[xg15]

Come on dude, there are enough, very public indicators that it indeed had that intent. The quotes from various government officials are well-known by now.

> Second, "apartheid" - Israel has arab supreme judges and muslim parliament members, very very far from apartheid

That term is in relation to Palestinians in the occupied territories, not in relation to Arab Israelis, and you know that.

> The only intent here, is to destroy hamas. the rest - a direct consequence of how they fight from within hospitals and civilian population.

That's why they're not letting in any shelter material more durable than a tent...

[Protostome]

Quotes are not intents. If someone would have advocated for peace and acted in aggression you wouldn't call them peaceful. You judge by actions, rather than words. and the actions are far from pointing out any intent for a genocide.

Second, the occupied territories were Jordanian and Egyptian territories. Currently most of the territory is governed by the Palestinian Authority with Israeli security control. Palestinians have demonstrated very well that they are unable to prevent suicide bombings, stabbing, mass shootings, so Israel had no choice but to take care of the security itself. The purpose of the Oslo accords was to hand the control in the entire west bank to the Palestinians and establish a state in those territories. Right now, we are in a limbo state. This is not an apartheid, apartheid is a systemic racial separation in all levels of society.

And finally, again, everything that went into Gaza was used for one purpose - fight and destroy Israel. Where did they get all this concrete to build tunnels? Where did they get all the chemicals and metals to build rocket and rocket fuel?

[xg15]

Explain what "security control" means.

[spwa4]

If you explain first what "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him" means, you know, in what is generally considered the constitution of Gaza. Could you please also expand on why this explicitly refers to Jews to be exterminated without limit, not Israeli.

Oh AND explain how this is not apartheid or racism: "The sale of Palestinian land to Jews is punishable by death" (part of the PLO laws)

I'll wait.

[toraway]

For the sake of argument, let's concede that every point you make is 100% true, it's apartheid and racism.

How does that possibly make the act of keeping an ethnic minority of 1 million+ people with zero political agency confined in a walled-in ghetto that is routinely bombed into rubble, where the ability to import even basic humanitarian aid is entirely at the mercy of external security forces anything other than apartheid?

It would be much easier to make your argument without absurd contortions of logic if Israel actually agreed to a two state solution and gave Palestinians true political agency and right to self-determination. Then they could get away with washing their hands of any culpability, instead of vaguely pointing to the Palestinian Authority which both de jure and de facto is missing most of the attributes of an actual state. First and foremost being controlling a border, instead of Israel's "security control" granting the IDF complete freedom of movement and power to block any goods from entering/exiting the occupied territories.

The PA is closer to a city government with fewer powers than even a U.S. state, let alone an actual nation state. As long as that remains unchanged, Israel bears both legal and moral responsibility for the residents, and difficult to view the gross disparities between the rights of Israelis proper and those residing in the occupied areas as anything other than apartheid.

[spwa4]

So here's where your argument first goes wrong: Israel agreed to a two state solution many times. You do realize that the very origin of hamas was as a reaction to the two state solution, after the agreement was agreed/signed? They started massacring Palestinians to prevent it, spoiling Bill Clinton's "I made peace in Israel" party. Remember?

But this generalizes. Since 1880 what eventually became the Israeli government has made a great many attempts to make peace. Between 45 BC and 1970 ironically "Palestine" referred to the Jewish government in a bunch areas, most now called Israel (before "Palestine" is was "Judaea" and "Samaria"), a term chosen by, of all people, Julius Caesar. He chose it specifically to insult the Jews living there. A fact that, while totally lost on everyone today, was not lost on the KGB's Egyptian spy with the name "Yasser Arafat". Everything about Palestinians, including the name of their supposed ethnicity, is chosen with the specific purpose of making whoever lives there the enemies of the Jews, and this was so chosen by the Soviet Union (yes, it wasn't yet dead at that time). It's crazy how many people the Israeli government made peace with. The Caliph al Islam (ie. the leader of the Ottoman empire). The King of England. The UN Security Council. US presidents. General secretaries of the Soviet Union. KGB spies calling themselves "president of Palestine". The list goes on and on and on and on.

