This has been happening regularly over the course of decades on the West Bank but no-one is willing to call it "Terrorism" and therefore respond appropriately.
Israeli jewish settlers murdered, on average, one Palestinian civilian per day in the west bank, for the entire year leading up to oct 11. The attacks on Palestinian civilians in the west bank have only accelerated, since then.
if you will read the article, you will see that it talks about IDF and settlers. PA in fact called in IDF to suppress hamas and pij in areas that PA tried to clear out but failed.
Articles like this on purpose blur lines of what happening and meant to generate outrage. Once I traced back article that talked about 48 (or something) palestinians killed by settlers by going through listed sources in the article. when I got to original article (twice removed), I discovered that it talked about 47 killed by IDF and 1 killed in clashes between settlers and palestinians
The PA is a puppet government of Israel. The last elections for PA leadership were in 2006. I don't think the distinction between settlers and the IDF is as salient to most outside observers as you think it is.
so, when israel on pa requests going to mop up hamas, because otherwise it about to be overthrown, and IDF kills 999 hamas/pij/lions of whatever members, it's essentially "settler violence". do i get it right ?
and about "puppet". the very funny part is that people that demand for PA to have controls over west bank/gaza as sovereign, don't realize that it physically unable to do so without Israeli support. And Israeli support makes local population regards PA as Israeli puppet. The was major reason for Israel refusing to get into 2007 gaza purge of PA
I would put it this way: in my eyes, the violent subjugation of Palestinians is brutal colonialism whether conducted by loosely organized vigilantes or officially state-sanctioned actors.
Of course the PA could not maintain power without Israeli support. They don't represent Palestinian interests.
If Israel allowed elections, I could answer you, and Israel would have a negotiating partner. But I don't think Israel has any interest in negotiating.
The fact that countries halfway around the world are using basic recognition as a coercive tool to shape their democratic expression is exactly why Hamas has any following.
The word “terrorist” is strictly a political designation, one that allows for dehumanizing and condemning one’s enemies. Israel’s pager attack on Lebanon has all of the hallmarks of a terrorist attack, but the west won’t call it as it is because it’s inconvenient. It was inconvenient to acknowledge that Israel is conducting a full on genocide, so not until very recently did major western news orgs start using the dreaded G word.
A lot of what the US did during Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc, could have been considered terrorism.
Terrorism as a label is a very convenient way to justify committing atrocities, under the name of squashing terrorism.
I remember hearing a radio talk show in which someone said they were against the Iraq war and the response from the pundit was "so you don't want to fight against terrorism?"
When people's actions get reduced to a single label it becomes increasingly easier to hate them.
It's even worse than that. Israel's minister of the security services is ideologically aligned with the terrorists, and has openly supported their causes all his life. A quite unprecedented situation, I think!
> After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you.
I think there is a common belief that Israel was "given" the land beyond the Jordan because they were God's chosen people based on their merits.
Deuteronomy seems to imply Israel were just the least bad people.
The entire bible is a story of the Jewish people losing their land due to moral failings. Repeatedly. From Judges through 2 Kings, Israel repeatedly loses divine protection precisely because of its own wickedness. Being “chosen” meant bearing covenantal responsibility, not enjoying a blank moral check.
Deuteronomy 20:15-18 is more appropriate to the current conflict, as it relates to how the Jews should fight wars in the land of Israel. It commands the utter destruction of the inhabitants of the land, not sparing any that breathe (not just those who “pisseth-on-the-wall”)
Discussions about modern Israel/Palestine are full of shibboleths that reveal where people are drawing their information:
In the Hebrew the word in 20:16 for inheritance is “Nachala”. Worth Googling: Nachala is also the name of a present‑day Israeli settler movement led by Daniella Weiss, whose own literature says it’s “continuing the biblical mandate to settle the land.”
In other words, the same term that the Torah uses for a gift that can be forfeited is now used as branding for a modern political project—illustrating how ancient vocabulary still shapes today’s arguments about the land.
For an example from the Palestinian side: you do not have a full understanding of Hamas if you do not know about the Hadith about the Gharqad tree. Hamas charter writers alluded to this story; many Palestinians learn it young, while most Israelis have never heard of it.
Recognizing these code‑words doesn’t require agreeing with the theology behind them. It simply keeps us from talking past each other—and, one hopes, from letting someone else’s apocalyptic script dictate who lives and dies. I think we all agree that the other-sides’ eschatology is a dumb reason to die.
> “When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.”
When you separate yourself by [insert tribalist rhetoric], it breeds violence
This may sound superficially true, but it is confusing cause and effect. It's more likely to be the other way around: people seeking violence need to separate themselves from their target. That does not automatically mean that every self-classification carries an implication of violence.
