Big Picture American Politics

[Jwb]

This might sound heartless, but why are we supposed to care about Isreal and Palenstine conflict this time? I'm not picking a side and posting a little square on social media to say I support one side or the other. They have been in conflict with each other for decades now? What's different?

Is it the amount of people that have died in one attack?

I heard a random comment with someone saying that this is Isreal's 9/11 and I rolled my eyes so hard at that but are they accurate? I don't know I haven't done a deep dive into this situation at all.

the last death toll I heard was around 1200 for the israeli side. Considering these are people largely being slaughtered one by one by roving militants, yeah I would say the psychological impact of this attack is on par with 9/11 from an Israeli perspective.  It's not even just a high death count,  it's the personal and brutal nature of it. Combined with the long standing hostility between the two sides.

Also, people in Israel have historically been able to at least have confidence in the capability of their military apparatus to defend them from precisely this sort of thing.  But the unprecedented success of this attack blows a massive hole in that confidence and almost certainly will result in an overkill response from Israel. We've already seen the beginning of that with the current siege.

[Psy-Fi]

Donald Trump gets gag order in election meddling case

[Psy-Fi]

The sporting-event/team-support mentality towards this in the U.S. is about as wretched as it gets.

In Israel, Biden says it appears "the other team" is to blame for Gaza hospital explosion

[Nimbly9]

Lol...you can always count on Biden to fall flat on his face. But I have some sympathy here because any discussion about Israel and Palestine is a loser. If you side with Palestine you get called a terrorist sympathizer, a colonizer and/or a racist antisemite (among other things), and if you side with Israel you are a colonizer and also a racist / Islamophobe or some kind of fascist.

And if you need even more proof that we'll never get a nuanced discussion about it as far as society goes, look at how even liberal colleges are cracking down on students and professors saying anti-Israel things.

[Lexi Darling]

I feel awful because I'm so politically ignorant to this, and to a lot of stuff happening outside the US.

I feel like people have the idea that I'm obligated to say something due to me being raised Jewish, but I stopped practicing literally 20 years ago. I just have to admit that I'm uneducated on all this stuff. I try to do research and all I can find on the net is each side saying how atrocious and horrible the other side is, and I just don't know what to think.

[jimmy jazz]

In Israel, Biden says it appears "the other team" is to blame for Gaza hospital explosion

I saw that.

Our PM has also said "we want you to win" to Netanyahu.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-67151404

Horrific things going on and he's coming out with shit like that.

[SGR]

I saw that.

Our PM has also said "we want you to win" to Netanyahu.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-67151404

Horrific things going on and he's coming out with shit like that.

Biden is definitely not a wartime president.

[jimmy jazz]

Biden isn't fit to be any sort of president.

He is too confused, old and decrepit for this.

I saw him on the news earlier and he looked like a corpse. He looks almost as dead as Prince Phillip did before he died and he was 99!

I know Donald Trump is old as well but he is in miles better shape than Sleepy Joe.

[Guybrush]

I feel awful because I'm so politically ignorant to this, and to a lot of stuff happening outside the US.

I feel like people have the idea that I'm obligated to say something due to me being raised Jewish, but I stopped practicing literally 20 years ago. I just have to admit that I'm uneducated on all this stuff. I try to do research and all I can find on the net is each side saying how atrocious and horrible the other side is, and I just don't know what to think.

The reality of the conflict is horribly convoluted with a long history of many conflicts breaking out in that area. Noone can keep track of everything that's happened.

I think these are the broad strokes:

• Jews have a religiously rooted idea of a homeland and many (the Zionist movement) wanted to establish this in the Israel area for a long time, from the late 19th century I believe. Jews have been migrating to the Israel area for a long time.
• At the time of Imperialism up until just after the second World War, Palestine was occupied by the British who found it too troublesome to hold, in part due to Jewish rebellion
• The British announced they would leave the area come some date in 1948. A significant Jewish population prepped to create the Jewish homeland (Israel) while neighbouring Arab nations also prepared to grab some of this land
• After the British moved out, there was an armed conflict. At the end of it, sorta, you had the new nation of Israel and Egypt had occupied the Gaza strip.
• About a decade later, after warring a bit more (Israeli-arab war), Israel expanded borders and took control of the Gaza strip and the west bank populated mostly by Palestinian Arabs.
• Attempts at peace treaties etc. haven't quite worked and there are now walls and checkpoints separating Arab populations in Gaza / west bank from the Jewish population.
  

So I think the deal is you have Jews and Arabs who don't get along. Arabs feel Jews inserted themselves, displacing Arabs or taking their land by force. Sympathy after WWII significantly supported / enabled this. The Arab populations of Gaza/west bank have been oppressed and have had their land etc. taken away, creating fertile grounds for the growth of Hamas, roughly and generally described as Palestinian terrorists.

It's not a conflict where one side is entirely right and the other is entirely wrong. Opinion here is generally that Israel is wrong to oppress Palestinians and has a hand in creating Hamas/rebellion to their own treatment. At the same time, people generally condemn Hamas attacks that target civilians. I also think Hamas probably don't speak for all Arabs living in Gaza/West Bank and are probably making life dangerous for many Arabs who would rather try to live peacefully.

