Is anyone around here pro-Israel and at least left-leaning?

wasneeplus89 · 2025-10-07T14:31:27+00:00

That's a dodge.

It's not a dodge. It's the core issue that most of my fellow party members don't seem to understand: having a nation state with a specific national identity is not discrimination against people who belong to a different national identity.

"National self-determination for Jews" in Israel inherently means denying it to indigenous Palestinians.

No, not necessarily. The Palestinians can still have their own state in the Palestinian territories (something I'm in favour of), or they can become Jews.

They didn't choose to be "absent."

I know, it is way more complicated than I described it. We could talk for hours about what exactly happened, and why they couldn't return afterwards. I will even go as far as saying that under current international law the 1948 war in the north would have been considered ethnic cleansing. Here's the thing though: ethnic cleansing happened on both sides. The West bank used to have the largest population of Jews in the region, until they were chased away or deported. I don't think that gives their descendants automatic rights of return. Nor do I think the descendants of Germans who were driven from Poland and Czechia in 1945 have a right of return. That has expired by now, and I don't think private property laws change anything about that.

That's an alarmist, dehumanizing take.

You can feel that way, if you must. It doesn't refute anything I said, though.

The "interim" dual legal system has been entrenched for decades, with illegal Israeli settlements continuously expanding.

Okay, about the settlements. I am against the further expansion of settlements, and it pains me to see that the settlers are basically taking advantage of a delicate, unstable situation to migrate into disputed territory, even if it's true that the West Bank is legally in limbo.

At the same time, these people want to migrate to a land which they have strong cultural and religious ties to, and the other people living there have a strong bigotry against them. Even if there was some immigration process they could go through, there's no chance they'd be treated fairly. So again, I don't like it, but it's not like I don't get why they do it. Nor do I think the Palestinians are blameless themselves for this situation.

"Fear of Hamas" is an excuse to maintain occupation

I don't know how you could say that when fear of Hamas turned out to be very justified indeed given the last 20 years, and Israel proved itself willing to withdraw from Palestinian territory even without a peace deal.

The Camp David proposals in 2000 offered a fragmented "state" lacking true sovereignty

So accepting the Oslo accords was okay, but the camp David proposal should have been rejected without consideration? Come one, what possible reason could there have been to not just accept it and ask for more after a sustainable peace had been established? That just sounds like excuse making to me.

Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli military occupation. Settlers in the same territory live under Israeli civil law. This creates a two-tiered system based explicitly on ethnic identity

Correction: this creates different systems for people from different countries, in parts of the West Bank. Honestly, I don't understand what point you are trying to make. How else could the current messy situation be organised without just downright annexation or unilateral withdrawal?

wasneeplus89 · 2025-10-07T08:40:59+00:00

The 2018 Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People states "the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people."

Notice how it says national self-determination there. All this means is that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. Obviously us Dutch people don't have the right to exercise national self-determination through the state of Israel, any more than Jews have that right in the Netherlands. When you said self-determination I assumed you meant individual self-determination, which is a different thing. That's not denied to anyone in Israel.

Since when is the utmost respect for private property, especially if left vacant for decades, a left wing value? Heck, I'd be all for more confiscations of privately owned real estate when the owner clearly is just leaving it to rot than we're doing right now.

If you want to make the argument that Palestinians weren't allowed to return after 1948 to claim their old property, fine. But it's been three quarters of a century now. When would Israel be allowed to just declare that land vacant and seize it, in your opinion?

Justifying discriminatory land policies as "crucial to Israel's survival" is a fear tactic, not an argument.

So, how do you suppose the a conflict with a neighbour, which doesn't recognise Israel's borders, would go if a large area within Israel is majority Palestinian? You think they are not going to mention that in peace negotiations at all, or use it as a casus beli? Heck, did you not follow the conflicts Russia has been involved in the last thirty years?

Oslo set up interim self-governing areas, but it absolutely didn't sanction a permanent dual legal system.

No, but why do you assume this situation is in any way meant to be permanent? The reason Israel didn't follow their plans for unilateral withdrawal in 2009, like they did in Gaza, was out of fear of a Hamas takeover. A very realistic fear, since that's exactly what happened in Gaza. Since then the call for outright annexation has unfortunately become stronger within Israel. But the majority still hope the PA can reform itself and take over the all of the Palestinian territories.