For those that don't know the Old Testament/Torah it might be worthwhile to point out that what you refer to as "moral failings" is not the same as what modern people think are "moral failings". Uncleanliness (gay sex, touching menstruating women, eating pork, yadda, yadda) and worshiping other Gods are "moral failings", raping, pillaging, and exterminating enemies most definitely are not.
Yes. The moral failing of Saul (1 Samuel 15) is precisely not following the command to exterminate Amalek, but rather sparing Agag, and taking spoils when he was commanded to kill everything that breathes.
> The entire bible is a story of the Jewish people losing their land due to moral failings.
Plus the general idea that humans in general are morally flawed, sinful, etc. But, "Good news!" If you follow the one true god, that'll all be sorted out. Following the classic marketing strategy of creating a need, and then filling it.
People are being murdered thousands of years later because of the ancient Judea equivalent of 'Harry Potter', and the batshit insane people who still believe it in earnest.
Being dismissive of the Bible is not as cool as you think it is: those who do not study the Bible are doomed to repeat it.
I understand the instinct to treat Bronze‑Age literature like fanciful fiction: engineers are wired to put "myth" in one bucket and "hard data" in another. But for better or worse, the Bible isn't just an ancient novel. It's the source code for a huge fraction of the world's legal systems, ethics, holidays, and political claims, including the one we are discussing. Dismissing it as "Harry Potter" misses the point:
If we're serious about reducing violence, we need to debug the real code people are running in their heads, not the straw‑man version.
Software engineers are notorious for bikeshedding and pointlessly subjective "holy wars." Any belief in higher capacity for reason than their fellow man is sheer hubris.
No, they're being murdered thousands of years later because of the long history of bad blood between the two groups. The religious documents are just a pretext.
> Deuteronomy seems to imply Israel were just the least bad people.
As written by a member of "the least bad people". If you're going to have a historical look at events then, you need to take sources with a grain of salt.
Not much different than 19th century America slavery and Trail of Tears or 16th century Spanish conquistadors. It's ethno-nationalist supremacy by a powerful group believing they are superior to others who are seen as "animals".
> It's ethno-nationalist supremacy by a powerful group believing they are superior to others who are seen as "animals".
And this largely encapsulates the original definition of racism/racialism; it was far more extreme than hating some other race (which has become the modern dictionary definition). Hating Mexicans who (you incorrectly believe) are taking jobs that Americans would have filled is a very different mental state to believing that a group of humans is no better than animals (thereby "justifying" horrific acts like slavery and concentration camps).
> ...is a very different mental state to believing that a group of humans is no better than animals
Is it really? At the very least, the borders between those mental states seem quite blurry.
As soon as one group targets another for hatred, they're essentially saying that the target group is lesser in some way. It's like the first step off the cliff edge - you might still be near the top of the cliff, but now it's just a matter of time.
That point has been proved by the current US president, who has literally said things like, "they're not humans, they're animals," about migrants - that's just one example of a direct quote.
> the current US president, who has literally said things like, "they're not humans, they're animals,"
Oh... wow. I didn't realize it had gone that far. A very poor example in that case. Here's a more crisp example:
The "white man" was, by original (and modern) definition, racist in regards to Africa, we categorically believed that "whites" were better than "blacks" - and that's not only the export of slaves to America. Things were pretty dire even within current human memory, and pockets of racists continue to thrive today (it seemed largely based on age in my experience, all of my friends weren't but many 50+ were).
Contrast that with Malema's "kill the boer" song that I'm sure many international folks have heard[1]. The underlying cause for this is hatred stems from the aforementioned historical and current racism - there is no belief that "we are better" (there is certainly a belief that "we are more deserving of our ancestral land"). Malema couldn't be a racist using the original definition of racism, but definitely is using the modern definition.
Zionism was founded as a secular ethno-nationalist movement and to this day your entitlement to Israeli citizenship depends on your ethnicity, not your religion.
An atheist Jew is just as entitled to live in Israel as an ultra-orthodox one.
One should point out that Palestinian terrorism was originally largely secular too, with the secular Marxist group PFLP ranking up the highest body count.
The point being, this conflict does not need religion. Even if everyone involved became secular tomorrow, Palestinian nationalists and Zionists would still kill each other without needing any god to justify it.
This is somewhat confusing. If there were no religious component, why not declare all Palestinians “Jewish” and resolve the issues immediately?
My understanding is that ethnically Jewish individuals (ie who can trace their matrilineal genealogy to synagogue records in accepted orgs) who have converted to other religions are not entitled to the right of return?