That's roughly what I think is going on? I'm expecting @Nimbly9 might correct me and give a better summary of what's actually happening.

[Lisnaholic]

^ You've done a great job of summarising thousands of years of history and conflict, Guybrush.

I'd just like to add my five cents to emphasize just how badly that whole region was treated by the Brits during and after WW I: we were so keen to find allies in our fight against Germany (and their ally, Turkey) that we enlisted the help of both Arabs and Jews. The Arabs fought dramatically under Lawrence of Arabia, pushed the Turks out of Palestine, and of course expected to get their country back as a result. At the same time, other Brits were promising the Jews that they'd get a homeland of their own, also in Palestine.

The "quick fix" solution was for Britain to divide up the country between the two conflicting claimants ( in The Balfour Declaration, 1922). It was a monstrous piece of Anglo-centric arrogance, given that it wasn't their country to divide up, and the Palestinians weren't consulted - although I think the US and the French gave it their stamp of approval too.

The result has been an endless conflict ever since, with both sides having good claims to the same territory, and making it a moral quagmire for outside observers like me, who are inclined to look for simple good guy/bad guy issues.

[Jwb]

The Zionist movement was started by Theodor Herzl. He wasn't motivated by religion but by European anti semitism in the late 19th century.  He thought the jews would never be safe unless they had their own country. He died in 1904, so he never lived to see either the climax of European antisemitism in the holocaust,  or the subsequent creation of the Jewish state in former Palestine. Thus he is considered the father of zionism  and the "visionary of the state." Almost a prophetic type of figure, keeping with Jewish tradition in at least one sense.

It is true that since the creation of Isreal there are many religious (and non religious) jews who flocked to Israel and there are religious versions of zionism that are often even more right wing and ambitious in terms of land.  And also that if you just look at the Hebrew Bible, the entire thing is about the relationship between God and the people of Abraham, who he delivers into the promised land from which they are later scattered. 

Jewish history for the last couple thousand years has been in exile. They've been cast out of Israel/Judah multiple times by different regional empires, most recently by the Romans in 70 AD. But previous periods of exile such as the exile of Judah to Babylon had a decisive impact on Jewish tradition as well and is when some of the texts from the Hebrew bible were being written.

Anyway,  the fact that they settled on Palestine as the location is clearly tied to the fact that there is that history there and that sort of ancient cultural and even religious connection to that land,  but also as you guys mentioned the fact that the British happened to control that specific plot of land at the time and were notably sympathetic to the zionist movement.  So I do think the initial fuck up is on England.

It's also true that there wasn't a Palestinian state really,  historically.  This was just land that was inhabited relatively sparsely  by an Arab population that was mostly rural and had been subjects of various empires previously.  But the idea of nationalism and statehood in the way we understand it is also a fairly recent phenomenon historically,  especially in certain regions. So at the very least there were Arabs living in Palestine at the time who wanted a state, even if they didn't have one.  But then there were jews who were moving there in droves who wanted the same thing.  Imagine how you would respond if you had a tiny region that was under imperial rule based on some world War you had nothing to do with,  and now your population was being completely replaced with refugees from another world War/genocide that you had nothing to do with.  It's understandable to me why at the time they figured this is my country, and these people are invaders. Even if you didn't have a formal nation state.

But the fact is that Israel is there now and they aren't going anywhere.  Any reasonable solution has to acknowledge that whether you think the creation of the state was right or not,  the people who are there now have been born there for at least a few generations.  They're not invaders or colonists any more than we are in this country.  So at this point, any solution has to involve both people being able to peacefully coexist somehow.

That being said,  Israel has most of the leverage. Most of the power. Thus most the responsibility. I can sit here and condemn Hamas all day long but they're a terrorist group that feeds off the scraps Israel throws to it every time they do another series of strikes that inevitably radicalizes a new round of recruits. And up until recently Netanyahu thought Hamas being in charge in Gaza was a blessing to their regime because they would never be recognized internationally.  They're actually not nearly as worried about Hamas rockets as they are about the prospect of actually having to absorb millions of Arab Muslims into their voting ranks. They're thoroughly concerned with maintaining a Jewish state above all else.  In keeping with the zionist tradition.

[Psy-Fi]

MyPillow's Mike Lindell is peddling an election machine 'security' device. But voting officials aren't biting

[Psy-Fi]

Poll: Trump DESTROYING Biden – Dems Freaking Out!

[SGR]

Poll: Trump DESTROYING Biden – Dems Freaking Out!

David Axelrod coming out and basically signalling that Biden should step down I think is a big indicator that movers and shakers in the Dem party might actually make a change. But if so, to who?

[Psy-Fi]

David Axelrod coming out and basically signalling that Biden should step down I think is a big indicator that movers and shakers in the Dem party might actually make a change. But if so, to who?

Your guess is probably as good as mine at this point but the only person I've noticed who looks like he's positioning himself for a possible run at replacing Biden is Gavin Newsom.