slowturtle

By "Arabs who live in Israel" you mean the minority of Arabs who the Israelis didn't force out at gunpoint during Plan Dalet and the Nakba. The Israelis can rectify the situation at any time by either allowing the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to have a real state, not a puppet or rump state, or by incorporating them into Israel with full legal rights, political representation, and an end to military occupation.

Funny how you were originally arguing that Israel doesn't control the West Bank, but now you say "perhaps there would be more freedom and self-determination for the West Bank", correctly suggesting that there isn't self-determination now. So Israel does control it.

As for Gaza, it's ridiculous to say that Israel doesn't occupy it when even long before October 2023 the Israelis have imposed a complete blockade on the territory. They control the movement of goods, they control the water supply, the power supply, the airspace, they built a 20-foot wall around it, they destroyed the only airport, they control how far fishing boats can go out, and on and on. How is that not military control?

The West Bank is administered by the Israeli Civil Administration which is a branch of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Even the Israeli High Court of Justice (Supreme Court) says that "Israel holds the Area in belligerent occupation" and that "a military administration... continues to apply". [0]

Not to mention how the Israeli government allows over 700,000 illegal settlers to flood the West Bank and does absolutely nothing to stop them from stealing land or attacking Palestinians. The Israeli military has ultimate authority there. Like the other commenter said, it's a fantasy to claim otherwise.

[0] https://books.google.com/books?id=B1ZIIDeEc5AC&pg=PA511#v=on...

You’re ignoring 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and 2 million in the Gaza Strip who are forced to live under Israel’s military occupation and law but do not have political representation in its government. That’s not even getting into discriminatory practices in Israel against its own Arab citizens. How about the fact that a Jew anywhere in the world can immigrate to Israel, but a Palestinian Arab whose family was forced out in the Nakba, with a valid claim to land in Israel, cannot.

Israel is not a democracy. You cannot call yourself a democracy when 5 million people live under your military occupation and are subject to military law without any political representation. An apartheid state cannot be a democracy.

> Israel values the lives of their hostages above all else and will try to rescue them no matter the cost.

Then why did the Israelis violate the ceasefire in March earlier this year, after they refused to move on to the second phase which would've seen the release of more of the hostages? They broke the ceasefire by killing 400 Palestinians in one day, including over 200 children. [0] Conveniently Netanyahu used it as an excuse to get out of a court appearance for his corruption trial the next day.

[0] https://apnews.com/live/latest-updates-israel-launches-new-w...

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahus-testimony-in-graft-...

Probably because Israel violated the ceasefire earlier this year (that was a sham from the beginning) that lasted from January to March. The first phase of the ceasefire saw an exchange of hostages, but then the Israelis refused to move on to the second phase and broke the ceasefire by bombing Gaza in the middle of the night, killing over 400 Palestinians in one day, including over 200 children. [0]

Not to mention the fact that Israel just killed a top Hamas negotiator in Doha, Qatar only a few weeks ago. [1] How can you negotiate with someone who just killed your negotiator?

[0] https://apnews.com/live/latest-updates-israel-launches-new-w...

[1] https://apnews.com/article/qatar-explosion-doha-e319dd51b170...

UK surgeon Nick Maynard, a volunteer at Nasser Hospital, tells Good Morning Britain that he and other doctors tried to bring baby formula into Gaza and the Israelis confiscated it from them with no justification. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ipJEROtHOs

Carter was the only president to call Israel what it is, an apartheid state.[0] Rest in peace.

[0] https://youtube.com/shorts/y23V6PLTCMw

The war's been at a stalemate for over a year with Ukraine having lost control of its eastern provinces in spite of receiving hundreds of billions of dollars in aid from "the West". Sounds like a loss to me, regardless of one's personal feelings.

Just because "we" are from English-speaking countries doesn't mean "we" have the same "enemies", and the idea that people are assigned a list of enemies based on where they're born is insane. Being born on the same patch of dirt doesn't mean I have anything to do with you.

I can’t wait for the day I can strap on my Apple® Vision Pro® 9 with OpenAI® integration and spend all my time interfacing (wink) with my virtual girlfriend. Sure my unlit 3 by 3 meter LifePod® is a little cramped and my arm itches from the Soylent® IV drip, but I’ll save so much time by not having to go outside and interact with legacy humans!

> I can certainly think of some other ethnicity in that region who had their land occupied and was cleansed from the region.

And I can certainly think of some other ethnicity in that region who that ethnicity cleansed from the region according to their own holy book. :)

Deuteronomy 20:16-17 (God telling Joshua, leader of the Israelites, to go to war)

> 16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.

> Any rational person of western ideology, that isn’t myopically viewing this as some oppressed/oppressor academic generalization, gets why Israel must act the way they are acting.

Why must Israel act in a way that includes indiscriminate bombing? Those aren't just my words, by the way, but President Biden's [0], who's a self-proclaimed Zionist. [1]

Isn't it (A) not effective at eliminating Hamas and (B) likely to increase anti-Israel sentiment and radicalize the Gazan population, which is harmful to Israel's long-term security?

[0] https://apnews.com/article/biden-israel-hamas-oct-7-44c4229d... [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/i-am-zionist-how-joe-bidens...

> Hamas is making that very difficult by blending in with the population, putting command centers under major hospitals and so on.

If there's a command center under a hospital, then you don't bomb the hospital. The fact that your enemy is using "human shields" doesn't mean that it's justified to bomb and kill everyone, including the shields. Now every relative and friend of the innocent people you killed has a reason to pick up a gun against you.

Obviously this puts you at a disadvantage. Instead of bombing targets on a screen from the comfort of an air-conditioned office in Tel Aviv, you'll have to send special forces in on the ground and probably take a lot of casualties. But you demonstrate to the civilians that you're not just killing them indiscriminately.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress in March 2013 that the NSA did not collect data on millions of Americans, just three months(!) before Snowden and Greenwald revealed the classified NSA documents proving otherwise. [0] The heads of the intelligence agencies will say whatever they need to say to get what they want. Lying to Congress and the American people is business as usual for them.

[0] https://apnews.com/article/business-33a88feb083ea35515de3c73...

The point is that Fauci and the CDC lied to the public about the efficacy of masks, even if they lied with "good" intentions. They simply could've explained that supplies were low and asked people not to hoard them. Instead they lied (one of many times) and acted surprised when people started distrusting them.

I've been checking in on the Herculaneum scrolls every few months for years to see if any progress has been made reading them yet, so to see such a well orchestrated competition around them is really exciting!

> I'm dubious that the "Fed's money printer" had much of an effect on inflation. It certainly didn't cause the SVB or other banks to go under. The rate increases did that..

The rate increases were an attempt to combat the inflation caused by the massive increase in money supply during the pandemic due to the government stimulus. There were no new goods or services justifying all the stimulated activity. SVB was drunk on the seemingly permanent zero interest rates (like everyone else) and invested in long term government bonds. Then the unthinkable happens—rate increases for the first time in over a decade, and those investments go boom. This is all about people getting used to cheap money.