I'm Swedish. Since I was a child, for decades, I was taught and never questioned the idea that Germany had learnt from their history, in the most admirable way. That it was really ingrained into the German culture to never let anything like the holocaust happen again. That the education system there was very good in really making people understand why it happened, what went wrong, and how to make sure there would be no second one.

In early 2024, I was chatting with a German colleague of mine. Great guy, politically we were the most aligned out of anyone in our team. The genocide in Gaza was already well under way, so the topic came up. He told me, as if it was incredibly obvious "Well of course as Germany we couldn't possibly say anything about Gaza, given our history." For the rest of my life I will remember exactly that moment, where we were stood, the scene, because it came as a shock; this belief that I'd had since childhood turned out to be entirely wrong. It was the exact opposite - Germany had learnt nothing, in fact they'd learnt even less than the countries they had occupied. It was all a complete ruse, and I really lost all respect I had for how Germany has dealt with it all. A country like Japan at least doesn't even pretend to have learnt anything, and I'm not convinced that's the worse option.

I should've known the second news started flowing out of Germany such as "Award ceremony set to honor novel by Palestinian author at the Frankfurt Book Fair canceled “due to the war in Israel,", along with stuff like designating B.D.S as "antisemitic" but I wanted to believe that was just a tiny minority of ignorant people.

Yes, I know that now "the narrative inside Germany has been turning around" but imo it's far too late, and can't possibly be sincere, being entirely fuelled by external pressure rather than any kind of actual realization.

> "the narrative inside Germany has been turning around"

Fully agreeing with your post - and also, it's not. Maybe for parts of the population (though even there, many are extremely conflicted) but definitely not for the current (conservative) leadership. What worries them is that they find the country increasingly isolated and there is a growing risk they could become personally liable - this forces them to make some concerned noises if the atrocities become undeniable.

But they never stopped practically supporting Israel wherever they can, be it with military aid or preventing EU actions that might put pressure on it. They will also snap back into the unequivocally pro-Israel narrative as soon as they can get away with it.

As a German, I think you should cut your colleague some slack.

There's 8 billion people in the world who aren't German. If there's one topic that Germans don't chip in on, it won't move the needle.

Whatever we as Germans say on Israel/Palestine will be taken the wrong way by someone. Critical of Israel? Still an antisemite! Supportive of Israel? Pathological guilt!

It super sucks, but I too will leave it to others to voice strong opinions in this matter. And there's no shortage of that.

There is also an unspoken bit of realpolitik there: Israel is still an ally to Germany, Palestine isn't, Iran isn't, Hamas isn't, etc.

So this is actually a super-nice position to be in, you can support your ally no matter what they do, while still looking contrite and morally superior by pulling the "we are Germany, we are not allowed to have a say in the matter" card.

There's nothing that Israel needs from Germany, in effect the support is little more than symbolic.

I'm not sure why you think that any of this makes Germany look morally superior. I certainly don't feel that way.

Mostly weapons and weapons components. E.g. Israel operates a number of German-built and partially gifted submarines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin-class_submarine

Also, Israel is a trade partner, which is important because the non-western countries are hesitant to trade with them. Israel is culturally integrated into certain European institutions, in part due to German support (soccer, Eurovision, other sports).

If this was conveyed more honestly, it would at least be understandable (up to some point).

I think what grates me is the dishonesty: We want to do both at the same time: A neutral mediator that advocates for the two state solution and the world's (second-)closest ally of Israel. That's like wanting to be both the coach and the referee. At some point it just becomes an insult to everyone's intelligence.

(The US does the same spiel)

It half-way is, at least by the new chancellor Merz, who praised Israel for doing our "dirty work" in bombing Iran. And he was promptly criticized by the rest of the political establishment and the press for that.

Criticized for saying the quiet part out loud. I don't see any actual opposition to the strikes, just opposition to the wording.

Well, let's face it: Nobody likes the current Iranian government, and nobody wants yet another state (especially with a leadership like that) to have nukes. Just that nobody dares to do anything beyond sending strongly worded letters and time-wasting "diplomatic initiatives".

And so you leave your politicians to set the official German opinion of unconditional support for Israel.

> Whatever we as Germans say on Israel/Palestine will be taken the wrong way by someone. Critical of Israel? Still an antisemite! Supportive of Israel? Pathological guilt!

How does that distinguish Israel/Palestine from any other issue?

I am interested to know why you call out Japan as learning nothing. Obviously modern Japan has an excellent reputation and is not known as a warring nation( "no military" but ofc they have the JDF) so I'm guessing there's something deeper I don't know. Genuinely curious.

There is some denial about the crimes committed by Imperial Japan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre_denial https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gb94m1/why_...

That's not representative of the Japanese public opinion at all, so I fail to see how it supports the view that the entire country "hasn't learned anything at all."

What is the average level of knowledge around the history of imperial Japan. Is that period covered thoroughly in school?

I was under the impression that Japanese people don't so much deny war crimes, as they just don't talk/learn about the uglier parts of what happened during the first half of the 20th century. Is the Rape of Nanking a well known event in Japan? Are the significant battles and general tactics of the war(s) talked about? Do they talk about the Japanese Army's general treatment of foreign civilians?

I guess, what I'm wondering is if I asked the average person on the street these questions, would they know at all what I'm talking about? Would they have the knowledge to talk about it in more detail?

Is this like in the US where most people have no idea about American intervention in Cuba, and the rest of the meddling that the US was involved in in Latin America?

> I guess, what I'm wondering is if I asked the average person on the street these questions, would they know at all what I'm talking about?

They would, yes, but mostly because South Korea won’t shut up about it nearly a century and several ‘final’ sets of reparations later. It seems to be about as popular a political crutch in SK as it is to kill Palestinians in Israel.

I don’t know. It is about as relevant to current Japanese as the Dutch colonial past is to me. I’m sure we did plenty of bad stuff, but feeling remorse for it now is just bizarre. People several generations before me committed those crimes.