There is no "Biblical narrative." The Bible consists of numerous books written over a vast span of time, evolving cultural and religious contexts, and reflect the often conflicting points of view of their authors, and whatever agenda under which the whole was being edited at the time. There isn't even a single canonical "Christian" Bible - Catholics have one version, Orthodox have another, Protestants have another.
What you're describing is a Christian reinterpretation of the Old Testament employed to justify the argument that Jesus was the Jewish messiah, which is a Biblical narrative, but only one of many, and not one that Jews particularly care about, or that Muslims entirely agree with for that matter.
No, it's been the norm for Israel since its inception. To mention just a couple of examples, ben-Gurion was a founder of Haganah, of which Rabin, infamous for his "break-their-bones" policy, was a member.
No, this was a misquote, but it sounds juicy so it will never stop being passed around on the Internet. Netanyahu cited a completely different verse of the Torah, which was then mischaracterized.
The verse Netanyahu quoted said to blot out even the memory of the Amaleks, after comparing Gazans to Amaleks. How is this a misquoted? This is the verse he cited, although the other verse you mentioned is just as bloodthirsty.
Especially the correction (italics are my own and added to contrast your view with that of those who disagree with your interpretation):
> [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: This interview incorrectly says a quote from a speech that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave on Oct. 28 refers to the Amalekites from the biblical Book of Samuel. The prime minister’s office added a citation to his written and translated remarks to indicate Netanyahu was quoting from the Book of Deuteronomy. Both stories call for the Israelites to completely eliminate their attackers. In the Book of Deuteronomy, the text reads “blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”
It's a weird nitpick about 'blotting out the memory' of another society being much nicer and not at all genocidal compared to the 'spare no one' of 1 Samuel, and Rosenberg spends a lot of words to avoid describing how Netanyahu's speech was perceived by his constituents.
I'm really not so much interested in litigating the broader conflict; just, this is a factoid that gets brought into these threads, and it's worth knowing the quote people are referring to was mischaracterized.
“There are many other quotes either similar meaning and intent, but you got the intent of this one quote wrong” is not… something I’d feel the need to point out to people.
The claim being made is the Netanyahu himself expressed coded genocidal intent, by citing a passage from the Book of Samuel in which God commands King Saul to kill every member of Amalek. But he's quoting an entirely different passage, unrelated to the Book of Samuel, about a surprise attack.
It's not a technical distinction. People should stop bringing up the Amalek thing. Virtually everyone who cites it has no idea what it's a reference to. Given the gravity of everything that has happened since 2023, it's a pointless diversion. Any argument you want to make, you can make without this.
if we are interested in truth and justice, there is a mountain of evidence of genocide at ICC/ICJ awaiting the trial, so we should let the judicial process run its way, just like with Nuremberg trials
we're precedenting it in the united states. our government is deeply ideologically aligned with the people committing the vast majority of domestic terrorism in this country.
The vast majority of the government are full-time employees without any express political allegiance aside from whatever they happen to personally believe. I doubt they are "deeply ideologically aligned with...domestic terrorism" and most of them would probably physically assault you for suggesting they agreed with domestic terrorists in person.
I agree, but hackernews is evidently taking his side because any time I try to reply I get told I'm posting too often, even when its been hours since my last post.
Government employees don't have their own political alliances? Have you seen the american government anytime in the past 10 years? That's a very strange argument considering it's a commonly discussed issue in the current american political climate.
Chris Owens just interviewed Jeremy Corbyn and it was really revealing.
Jordan Chariton/Status Coup gets out to communities after the mainstream media leaves and misses the aftermath.
Democracy Now! has been following the atrocities in Gaza nearly every day with personal accounts from people on the ground.
Medhi Hasan, Sam Seder, Robert Reich, David Pakman, Meidastouch, Malcolm Nance, and Thom Hartmann to name a few.
Another one particular to Israel is The Salukie who is a half Arab Israeli Jew who goes undercover to West Bank refugee camps to show what's really going on and how everyday people are treated on all sides.
The Family by Jeff Sharlet is great for a look at the actual working process of the political Evangelical movement. i'll have to take a look at Hedges' book, thanks for recommending!
Definitely, the government of Serbia supported (or at the very least, ignored) Serb paramilitaries, which were infamous for carrying out "ethnic cleansing".
On the Croatian side, right-wing paramilitaries were quicker to organize national defense, and were far more effective, than government forces. This led to a rather uncomfortable situation for the government, which was resolved by assassinating the paramilitary leaders (note: I have no citation for this, it's just a strong suspicion), and absorbing their soldiers into the official armed forces.
Bosnia's muslim population had a confused notion of nationalism, which was fully taken advantage of by the Serbs, and to some extent the Croats, to further their ambitions.
I believe that is a more accurate summary of the situation in 1990s Balkans.
