. The USA didn't even know where Bin Laden was hiding & attacked 5 countries & turns out he was in a different country (Pakistan) living close to one of their military headquarters.

Yet the woke communists are not calling Graham Platner as "genocidal babykiller" for partaking in the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. In fact, recently, there have been many credible sexual assault allegations against him & the woke people in the comments are defending him (see today's Twitter posts). This is Bizarre, normally in the context of Israel, they gulp down even baseless conspiracies. But for Planter, even credible things they are defending.

No one forced Platner to join that war, unlike in the Vietnam War, where people were forced. The woke people don't care about him killing Middle East civilians. Even in the Gaza war, the communists don't care about the Levant Sunni Arabs (Palestinians), as is obvious from them defending Assad & Hezbollah butchering 600,000 Levant Sunni Arabs in Syria in the name of righteous "anti-imperialism" of Iran.

It seems to be subconscious antisemitism from the communists that they pretend to care so much about Gaza. That's why they don't care about anything Platner did, as they saw that he had a Nazi tattoo for many years (although he now claims he never knew what it was, his friends & ex-girlfriend confirmed that he had in the past jokingly referred to it as a Nazi tattoo many years ago). It seems that Tattoo alone is enough for the omni-cause woke people to justify anything he did in the past, including killing people in Iraq & Afghanistan.

These American Leftists claim they are "anti-American," but still, they seem to judge the USA with lower standards than Israel. They are American citizens, but they never call themselves "genocidal babykillers" by applying the same insanely stupid standards.

There are countless of posts about who is to be blamed.... and more debating when the Israel-Palestinian conflict started, what started it, who started it first, etc...

But my question is simply as follows:

In your view, who bears responsibility for resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict ? Why do you think they bear that responsibility ?

Article by The Economist

Israel’s global reputation has taken a battering. Since the start of its war in Gaza, which killed over 70,000 Palestinians, the country has been condemned by governments across the world for its disproportionate use of violence and its toleration of settler attacks on the West Bank. 

In Israel, such criticism is called unfair. The country’s defenders say the censure is dismissive of Israel’s right to self-defence following the October 7th attacks, in which Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 people.

Has Israel really been shunned by the international community? And—behind closed doors—do lots of governments deem the country too important to isolate? David Rennie, The Economist’s geopolitics editor, is joined by an expert panel to assess the reality of Israel’s standing.

Starting in 2018, Qatar began sending tens of millions of dollars a month into Gaza. Not through banks. In actual suitcases full of cash, driven across Israeli territory, with Israel's government signing off on it.

Why would Israel's own government allow money to flow into Hamas controlled Gaza?

Netanyahu's strategy, according to multiple former Israeli officials including former PM Ehud Olmert, was to keep Hamas and the Palestinian Authority divided and weak against each other. A strong Hamas in Gaza meant a weaker, less unified Palestinian movement overall, which meant less international pressure to negotiate toward Palestinian statehood. Olmert put it plainly in a 2023 interview: Bibi made a deal with Qatar and they started moving millions and millions of dollars to Gaza.

Over the years, this added up. Qatar sent more than 1.8 billion dollars total with Israeli security officials increasingly worried that even though the money was labeled humanitarian, it was freeing up other Hamas funds to be redirected into weapons and military buildup.

About a month before the October 7 attack, Israel actually asked Qatar to increase the payments to Hamas, after Hamas made threats about escalating violence.

Weeks before the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians in the country's history, Israeli officials were pushing for more money to flow toward the group that carried it out.

A Shin Bet investigation published in 2025 later concluded that Qatari funding, combined with Iranian support, helped Hamas build up its military capability over those years.

Netanyahu has denied the money funded the actual attack, arguing the October 7 attackers used cheap gear, sandals, old rifles, pickup trucks, and that weapons mainly came through smuggling tunnels from Sinai instead, That is worth including because it is his stated defense, and people should hear both sides and decide for themselves.

This is not a fringe claim. It is reported by CNN, the Times of Israel, Haaretz, and confirmed in Israel's own Shin Bet review. A policy that started as a way to stabilize Gaza and manage Palestinian politics ended up, by the accounts of Israel's own former officials, strengthening the exact group that carried out October 7.

What are the general thoughts on both sides?