History isn't supposed to be about your personal feelings of ethnic pride or remorse. It's about learning from past successes and failures, and better understanding how people from different cultures may view each other. Other countries can and should learn from Japanese history too, because no country is immune to the mistakes that Japan made during WW2. Especially in this day and age, people around the world should have a hard look at how propaganda was used to commit atrocities.

Also if you care about national interest, it would be counterproductive to "shut up" or forget about past failures for an ego boost. That would make the country detached from reality, isolated from the rest of the world, and prone to the same failures.

Last but not least, it's very insensitive and inconsiderate of you to label South Korean trauma as a mere "political crutch" or the Dutch colonial past as no longer "relevant." Historical injustices can carry on to today's injustices much more than you think. You should try to see the perspective from the other side more before dismissing these things.

> People several generations before me committed those crimes.

It isn't that long ago.

There are still women alive who were used as sex slaves by the Japanese Army. I can see why their (SK) government is unwilling to let the issue be forgotten. Paying reparations does not mean that you can now forget the attrocity. Should the US not teach about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because it was our grandfathers who did it, and we feel like we have made it up by rebuilding Japan? Should we tell the Hibakusha that its time for them to shut-up, and there is no point in talking about what happened since the people who made those attacks are all dead?

The point of this knowledge, at least in the west, isn't to make you feel badly, or remorseful. The point is to remember that there are monsters lurking beneath the surface, even in the modern era. The Banality of Evil (the book) is about demonstrating that even a mediocre, non-fanatical, reluctant Nazi bureaucrat like Eichmann can be a pivotal figure in a genocide. We remember so that we don't repeat. Should we not learn from experiences?

> It isn't that long ago.

If it’s before my lifetime it’s not something I’m going to feel responsible for.

I completely agree we should ‘learn’ from history. Even teach what happened in school, but we shouldn’t harp on it forever, or manufacture grudges based on it.

At least, not in the way that’s currently happening in Japan anyway. The crux of the issue seems to be they don’t think people that were never involved aren’t sorry enough.

It's covered in much detail as the other eras of Japanese history. At least it's widely understood that there were massacres, rapes, targeting of civilians, displacement and forced labor, etc etc.

It's true that the far right, disproportionately loud in online circles, tries to downplay all of this like in the sibling comment. It's concerning how social media amplifies these voices, but it's still not mainstream opinion.

So some Japanese people are skeptical that history as kept by the victors is 100% accurate, especially when that history is still being used to limit the Japanese people in ways that other nations are not limited. There is nothing wrong with this.

That is awful, I see.

>As part of a lesson, they were banned having an army >They have powerful army anyway >Millions of Koreans live in constant fear of the power and brutality of their army

Japan obviously learn nothing.

I've been to SK numerous times. The older people dislike Japan A LOT. But their biggest base is a US one. I've never heard fear of the JDF. They have another more problematic neighbor.

The United States - who made the constitution that banned the military - does exercises with and supports the JDF. Idk if that fits unconstitutional anymore.

Their denial of horrid events and their attempts to suppress the fact that comfort women happened is undeniably awful though and shows many did not learn.

David Simon (creator of The Wire) once gave a lecture at a Jewish conference trying to make the case that Jews in America should be uniquely aligned with the plight of Black Americans in the inner cities. The case was that the Jews went through an experience during WW2 that makes them uniquely qualified to always align in solidarity against oppression, poverty, and general suffering.

To be children of ethnic cleansing (obviously I’m describing the Holocaust lightly here) and still commit the same crime in Gaza is profound.

It’s a great point you bring up, that being, what have we learned?

Jews in America are not the ones committing a genocide in Gaza. Quite a significant proportion of the American Jews are absolutely horrified.

Can I ask why you think that American Jews are any more responsible for the crimes of Israel in Gaza than non-Jews, or Jews elsewhere in the world? Do you think that Judaism is a monolith, or that American Jews are the same as all Jews?

I ask because blaming Jews elsewhere for the acts of Israel, and conflating all of Jewry with Israel is a common tactic of anti-Semitic movements. I can't tell if you are doing that intentionally, or if you have just made your point poorly.

Assuming you are acting in good faith, you should look at the history of Black/Jewish relations in the civil rights eras. There was a disproportionate amount of support from American Jews (compared to the population at large) towards the civil rights movement.

MLK himself was outspoken about the support from American Jews:

"How could there be anti-Semitism among Negroes when our Jewish friends have demonstrated their commitment to the principle of tolerance and brotherhood not only in the form of sizable contributions, but in many other tangible ways, and often at great personal sacrifice. Can we ever express our appreciation to the rabbis who chose to give moral witness with us in St. Augustine during our recent protest against segregation in that unhappy city? Need I remind anyone of the awful beating suffered by Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld of Cleveland when he joined the civil rights workers there in Hattiesburg, Mississippi? And who can ever forget the sacrifice of two Jewish lives, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, in the swamps of Mississippi? It would be impossible to record the contribution that the Jewish people have made toward the Negro's struggle for freedom—it has been so great."

I would say that Israel/Zionism wants to conflate worldwide jewelry with itself.

And the KKK claims to represent all whites....

It does not matter that someone claims to represent a population, if in obvious fact, they do not.

I dont believe you're the same. Just saying that Zionists wants this conflation, it plays into Israel being the only safe place for Jews and they want it like that.

Agreed - living in New York City, I know quite a lot of Jews. Not a single one supports the genocide.

> A country like Japan at least doesn't even pretend to have learnt anything

I was under the impression that they had a lot to say about how WWII taught them the virtues of pacifism?

I would not extrapolate from the discourse with one German to a general statement of a heterogeneous population of ~80M people. There are many different opinions and positions in Germany - like in every country in the world. Please keep that in mind.

Germany has indeed still have a ‘vaccination’. How well it works, and whether it is not exploited by politics, is another matter.

Lastly, the conflict in the Middle East is one of the most complex conflicts in recent human history - and there is no easy way out. That also applies to the situation in Gaza.

As someone living in Germany, that philosophy of "we don't have the right to intervene or say anything" is definitely embedded in the culture here. Obviously there are plenty of people who don't follow this philosophy, and there are left-wing pro-Palestine movements here as well, but overall there's a big cultural sense of obligation to Israel due to Germany's history.

