Guest post: An integrated solution whereby the Palestinians become full Israeli citizens
Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on The trees will speak.
Me
“falsely claiming Israel is a totally innocent, ”
Nobody has claimed that. At all. If anything this is you projecting your view of Palestine onto us.
Israel is an ethnostate, that in and of itself creates problems. Palestine would equally well be an ethnostate, just a much worse run one.
We can all rattle off issues with Israel past and present. We are well aware of the bullshit you’ve been spouting, those issues do not excuse the targeted mass rape, murder and abduction of civilians.
7 October fully justified a military response.
That means that yes, if Hamas use their civilian population as shields, a lot of them are going to die, and no it won’t be murder, it won’t be collective punishment, it won’t even be disproportionate. It is what happens when those tactics are applied in a war.
If you seriously want to reduce civilian casualties, the first step would be maybe not supporting tactics that put civilians in danger. Hamas is very guilty of using such tactics. The line of bullshit you push here, is what makes those tactics effective.
“and accusing Israel’s critics of antisemitism, (exhibit “A” being Bruce Gorton calling me a goddamned Jew-hating nazi)”
Lets see, why did I call you a Nazi? Was it because you’re critical of Israel? No, its because you use Israel to deflect criticism from someone calling for the deaths of Jews in Australia, a totally different country.
Jews in Australia are not responsible for the policies of Israel – they don’t even live there. That whole “collective” guilt thing you’ve got going on when it comes to Jews, is a bit of a problem.
So far as Israel is concerned, you seem to be of the opinion that Israel has no right to defend itself, or its population. That in order to have a right to defend itself, it would have to somehow be blameless of all wrongs, or lack the capacity to do so. We have seen this line of reasoning before, it is the “no angels” argument applied to a state.
This isn’t a matter of Israel being helpless babes innocent of all wrongdoing, this is a matter of Israel being a fully modern, fully armed society that will damn well defend itself whether Nazis like you like it or not.
If you don’t like what Israel is doing, you’re going to have to come up with a reasonable alternative.
Here is what I can come up with, but it requires taking a different set of tactics to your perpetual bullshit:
The UN cuts the shit and condemns Hamas. Negotiations with the UN ensue, where the UN offers to take on the responsibility of seeing Hamas destroyed in lieu of aggressive military action by Israel.
The ICC issues warrants for the arrest of Hamas’ leadership. Global banking agrees to freeze accounts linked to Hamas. States that support Hamas cannot get loans from the World Bank or the IMF. We see if we can’t get the Bank of China in on the game (their excuses with regards to their treatment of the Uygers could be used as leverage for this purpose).
At the same time the UNRWA, which is extremely guilty of maintaining this forever war, gets folded into the UNHRC. The education the UN provides moves over to a soft curriculum designed to ease the next generation into reconciliation rather than radicalization. Israel is assured that it can employ observers to ensure that the education involved is not mainly propaganda for further war.
At the same time, Israel is required to come up with a roadmap for citizenship for its Palestinian population. The same requirement is placed upon the surrounding states. This aims to solve the problem of long-term statelessness with regards to Palestinians.
The two state solution is, bluntly, exactly what Apartheid envisaged with the Bantustans.
Instead the plan should be to emulate the one thing my country, South Africa, did right and move towards an integrated solution whereby the Palestinians become full Israeli citizens. This is a long-term goal, with a lot of work required to hammer out issues such as legal protections and suchlike, but it should be the overall direction for the future.
Yes, my country does have problems, very serious problems, but this I think is the only real workable solution long term. Otherwise you end up with a perpetually impoverished Palestine, next to a wealthy Israel, and more war ensues.
Wow, you sure do come across as a shill for the genocidal policies of the current Israeli government and Likud in particular.
Then so did 2 & 13 May 1948. Unfortunately, once again, it was Israel with the major military power and overwhelming force was used to remove over 400 Palestinians from what would become Sderot to make way for Jews from Kurdistan and Iraq. Can you draw a line from then to now? I can.
Australia is a hotbed of Zionism. No criticism of Israel can be made in Australia without two or three Jewish organisations ignoring the argument and simply yelling “ANTI SEMITISM”. In this way, they try to claim the moral high ground and shut down any criticism of Israel, which, as you said, is a totally different country.
Have you seen the photos of a fire-bombed business, owned by a man sympathetic to Palestinians, with a great heaving mass of people waving Israeli flags and cheering the destruction of a life’s work?
Do you mean tactics like using Palestinians as “human shields”? That is a lie as big as “the fog of war”, used by the aggressor to excuse war crimes. 2.2 million people crammed into an area smaller than Seattle doesn’t leave a lot of room for traditional military bases.