I've been closely following the Palestinian cause since 2021 but in recent years something has changed. The more I study the history in an unbiased way without romanticizing either side the clearer it becomes that, after October 2023 many pro-Palestine started oversimplifying the narrative. Something that even though I'm against Israel I simply don’t agree with. It has almost turned into "Arabs/Palestinians have always been innocent from the beginning" which simply isn’t true. No people are saints the Israeli one isn’t either but one side being more wrong doesn’t change the fact that Palestinians also bear significant responsibility for the point we’ve reached today

To begin with many pro-Palestinian supporters still live in an echo chamber, constantly repeating claims like "Palestine is being ignored" "Israelis always receive sympathy" or "Celebs who support Israel are benefited" when that’s not true. Since 2023 Israelis have arguably faced far more public hatred than Palestinians while the Palestinian cause has received an extraordinary amount of global attention over the past three years far more than many other ongoing genocides. At the same time anyone who expresses sympathy for Israelis even if it’s only for Israeli civilian is often met with intense backlash. There’s also a common narrative that celebs who support Palestine are inevitably “canceled.” In reality, that has mostly happened to smaller public figures. Major celebs such as Angelina Jolie and many other high-profile artists have openly supported Palestine without suffering any meaningful damage to their careers. What bothers me is how this has become almost a trope that “if you support Palestine, some evil Zionist Jew Lobby will destroy your career" that simply isn’t how things work. If you’re influential enough and publicly support Palestine, chances are nothing will happen to your career. In fact several celebs with genuinely problematic past behavior ended up receiving more public sympathy after taking a pro-Palestinian stance

Now let’s talk about the historical side of the issue “Jews and Muslims lived in peace and harmony in Palestine before Israel” is a lie

There were already records of violence by Palestinian Arabs against Jewish communities at the beginning of the 20th century long before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 (such as the Hebron massacre in 1929) + in the historical Islamic world the dhimmi system treated Jews as second-class citizens. They paid special taxes (jizya) had clothing restrictions, could not bear arms and could not testify against Muslims in court. There was religious and cultural animosity, Palestine and the Arab world were never the multicultural paradise they sell out there. Ignoring this and saying that "all problems started after Israel" is intellectual dishonesty

The same goes for repeating that Jews are European colonizers, the Khazar myth about Ashkenazim or simply forgetting that Mizrahi/Sephardic Jews always had a continuous (and often oppressed) presence in the region

It’s also at least strange to note that even before 2023 there were practically no Jews living in Palestine/the Palestinian Authority. Unlike countries like Morocco, which once had hundreds of thousands of Jews, the Jewish presence in Palestine was minimal for centuries. This didn’t happen by chance

Plus the Arab world (including parts of Palestinian society) has its own serious problems especially with racism that seem to be ignored while all lenses are focused on Israel like the case of Ethiopian Jews being sterilized. Focusing on only one problem isn’t activism it’s being selective. This also explains why many Arabs don’t care much about Sudan or Congo. I watched a documentary where the term “Abeed” (slave) for Afro-Arabs is still used pejoratively in several countries and many Arab countries still practice slavery. I don’t see people talking about this even though "everyone should be free" it only seems to focus on the Palestine problem because there’s a common enemy the Jews (because a Jewish-majority country does bother many Arabs) and the West

Continuing with this inconvenient side that many ignore the majority of Palestinians openly celebrated the October 7 attacks. Videos of people handing out sweets in the streets, fireworks and explicit support circulated widely. Polls by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) showed high approval for the attack shortly afterward (reaching 71% in some 2024 surveys) even with the enormous suffering in Gaza support for Hamas remained significant for months (above 30-40% in various polls) and a large portion still resists the idea of disarming the group

International aid of billions of dollars goes mostly into the pockets of corrupt leaders of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas (many of them billionaires living in Qatar or in mansions) while the population lives in misery. Other Arabs even if they don’t speak loudly due to Muslim solidarity criticize Palestinians a lot for this. It’s no wonder they had civil wars and were expelled or massacred in countries like Jordan (Black September) and Lebanon

All of this leads me to see that a significant part of Palestinian society supports or tolerates terrorism against civilians not just "resistance" of course there are also Israelis who support brutal excesses both sides have radicals. But what shocks me most are the Palestinian Authority’s school textbooks (also used in UNRWA schools in Gaza)

•  Classic antisemitism (Jews portrayed as liars, greedy, controllers of the world)

•  Glorification of terrorist “martyrs”;