A friend of mine even ended up talking to a German diplomat in Israel, who said much the same thing: they could cosign other nations' condemnations of Israeli actions when they happened, but they couldn't condemn Israeli actions unilaterally. Obviously that was just his opinion and not an official viewpoint of the German government, but I found it fascinating that Germany still felt this sense of needing to make things right to Israel specifically.

No, there is nothing “complex” about Gaza - neither before nor after Oct 7.

The late Michael Brooks shared a small thought experiment that might help elucidate this: https://youtu.be/7ebPj_FqM5Q

It’s one thing to call the situation “nothing complex”, but there was no solution in this clip.

Usually when people call something complex they mean that the solution is complex.

Of course you’ll learn nothing when you’re not allowed to question…

The German relationship with Israel is very weird, to put it mildly, and I don't mean just the official government position, but the more broad political culture.

To the best of my knowledge, they are the only Western country in which there are far left groups that proactively support Israel specifically wrt what it's doing in Gaza. And by "support" I mean e.g. posters encouraging to drop more bombs on "Hamas Nazis".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Germans_(political_curren...

Germany has learned to be critical of themselves, and not be critical of others. Especially the victims of Nazisim.

That worked when Germany was occupied, or split in half, or broke.

Now that a unified Germany is in a position of leadership, rethinking history in terms of absolute right and wrong is probably a good idea.

What does it even mean 'to want nothing more than to end the conflict'? As far as I can tell it doesn't mean anything. Everybody wants the conflict to end, including the Israelis and the Palestinians. They just want it to end differently, of course.

In theory, we want to end it through the Two-State Solution (though even what this means is vague - certainty not the borders of 1967 that Palestinians and Arabs are demanding)

But yeah, in practice, we seem to want it to end with full Israeli dominance, and the Palestinians either emigrating to Egypt and Jordan or vanishing into thin air, I suppose.

> But yeah, in practice, we seem to want it to end with full Israeli dominance, and the Palestinians either emigrating to Egypt and Jordan or vanishing into thin air, I suppose.

No, the majority of the West strongly wants a two-state solution (on the 1967 border, roughly). So did many Israelis, who voted people into office intent on achieving that goal many times.

The problem is, Israel and Palestine never managed to sign an agreement leading to a two-state solution. And in parallel to the peace process, some Palestinians launched the second intifada, a terror campaign which killed many hundreds of Israelis. This eventually lead most Israelis to think that a two-state solution is impossible.

The Israeli PM who pushed for a two state solution was assassinated by a right wing Israeli citizen.

No, you're wrong in multiple ways:

1. You call it "The Israeli PM who pushed for a two state solution" (referring to Rabin), but actually there were other PMs who were negotiating a two state solution with the Palestinians and were elected after - Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert (Ehud Olmert was ten years after the assasination of Rabin).

2. The PM the succeeded Rabin, Ariel Sharon, a long-time right-wing hawk, didn't negotiate with the Palestinians, but did shift Israeli policy to simply leaving the territory without a negotiated settlement. He's the one who pulled Israel out of Gaza, and by all counts, he was poised to do the same and leave the West Bank before he had a stroke.

Olmert, also a historic right-wing hawk, succeeded Sharon, and campaigned openly on the idea of starting to pull settlements out of the West Bank. And he won, with this campaign.

Olmert, btw, to this day is a big peace-advocate, working together with Palestinian partners on trying to bring about a two-state solution. He's also a big critic of the current Israeli government (and famously wrote a piece saying that Israel was committing war crimes in Gaza).

3. Funny enough, another way in which you're technically wrong is that Rabin himself didn't directly advocate for a two-state solution, at least not officially. That was probably his direction, but both Barak and Olmert went much further than him in what they were offering the Palestinian leadership in terms of a deal.

Bonus 4th point: Worth mentioning that calling the person who assassinated Rabin a "right wing Israeli" is pretty wrong too. He was a member of a very extremist right-wing group that did not and does not have any broad support in Israel, as opposed to standard "right wing" positions which do have broad support.

What exactly are the borders of Israel then?

I'd "assume" they're very similar to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine

I'd like better news coverage of that:

What exactly ARE the goals / demands of every side. Both what they say in public, and what's generally accepted as the rational real goals each side requests / demands / etc via peace talks as well as through violence.

The breakdown could even focus on factions within the nebulous term of 'sides'. An average citizen is likely to have looser criteria than a government / terrorist.

Here's the coverage you've asked (opinions my own, I do not pretend to rep. anyone)

Israel stated goals of war:

1. Return the hostages

2. Remove Hamas regime from Gaza

3. (arguably done) bring north-Israel communities safely back home

Unstated goals:

1. Open Egypt-Gaza border. This had failed.

2. Create safe zone on the Gaza-Israeli border. This is mostly done in practice. This goal cannot be stated (though it'll save many lives)

Hamas goals:

Read Hamas chapter, or see interviews with captured Hamas militants post 7/10 attack (if you believe it's not scripted)

Gazan who are not part of Hamas regime goals: survive

Another unstated goal: punitively deter future attacks.

100%. Thanks for mentioning that.

Stated goal (by Ben Givir, Smoltrich and, yes, Bibi himself): genocide of Gaza.

Half the cabinet of the current Israeli government has made public statements to the effect of wanting to starve everyone or kill all the kids.

We've seen the videos and, with !gt, we can read the translations.

There's also the poll that was conducted by penn state -

It found that 82% of Israelis want to expel Gazans, and 47% of support killing all Palestinians in Gaza.

Article was featured in Haaretz - linked to here:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/poll-82-of-israelis-wan...

> Half the cabinet of the current Israeli government has made public statements to the effect of wanting to starve everyone or kill all the kids.

There's a database tracking those: https://law4palestine.org/law-for-palestine-releases-databas...

Hum... when I look at pictures of the very thorough destruction in Gaza (hospitals, civilians etc) it would seem that the israelis think "Remove Hamas" actually means kill everyone one in Gaza.

If not a genocide, at the very least an ethnocide.