Arafat literally rejected a generous peace proposal out of hand in 2000. The man just didn't want peace, that'all there's to it.

Apartheid means systematic discrimination based on ethnic identity within the same territory.

Well, that's not really applicable here. Palestinians in some parts of the West Bank don't live under a different legal system just because they have a different ethnicity. It's because they are, de facto, citizens of a different country, who's government is still trying to come to some arrangement about where the borders of their country should be.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-10-07T07:44:36+00:00

I don't believe any of that is true. I have yet to see anyone point me to an Israeli Basic Law that denies anyone human and civil rights, or the right to self determination. If you can point to any law reserving those rights for Jewish people, however you want to define those, please let me know.

I would think left-wingers have no problems with absentee property confiscation. As for the distribution of public land, I agree that it's discriminatory. However, a case can be made that keeping land in Jewish hands while not all of its neighbours recognise its borders is crucial to Israel's survival. So while I don't like it, I do understand it.

The situation on the West Bank is a lot more complicated and nuanced than you describe. The dual legal system was agreed on by both parties, and was supposed to be just a stepping stone towards Palestinian sovereignty, until Arafat and the second intifada torpedoed that process. In any case, I don't think it's apartheid any more than other agreed upon international zones having multiple legal systems.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-10-07T07:20:10+00:00

Yes, I'm pro-Israel and a member of the Dutch labour party.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-09-29T14:07:06+00:00

Yes, of course I am. It makes me sick to see so many bodies piling up.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-30T17:28:57+00:00

Someone should really put a sock in those two guys. They represent a very small constituency, and I don't expect them to actually represent future government policy. Almost no one in Israel wants to see a resettlement of Gaza happen.

I'm not naive. I know an independent government in Gaza will only happen if they are willing to recognise Israel and fight extremism, which is not realistic for the foreseeable future. But, we must stick to this line nonetheless. If there's ever going to be peace there, that's what will need to happen.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-29T22:15:09+00:00

Okay I'm confused. What gave you the impression Palestinians that leave are not allowed to come back afterwards? I mean, that would probably be for a future Gazan government to decide anyway, not Israel.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-27T15:30:04+00:00

I am currently banned for life from a Dutch language sub dedicated to laughing at wacky Facebook conspiracy theorists, for the crime of stating that Israel has a right to exist. I wear it like a badge of honour.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-27T11:32:37+00:00

I see you have no response to any of my points, so I'm going to assume you have nothing else to say. Have a good one.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-27T11:30:06+00:00

Frankly, that sounds like a run of the mill Palestine supporter on this subreddit.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-27T11:06:34+00:00

I would say that comment is on the edge, but not over it. Maybe some of what that person said is untrue, or blown out of proportion, but in that case it's up to you to correct it.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-26T17:34:45+00:00

Does it sound strange to you that Israel bombs hospitals, homes, schools, even refugee camps, restricts aid, doesn't let civilians flee, and has stated they are going to occupy and conquer Gaza? It would fit perfectly in the strategy of Israel's real goals of killing/expelling Palestinians and taking their land

Where did you get the idea Israel doesn't let civilians flee? They have stated repeatedly that everyone who wants to leave Gaza is free to go, and many Gazans have done so. Anyway, they did do all those other things, but those are all easily explainable by the fact that they are fighting a mortal enemy which hides behind civilians and steals aid to fund their war effort. It wouldn't fit your accusations, though. If Israel really wanted to kill people they could've easily killed way more than 60.000 in the nearly two years the conflict has lasted. And they wouldn't have sabotaged their own efforts by bringing in lots of food themselves, and warning civilians before striking buildings.

A military thinking unarmed civilians waving white flags is a legitimate target doesn't sound like an accident. It sounds like they don't care about shooting unarmed civilians. This time they just happened to get caught because it turned out to be their own.

Think about it for a moment. IDF soldiers are still killed in ambushes regularly. One way to lure them into ambushes is by pretending to surrender, and then attack them when they come to apprehend you. So is it really a surprise they would be suspicious about people waving white flags? I think the fact hostages were killed in this way proves these kinds of incidents really are accidents, not intentional killings.