•  Encouragement of jihad and martyrdom

Reports from organizations like IMPACT-se, the European Union and other independent institutes have documented this for years despite repeated promises of reform. They are raising entire generations to hate Jews and see the destruction of Israel as a sacred goal. Not everyone is like this but the problem is real

Not every Palestinian supports Hamas (especially now with the destruction in Gaza support has dropped in some recent polls) Israel has also made many mistakes and I will never stop criticizing the expansion of settlements, disproportionate use of force and the prolonged blockade but in the West many people place all the blame on Israel ignoring the radical Islamic religious component that would not accept living in peace with Jews

What bothers me most is seeing how this has normalized antisemitism. Antisemitic attacks have surged worldwide (in the US, Europe, Canada) the highest peak in decades according to police and Jewish organizations. Many pro-Palestinian supporters make the mistake of repeating the old tropes:

•  "They control the media, governments and banks"

•  Comparisons of Israel to the Nazis (which minimizes the Holocaust - No genocide should be compared to another especially considering that many of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust had never even set foot in Israel. It’s not as if Palestinians are being ignored. The Palestinian cause has received an enormous amount of global attention much like the Holocaust did in its time)

•  Stars of David in trash cans, graffiti saying “f* the Jews" attacks on synagogues and ordinary Jews (not just Israel)

The Palestinian cause today has become an umbrella that attracts everyone from leftists who see Jews as "white oppressors" radical Islamists to neo-Nazis. Many people jump on the emotional bandwagon without studying the real complexity. This simplification is causing real suffering for Jews in the diaspora and is making the debate toxic. We need more honesty

Long time lurker, first time poster, here to ask folks here (particularly Israelis) about the West Bank, namely why Israel would want to annex it as part of a one state solution. Often there is a sentiment that the Israeli government wants to annex this part of Palestine, but this seems to me to be entirely advantageous for Palestine.

Now, I understand the cultural and historical significance of the region for Jews as it’s the site of ancient Israelite Kingdoms. I understand why the specific region is important.

What I don’t understand is demographics. Whatever about annexation obviously being illegal, it doesn’t even seem practical from the Israeli standpoint. If Israel annexed the West Bank, the Arab population of Israel would instantly increase by somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 million (for some reason there are varying reports of Arab population in the West Bank, 2.7m-3.3m). What I didn’t realize until recently is Israel counts the West Bank settlers as part of Israeli population, so the Jewish population would remain approximately 7.2 million. Arab population would increase to over 5 million.

That still leaves a sizeable Jewish majority, but doing this would raise the Arab population of Israel from 20% to 40%. Why would Israelis support this demographic shift? Why would the Israeli government (as it currently stands) do this when the goal is to maintain the Jewish majority of the population in Israel? This is why Israel would never annex Gaza, it seems like simple math to me.

From my own social circle, I have heard both Jewish and Palestinian peers use arguments that attempt to portray the other population as foreign to the land. For example, some of my Palestinian peers have claimed that Ashkenazi Jews are primarily descended from the Khazars. They have also claimed that Israel restricts DNA testing because the government supposedly knows that Ashkenazi Jews are not actually descended from the ancient Israelites, even though commercial DNA tests can be purchased internationally.

Likewise, a few of my Jewish peers have claimed that most Palestinians are relatively recent immigrants from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, or North Africa. Others have argued that Palestinians primarily descend from the Arab conquerors who arrived during the Islamic conquests rather than from the local Levantine populations (i.e., Jews, Samaritans, Levantine Pagans, Levantine Christians) that already inhabited the region.

Out of all my Palestinian peers, only 2 out of the 14 have accepted that they're related to the Jews. The first one essentially believes that because Jews and Palestinians are related, a 1SS composed of only people with Canaanite ancestry should live in the land (Essentially blood quantum arguments). The second admits that Palestinians are related to the Jewish people. However, he believes that Jews should abandon their cultures and religion and convert to Islam because he views the Jewish religion and culture as promoting narcissistic behavior. As a disclaimer, he also believes that the entire world should eventually become Muslim, and he is one of the very few Muslims I personally know who holds views this extreme.

Out of my Jewish peers, some of them believe they share ancestry with the Palestinians; however, a few of them believe that their Arab culture has corrupted them to be barbarians and wish for them to become more rooted in their pre-Arab roots, including Palestinian Christians. However, if they want to maintain their Arab culture, they need to leave Gaza and the West Bank because they believe Arab culture is inherently antisemitic and thus only elongates this conflict. In contrast, I have Jewish peers who believe that their shared ancestry makes this conflict inherently sad, as they believe the Israeli government is killing their own kin. In addition, they wish they could live together in the Land of their forefathers someday, while ensuring that neither people abandons their cultures or religions.