Next step: Riviera Gaza!

They think Palestinian = Hamas

Unstated goal #1 for Netanyahu: avoid prison at any cost.

That's another straw man argument. No other prime minister would act differently in his place.

Hamas goal with the hostages was exchange has Israel has tens of thousands Palestinian prisoners. Turns out Israel doesn't care anymore and will even sacrifice their own to further right wing Zionist goals.

Unfortunately this Israeli government has consisently refused to articulate any sort of positive goal. Netanyahu is only publicly against things. He is adamant about preventing a Palestinian state and crippling Iran, but seems to have no plan for what should happen in Palestine, hence the seemingly endless horrible situation there.

Hamas wants to destroy Israel, they are pretty open about it. They are also not really holding back about their antisemitism. The mass murdering on 7th October pretty much demonstrates what Hamas is about in general.

They also murdered the Gazan opposition after they were voted into power and have not really allowed voting since. They are pretty much not interested in increasing the situation for the people in Gaza. That's also why they are a terror organization.

Hamas' explicit goal is "from the river to the sea". If there is an alternative that they are willing to settle for, nobody knows what it is.

The individual Gazans almost certainly have one in mind, likely some variant of the two state solution. But Hamas is in charge, and there is nobody else to talk to about it. Ordinary Gazans don't much like Hamas but they are the only thing standing between them and Israel, who as you know is attacking with impunity.

Israel's nominal goal is to remove Hamas and engage such a negotiation, though there is significant doubt that this tactic is going to lead there. And they know that.

Israelis are roughly equally divided on what they want. About half want to wipe out Gaza and have control of (but not responsibility for) the West Bank. They are the ones in government.

The other half is much more amenable to a two state solution, but they are extremely skeptical of finding it. Long before the October 7 attacks, Israelis routinely have to shelter from rocket attacks. We hear little about them because they are largely ineffective, but it does not give Israelis a lot of confidence in any kind of negotiated settlement. That side is also happy to have Gaza walled off.

And all of these sides are backed by powerful outside forces for whom the conflict itself is their goal.

That is an extremely high level breakdown, as neutral as I can be.

Didn't they remove that from their charter, same as Likud?

The problem with enunciating real positions to domestic audiences are that the extremists on both sides will literally murder anyone who compromises.

Let's not forget Israel's domestic orthodox/right-wing Jewish terrorism and Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.

Ergo, there's even more incentive for leaders to continually espouse positions they know will never happen, but which play well at home.

As a violence in poli sci professor of mine once quipped, this is a 'the only solution is killing the grandmothers' conflict. Because generational narratives of victimization are so ingrained in large parts of both societies that there is no room for compromise.

Silence extremist voices forcefully, wait a generation, and then there might be a path to peace. :(

Who will provide the force to silence these extremist voices?

Maybe there are some parallels in this situation and late 1800’s-mid 1900’s Western Europe. The civil war on the European continent between Germanic states on one hand and French/British ended when two powerful outsiders (US and Soviet Russia) invaded and split the continent. During this occupation west Europeans nations learned how to live with themselves and to atone for their mistakes and to not repeat these mistakes. But they only learned this because they were under military occupation.

This scenario will most likely not happen in the Middle East and so I think there will not be peace there for generations.

The greatest chance for this was probably the US-Arab world, but the Shia/Sunni sectarian-political feudalism made that a non-starter, especially in the context of the Cold War.

As a colleague from Bahrain once quipped, 'the countries of the Arab world love to use Palestinians as propaganda for domestic purposes, but none of them actually give enough of a shit to make hard choices to solve the problem.'

In precisely the same way that the Nazis wanted their conflict to end with Jews emigrating to Africa (Madagascar according to their original plan) or vanishing into thin air.

Even assimilation seems hard at this point. If I were a gazan I'd ask the international community to have Israel buy me decent housing somewhere safe in an arab speaking country. Like, I get it you are stronger and don't want me here but give me.somewhere decent to go. I often wonder what are the options for Palestinians and especially gazans who do want to get out of there.

Israel's neighbours are absolutely unwilling to take large numbers of Palestinians, for reasons that seem perfectly fair.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_insurgency_in_Sout...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinai_insurgency#Gaza_Strip_sp...

There are not necessarily Arab countries that want to take on millions of Palestinian refugees. There is a broader issue that what you suggest is not considered good for the Palestinian cause. I'll give an example. UNRWA uses a specific definition for Palestinian refugees that differs from the general refugee definition used by UNHCR. They define Palestinian refugees as "persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict". This status also extends to their descendants. This means children and grandchildren of the original 1948 refugees maintain refugee status even if born outside Palestine. When you think about it, this is kind of the opposite of what you suggested. It creates a massive class of legal Palestinians who live in and are citizens of other countries (particularly Jordan), but are ostensibly waiting for their opportunity to return (or receive some other "durable solution" such as compensation).

In general, Arab states and Palestinian leadership argue that naturalizing refugees would undermine their right to return to their original homes. You can interpret this cynically: because many Arab states are not too friendly with Israel, having a massive class of refugees putting political pressure on them could be advantageous, and is probably one of the only ways to "defeat" Israel as a jewish state (because if all of those refugees had the right to live in Israel, jews might become a minority.) But it is true that removing refugee status without a just solution would erase Palestinian claims and rights under international law.

It's interesting to compare that treatment to the Mizrahi Jews who fled persecution in Arab states after 1948 and many settled in Israel. They're not refugees anymore. The Arab states stole tons of property from Mizrahi Jews (adding up to multiple times the size of Israel) but nobody is demanding that the Arab states pay reparations to Mizrahi Jews as a condition for peace. Meanwhile those same Arab states radicalize their populace against Israel by calling Israelis "land thieves" - the hypocrisy is quite amazing considering many of those Israelis literally had their grandparents' land stolen by those same Arab states.

> nobody is demanding that the Arab states pay reparations to Mizrahi Jews as a condition for peace

Why not?

A general bias that Jews are supposed to "forgive and forget" losing 3rd of population in a genocide, losing land multiple times the size of Israel etc.

While much smaller tragedies are used to justify forever war by Hamas against Israel.

