Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib refused to apologize Wednesday for saying on Tuesday that Israel is to blame for the hospital explosion that day in Gaza, an accusation that sparked political backlash against her from Republicans as Israel denies fault.
Tlaib joined thousands of protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza during a solidarity rally hosted by the left-leaning group Jewish Voice for Peace at the National Mall. She was visibly emotional, at times pausing her speech to openly weep and criticizing lawmakers who have not backed a ceasefire resolution.
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Glad to see somebody that gets it. If one side intentionally slaughters civilians, does the other side get a free pass to do the same? Palestine deserves to be free, but how many civilian adults and children in both Palestine and Israel should be sacrificed upon the altar of war to get it? 500,000? 1,000,000? If someone claims to care about the people and not just the outcome, the answer should be zero. Period. Doesn’t matter which side.
Accepting this stance doesn’t magically fix the problem in the middle east, like so many trolls are glib to point out, but you can condemn the actions of Hamas and Israel without having a solution to their “thousand year grudge” (which starts with a ceasefire, anyway). I may not know how to fix things, but I know that what’s happening is wrong, and that’s at least better than the people who think, “[My chosen side] is justified killing [opposing side’s] civilians, because they had it done to them!”
Fuck. That.
If Israel stopped fighting tomorrow, what do you think would happen?
Would it get its civilian hostages back?
Or would Hamas just set up another invasion and kill more civilians?
Defense does not necessitate apartheid or ethnic cleansing.
I never implied it did.
It does, however, require border security. Most countries have borders, and most countries that have borders with hostile forces try to enforce security at those borders, rather than just letting people come in and rape their civilians all willy-nilly.
That’s not called “apartheid” anywhere else in the world, only when people are looking for a word to demonize Jews with.
You did, because you stated that:
Implying that the only thing Israel is doing is fighting. It’s not, it’s doing a hell of a lot more than that. It’s doing apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
If you’re saying that Israel should stop doing those things and instead only focus on defense then I agree with you. But you’re acting like Isreal is completely innocent.
Yeah, that’s not true.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_apartheid
The term was started in South Africa, being critical of the white people in charge.
How so?
I’m just saying that the calls for a ceasefire are absurd. Israel should be careful, Israel should follow international law, Israel should not start engaging in apartheid or ethnic cleansing (I’m quite happy it doesn’t). Settlements are bad, it should absolutely stop expanding settlements and offer land swaps (again) to try to resolve any existing disputes.
But Israel should not just lay down its arms and let Hamas keep the hostages, and try to use its words to negotiate with terrorists who openly and proudly want to wipe every Jew off the face of the earth, that is not a reasonable concept.
Apartheid occurred within the borders of South Africa. Israel enforces its borders, the same way the United States enforces its borders, and South Korea enforces its borders, and Egypt enforces its borders, and every other country enforces its borders. Again, enforcing your borders is not referred to as apartheid anywhere else in the world—only in Israel, because people want any opportunity they can get to accuse Jews of being evil racists.
Israel has a divided judicial system and Palestinian defenders are punished more severely than Israeli defenders. Here is an article about it by a group of Israeli human rights activists.
Have you heard of a country that didn’t have military court or military tribunals? Can you name such a country? Is the country in the room with us now?
It’s not a perfect system, and yes there are racist assholes in the system, but of course Israel doesn’t use its intranational civilian courts to try Palestinians in Palestine, that wouldn’t make any sense.
Every country has military courts, every country has some racist somewhere in the process, you’re going to have to try harder to explain what it is about Israel that makes it so singularly evil.
Whataboutism, but I’ll bite. No, I haven’t heard of a country that colonized inhabited land and unequally punished the people they oppressed and then didn’t need to concede that what they were doing was wrong. Weird how that epiphany always comes after the colonists get what they want tho. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.
Military courts are supposed to govern your armed forces, not any rando you don’t like.
A Palestine state does not exist unless you equate Palestine to the Gaza prison camp guarded by Israel and maybe parts of the West Bank that Israel occupies against international law since I-don’t-even-know-how-long. A convenient excuse for their racist system.
What it boils down to is that in a Zionist state, like the Likud strives for Israel to be, Jewish law only applies to Jews and not to the “gentile”.