As for the rest of my Palestinian and Jewish peers who reject the idea that the two populations share ancestry, they essentially repeat the same arguments I mentioned earlier, despite modern secular scholarship saying otherwise. I suspect that some of them may, deep down, recognize that the two populations are historically related. However, accepting that relationship can become emotionally difficult when it conflicts with the political narratives they have inherited from their families, communities, or religious leaders. It is also much easier to repeat a conspiracy theory that portrays the other group as completely foreign than to accept that the people you view as your enemy may also be closely related to you.

What are your thoughts?

Also, if you are wondering why I tend to socialize with Zionists, anti-Zionists, religious conservatives, secular leftists, and people with other conflicting political views, it is because I do not believe that surrounding myself only with people who agree with me would help me understand the conflict any better, as I believe remaining in echo chambers only stagnates your political development because you are rarely forced to examine your own assumptions or explain why you believe what you believe.

Some Pro Israelis are like toxic partners who abuse and cripple the hell put of your existence but play victim.

Has Israel genuinely crippled lives of Palestinians in the West Bank to this extent?

As a British Indian Hindu, I want to ask you something and I beg you be honest.

I can’t stop crying. I can’t stop crying at the plight of Palestinians. To what extent has Israel completely and utterly crippled the lives of Palestinians?

From what I am seeing, if it true that Israel seems to have made the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank worse than death. It seems like Palestinians have NO hope to better themselves. They seem to live like animals in a cage. Israel has trashed their existence, Israeli settlers burn fields, checkpoints stop all commutes. Is it true that Palestinians in the West Bank have NO scope to better themselves at all?

Israel has limits exports and imports- if it true that there is no scope for Palestinian economy to develop? Is it true that Israelis lives lushly in the settlements. Israeli settlement towns have most of the fertile and beautiful green land whereas Palestinians are forced to live in landfill sites like conditions.

Israelis dump all their trash in Palestinian areas. Some places in Hebron literally have nets because Israeli settlers throw their trash onto Palestinian markets.

Meanwhile Israel betters itself and lives in a beautiful country whilst the Palestinians in their enclaves live their decrepit existence.

To what extent do you guys feel crippled by Israel?

It seems there is no space left on these exhausted enclaves?

The future of Israel is looking bright, because the sun will be trying to kill everyone.

Artificial intelligence will free humanity from boring work: spreadsheets, coding, writing emails that begin with “hope you’re well.” This is excellent news for the Middle East, because once humans no longer have to waste time being productive, they can return to the region’s most beloved hobby: war.

Expect advanced new AI systems to handle all the boring stuff like logistics and propaganda, allowing people to focus on the truly human parts of conflict: paranoia, violence and revenge.

Meanwhile, climate change will be doing its part to simplify urban planning. Future real estate listings may read: “Charming two-bedroom underwater bunker, sea view, briefly habitable between 3:00 and 3:12 a.m.”

Beyond the region, the West will continue its national self-disassembly through low birthrates, cultural decadence, and ideological culture wars. The developing world, having been promised progress and stability from the West will then discover that the global system they relied on was held together by elderly German engineers that retired.

So what will save humanity?

Artificial superintelligence, obviously.

A god in the machine may solve all human problems. Unfortunately, there remains a small technical concern: the superintelligence may look at humanity and conclude that the most efficient solution is subtraction.

Still, one must remain optimistic. This is Israel, after all.