Usually but not actually. Northern Ireland is a good example where if people are well-off enough, you can diffuse tensions. Many thanks to Brexit for stirring this up more recently, and having different US tariffs across the border will be interesting, but it's still a valid data point.
The problem is that until a few hundred years ago, you could stand your ground and either win or lose (happened a lot) or you sought uninhabited land elsewhere )or a weaker party to kick out) That also happened a lot. Back then borders were defined by what you could actively defend, though treaties also existed.
These days though, there is no unclaimed land or unpopulated place to move in to. Practically speaking anyway. No one would want to move into the Yucatan jungles or Boreal Siberia even if the host countries invited them in to settle land.
> The problem is that until a few hundred years ago, you could stand your ground and either win or lose (happened a lot) or you sought uninhabited land elsewhere )or a weaker party to kick out) That also happened a lot. Back then borders were defined by what you could actively defend, though treaties also existed.
That is the same situation that exists today. Might makes right is the only rule of nature. Treaties are just hopes that someone will help with defending your borders.
See Russia expanding its borders into what was previously recognized as Ukraine.
Right. But before you could “run away” if you were willing to. Today you don’t have places to run to without running into other people willing to defend their places.
In the past you had lots and lots of peoples who just got erased as modern concepts of fairness and justice didn’t work the same way. See the warring states period.
The last major landmass to be settled I believe is Madagascar, only settled ~1500 years ago, with only scattered, remote islands remaining unsettled past that point. Madagascar itself is an island, albeit one of the largest in the world, so enough to constitute 'major landmass' in my book; discount all island groups entirely, and the unsettled lands haven't existed for over 10,000 years.
What that means is that all of the "run[ning] away" you are talking about is still violently displacing native peoples. So for example, when the Boers flee the Cape Colony to the Transvaal, they aren't moving to virgin, empty land, but rather land inhabited by native Africans (Zulu, I think), who needed to be dispossessed of their land. And such dispossession tends to require violence.
Pop density before the 1870s was generally low in most places with a few exceptions.
After all there was no "industry" it was 95% + agrarian, pescatarian, pastoral. Many populations had a preference for coastal, riparian settlements and mountainous areas were less favored... but were where displaced peoples could move to. People clumped, they were not evenly distributed so any region would have unsettled areas --just like today you have vast areas in Alaska that are not populated -even Wyoming. There are towns here and there but most areas of those states are not "populated" though they are under local, state and federal control. Government did not work that way back a few hundred years ago.
The Zulu only relatively recently moved into ZA (around the same time as Europeans maybe a bit before --the Khoisan are the native peoples of ZA).
People also moved (were displaced) for other reasons beside war: drought, depletion of game, disease, pests, tribal splits, insufficient carrying capacity, ecological pressures, etc.
Maybe. I don’t know that there was a place to run to a few hundred years ago. That was when Native Americans were pushed out (in North and South), Aborigines in Australia, etc.
When China expanded in the 1600 and 1700s the non Han ran to uninhabited Southeast Asia. One example are the Hmong who moved to mountains of SEA from interior China. Also lots of internal movement in Africa.
The perpetrator, Yinon Levy, has sanctions put on him by a few countries. The current regime in the White House lifted the US sanction a while ago.
Arguably it's worse than what is usually meant by terrorism, i.e. civilians or paramilitaries attacking a state by actions against civilians, since it's a state exterminating stateless civilians.
If you want to see someone refer to acts of the Hilltop Youth as Jewish Terrorism and condemn it, you need only switch to channel 12 (Israeli channel, that is).
It's two violent ethnoreligious fascist movements with dreams of cleansing the land - that they both think was promised to them by God! - of the unbelievers.
Only one of them enjoys the support of the West and it's coincidentally the one that is currently succeeding at realizing their vision.
You a re being very reductive in order to make your point, but thats fair enough, I don't entirely disagree.
But I would like to point out that the situation is significantly less symmetrical than the picture you paint:
Yes, lots of Israelis treat the other side as second class citizens (apartheid analogies make a valid point).
BUT if you flipped the power distribution, and gave the Palestinian side a fully functional modern army, then we would no longer need to be arguing about the semantics of "genocide", because practically every single jew in the region would be killed within weeks. There is significant restraint on the Israeli side that they deserve quite some credit for, in my opinion.
I believe it is very important (and right!) to keep the ruling side (Israelis) "honest", and to speak out in favor of the "underdogs", but the "both sides" argument feels dishonest and misplaced here to me, and IMO "the West" fully supporting the Palestinian side would have been genocidal from the start, and escalated into an unmitigated disaster basically immediately (my position is that the current situation is still a barely "mitigated disaster", and de-escalation instead of October 7and its lead-up would have been an actual possibility with some effort from all sides).