I always laugh when people fall over themselves trying to claim Israel isn’t an apartheid state. It’s basically matches the textbook definition of an apartheid state at this point. Even the many Israelis with a conscience call it out as an apartheid state. There’s no legitimate uncertainty there, only propaganda, lies, and ignorance.
So Egypt is an apartheid state too, right?
And Jordan?
What are Israel’s borders? It seems like it conveniently places its borders in one place when it wants to selectively disenfranchise 5 of the 7 millions Arabs, and another when it wants to place settlements.
Where exactly has Israel done this recently? Attacking someone across your border because they’re killing people near yours is war.
See, Ukraine attacking places inside Russia lol. Justifiably so.
They’ve been doing it for decades.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution
As for the more recent:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/13/civilians-trapped-in-gaza-cant-escape-israels-siege.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing
Civilians are getting killed and forced out of their homes, all based on race. It’s an apartheid, and an ethnic cleansing.
The apartheid accusation is solid, nothing to say here.
But ethnic cleansing?
There are 2 million arab israeli citizens… not very homogenous. That’s almost 1 in 5 citizens.
The degree to which a nation is homogeneous is not the qualifying factor for whether an action is considered ethnic cleansing. It is instead the effect, and the effect of forcing Palestinians out of their homes, out of Gaza, counts as ethnic cleansing.
It’s also not just based on race, it’s also got to do with religion.
About 18% of Israelis are Muslim, and they have the full rights of any other Israeli citizen. They serve in Knesset and in the IDF, there are Muslim celebrities, there are Muslim academics, they’re free to practice their religion as they see fit.
Actually, the only thing you can really call “apartheid” in Israel, if you want to be a dick about it, is the temple mount. Only Muslims are allowed to pray there, Jews are forbidden.
The last instance I know of where Israel was accused of “forcing Palestinians out of their homes” is the Sheikh Jarrah situation, where Palestinian tenants stopped paying rent to their Jewish landlords for over a decade and Israeli courts were really slow about processing their evictions. Like, really slow. For obvious reasons. And then, just before they decided, mounting tensions led to riots. You might complain about the property decisions from decades before that, but the tenants agreed to the rent terms in the early 90s, so framing this as “ethnic cleansing” is pretty nuts.
That’s not true.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution
Yeah. Those decisions are exactly what people are talking about when people call it apartheid. And those decisions have never stopped, it’s been happening ever since the Israeli-Palistinian conflict started.
When somebody comes in, says they own your home, and then try to kick you out because of your race/religion, that is apartheid.
“Agreed” is a strong word to use when the alternative is homelessness.
It is the intentional homogenization of a region, dispelling people from their homes that they’ve lived in since their birth. That is by definition ethnic cleansing.
You are kidding, right?
Gaza is basically an open air prison. Do they control their own borders?
If Hamas stops fighting, does Palestine get freedom and self determination?
Actually, if the extremists don’t gain control- yes. There have been several instances when they have been close to peace and even a two state solution… But then the terrorism starts.
If both sides stop fighting and start working toward peace, sure. I’d note that those prior peace deals have usually been completely shit for Palestinians
It’s not going to end the blockade of gaza or the occupation of the west bank overnight, but Israel withdrew from Gaza unilaterally in 2005, Gaza was pretty free, and that backfired hard for everybody involved. Hamas took advantage of the freedom of they had to dramatically ramp up rocket power.
The Olmert deal was a big opportunity for peace, but before either party could actually negotiate it, mounting terrorism gave Netanyahu a huge boost in support and he obviously wasn’t nearly as friendly. And obviou
Peace is a process. Trust is a process. There’s obviously no way Israelis will trust the PA while Hamas is still the majority party. There needs to be some kind of good faith on behalf of Palestinian leadership, doesn’t there?
This war is obviously not helping anybody, especially towards building that process. Israel is never going to say “oh, they killed thousands of us, and don’t want to stop? guess we’ll just end the blockade and let them have all the weapons they want!”
I don’t think I fundamentally disagree with you. Hamas aren’t helping Palestinians and I don’t think Likud are helping Israelis.