So there’s this clip circulating of Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks saying Israeli settlers are raping Palestinian girls coming out of public bathrooms. I’ve had two different people send it to me telling me to be careful. I’m a Palestinian woman living in a small town near Ramallah in the West Bank.
If we're talking about settlers doing this kind of dirt, it’s the Hilltop Youth. I truly fucking hate them. They’ve made life in my town unbearable. I’m stuck in a position where I have to be fair to them, because this whole "bathroom rapist" claim is absolute bullshit.
Two minutes of critical thinking exposes this. Gaza doesn’t have settlers. The West Bank doesn’t have public bathrooms. I’ve been to every square inch of this place. If there’s a public restroom hiding somewhere, maybe it’s in the dead center of Nablus or Hebron—which are Area A, meaning a settler stepping foot there has an immediate death wish. Area C is empty farmland and Bedouins in tents. I know there are no bathrooms there because there is nothing there. The edges of our Area B villages touch Area C, and the people there are deeply traditional, conservative farmers. If anything remotely like this happened, it would be plastered all over local Telegram channels and the news instantly. It has never happened. Not once a decade. Never.
The Hilltop Youth’s brand of evil is land-centric. They aren't roaming around looking for opportunistic sexual crimes; their explicit goal is to terrorize us into leaving Area C so they can steal the land. They burn our olive groves, vandalize solar panels, smash water tanks, throw rocks, and sometimes they hurt and kill people.
When they venture into Area B towns like mine, they don't loiter around nonexistent restrooms. They do high-speed, masked hit-and-run raids on ATVs and dirt bikes, doing maximum damage and leave before things get too hot. If settlers attack a Palestinian farmer during the olive harvest, a caravan of trucks packed with local Palestinian guys will instantly flood the zone until the military is forced to break it up.
The Israeli military knows it’s a sensitive issue. Their own rules say only female officers can arrest Palestinian girls. It’s not because of chivalry it’s because they know that putting hands on a conservative girl in public is a cultural landmine that will instantly start a riot.
Sexual humiliation and systemic abuse are rampant inside Israeli military prisons. But this specific viral rumor is completely made up. That’s exactly why these absurd stories sabotage the Palestinian cause. When a high-profile lie gets thoroughly debunked, it hands a victory to our critics. They will take that one fake story and use it to cast doubt on the mountain of verified documented human rights abuses that are actually happening. Life under occupation is already a nightmare. We don't need to fake the horror when the undeniable truth is damning enough.

"Khaybar, Khaybar, ya yahud! Jaish Muhammad soufa yaʿoud!" is a chant used by HAMAS to taunt Jews meaning "Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaybar_Khaybar_ya_yahud

Here's Jewish woman Safiya's story in Khaybar according to authentic hadiths and Muhammad's earliest biography (everything cited and quoted verbatim):

Muhammad killed Safiya's father and people, tortured her husband Kinana for treasure by placing fire on Kinana's chest until he was nearly dead, then beheaded him. Then he took Safiya because she looked pretty, and had sex with her in a tent on the 3 day journey back from Khaibar to Medina as a companion circled the tent with a sword because he "was afraid for you [Muhammad] with this woman [Safiya] for you have killed her father, her husband, and her people." (Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah, p. 517)

>"Khaibar is destroyed...The Prophet had their warriors killed, their offspring and women taken as captives. Safiya was among the captives. She first came in the share of Dihya Al-Kalbi, but later she belonged to the Prophet."
Sahih Bukhari 4200

>"Kinana al-Rabi [Safiya's husband] who had the custody of the treasure of Banu Nadir, was brought to the apostle ... the apostle gave orders 'Torture him until you extract what he has.' So he kindled a fire on his chest until he was nearly dead. Then the apostle delivered him to Muhammad b. Maslama and he struck off his head."
Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah, p. 515

>"The beauty of Safiya bint Huyai whose husband had been killed while she was a bride, was mentioned to Allah's Apostle. The Prophet selected her for himself."
Sahih Bukhari 4211

>"The Prophet stayed with Safiya bint Huyai for three days on the way from Khaibar, where he consummated his marriage with her."
Sahih Bukhari 4212

>"The apostle passed the night with her in a tent of his. Abu Ayyub… passed the night girt with his sword, guarding the apostle and going round the tent… 'I was afraid for you with this woman for you have killed her father, her husband, and her people.'"
Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah, p. 517

I've posted this argument along with others on this website (with linked sources): https://islamsproblems.com/muhammad-safiya-family-killed/

This question is largely intended for Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. I am aware that the Jews and Samaritans both descend from the ancient Israelites, although their communities developed separately and have significant religious differences. I am also aware that most Samaritans today live either in Holon or on Mount Gerizim near Nablus. One major difference between Jews and Samaritans is that most Jewish communities lived in the diaspora for much of the past 2,000–2,500 years. In contrast, the Samaritans largely remained in the Holy Land, where they continued to live alongside the local Levantine populations that would eventually become modern Palestinians.

