Germany continues to provide arms and support to the IDF and did so throughout the entire duration of the Gaza Campaign. Just recently, the Volkswagen group announced it is considering retooling one of their factories to manufacture missiles for Iron dome system. The UK also continues to manufacture and sell components for weapon systems used by the Israelis. The UK's RAF bases in Greece, Cyprus, and the UK have also been key logistics hubs for weapons to the Israelis and the Americans. In addition, the UK operated daily surveillance flights over Gaza out of their base in Cyprus through the entire period of the Gaza Genocide. The exact goal and nature of this operation continues to be kept secret but it is inconceivable how they weren't witness to the countless war crimes being committed on the ground. Mainstream outlets like the BBC and the Guardian continue to suppress reporting on this story. I am sure there are more countries providing support in secret and in smaller ways. Germany which suspended all arms exports to Saudi Arabia in 2018 citing the murder of the journalist Khassogi and grave human-rights violations in Yemen lifted these restrictions last year citing its defence of Israel. It is illuminating to note how Germany defines the protection of human rights and journalists in these cases.
Part of the problem is the conflation of Zionism with genocidal government. There is no room for nuiance. A Zionist can want Israelites to live in peace where they currently are and not harm others, and certainly not commit horrible atrocities against other people.
Yet, even this kind of Zionist is under their own genocidal threat, "from the river to the sea", and instead of their being a sensible perspective of "maybe let's not kill a bunch of any people's" we are left with the never ending debate or whose worse.
Are there any polls (or any educated guesses) gauging what proportion of people who identify as Zionists want equal status with all Palestinians (particularly democratic rights) within the bounds of what was once Mandatory Palestine?
* A Zionist can want Israelites to live in peace where they currently are* = they want to live in peace in a land they took by murdering its inhabitant. You can have Jews living in Palestine though but it's not Zionism.
From the beginning, the founders of the Zionist movement were completely on board with the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians from their lands to establish the Israeli state.
There are no Islamic countries. All Muslim-majority countries remain power structures intended to maintain the power of the powerful and use Islam as part of their means to do so. To call them otherwise or label them Islamic is fruitless.
We do the same for Israel. They claim Judiasm but we know they do not represent it. The same for all so-called Islamic countries.
When an “Islamic country” starts getting several billions of dollars in aid from the US and begins “quadruple tapping” civilians, then I suppose there will be some outrage.
In the meantime, this outrage appears to be more based in the criminal conduct of a genocidal state than any religious amenity
Several Muslim-majority countries have received billions in U.S. aid for decades, not just recently. The clearest examples are Egypt, Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and, in humanitarian years, Syria and Yemen.
Hell, Pakistan got more than $19 billion in U.S. aid from 2002–2010, plus a $7.5 billion non-military package over five years, and Afghanistan got more than $109 billion total through USAID.
Egypt gets about $2 billion a year on average since 1979, mostly military aid.
How do you think Islam spread? Peacefully? Look at history. And look at Islamic texts that preach the subjugation and killing of anyone who isn’t Islamic. It’s much more of a supremacist culture than any other.
Yep, and this is the obvious dishonesty of the people who single out Israel. It’s one country with a Jewish culture, where non-Jewish people also prosper in large numbers. But there are MANY officially Islamic nations where there is a state religion, where laws and religion are mixed together, and where violence/oppression of minorities is normalized and welcomed. Not a single pro-Gaza or anti-Israel activist will acknowledge this. It’s dishonest. Israel is much more egalitarian and frankly, civilized.
> Not a single pro-Gaza or anti-Israel activist will acknowledge this
Go easy on the Kool-Aid.
It's the opposite; those things are not talked about because they are universally acknowledged by anyone except the groups themselves as bad.
The problem with Israel is that you have a huge number of people who are not even Israeli gleefully supporting a genocide, either overtly or by doing everything in their power to silence anyone calling it out. This is a stark contrast: the only people actively supporting the oppression of minorities in Syria or Saudi Arabia are those carrying it out. There are no large groups of powerful people solely comprised of Americans in the US or Germans in Germany who do their best to silence criticism of Saudi Arabia. I'm sure you'll be able to find a few PR firms that Saudi paid, or a few people with business interests there who did such things, but it's completely incomparable to the Zionist lobby and the active carrying out of its interests.