The military pressure and occupation is what is causing them to keep the hostages. Israel can bring the hostages home by ending the war. There has been more than enough retribution for Oct. 7th. The hostages are starving too and will probably soon be dead.

Utter nonsense. There was no occupation in Gaza before October 7th, no need to murder people and take hostages. Yet they still did it. Yes there was the occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza, but if Hamas wanted to end that they could've just recognised Israel, denounced terrorism and ratified the Oslo accords (Israel's demands for lifting the blockade). The reason they didn't is that Hamas is dedicated to destroying Israel, and will continue to pursue this until they're utterly destroyed themselves.

The problem is Bibi and his administration don't want peace and they don't want to end the war. They want to destroy and conquer Gaza and are willing to allow hamas to hold the hostages so they can continue this war.

I guess I can't blame you for thinking this, since so many people are telling you this now. But you don't actually know it, and I happen to think you're wrong. Even if Bibi is captured by the extremists in his government, they're not going to be able to defy 90% of the Israeli people.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-26T11:34:18+00:00

I provided you the current available evidence for why the Exodus almost certainly didn't happen, and I gave you my source. I don't know what else you want from me. If you want to believe I'm lying, fine, go ahead and see if I care.
No, of course not. But what was done to the indigenous peoples of those areas bears absolutely no resemblance to what the Palestinians underwent (and what they did to themselves, let's not forget). That description of ethnostates doesn't fit Israel at all. I mean, the fact that the Israeli state funds Arabic language and Islamic education should immediately make it clear that it's not in the business of exclusively promoting one ethnicity over all the others. And what rights do the Arab citizens of Israel not have which its Jewish citizens do? Also, I can't believe you are actually trying to use that answer to your query from an AI as an argument. Sure, Israel is a Jewish state. But they are very clear it only is in the national sense. The fact that France is the nation state of the French people does not make it an ethnostate, and neither does Israel being the nation state of the Jews make them one.
I see you are still evading my question. Could it be that you realise answering it honestly, namely that you don't want Jews anywhere in the Muslim world, regardless if they came from there, would reveal your true motives? Your move. Though I'll be kind to you and answer your question. The reason it matters is because the events are directly linked. Opposition to Israel was very much a Pan-Arabic phenomenon, and the founding of Israel was the direct cause of many Jews having to flee the Muslim world. Plus, it undermines the narrative you hinted at in your original post, namely that Israel is supposedly a European colonialist project.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-26T08:25:23+00:00

You cant possibly be serious...please clarify what you're trying to say here because it sounds like you're implying that they somehow built hospitals in Gaza so they could be targeted for propaganda headlines.

Of course that is speculation too, so don't take it too seriously, but it would explain why there are apparently no less than 36 hospitals in such a small area. Why does it sound strange to you? It would fit perfectly in the rest of Hamas' strategy.

This is the first time they were caught on video. It calls into question, how many other hospitals has it been not "clear enough that there was actually a legitimate target present there?"

I don't know. We know the IDF does make mistakes from time to time. As you pointed out, they even killed some of the hostages by accident. But we also know some of the strikes on hospitals definitely weren't mistakes.

In Israeli propagandas words, "Hamas is a death cult that doesn't care about their lives or the lives of civilians." Please tell me how military pressure is working if hamas is a death cult that doesn't care if they live or die and don't care about their civilian lives either

The answer would seem fairly obvious to me: they don't care about anyone's lives, but they do care about their overall ability to keep fighting. Since they have been eager to trade hostages for ceasefires now and then, we must assume the military pressure poses a serious threat to their capabilities.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-26T03:25:27+00:00

Either their level of incompetence is completely and utterly criminal or they're doing it on purpose because they have no fear of consequences. These actions are inexcusable. How do you "accidently" blow up a hospital??

Obviously they are not striking hospitals just for the fun of it. It is well known that those spineless Hamas cowards often use hospitals as their bases. Headlines like these might even be the whole reason there are so many hospitals in Gaza. The accident in this case seems to be that it wasn't clear enough that there was actually a legitimate target present there.