Well that seems a silly bias for Israelis to have.

Maybe the Mizrahi Jews can get their property back if they return the land they stole?

Seriously though, if you look back far enough, all land is stolen. I think it's more prudent to focus on the present day.

That's not quite fair. The Mizrahi Jews the GP is referring to were kicked out of the country they were born in, and had nowhere else to go but Israel, the land for which was already "stolen" when the Mizrahi Jews got there. (Obviously settlements are ongoing so you can say that land theft is continuing to happen. If that's what you meant, ignore me.)

I've done the math, and if the US had given every Palestinian $100,000 to move elsewhere (surely enough to relocate) they could have forcefully relocated every single Palestinian without killing them all. And they would have spent less money than they have on bombs and stuff for Israel.

Still a dick move, but much less so than wiping out an entire group of people.

Nobody wants palestinian population. Egypt built a wall for a reason.

So just kill them all or even what?

It's up to them and Israeli to decide, I guess. Not wanting to help is not the same as killing. If some stranger comes to your home, you're not obliged to let him in and it won't be kill, even if he died afterwards. World is cruel and nobody obliged to nobody, especially at population levels. It's much easier to help single person, of course, but accommodating millions is another matter.

> If some stranger comes to your home, you're not obliged to let him in

Sure.

But if you go over to where a stranger lives and build a wall around them. You are responsible if they then starve to death.

If another stranger is delivering food to a different stranger and you kill the food deliverer. You are responsible for that mans death.

These analogies are much more relevant to the discussion. Isreal is disallowing people from delivering food and has even killed people that do (leading to organizations like word food kitchen to leave).

> Not wanting to help is not the same as killing.

You do realize that a significant fraction of Israel's military budget comes from the US?

Maybe they need to get control over their leadership?

Who is "they"?

The people literally getting wiped off the map because their leaders thought it was a good idea to conduct a massacre at a rave.

> I'd ask the international community to have Israel buy me decent housing somewhere safe in an arab speaking country

The degree to which France and the UK have dodged the question of reparations in this debate is frankly surprising to me.

Assimilation definitely would be a hard option.

I agree that subsidized resettlement should be another option explored by middle east nations.

That would still amount to ethnic cleansing by israel though.

Why would any Arab-speaking country accept 2M Palestinian refugees?

> If I were a gazan I'd ask the international community to have Israel buy me decent housing somewhere safe in an arab speaking country.

The Arab states seized properties from Mizrahi Jews fleeing to Israel decades ago, land that adds up to multiple times the size of Israel. They have plenty of space to resettle refugees without asking Israel to "buy" their own stolen land back!

>> An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else, just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead.

You have to look at the other side too. Palestinian's are born knowing that Israeli's have taken lots of their land through violent force. And they want to take more of it. And while the Israeli's live in a well developed wealthy nation they are condemned to poverty.

Consider the King David Hotel Bombing[1]. Israeli terrorists murdered nearly 100 people. In 2006 Netanyahu presided over the unveiling of a memorial plaque, alongside some of the terrorists involved in it, with the plaque specifically remembering the terrorist who died in the attack. So Israeli terrorism is fine, even worthy of praise.

And while the Israelis may grow up scared that the Palestinian's want them dead, 10's of thousands of Palestinian children won't grow up at all.

>> I'm German and I really see a lot of the blame for this on our states as well

I agree. It seems that all over Europe at least, the governments are largely going against public opinion on this issue. But it's not the first time we've seen this (Iraq being a recent example).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

No question about that.

I found it a remarkable detail that from the shore of Gaza, you see the port of and industrial zone of Ashdod, only a few kilometers away. It seems almost like a permanent reminder that the entire area is in fact well-developed - the wasteland only exists where they live.

And in the US insurrectionists are pardoned. That’s a striking parallel.

> An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else,

They know perfectly well that their settlers are conducting daily pogroms against Palestinian villages in the West Bank, protected by their own army. They know perfectly well that thousands of Palestinians are detained for years without due process, trialled by military courts, kept in a state of apartheid.

They just don't care.

I think they meant, they are born into the situation and don't have an outsiders perspective, not that they are ignorant of what's happening

The situation is not static. The oppression of the Palestinians is active, progressive, and happens every day. This is not a state you're born in, but it is something you actively participate in or decide to ignore. Those who say "this is just the situation now" are disingenuous, as new crimes by one side against the other are perpetrated every day.

I agree. Dwelling on the past is pointless. All of this is new.

Israel and people of Jewish heritage has a lot of soft-power in the west. And the anti-terrorism rhetoric that Israeli's using to sell this has has previously been deployed by the west to cover up it's own crimes.

I would argue that the Muslim world has gained quite some political power in the West, perhaps as a simple result of immigration. The EU for example seem to have about 50 times more Muslims than Jews.

Anti-terrorism rhetorics has indeed previously led to terrible crimes, but I wouldn't suppose that's a reason to support pro-terrorism rhetorics. It's probably best to look at the content instead of the type of rhetorics.

You're not making sense my friend. The recent Muslim immigrants have nothing to do with soft power and I don't see how that's relevant to this context. Are you saying that it counters the influence that Israel has?

And if we're talking about terrorism, IDF and Mossad are very much known to deploy terror tactics across a lot of their historical engagements. The definition of the word doesn't hinge on designation by a Western organization. And the vast majority of "pro-palestine" people in the world are not Iran proxies and secret anti-semites. They're actually, for the most part, young people that are working from a place of empathy and horror. The most blatant and harmful propganda in this whole mess is the attempt to designate pro-palestine protestors anti-semites and secretly in support of Iran and Hamas policies. What a terrible cheapening of the word. Point is, the ones using the most pro-terror rhetoric are those trying to defend the IDF right now.

What evidence of this do you see? Non Jewish natural born Americans also outnumber Jews in America, yet I don’t see any immigrant students getting deported for criticizing Americans.

Jews have disproportionate levels of soft power in the US. Israel receives billions in support every year. Anti Muslim propaganda is pushed out every year in Hollywood. The medias coverage of Gaza is essentially one big lie by omission. Many states pass laws aimed to deter criticism of Israel.

