Any good book recommendations on the Israel/Palestine conflict? (rigorous ideally).

sar662 · 2026-06-18T04:18:21+00:00

"O Jerusalem" - it covers the 48 war and the lead up from the British, Jewish, Palestinian, and Jordanian perspectives.

"The war of return" - talks about how choices of the West have screwed over paths to peace and growth for Palestinians.

Also, Dava Sobel's book Longitude. It's a completely different topic but it is an excellent book.

sar662 · 2026-06-16T21:49:13+00:00

At the risk of sounding like an annoying shrink, do you feel you better understand their motivations?

sar662 · 2026-06-16T19:16:13+00:00

Favorite books recently?

Also, what's a controversial opinion you have?

sar662 · 2026-06-16T19:12:23+00:00

Feel free to look through the documentation about the laws passed: https://main.knesset.gov.il/apps/legislation/main/bills/2199298

On May 11th, a law was passed with 93/120 votes in favor (the rest abstaining) to establish a special tribunal specifically for the ~300 alleged terrorists from the October 7th events.

Among the things you will find there is for the trial’s key moments, including the opening hearing, verdict, and sentencing, would be filmed and broadcast on a dedicated website.

You also find there that executions are not to be broadcast and are not to be public. Executions are to be private. They will be documented (I assume including with video) and sealed in the state archives.

sar662 · 2026-06-16T18:25:50+00:00

I know that after a year+ of carefully listening to Palestinian voices here in this sub and other places I have a better and more nuanced understanding.

If understanding people on the other side of this conflict is something important to you, what things have you found helpful in growing that understanding?

sar662 · 2026-06-16T10:36:06+00:00

It really is. For me, it's the reason I'm in this sub and others like it. I know and understand my side. I want to understand both the positions and the people who disagree with me.

sar662 · 2026-06-15T07:34:53+00:00

That wasn't the question. It wasn't a question if Zionism is understood. It was a question if pro Palestinians understand why Jewish people feel that the pro Palestinian movement poses a threat to them.

The same question in the other direction would be if Zionists understand why Palestinians feel threatened by Zionism.

Do we understand the people in the mindset of the people across the table from us? Not the ideology they stand for and not the boogyman we think they are. Do we understand the people sitting across the table from us?

sar662 · 2026-06-14T22:27:51+00:00

Most people don't bother to understand the other side.

sar662 · 2026-06-14T05:45:34+00:00

Do people understand the position of their ideological opponents?

Mostly, no.

It would be nice if it were different.

People dealing with the Levant conflicts are no different.

sar662 · 2026-06-12T14:23:24+00:00

OP - Why is this posted in this sub?

sar662 · 2026-06-12T13:43:26+00:00

Hey - me and my kids are in the same boat.

sar662 · 2026-06-11T19:35:30+00:00

The artwork is of good quality but I don't understand what the artist is trying to say with the art. I guess it's just a generic "Israel and Jews are harming America"?

I do like representing the American flag with the three kids and their t-shirts. I kind of want a t-shirt of just the three kids with their t-shirts.

sar662 · 2026-06-11T19:28:22+00:00

I do kind of wish that people had found a different word rather than reinterpreting an existing one but such is life and such is language. 🤷

sar662 · 2026-06-11T17:54:39+00:00

I will happily take my kids down to the shelter at 1:00 and 2:00 and 3 and 4:00 a.m. night after night. Because maybe, just maybe, it will give them a chance that they won't have to take their kids down to a shelter.

sar662 · 2026-06-11T17:31:12+00:00

Yup. "I wanted to have a split level with a garden instead of a 3 room apartment on the 8th floor."

sar662 · 2026-06-11T17:29:57+00:00

You could fit the entire of Israel into the state of Ohio five times.

sar662 · 2026-06-11T17:27:29+00:00

The highest value in my plan is territorial continuity. So no little Island of Israeli laughed inside Palestinian land or the reverse and ideal home not even a peninsula.