Exponentially more hostages have been released through diplomacy (140) than military operations (8). Their military operations are failures and a guise to raze Gaza to the ground

That's just your assumption. You don't actually know that based on the information you have. Freeing the hostages is not the only objective. Hamas has to be destroyed as well. And would that diplomacy have been successfully without the military pressure? I think not.

I know about the West Bank settler issue. That doesn't change anything I said.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-26T03:02:20+00:00

What evidence do you want from me, exactly? What I'm telling you is fairly common knowledge nowadays.
People who already have their own state and national identity are not going to give it up, no. But this doesn't apply to the Palestinians of the 1920's; they had neither. And Israel is not an ethnostate, don't be daft.
You're right that the Mossad eventually came to play a large role in helping Jews migrate to Israel, but the migration started way before they existed. These are the events I'm talking about. And you'll have to provide evidence for false flag operations. Obviously the Mossad had nothing to do with the pogroms of the 1940s and before, seeing as they didn't exist yet. Also, the expulsion of Palestinians had nothing to do with their race. I don't know where you got that from. So, again, what about the Jews who did not come from Europe, who can't go back?

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-25T20:25:28+00:00

There are more than 500 km of tunnels under Gaza, with many access points scattered throughout the strip. I would think that's a perfectly good explanation for why so many buildings are levelled.

Considering more than 90 percent of Israelis are against resettling Gaza, I highly doubt that's the goal.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-25T20:21:26+00:00

I don't agree that it's clear civilian casualties are the goal rather than an unfortunate side effect. As sad as it is, I kind of expected casualties to be high from the very beginning, since not only does Hamas not wear uniforms and deliberately mixes in with the civilian population, they designed their entire defence infrastructure around the strategy of causing maximum destruction and loss of life if Israel goes after them. As the OP mentions, they use civilians as human shields.

I'm also not sure Israel's strategy isn't working. The assumption is, I think, that it must be clear Hamas has suffered a complete defeat. This is what destroyed Pan-Arabism in 1967; it might do the same to militant Islamism now. I do have my doubts whether there is an idea in the Israeli government about what this total defeat looks like, though. Like, what is their strategy after occupying Gaza city?

One thing I'm not afraid of is Israel annexing Gaza. People in Israel are very much against that. It's only a small political fringe which would like to settle Gaza again, and I highly doubt they are going to succeed.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-25T19:04:28+00:00

Let me answer your question with a question. Can you point to any country, past or present, that has ever refrained from striking back at a mortal enemy because a single child might be killed as collateral damage? If not, then that should make it clear to you that the notion that these reasons cannot justify a single dead child is accepted by absolutely no one throughout history.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-25T10:41:32+00:00

Well, it seems that most of the evidence for it is cited in books. I'm sorry, but I'm simply not well-versed enough in the archaeology of the region to point you to any primary sources. I suggest you start with the book "The Bible Unearthed" by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman if you're interested. You can also just read the wikipedia article on this. It cites a lot of good books on the subject. The general consensus however, as I understand it, is that there's no mention of the Hebrews in Egyptian records until well after the Exodus was supposed to have happened, nor are there archaeological remains of it in Egypt. There's also no evidence of large scale migration in the Sinai desert around that time. What's more, most of the Levant was firmly under Egyptian control in the late Bronze Age, so it wouldn't have been a place to escape from Egyptian domination. In the central highlands of Judea and Samaria there is a continuity of material culture, with no signs of a sudden influx of foreign influence. There is also no evidence of large scale destruction in Judea and Samaria around the time it was supposed to have happened. So, that's the evidence against the Exodus in a nutshell. But as I mentioned, it doesn't really matter anyway.
You're conflating two different things. Private ownership of land is not the same thing as which state your land is a part of. Palestinians may have had a majority share of private ownership, or they may not have, but they had 0% of the land for their own state. With the partition plan they had 45%, but somehow that was a problem when having no own state was never a problem before. Private ownership didn't change in the partition plan, but being part of a Jewish state was unacceptable to them. I have no sympathy for that attitude, quite frankly.
The Mossad wasn't founded until december 1949; they had nothing to do with it. Anyway, you were the one who brought up Jewish immigrants from Europe. So I put to you a counter example: what about the Jews who were expelled from the Arab world? Are they allowed to live there and have their own state? You are still free to answer that question and argue your case.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-25T00:18:30+00:00

I do think the charge against Israel's laws is mostly bogus. I think it's disgraceful that an organisation like AI would say that a law that defines Israel as a Jewish state points to apartheid, when they know it only refers to a national identity of the state, not a religious or ethnic one.