I don’t see any other group in America that receives this level of support.

I thought I wrote pretty clearly what evidence I have: the EU has about 50 times more Muslims than Jews. That translates into political power in democratic societies.

I'm not an expert on US politics and the reasoning for why the US supports Israel. I do however think that it's sensible to see Israel, with its relatively free elections, women rights, entrepreneurship etc as a more natural ally to the US than other countries in the Middle East, regardless of the "soft-power" you're referring to. The fact that some of its enemies also threaten the US probably plays a role too.

> Anti-terrorism rhetorics has indeed previously led to terrible crimes, but I wouldn't suppose that's a reason to support pro-terrorism rhetorics

Opposing genocide is not supporting terrorism. Labelling support for basic human rights as being pro-terrorism is, well, part of the genocide.

What are you even commenting on? Did I (or anyone?) say that opposing genocide is supporting terrorism? Did I say that human rights are pro-terrorism?

The parent comment was dismissing anti-terrorism rhetorics because previously they were used to committing crimes. That sounds illogical to me, and that's what I was commenting on.

> I'm German and I really see a lot of the blame for this on our states as well - the US and the EU states (especially Germany, sadly).

I understand that you are talking about the recent era, but I wonder if you could speak to the history of the creation of Israel, and the German perception of that. Is there any discussion about the European role in the creation of Israel? After the end of the war, it isn’t as if there was a movement to return property and homes to European Jews. If anything, the powers in Europe after the war (and, in the case of Eichmann, pre war as well) saw Zionism as a solution for what to do with the Jews.

Is there any sympathy or responsibility felt in European communities for essentially using Zionism as a solution?

From my experience, the history of Israel as discussed in the media usually begins in 1948. A standard phrase is "The state was founded and immediately declared war at".

Sometimes discussion goes back a bit further about how the area was a "League of Nations Mandatory Area" before, that was for some reason was administered by the British.

That's usually it.

An interesting detail is that the legitimacy of Israel here is usually explained with the UN (the Partition Plan resolutions and the accepted membership) - not with any kind of divine right. I think that's quite different from how (right wing) Israelis see the source of legitimacy themselves.

That's a whole other fork of the story.

I was basically getting at how does Europe see its role in the fact that a big part of what made Israel possible was the more or less complete displacement of European jewry during the war, and the complete lack of will to create a place in post-war europe for their own Jewish community.

This perspective comes from my own family history where a few relatives managed to survive the war in Nazi custody, but then spent longer in Western European refugee camps postwar than they spent in the concentration and death camps during the war. The entire family ended up outside of Europe (USA and Israel) since it was the most viable path out of the camps.

Basically the success of Zionism is due in no small part to the active support from Europe in the years after the war, and my question is, do Europeans see that in as self-interested terms as it can look. More succinctly, does the Western European community realize that creating Israel was a solution to the post-war "Jewish Problem" that conveniently did not require those nations to create a hospitable place for jewish communities within their own borders.

That's a very good question, and thank you for sharing the experience of your family.

I can't really say.

From what I see here, there is not a lot of discussion in that area. (That was the first time I heard about those refugee camps, but that may just be me)

From what I understand, the discussion for a long time was more about whether Jews would even want to come back to.Germany, after all the other Germans did to them.

German reflection on the Nazi period also happened in multiple stages. From what I know, the initial phase, right after the war, was quite inadequate. Yes, there were the Nuremberg Trials, but both Allies and Germans were interested in quickly getting back to some kind of "normal" and rebuilding the country - the US and the Soviets in particular in preparation for the imminent conflict between them. So a lot of Nazi personnel stayed in office.

I believe, support of Israel in that time was seen as a sort of reparation that conveniently made it unnecessary to engage with the Nazi past on a deeper level. (I did wonder when learning more about the conflict recently, why the Allies didn't designate some are inside former Germany as a Jewish state - let's say the Rhineland. That would have been entirely justified IMO. But of course the question of Israel was already settled at that time.)

There was a sort of "second stage" a generation later, during the Civil Rights movement, where students forced a revisit of the Nazi past. I believe, a lot of the currently known details of the Holocaust are coming from that phase. But I think they didn't say a lot about Israel and just saw it as an emancipatory, left-wing project.

Today, people here are enormously proud that Jewish communities exist again in Germany, though it's understood that it's still a lot less than before the war.

It would be an interesting question how the sentiment of German leadership towards Jews was in the 50s and 60s.

In case you are interested in the bigger picture, the camps were called Displaced Person camps in English. Most had closed by 1952, with the last one in Germany closing in 1957.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displaced_persons_camps_in_pos...

“Desperate and traumatised Jewish survivors refused to return to neighbours who had denounced or deported them; when some were returned to Poland anyway and met with pogroms and hatred, all prospect of Jewish repatriation evaporated. Following sharp criticism from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which was caring for Jewish survivors, in December 1945 Truman opened up visas in excess of the usual quotas for some 23,000 DPs in the American zone, two-thirds of them Jewish, and from January 1946 UNRRA too recognised Jews as a national group, to be housed apart from other refugees. In this case (and no other), the Soviets and Americans were on the same page, agreeing that refuge outside Europe must be found, ideally in Palestine. The British, having learned how strongly Palestine’s Arab population would resist this project, objected until, in 1948, they surrendered their mandate, leaving – as one departing official put it – the key under the mat. Of some 230,000 registered Jewish DPs, just over 130,000 would settle in the new state of Israel and about 65,000 in the United States.”

From a recent review in the LRB of a book (Lost Souls) about those camps and their inhabitants. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n10/susan-pedersen/owner...

Europeans were eager to see Jews gone, one way or another. “Pogroms and hatred” sounds pretty violent.

I think that part of history is largely forgotten. I don't think a lot of Europeans have much self-interest in mind when picking a side in this conflict today.

Well it's in their self interest to deny any culpability. That way older generations could say "Jews get out of Poland! Go back to Palestine!" And younger generations can say "Jews get out of Palestine! Go back to Poland!" Without acknowledging that taken together, these statements show they just don't want Jews to exist anywhere.