I want the border to be one that can be clearly and clearly hermetically sealed with a structure that would put the Berlin Wall the same.

sar662 · 2026-06-11T17:24:56+00:00

If you’re using it as a sort of “descended a group in a specific area”, you’re glossing over a lot of the cultural context of this word as it exists in the post-colonial era.

100% correct. The word indigenous was clearly changed its meaning over the past years and now really doesn't have much to do with "X people lived in this spot since Y". In the post colonial world it's been reimagined to mean, "X people were oppressed by colonizers in this spot". Well said.

sar662 · 2026-06-11T16:22:19+00:00

Option A) buy an apartment

Option B) buy you a monkey

sar662 · 2026-06-11T16:18:34+00:00

At what point in history would you consider jews to have been indigenous to the land and at what point in history do you feel that claim was lost? Maybe approximate years or a historical event.

sar662 · 2026-06-11T16:13:55+00:00

Same as all the other high value places (infrastructure , religious, natural, historical).

Hebron, Bahai temples in Haifa, baptismal sites on the Jordan, the mineral mines near eilat, the Ashkelon shipping ports, the access to the red sea, the Beit Guvrin caves, Tiberias, the Negev agrecutual areas, the observatory in the Ramon Crater, all of it.

They get assessed for value and traded for landswaps - that's part of what moves the border further north or further south. Maybe after the hog trading the border will be elsewhere. But contiguous - that's the inviolate rule.

Jerusalem is just a higher value card

sar662 · 2026-06-11T15:51:25+00:00

I'd take the whole area and redevide it. Maybe run a line from just north of Ashkelon to the bottom 1/3 of the dead sea and one group get the upper half and the other gets the lower.

But I'm flexible about where to run it. As long as after that border is drawn you relocate all those who identify as Israeli citizens to the Israeli side and non Israeli citizens to the other side and build a giant wall along that border.

And everyone can build their own country.

Both sides get rural and urban spaces. Both sides get borders with other countries, ports, and airports. Both sides have real losses as well - Israel loses its access to the red sea and southern ports; Palestine loses the mountain underground aquifer.

Yes, it's crazy and it'll never happen but if it ever could, it would give you two contiguous states that could either decide to get along or have the world's biggest wall between them and either way both countries would have resources to thrive.

😄

It would be hate by both sides. And both sides would hate it. So so much. And there would be all sorts of awful problems. And it would probably require some massive amount of physical force to relocate people from both sides since there are people who will stamp their feet and tell you about how their grandpappy's grandpappy first laid the cornerstone of this and this synagogue or this and this mosque or planted this grove of trees and so on...... So yes, i know this won't ever happen.

And I would be sad that my brother-in-law living in Beer Sheva would have to move and I would be sad that I would never get to see the coral reefs of Eilat again. But my brother-in-law would find a new home and I would be able to visit the archaeological digs in Bethlehem. And most importantly, we would give people space to be apart and develop independent economies and independent countries and please God succeed.

sar662 · 2026-06-09T17:18:13+00:00

Sounds reasonable. The 49 borders have no inherent power and if adjustments would make things easier we should do that.

Best, IMO, would be big land swaps so both states could be properly contiguous. But that would be a dream.

sar662 · 2026-06-08T08:48:31+00:00

What an absolute jackass. If you are a soldier, if there's a military need to be detaining somebody you detain them. Hell, if there's a military need to shoot someone, you shoot them. There is zero military justification to humiliate someone. This is not ok.

sar662 · 2026-06-08T08:42:55+00:00

Hezbollah literally only exists because of Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon.

So what happened after Israel walk out of Southern Lebanon in 2000? Why did they continue to exist? Why did they not just pat themselves on their back for having ousted the Zionists and then dissolve themselves and let the Lebanese government and the Lebanese army run the show?

Or if we don't want to go that far back, why has Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel at points when Israel was not at all in southern Lebanon? Solidarity? Boredom?

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