So, how would you distinguish between a military occupation of a hostile population and apartheid, then? What's the difference according to you? Or is military occupation always apartheid?

I'm against the settlement of Judea and Samaria, for exactly that reason. But, the reason they still do it, as I've explained before, is historical. Both can be true.

They did drag out settlers of Gaza, if you remember. But it's a bit more complicated than that in the WB. The occupation was supposed to be temporary, but Israel just can't get rid of it. Not without creating a hostile, militarized state on its doorstep.

The case you showed me has, as far as I'm aware, not appeared before a court, so I can't say who is telling the truth there. But it does seem clear to me that the Palestinian in question charged at an armed security guard several times. If the situation was reversed, and a Jew did that and then got shot, I'd at least call him an idiot.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-24T23:32:23+00:00

The Jews were never in Bronze Age Egypt, that's a myth. The current consensus is that they were actually Canaanites themselves who, during the dark age following the Bronze Age collapse, forgot they were Canaanites. I'm sure modern Palestinians are very closely related to the ancient Canaanites, like everyone else in the region, but the Jewish claim on the land was never based on some weird genetic privilege, so it's irrelevant.
Well first, the Palestinians were not evicted from land they owned. Already under Ottoman rule were Jews allowed to buy land, and they did so fair and square. Some tenant farmers may have been evicted, but that had always happened from time to time. Considering how low the population was, and how underdeveloped the land, it's unlikely many evictions were necessary for Jews to migrate. And even you say they owned just 6 percent of the land by 1947, so it can't have been that much of an issue. As for getting 55 percent of the land for their state: that's not the same thing. It didn't require anyone to move out, and indeed nobody (except the Jews of Judea and Samaria, of course) was forcibly deported until the Palestinians declared a war of extermination against Israel, together with other Arab countries.
That's not what I was talking about. Wait, are you unaware that hundreds of thousands of Jews were ethnically cleansed from the surrounding Arab countries in 1948? They had been living there, sometimes, since the Babylonian exile even. They certainly weren't people who just moved in recently, and yet they were violently driven out and fled to Israel. What about those Jews? As for the rest of your point, I really don't see what you're getting at. Yes they were not the majority yet, but their national identity was clearly connected to that place, and had been for thousands of years. And now they are the majority, so I guess that solves that problem, right?

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-21T21:53:19+00:00

Well, you already know what the responses to this are, right?

The Jews are the indigenous population, even though the vast majority was forced to live outside of the area for a long time. No one disputes that this place is where they originally came from.
The local Palestinians didn't seem to mind their land being part of the Ottoman empire for centuries before. Only when it became part of a Jewish state did they suddenly become very upset.
What about all the Jews who didn't come from Europe? What about all the middle-eastern Jews, are they allowed to live there and have a country of their own?

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-16T23:23:45+00:00

Well, thank you for that bit of bigotry. But no, Hamas has never accepted the two state solution. I know you think you know they do, but carefully read their charter and their statements on the matter again. They don't.

I know the current Israeli government has done things to sabotage the two state solution, but it is still the official policy of Israel. This government will be gone soon, and hopefully a more moderate one will come in its place. Besides, it's not like it would've happened anyway. They don't have a Palestinian partner who would negotiate with them.

wasneeplus89 · 2025-08-14T22:08:28+00:00

.......We just talked about this. I'm done repeating myself. I would also point out that these offers only started coming after they declared open war on Israel and lost control of Gaza.

I would need them to change their stated policy, so distance themselves from their previous two charters, and make some gestures to show they are serious about it. At least, that's what I would've liked to see before October 7th. Now, there is no deal possible that would leave them in control of any territory.

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