What if the Arab states stole property multiple times the size of Israel from Mizrahi Jews? Which they did.

The Arab states clearly owe Israelis more reparations than the other way around.

If a genocide survivor showed up on my doorstep with nowhere else to go, I hope that my reaction would be: Welcome fellow man. You must be desperate. How can I help.

Nope. It's basically forgotten. At least, I haven't heard anyone talking about it, either in my circles or in the media.

I do not think this simplification works. A lot of the conflict is about systematic attempts at expansion of Israel itself - that is what settlements are and always were. Removal and mistreatment of original population went hand in hand with that.

Are we talking about the expansion out of Lebanon in 2000 or the expansion out of Gaza in 2005?

We are talking about all settlements into territory that was not Israel's regardless of the year. The settlements like that are internationally illegal precisely because they are clear attempt to use civilian population as shields in a land takeover.

What territory wasn’t Israel’s? And when? And at what point?

West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, Golan Heights.

Formerly: South Lebanon, the entire Sinai peninsula.

New and improved: Mt. Hermon, UN buffer zone in the Eastern Golan Heights.

Any territory which Israel occupies without granting the local population citizenship is definitely not Israel's, by their own admission.

> An ordinary Israeli citizen is born in that land, knows nothing else, just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead - and will with very high likelihood experience terror attacks themselves. That this upbringing doesn't exactly make you want to engage with the other side is psychologically understandable.

This "entirety of the surrounding population want them dead" language is both dehumanizing, false, and (perhaps not intended by you) genocidal.

The "surrounding population" is not a monolith. I imagine only a very small minority of people want all Jewish Israelis dead. I do Palestinian liberation work with many non-Jewish people from the middle east (I'm Jewish) and have yet to meet a single one who wants me dead.

They all want an end to Zionism.

Some may want it replaced with an Islamic government (which at its best is not different from the ideal "Zionism" you may hear defended by liberal Zionists, and at its worst is no different from the Zionism instituted by the modern state of Israel today)

Most want it replaced with a secular state where everyone has equal rights.

If your intent was to explain the mindset of an "ordinary Israeli citizen" who supports Zionism, then I agree with you, but it's dangerous to say something like this without distinguishing why this is a flawed mindset which can only exist due to an extensive system of propaganda.

> Most want it replaced with a secular state where everyone has equal rights.

I believe that this is true of most of the people you've worked with. However, polling in the West Bank and Gaza finds that to be a fairly unpopular position. Quoting https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/what-do-... :

> These numbers are not the same as popular support for a single state “from the river to the sea” with equal rights accorded to Arab and Jewish citizens, as in recent international proposals. In 2020 polls, only about 10 percent of West Bank and Gazan respondents favored this option over either a Palestinian state or two states. Notably, a theological premise underpins the one-state preference: A majority of the Palestinian respondents believe that “eventually, the Palestinians will control almost all of Palestine, because God is on their side”—that is, not because Palestinian control will flow from demographic changes or from a joint arrangement with Israel.

I agree with you that it's not accurate to say that the entirety of Jordan or Egypt want Israelis dead. However, if we're trading anecdote for anecdote: I know someone who grew up in Saudi, and he told me that when he was growing up it was completely normal to insult someone by calling them a jew (especially someone you perceive as being stingy, scammy, or reneging on a deal). He said it was so normalized that when he came to North America, he had an awkward adjustment period before he realized that was considered unacceptable here.

Now, there's a big difference between calling someone a jew as an insult and wanting all jews dead, but I have no trouble believing that antisemitism is very common within the middle east. Don't forget that it wasn't so long ago that there was a mass exodus of jews from the Middle East and North Africa to Israel, which can only be explained by some degree of "push factor" pushing them away from those countries. So while "wants them dead" is probably an exaggeration, you have to empathize a bit with the fact that almost every other middle eastern country was quite hostile towards jews in the past 100 years, and there's not an especially good guarantee that they would not be hostile again.

> I believe that this is true of most of the people you've worked with. However, polling in the West Bank and Gaza finds that to be a fairly unpopular position

Late response on my part, but it sounds like we're mostly in agreement.

I will add that I think what people would accept is different from what they will tell interviewers they want.

I agree that there will be antisemitism everywhere, and as a Jewish person doing organizing work with Jewish groups, there will certainly selection/sampling bias among the Palestinians I interact with.

I'll also say that the prejudice of the oppressed shouldn't be seen the same as the prejudice of the oppressor.

If a slave in the U.S. in 1840 believed white people were inherently incapable of empathy, I imagine that the only people focusing on their "anti-white racism" would be doing so to defend the status quo of slavery.

When Palestinians living under occupation talk about "Jews" it's likely that the only interactions they've had with Jewish people were with IDF soldiers enforcing their occupation, perhaps shooting at them during peaceful protests, killing their friends, their family members, and so on.

The focus should be on liberation, even if people with problematic beliefs are among the oppressed.

Even if it's the case that most people in Gaza and/or in the West Bank are antisemitic (and even if it was the case that most of them "wanted all Jews dead", which I think is a gross mischaracterization of the situation) that doesn't mean they would turn down a justice-oriented plan which would allow them to participate with full equality under the political systems that dictates their freedoms.

> I'll also say that the prejudice of the oppressed shouldn't be seen the same as the prejudice of the oppressor. > > If a slave in the U.S. in 1840 believed white people were inherently incapable of empathy, I imagine that the only people focusing on their "anti-white racism" would be doing so to defend the status quo of slavery.

I understand the circumstances that lead Palestinians to be antisemitic. That said fair, the person you responded to said this:

> the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead

I admit that it's a ridiculously hyperbolic comment, but most of Israel's surrounding countries do have an environment that's extremely inhospitable to jews and that can't really be attributed to Israel oppressing them all. They were ethnically cleansed from nearly every other country in the middle east - I think that just as we can understand why Palestinians ended up antisemitic, we can understand why jews in Israel ended up being uncomfortable with the idea of Israel not being an explicitly jewish state. Two wrongs don't make a right, but to make any progress towards a single state solution with equal rights for everyone, Israelis will need to be convinced that it won't result in a "two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner" situation.