I am familiar with the Samaritan YouTuber Abood Cohen, who has explained that many members of his community try to remain politically neutral in the conflict because they are a small ethnoreligious minority. However, there have also been Samaritans who served in the IDF, while Nader Sadaqa notably joined the PFLP during the Second Intifada. In addition, Cohen has expressed in some of his YouTube videos that he views his people as a bridge between Jews and Palestinians because Samaritans share an ancient Israelite heritage with the Jews while also sharing language, geography, and centuries of coexistence with the Palestinians.

I do not personally know any Israelis or Palestinian nationals, but I have asked Jewish and Palestinian peers in my social circle about their views on the Samaritans. From what I have gathered, my Jewish peers generally see Samaritans as belonging to the same broader Israelite family and cultural tradition. However, a small minority of my more religiously observant Jewish peers refer to them as Kutim and view them as a mixed population descended partly from Israelites and partly from peoples resettled in the region by the Assyrian Empire after the fall of the northern Kingdom of Israel.

Amongst my Palestinian peers, their views are more varied; some of them see them as fellow Palestinians, especially the ones who continue to live in Nablus. In addition, they don't exclusively see them by their Samaritan background but as fellow Arabs who so happen to have a different religion from the Palestinian Christians and Muslims. In contrast, a few of my peers view them with some skepticism because they see the Samaritans’ cultural and historical proximity to the Jewish people, along with the service of some Samaritans in the IDF, as a potential sign of political alignment with Israel.

I understand that the opinions of my own social circle are anecdotal and may not reflect the views of Israelis or Palestinians more broadly. Therefore, I am curious about how Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs on this sub generally view the Samaritan community. Have you personally interacted with Samaritans, and if so, what have those interactions been like?

Palestinian nationalism is fascism with anticolonial aesthetics.

I've done reading into the British mandate period and specifically Arab nationalism of the time, and it is crystal clear to me that Palestinian native indigeneity claims are basically volkisch nationalism that has been reified into postcolonial vocabularies.

For those who don't know, Palestinian nationalism in the interwar period was under a broader umbrella of pan-Arab nationalism. It was spearheaded by Sati al Husri, an intellectual who set up the Iraqi and Syrian education systems. He imagined the Arab nation as a mystic primordialist organism where the individual should dissolve into the collective will of the Arab ummah. Arab nationalism took a particularly fascist turn in the 1930s in Baghdad, where the al-Muthanna Club read and disseminated Italian and German fascist texts. All of the leaders of Palestinian nationalism frequented these circles in the lead up to the Arab revolt. The Palestine Arab Party, the largest in Palestine in the 1930s headed by the Grand Mufti and Jamal al-Husayni, was ideologically and organisationally inspired by Italian fascism and even named its paramilitary youth wing 'the Nazi Scouts.' The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was printed and disseminated frequently in Palestine by the PAP and all, yes I mean all, of the popular Palestinian newspapers from 1926 onward.

So the 'anticolonialism' of Palestinian nationalism in this period does not look like traditional colonial contexts. It looks like the 'anticolonialism' of too many Jewish migrants parasytically infecting the Arab Volk in a secret Great Replacement conspiracy of World Jewry to destroy nations/Islamic civilisation and enslave/ethnically cleanse them. If you look at the structure of Palestinian historiography today, it's the exact same idea. The 'zionists' with a secret plan to destroy the 'natives' through demographic manipulation. The coloniser isn't defined by structural relation in a stratified racial regime. It's defined by the boundaries of the imagined nation. The general will of the volk. Even looking at the preeminance of the fellah peasant in the historiography looks less like actual Marxist analysis and more like a scientification of a volkisch myth. The romantic peasant tied to the land, the olive tree, the native keffiyeh, under siege from the rootless foreign jews who desecrate the land with industrial methods and ecocide.

I'm convinced the entire narrative of the mandate period is an academised dogwhistle for fascist antimigrant politics, where regional economic pressures were displaced onto the migrant scapegoat.

Who tf looks at 5,000 jewish refugees a year arriving to Palestine and concludes 'ah yes, this is all part of the secret plot to destroy the Arab nation.'

Jews are not allowed to use the ugly force required to win a defensive war — and that is racist.

Other countries kill people constantly. Turkey, China, Russia, Iran-backed groups, cartels, militias, governments all over the world. There is horrific violence inside societies too. Do you know the violent crime rate in Memphis? Presuming OCHA statistics are accurate, Memphis violence is something like 5x the amount of violence in J/S.

And yet nobody is harassing Turkish or Russian people around the world over it. Nobody is blaming random people from Memphis for “Memphisite violence.” Nobody is trying to ban them from restaurants, campuses, beaches, conferences, or public life.