But don’t worry, Bruce. When Israel wants to bomb a few buildings, they quite kindly ask the residents to vacate, at the same time hoping that Hamas members remain to be killed. Yeah, right!
Here’s an idea. Return the land to the Palestinians, let them create a state and allow Jews to become full citizens, with full civic rights, something Israel currently denies to a vast number of Arabs who currently live in Israel.
The Shoa was Europe’s problem and it was Europe’s to solve. Just like it isn’t up to women to fix men’s problems, it should never have been the responsibility of Palestinians to fix Europe’s problem with Jews. The Jewish safe place should have been carved from Bavaria and Austria.
And while you’re so focused on trying to find justifications for Israel’s wholesale slaughter of civilians in Gaza, you are turning a blind eye to Palestinians being turned out of their homes in the West Bank to make way for Jews arriving from Europe. Armed Israeli citizens attack peaceful Palestinians, and are supported by the IDF if anyone dares resist eviction from their homes. Children are shot by IDF snipers for the simple act of throwing stones at people trying to steal their homes.
The Israeli “settlers” are just seeking Lebensraum. Now, where I have I heard that before?
Modern Israel was born from terror campaigns undertaken by Irgun, the terror group that later split into two parts, one becoming the IDF, the other Likud.
I do not condone what Hamas did in Sderot, but I can understand the frustration of a people denied justice for so long.
Rev David Brindley
1948, there is a lot you could say about Israel at that point but the “overwhelming military might” was the other side of the war, made up of an alliance of literally all of Israel’s neighbors. The UK was largely allied with the Arabs at that point, and the US neutral.
Further, the causes of the 1948 war, were settled with the 1948 war, which Israel won. Otherwise wars never end – and Europe would still be fighting over Duke Ferdinand.
“Australia is a hotbed of Zionism. No criticism of Israel can be made in Australia without two or three Jewish organisations ignoring the argument and simply yelling “ANTI SEMITISM””
So it is okay to make a generalized call for the extermination of Jews in Australia?
“Have you seen the photos of a fire-bombed business, owned by a man sympathetic to Palestinians, with a great heaving mass of people waving Israeli flags and cheering the destruction of a life’s work?”
No, I have not. Where are these pictures? Googling, all I’m getting is that Australia has had a spate of firebombings that appear to have nothing to do with this current conflict, and there have been a few synagogues firebombed globally.
That said – if people are firebombing businesses sympathetic to Palestine in Australia, then that too is wrong. Is it that strange an idea to you that a war in a distant location does not justify local violence against ethnic minorities Rev?
“Here’s an idea. Return the land to the Palestinians, let them create a state and allow Jews to become full citizens, with full civic rights, something Israel currently denies to a vast number of Arabs who currently live in Israel.”
Arab Israelis make up about 20% of the population, and legally have the same rights as any other Israelis.
Hamas uses its civilians as human shields:
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/eu-condemns-hamas-using-hospitals-human-shields-urges-israeli-restraint-2023-11-12/
https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/hamas_human_shields.pdf
Are the EU shills for Israel? Are Nato shills for Israel? Really Rev?
The West Bank isn’t Gaza, the West Bank is under the authority of the PLO so it would be for the PLO to respond, and if you’re going to take the illegal settlements as incitement to war – then the rules of war still apply. Which is to say there is a difference between specifically targeting civilians, and collateral damage.
In other words you’d have a point if Hamas went after military targets, you do not have a point considering they went after music festivals.
The war is with Hamas, which forms the government of Gaza. If Israel then took the events of 7 October as justification for war against the West Bank, Israel would be entirely in the wrong.
As to whether a unified state should be called Israel or Palestine, Israel’s population is just over 9 million. The West Bank is about 2,748 millions. Gaza is 2.226 millions.
If Israel were to absorb the Palestinian population – granting them full citizenship – it would still be Israel simply because that would be what the majority of the population would go with.
Negotiating the return of property from the wars up until now would be part of why it would be a long term plan – in other words your solution and my solution, the main difference is in the name of the state.
So long as they’re stateless, the Palestinians lack a lot of the protections that people with states have. Israel are not angels, the illegal settlements on the West Bank are in part because Israel doesn’t see Palestinians as citizens, and thus doesn’t consider protecting their property rights to be Israel’s problem.
And the same goes for when Palestinians are targeted by Israeli criminals. Citizenship is at least an attempt to solve that underlying problem.
Hamas policies ensure that the results will be disproportionate. Billions in foreign aid have gone to tunnel-digging and rockets. Hamas has not invested in bomb shelters for civilians. Mick Hartley posted a clip of a Hamas spokesman claiming that civil defense in Gaza was up to the UN. Not Hamas.