What’s dishonest is your racist defense of a murderous and genocidal country that cynically uses Judaism
as a shield for war crimes. You should really think deeply about how you’re conflating the Zionist state with the Jewish people… not sure a lot of them are in board with your project. There is no world in which a Jewish-supremacist state is righteous.
As for equal rights, it is to laugh. Israel is an apartheid state. Ask any expert in the subject.
Let’s talk about the racist death-penalty-for-Palestinians law that just passed to Ben Gvir drinking champagne and to celebratory prayers in the Knesset. Or what about the fact that gay people cannot legally marry? Or that protesting the genocide gets you brutally arrested. Not to mention the ghetto that Israel has turned Gaza into. (shame on the Zionists!) What about no right of return to the people who lived on the land that Israel stole and continues to steal? (let me guess: all in self defense!) It goes on and on.
Actions, not words. Otherwise we'd be believing that a certain political party in the 40s Germany was simply all about work setting you free.
Zionists have showed what they are about through their actions ever since establishing their ethnosupremacist state. And they showed that genocide is not a red line to them over the past 2 and a half years. What they say they are about on paper is no longer relevant.
> Part of the problem is the conflation of Zionism with genocidal government. There is no room for nuiance
This blame falls squarely on Israelis and Jewish people as a whole for conflating Zionism, Israel and Jewishness as a single thing, and branding anyone who dared to be critical of Zionism as antisemitic. Now they try to distance themselves and rightly so, but it is their fault that the victim agenda backfired terribly.
I have expressed my solidarity to non-Zionist Jewish people in a previous comment, but still all I hear is victimization at how the world at large treats them rather than real anger and disgust at what the State of Israel is doing in their name. Where are the angry non-Zionist protests? Where are the people renouncing their dual citizenships? The reaction is still very subdued for a genocide in massive scale, and at times it is hard for us gentiles to feel sorry for their apathy.
What is Russia's side of the argument? What is China's side of the argument? What is USA's side of the argument?
Bibi's reasons are not the same of the ultra ortodox, neither the same of the ultra zionists, neither the same of regular joes.
(Bibi wants to avoid going to trial, the orthodox believe god promised them "all of israel" (which includes some Lebanon, Syria, Jordan), the zionists are your run of the mill nazis (racists), while most of the people want "peace" whatever the price.
> [What is Israel's side of the argument?] What is Russia's side of the argument? What is China's side of the argument? What is USA's side of the argument?
All of these countries but one have launched invasions within the past ten years. What's the obsession with China?
The reality is much simplier, it's not a one man story not even a top down one. If you had travel on those area you would know that their leader reflect the will / moral sense of the population. Most Israelis approve the genocide, most Russians and Americans don't mind invading other nations.
The way I understand the dispute, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that Ukraine was formerly part of the Soviet Union.
Russia feels aggrieved that in recent years Ukraine has been trying to become part of NATO, a move that would further diminish Russia's ability to project power in the region.
NATO has already expanded into former Warsaw pact countries, and even former Soviet Republics. Russia feels they need to do something about Ukraine before Ukraine becomes one of them.
Western leaders have already broken the promise made during the cold war that NATO would not expand "one inch eastward" beyond a reunified Germany.
Please, this is not a defense by me of Russia's attack of Ukraine. I'm just describing Russia's side of the "argument" as I understand it.
Once again, correct me if I'm wrong.
I don't understand Israel's side of the argument, if you could explain to me.
These are the "excuses" by Russia. The only real motivation is to expand its own power and influence in the World. They will find whatever lowest hanging fruit to justify the actions they think will lead to it. They will try to propose a rhetoric that sounds as if they are justified to something. Everyone does that, not just Russia, but there are countries and leaders who always want to expand at the cost of others, and there are countries who just want to be and are fine with their borders. If it wasn't decade old broken promises by someone from NATO or whatever they would of course dig for another reason as part of the propaganda. There is no rational reason for a peaceful country without goals of expansion to fear NATO. They don't like the expansion of NATO because it limits their abilities in the future to expand.
NATO is for countries that want to stay as they are without having to be as scared that Russia decides they would be their next target for expansion. If those countries in the east didn't join NATO, Russia would use another excuse to at first opportunity invade and occupy those countries.