How strange that nobody seems to see collective blame as OK... except when it comes to Jews. Suddenly a war across the world becomes a perfectly acceptable reason to harass Jewish students, Jewish doctors, Jewish artists, Jewish diners, Jewish businesses. And this connects to the obsessional attention pattern... both are happening for similar reasons. They are connected.

Part of the attention is political.  Morally condemning Israel is useful as a way to attack the U.S. by proxy, destabilize the West, distract from poor behavior by other leaders or groups, and unite groups that otherwise have very little in common besides hating Israel/Jews.

Part of it is profitable. NGOs, activists, academics, influencers, and political organizations all benefit from keeping people in a permanent state of moral emergency.

And the reason Israel is so easily targeted for profit, and the reason that moral targeting so easily converts into harming random Jews and Israelis, is ancient. There is a huge reservoir of anti-Jewish narrative sitting there already: Christian Jew-blame, Islamic dhimmi hierarchy, Nazi & Soviet antizionism, and ordinary human resentment and the need for someone to blame.

The dhimmi piece matters because the old deal was: Jews can be tolerated as long as they are dependent, inferior, and protected by someone else. They can be pitied, mourned, studied, or used as proof of someone else’s tolerance. But Jews with sovereignty? Jews with borders? Jews with an army? Jews who defend themselves and win?  That threatens every ideology that aspires to become universal and can't tolerate disagreement or independence.

So no, I do not think the obsession is really about human rights. I think a lot of it is discomfort with Jews leaving their assigned subordinate role.

In the West, people are trained to see Muslims as less powerful and Jews as “part of us,” so they often miss the older MENA power dynamic: Muslims were dominant, Jews were tolerated as subordinate minorities, and Jewish safety depended on someone else’s permission. The dhimmi arrangement was protection in exchange for inferiority.

So when Jews have borders, an army, sovereignty, and the ability to fight back, it breaks an old script. Westerners then mistake the obsessive attention to Jewish military action for proof of unique Jewish depravity, when often it reflects something much older: rage at Jewish independence and Jewish self-defense.

If you are Jewish, Israeli, or Palestinian, of course this conflict matters to you directly.

But if you are none of those things, and this is the conflict you obsess over while ignoring far larger or closer horrors, then maybe you are not standing against oppression.

Maybe you are participating in the moral apartheid of Jews.

Just some thoughts I was having this morning. Curious what others think.

It has been 1,000 days since the beginning of Israel's destruction of Gaza, which experts, international organizations, and the UN commission of inquiry characterize as genocide. The government media office in Gaza has published chilling data regarding the situation in the occupied territory.

The entire territory, which has been under Israeli occupation since 1967 and under an Israeli blockade since 2007, measures 365 square kilometers. Prior to the mass killings of recent years, approximately 2.3 million Palestinians lived there, with children making up half of the population.

Through ground incursions, attacks, and forced displacement orders, Israeli forces have occupied approximately 80 percent of Gaza. On Wednesday, Israeli Minister Eli Cohen stated that Israel directly controls nearly 70 percent of Gaza, but intends to expand this to "100 percent."

According to the government media office in Gaza, more than 90 percent of this Palestinian coastal strip has been destroyed by Israeli bombardment. In the process, Israel has used approximately 223,000 tons of explosives, which is 16 times more than the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima in 1945.

The number of people killed in the attacks since October 2023 is at least 74,066, a figure that includes 9,500 missing individuals. Many of them are buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings. At least 173,514 people have been wounded.

Israeli forces have also killed more than 21,500 children, including 1,022 infants under one year of age.

At least 262 journalists, 145 civil defense personnel, and 928 athletes were also killed, according to the media office data cited by Al Jazeera.

A ceasefire was agreed upon last October, but Israel violates it almost daily. Since then, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, the Israeli military has killed 1,053 Palestinians there, including more than 350 women and children. During this period, more than 3,400 people have been wounded.

Israeli forces are keeping all border crossings into and out of Gaza closed.

The United Nations warned last month that 17 hospitals in Gaza remain non-functional due to a shortage of basic necessities resulting from the blockade.

Hundreds of thousands of people are forced to live in tent camps lacking basic infrastructure or among the rubble of bombarded buildings.

Israel is on trial at the International Court of Justice in The Hague over allegations of genocide, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stand accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.