My recent thoughts on why the US is complicit is that Israel is America's "bad cop" of the world. The trade is that the US will allow Israel to act with impunity in the region as long as Israel gets to be the bad guys to the world.

The reasoning for this is action about nuclear weapons programs. Israel gets to have nukes, developed by sending US expertise to Israel, while Israel has not been subject to nuclear investigation programs.

If things ever got bad, the US doesn't want to nuke the world, then face retribution, they want Israel to shoulder that burden.

> just learns that the entirety of the surrounding populations want them dead

So naturally, the logical response is to wish that on others. Seriously, wat?

Speaking of Germany - Israel really weaponized the holocaust, in the sense that's absolutely impossible to criticize Israel without being accused of antisemitism. I actually think it got to the point it makes difficult fighting antisemitism because it's evident to any honest person that the accusation is a weapon now.

I dont disagree with anything you said, but isn't that the role of elected leaders ? Actually making the difficult decisions that may be unpopular, but necessary ?

Or is it the leader class in most western countries have no sense of duty , are effectively cowards, and are in it just to have a profitable, white-collar career ?

It's a bunch of >60yr old western leaders who had 40yrs of seeing violence and terrorism in Israel and Palestine, and every couple years a naive western leader announces they want to fix it, while nothing changes.

People are just numb to the whole area.

The most difficult part is the fact Israel is wealthy and aggressive while (both) Palestine government has been the definition of dysfunction and tribalism for decades, even during peace times. Diplomatic solutions have became harder and harder since the 90s.

You can read the history the political bodies in West Bank and even they seem to not care to fix anything either. They have their own leadership issues (like never electing new leaders).

There’s a major gap between a western savior wanting something bad to stop and actually going there and accomplishing something.

> Or is it the leader class in most western countries have no sense of duty , are effectively cowards, and are in it just to have a profitable, white-collar career ?

They are cowards who are just in it to enrich themselves by bribery, theft, and extortion.

You are looking in the right direction and not seeing just how far our society has gone.

And they may even find it comforting that it's OK to bomb innocent civilians for years because that's the only solution they can think of to deal with their own dissatisfied populace ultimately, when things will predictably get worse in Europe as well...?

It's not Russia or terrorism they are afraid of.

> Actually making the difficult decisions that may be unpopular, but necessary ?

What is the unpopular, necessary decision? GP is commenting on the US/EUs continual campaigns to arm and fund Israel's efforts in Gaza without pushback. I don't wish to misinterpret you, but this read to me, that funding/aiding human rights violations and genocide in Gaza is a "necessary" act.

That's a good question. I know, in Germany, saying - let alone doing - anything critical of Israel as a public figure has effectively been a taboo. The justification had always been the Holocaust and the perpetual guilt of Germany towards the Jewish people arising from it.

For a long time, that made some sense - it's starting to shift into quite horrific territory though, if leaders and communities interpret this obligation as some sort of absolute fealty towards the Israeli government, at the exclusion of everything else - even if that government itself is repeating the path of Nazi Germany. Yet this seems to be how a lot of German politicians interpret it.

I found the distinction exemplified in the "Never again" vs "Never again for anyone" slogans.

I don't understand what exactly is going on in the US, but there seems to have been a similar taboo, though maybe stemming from different sources (like that Evangelical end-of-days prophecy that sees Israel literally as part of a divine plan that trumps everything else).

I find it notable that part of Trump's voter support in the election were actually pro-Palestinian groups - because they saw Trump as the only alternative to a complicit Harris administration. Of course, Trump turned out to be even more complicit and openly embracing the Evangelical narrative.

So as far as US voters were concerned, there was no pro-Palestinian or even neutral options to vote for. There was just secular pro-Israel and religious pro-Israel. (Well, there was also Jill Stein, but she had no realistic chance of winning)

Of course there are other voices saying that all those justifications - Holocaust, biblical prophecy, etc - are just show and the real reason for the unconditional support is just ordinary geopolitics. The image of Israel as the "unsinkable aircraft carrier" that guarantees US dominance in the region.

> I don't understand what exactly is going on in the US, but there seems to have been a similar taboo, though maybe stemming from different sources (like that Evangelical end-of-days prophecy that sees Israel literally as part of a divine plan that trumps everything else).

It's also that the American mythos that they were the saviors of WWII requires there to be villains and innocent damsels. If you acknowledge that those damsels are themselves capable of being villains then it makes the whole thing much more "complicated".

That and simply the fact that lots of Jews hold positions of power in the US.

> "unsinkable aircraft carrier" [...] in the region

The IDF might disagree.

A quarter of Israeli citizens immigrated there, so probably quite a few of them do know something else.

I recommend you reflect a little deeper on this topic. Maybe look a little bit into how Jews were treated in Europe and the middle east.

The Anti-Israeli crowd is throwing universal human rights under the bus. That crowd doesn't care about human rights under Arab and Muslim rule. It wants to see some imaginary "justice" at the cost of murdering the Jewish people. It promotes antisemitism including justification of the Holocaust.

I'm Israeli and your "relatable" is nonsense. Israelis engaged with the other side in good faith many times. We made peace with Jordan and Egypt. We negotiated with the Palestinians during the Oslo process. What we got in return was a suicide bombing campaign in the late 1990's early 2000's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_at... and then we got Oct 7th. Israelis would be happy with a solution that leaves the with those human rights that you appear to be championing, such as the right not to be murdered.

Modern anti-zionism is just another incarnation of antisemitism. There is really no other way to look at it or explain it. The selectivity and the images used are 1:1 with antisemitism throughout the ages. This is not about whether you can critique Israel or its government. This is purely Jew hatred and racism under the mask of anti-Israeli.

EDIT: And for people who are reading this comment who think antisemitism isn't a reasonable argument here I would recommend the book: https://www.amazon.ca/People-Love-Dead-Jews-Reports/dp/03935... ... Once you read this you will have a better understanding of the different forms antisemitism takes and learn a bit of interesting history too.