I’m sorry but I read what you say and it sounds like you and others are taking the easy path of calling for peace while not acknowledging that there is no real way for there to be peace. How can Israel have peace when there is an organization that unequivocally demands their complete destruction. Every call for ceasefire seems simultaneously a call that Israel returns to the status quo of 100s of rockets launched per day and the threat of another invasion and raping of their civilians. What would you have them do? They’re a sovereign nation, they simply won’t roll over and die because it’s convenient for the Middle East. I have so far refused to argue for ceasefire on the belief that Israel is defending itself from an existential threat. I continue to think that’s the case and I don’t see what’s changed. Everyone abhorrs innocents dying, but on my view, a call for ceasefire is a call that Israeli innocents die in place of Palestinians. If innocents are going to die either way, I don’t understand why we should not spend that blood trying to destroy Hamas. In the long run, when the numbers are tallied, it may truly be that this would be the quickest way to minimize the death of innocents, yet there are those who offer no solution and demand Israel stop their actions for the sake of innocents, yet make no acknowledgment that many more innocents may end up dying in the long run as a result. If I care about innocents, I don’t see how I can support that right now.
I think the primary issue is that “destroying Hamas” and “killing a hell of a lot of Palestinians” currently has a large overlap and the Israeli mindset of large amounts of collateral damage/death being acceptable is not shared by most of the rest of the world, even though they’re experiencing the same on a smaller mindset.
The pendulum swings the other way and there are absolutely bad faith actors out there (and on here) who have no problem with Israel continuing to take a barrage of rockets on a regular basis, because they either have no skin in the game or genuinely want Israel as an entity to collapse. They aren’t helpful here either.
Historically speaking, land claim issues involved one side stomping out the other. But that’s pretty much frowned upon today (not that has stopped Russia but, yeah, that’s another topic). This is still the most likely outcome here and will ultimately favor the larger, better funded Israel - it doesn’t make it right in any sense, though, but that’s frankly just what is going to happen eventually. None of the countries complaining are interested in actually helping the people on the ground in Palestine, on either side, because they are more useful as a political tool if left in the wastes to perish as a symbol
I’d argue it has *very little" overlap in the minds of Israelis. I’ve heard three people in a very conservative small town in the US discuss the latter, which is absolutely three too many. The lion’s share of Jews here—yes, Jews in a conservative town in the US—are very actively hoping for the best outcome possible for Palestinian civilians (even though we know they would never forgive Israel for destroying Hamas, even if it happened via magic bullet with no collateral damage).
Yes, a loud, dickish miniority of Israelis are calling for genocide, and yes, some of them will make it into the IDF, and do something horrible. That’s terrifying. Yes, Netanyahu sucks, fuck Netanyahu—although he is not calling for genocide, although he’s absolutely continued just about civilian-friendly policy the IDF ever had, he’s moved farther and farther to the right of Israeli politics. But the IDF, as an organization, is really still doing its best to weed them out, to control them, and to protect civilians while it goes after Hamas.
This is why Israel is trying to evacuate civilians from Gaza City. But people call that ethnic cleansing… And meanwhile, Israel has evacuated its own civilians from the south and from the Lebanese border, but nobody said Hamas and Lebanon are engaged in ethnic cleansing. Why the fuck would you not evacuate people from a war zone?
Because Hamas likes to use people at human shields.
Israel warns Hamas what building it’s going to strike, and when, and urges them to evacuate civilians from that building. And Hamas refuses. So Israel does its “roof knocking” if it thinks there’s a chance there might still be civilians in a building that’s firing rockets, trying to warn civilians again, and its critics say that “roof knocking” is somehow a war crime. They’re trying their hardest not to kill civilians, and Hamas is trying its hardest to make them martyrs!
No other army warns its enemy of what building it’s going to strike and when. That’s not a thing armies do. They don’t share intelligence, say “hey, I know you’re firing your weapons from this exact building, please stop.”
People have no idea… they should look at the vietnam war and see what indiscriminate bombing looks like…
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/16/middleeast/israel-palestinian-evacuation-orders-invs/index.html
Sad to hear. However, we’re talking about innocents dying and what can be done to protect them. I argued more innocents die in the long run if Hamas is not destroyed. To allow such an organization to exist just beyond your borders, is to allow innocents to die every year and that tally never stops increasing. If you need to kill the cancer in your body, you end up destroying good cells in the process, yet you do it anyways to save yourself from that cancer.