All Israeli peace attempts were in fact rejected by Arabs, dozen of peace attempts by now. Even by islamic institutions when they still existed. Islamic institions in Jerusalem at one point went so far as to create new SS units to exterminate Jews. Yes, really, that SS. There's history here.

> How does that possibly make the act of keeping an ethnic minority of 1 million+ people with zero political agency confined in a walled-in ghetto

It doesn't, of course. The problem is that that's not what happened. What happened is that muslim leadership consistently chose and enforced this outcome for other muslims (not just in Israel, but equally in Sudan, Syria, Egypt, Lybia, Iran, to various extents. This is their standard way of operating). Then they blame the result ... on the Jews. That is partly what the war with Iran is about. On Syrian Sunnis, then on Alawites, now on Sunnis again. On Lybian families. And so on, it's not like they're changing tactics.

Another big wrong point: US states have a ridiculous amount of power, imho, far more power than a European nation state has these days.

[toraway]

  > Another big wrong point: US states have a ridiculous amount of power, imho, far more power than a European nation state has these days.

A nation-state choosing to delegate power by treaty agreements does not mean they have lost the ability to exercise that power. Any state in the EU can withdraw at any time, as evidenced by Brexit.

Setting that aside, US states are prevented by the constitution from exercising control over trade or migration across their borders within the US, conducting independent foreign policy, issuing passports, are unrecognized by any other country, etc so that argument doesn't withstand the slightest scrutiny and is somewhat absurd. What they do have is an independent legal system and police powers that the federal government respects as settled law (with give and take on specific areas but still constrained by the judiciary).

Israel can and does override any action the PA may take at any time, once again on the basis of "security". There is very limited de jure autonomy and non-existent de facto autonomy. Much like how a state can override decisions a city makes, the difference still being that Israel again uses "security" as an ever present wildcard without judicial limitations that act as guardrails such as exist in US municipal governance.

[xg15]

And yet you can find maps with arab villages all over present-day Israel that were completely erased. There were battles in the War of Independence (independence from what?) to take over the large cities like Jaffa and Haifa and expel the population. How did that happen if Israel was always so peace-seeking?

> Since 1880 what eventually became the Israeli government has made a great many attempts to make peace.

Yes, like the UN partition plan. Usually, if one party says "no", I'd think this would mean "we have to renegotiate and find another solution" and not "ok, then we can just take everything by force". But the rules seem to be different here.

> It doesn't, of course. The problem is that that's not what happened. What happened is that muslim leadership consistently chose and enforced this outcome for other muslims (not just in Israel, but equally in Sudan, Syria, Egypt, Lybia, Iran, to various extents. This is their standard way of operating). Then they blame the result ... on the Jews.

Last time I checked, it was the IDF who keeps up the blockade of Gaza and controls everything that goes in and out, not any kind of muslim army.

[xg15]

We can agree that Hamas is bad - but Israel doesn't seem to make any difference between Hamas and the rest of the Palestinians. In fact, if I hear pro-Israel people talk, my impression is that there exists only Israel and Hamas - the latter the pure embodiment of evil - and nothing else. Are all 2 million Gazans Hamas?

Israel also doesn't give any indication what would happen to Gaza (and the Gazans) once Hamas is gone.

What about olive farmers in the West Bank that get their groves torched by settlers? What about people who are running modern universities in Ramallah or opening galleries and cinemas? (until the IDF raids them?)

What about Palestinians who are active in Combatants for Peace or Standing Together?

> Oh AND explain how this is not apartheid or racism: "The sale of Palestinian land to Jews is punishable by death" (part of the PLO laws)

Ah yeah, like the "anti-white racism" in South Africa. The Israeli "civil administration" and the IDF have full control about land use in the West Bank. They can and do just grab areas that belong to Palestinians and declare them as "state land" or "military restricted areas", until mysteriously some settlement outpost pops up on them. Palestinians have no hope of ever getting that land back and have no other land to go to. The same is (in the West Bank) not true for Israelis.

[Izkata]

> You judge by actions, rather than words. and the actions are far from pointing out any intent for a genocide.

On that note: The population in Gaza appears to have gone up rather than down.