Israel / Palestine

history of this conflict has been batted around alot, when you read into some of the earliest conflicts such as the 6 day war, at least in retrospective you can see how the threat posed by surrounding nations to israel was fabricated/exagerated/manafactured and used as cover to sure up the israeli states border expansion. this is not really coming from left wing foreign commentators either, but israeli primeministers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALJqE1nf2yw

fairly nuanced video here covers this, the original is available too but hasans analysis is routinely v good,, but as with all links on a bike forum about international conflicts do your own reading.

this is important because it seems, with the backing from the US positioning warships and hitting targets to neighbour states, israel is repeating this strategy. anyone drawn into thinking this is a religious or historic conflict is being lead down the garden path and should probably focus more on speaking and listening to a broard range of israeli citizens and jewish people themselves, but also palestinians who live under the occupation, their own views of their family history and their successive governments. this is a modern conflict, backed by major western powers to keep both a heavily funded and armed western power base in the region while also continuing to destabalise its neighbours for their own gains.

israeli government officials have made no secret that they wish to forcibly remove palestinian people from the gaza strip and force them into neighbouring states or into a smaller piece of land (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/foreign/israeli-fm-gaza-territory-shrink-after-war). this is essential as it's so densly populated the government backed illegal settlement program doesn't work like they're currently operating in the westbank, where there is no hamas government, just kids with stones, yet palestinians are airstriked and fired upon regardless, by idf troops and armed malitia alike (https://www.npr.org/2023/10/23/1207933378/palestinian-deaths-in-the-occupied-west-bank-are-escalating).

what happened in the attack on the 6th was horrific, cowardly murder of civilians. but this history does not start on the 6th. the israeli state has been purposefully/inadvertedly creating terrorist groups (https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/ much like the us did with osama / alqueda) to justify their own expansion plans since their inception. this is not unique to israel, america and the uk did the same to justify their destabalisation and destruction within iraq and afghanistan, the UAE has been doing this within syria and yemen for decades, russia is doing it in ukraine. this is how modern warfare is constructed, and i think many people here are disgusted by it, we should be disgusted by it here too.

less we go back to the time of the afghanistan invasion, where we're told osama binladen lives in an intricate palace of caves which conviniently looks like the lair of a bond villain (https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/tora-bora-tunnel-kingdom-wasnt-lessons-fake-news (link purely for convinience)). the time where we adopted "military aged male" so we would no longer have to report the deaths of those who looked over 18 in the statistics we sent back home and increase the effectiveness of hits on paper. how we were told endlessly of the "precision" of guided missile strikes (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/president-obamas-weak-defense-of-his-record-on-drone-strikes/511454/), which precisely flattend entire city blocks and the infrastructrure of iraq and afghanistan causing the displacement, killing and maiming of hundereds of thousands, leaving local citizens to pick up the pieces and become reliant on local militias.

military intervention by lockheed armed states does not make civilians safer, it does not make jewish or muslim people safer, be it in the states of israel and palestine, or the wider populations globaly. any thearter of war should teach us this. what lead to the events of the 6th was a security failure, something that israeli citizens agree on and hold their primeminister accountable for (https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/most-israelis-think-netanyahu-responsible-failing-prevent-hamas-attack-poll-2023-10-20/), what is happening now in palestine however, is the flattening of gaza, the killing of thousands of palestinians, children, women, men, it isn't correcting that security failure, it's collective punishment and an exscuse to accelerate the parliaments goals of removing palestinian people.

israeli citizens have the right to peace and access to an unbothered life like anyone else, but so do palestinians, the quickest way to achieve this is by stopping the aprteid of palestinian people within israel, the westbank and gaza, just like it was in south africa. achieving this comes from putting pressure on our own states to stop the arming and investment into allowing it to continue and making the continuation untennable for israels allies and bring them to the negotiating table. it also comes from calling on our government to stop sending military intervention to the middle east in any capacity, be it on the books or off it. importantly, it also comes from educating ourselves on the conflict so we can feel confident in making these arguments. we should also be confident in opposing any antisemitism or islamaphobia which stems from such a loaded discussion, there is no exscuse for it.

i don't really expect this to change anyones mind here, but in case anyone is passing through this thread i thought i'd contribute some links that people could use to make their own investigation, and maybe link it to touchstones they're more familiar with to orientate themselves if it's their first time looking into it. i'm not jewish, israeli, palestinian, or muslim, i'm just an agnostic white woman from the uk, my heart goes out to anyone affected either directly from the terrorist attacks on israel, the occupation of palestine, or jewish and muslim members of the forum here who are fearful for themselves or loved one in the face of rising antisemitism and islampaphobia. what we're seeing unfold is the actions of power hungry states, it's the civilians of any adjacency which get caught in the impact.