Which I keep telling people, so far Israel has shown more restraint than any other nation which would have leveled Gaza within the first few hundred rockets. Israel is going to spend even more of its blood preforming a ground invasion. Those are innocents dying too, surely. They didn’t ask for this enemy or this war. I still support them, because there is no compromise that can be had with Hamas.
It’s true that self-defense doesn’t give Israel the right to indiscriminately destroy all Palestinians. But, outside of the online rhetoric, it seems they’ve been very clear about the target of their war and they repeatedly are taking steps to attack that target specifically. I just read an article from a Palestinian journalist returning to her home in defiance of Israel’s warning to evacuate. These Palestinians quite literally are supporting Hamas, because they are willfully standing in front of Israel’s aimed attacks. It’s sad to see, but if I believe in Israel’s right to self-defense, it means supporting them when they destroy those who defend Hamas.
Edit: correction, more bombs dropped in 1 year of the war
Israel has dropped more bombs in this latest “offensive” than in the US did in the entire war in Afghanistan.
More restraint my hole.
Also Israel has no right to preemptive self defence because this level of damage and the threat Israel faces would not meet the Caroline test.
Palestine has the right to resist occupation under the Geneva convention but I don’t see any Zionists making sure that right isn’t trampled on.
I believe the bomb count is not the entire Afghanistan, but any given year of the Afghanistan war iirc that being discussed on PBS News Hour last night.
Thanks, added the correction.
Np. It’s still way too much. And at this rate, maybe it will exceed the entire Afghanistan war.
you’re right, there should be no preemptive self defense, they should wait for hamas to slaughter hundreds and hundreds of their citizens before bombing anyone.
No need to wait, that already happened.
Aww did someone tell you that running a genocidal apartheid state would be easy and have no risks?
What poor genocide apologists.
A figure you chose specifically because it sounds extreme. What matters is not the amount of bombs, as you well know, but the damage inflicted with those bombs. If you have to resort to extremities to make your point, do you really have a point worth making?
It is extreme…
4,200 murdered, 1 million people displaced all in 10 days. (From a UN article dated the 17th, probably not the current total)
There’s an esrimated 50,000 pregnant women now without proper healthcare, never mind the those with chronic physical or mental health issues.
The general population facing lack essentials like food and water.
Did no one tell you it’s cringe to defend fascist states or does that boot taste nice?
And again, perhaps more than that die in the long run when terrorists are capitulated with. Your calls for a ceasefire are to be understood exactly as a call for Israel to return to suffering under hundreds of rockets per day and the threat of another invasion and raping of their people. You demand everyone stop fighting while not acknowledging that at least one of the parties has made the full commitment to destroy the other, no compromises. You ask for peace because it’s easier to ask for peace than to fight for it.
You’re putting words in my moyth, we both agree that a ceasefire is not a solution as the injustice will just continue.
We disagree on solution though, Israel is the occupier and will kill or displace 2 million Palestinians as soon as it can. We didn’t let the Nazi state or fascist italy exist after the war. We now look back and consider Rhodesia and apartheid SA to be bad. The same applies to treatment of natives by most other colonising nations.
Israel is on the wrong side of history and like all fascist and colonising states it should be torn down.
If zionists cared about human rights, they wouldn’t be trying to re-settle the “holy” land
Those poor innocent invading soldiers trying to invade and colonize more and more land from these savage indigenous people. If only the indigenous people just accepted their fate peacefully and just give up their homes to the colonizers. They simply are the wrong ethnicity so they have to leave their houses or be shot. Not enough people consider how bad that makes the colonizers feel. Not leaving your house means you are just asking to be killed.
Israel has stated their intention to destroy Hamas, as you well know. If you cared about your cause, I’m not sure why you would lie and misrepresent what Israel is doing? You’re not going to convince anyone who doesn’t already agree with you, which is to say it’s pointless. Be mad if you want. If Israel wanted the land, they would have taken it already. If Israel wanted to destroy Gaza, they would have already. Clearly, what they want is to destroy Hamas while allowing the innocents to live. They have a right to defend themself. Sorry that hurts you.
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There are certainly Jews that are indigenous to that region, but most of them are not.
And in any case, why would Jews that haven’t lived there for multiple generations have more rights to the land than people actually living there?
Can an Irish-American go to Ireland and kick people out of their houses? No! They can move there and get their own house, that’s it. Same with Jews wanting to live in Palestine. They can move there, they can’t form their own country and deport the people living there. That’s called ethnic cleansing.
What do you call it when you have a stated mission to kill all Jews and destroy Israel? Ethnic cleansing? Geno-what?
Palestinians are in the position they’re in because they lost a war. When you lose, you don’t get to make demands of the victor. If they wanted peace, they could stop harboring Hamas and raising their children to want to kill Jews. If they wanted peace, they could ask for peace. With Israel, there is at least in principle, the ability to have peace. With Hamas and their charter, there can never be peace.
Apartheid would never end in South Africa. Until it did. Peace would never exist in Northern Ireland. Until it did. The cold war would never end. Until it did. The belief that the situation is unresolvable is the problem
Again, one side has a stated charter to destroy all Jews and Israel? What ceasefire or peace do you think you will accomplish here? Why must Israel bear the burden of allowing endless attacks and endless threats of attacks?
Israel controls the land and the Palestinians don’t have a seat at the table. Those are the preconditions for brewing up a deep rooted terrorist organization.
It’s strange how the terrorists never seem responsible for their own actions.
You don’t understand what I’m saying. Which makes sense in the context of terrible trauma.
Hamas is awful and should be excised. But if these regions and classes of people continue to be subjugated and unrepresented in the government that governs them, and forcibly impoverished, of course the worst of them will be the most emboldened.
If you hate terrorism, stop it before it starts. Do a simple root cause on this one seriously.
That would require occupying and re-educating Gaza. As soon as Israel even tries, the whole world will react by screaming that they’re Nazis and this was their plan all along. I agree education is the way to stop terrorism, but it has to come from Palestinians choosing to love their children so much that they give them a better future through that education, where their children will be turned from terrorism. But, once there are terrorists, the path is done. They are responsible for their actions, it doesn’t matter about the past anymore.
Re-educating them in what way?
Palestine <> Hamas Should we treat Israel like we would the hill top youth?
I never said they were the same. In fact, in all my messages, I’m explicitly against drawing that similarity. Israel has declared war on Hamas, whoever and wherever they are.
I appreciate IDF bombs only striking Hamas fighters and leaving innocent Palestinians who are not being bombed, terrorised, starved, facing mass eviction and collective punishment (a war crime)
Again, you have no solution. Your calls for ceasefire is simultaneously a call for Israel to return to the status quo of hundreds of rockets launched at them per day and the threat of constant terrorism festering just outside their borders. Israel won’t do that.
Nice strawman you built up there. Dealing with Hamas doesn’t require indiscriminate bombing of Gaza. Most people in Gaza are not Hamas. Likewise, dealing with Hamas doesn’t require starving the populace, nor using white phosphorous nor indulging in collective punishment - again, all war crimes. If you think that Israel has a right to commit war crimes then we have nothing to discuss.
Yes, the correct thing for them to do is prevent inbound threats without conducting an ethnic cleansing you genocidal freak.
So you have no solutions and you demand Israel accept living under hundreds of rockets per day and the constant threat of terrorism. No. They don’t have to. What do you call it when you have a charter to kill all Jews and destroy Israel? Geno-what?
Facts are that Gaza is still there. The citizens are still there. Israel is starting to let humanitarian aid in, which must frustrate you.
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You think if Hamas violated a ceasefire agreement that people’s judgment of them wouldn’t change? At all?
Trolling
Hamas has violated multiple ceasefires and is very specifically the reason a two-state solution isn’t already implemented.
Look around and tell me if everyone is anti-Hamas.
I don’t think you’re completely right here. The two-state solution isn’t very popular with regular Palestinians either. A two-state solution cements Israel as ethno-state and doesn’t address all the Palestinians already deported.
Also Israeli settlers keep violently stealing people’s houses, which I would also consider breaking the ceasefire.
I’m curious, what makes you consider Israel an ethno-state?
Palestinians have near-zero bargaining chips and caring too much about the makeup of another country is a poor use of what little leverage they have.
Agreed regarding settlements on the West Bank not helping, but it’s hardly the breaking of a ceasefire. Notable also that outright giving this land to Palestine has been included in every peace deal since the 80s