Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan also indoctrinated children like crazy, but fortunately it only took a few years of friendly exposure to American occupiers (and lots of chocolate) to undo the damage, and by the 50s they were waving American flags and wearing blue jeans. Israel will have a lot more work to do with almost 80 years of grievances piled up against it, but as they say, the second best time to plant a tree is today.
Some people accuse Israel of being a colonizer. I disagree. The proof that Israel is not a colonizer power is that every colonial power understood much better than Israel how to control a hostile foreign population. The trick is that no society is truly homogeneous, so you find a dividing line and split them along it, and richly reward the side that sides with you.
Israel needs to provide as much help as possible to Hamas' opposition, and undermine their state power. It can do that relatively easily because it can shelter dissidents and their families out of reach of Hamas, amplify their stories, and make Palestinian voices the most prominent ones that denounce Hamas. It can sponsor a government in exile and work to grow their legitimacy. It had a perfect chance to do so with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank but so far Israel has almost completely blown it.
I don’t know what to say to you. For everyone else, please look up the settlement videos pre Oct 7. They are made by Vox, Vice, probably even more credible outlets like the BBC. Basically they build suburbs literally inside the West Bank, and connect them through super highways so Israelis don’t even feel the difference between living in Israel or knee-deep inside Palestine (20-30min drive from Jerusalem to an illegal suburb in the West Bank).
Israeli government is relentless with this. Those suburbs are incentivized with subsidies for the settlers, more so than people inside Israel itself.
Oct 7 was horrifying, but for a nation that wants to expand out and build suburbs inside Palestine, it was a lose-win situation. Oct 7 was a loss, but now they don’t have to pretend about building those suburbs anymore. They can just say “each home is on top of a Hamas tunnel”, and boom (literally), clear lot for new housing.
Anyway, the deed is done. All other discourse on this thread is between Israeli apologists and just about everyone else that is not morally bankrupt.
Last but not least, everyone apologizing for Israeli, please save your faces. Please. IDF does not even allow foreign journalists into Gaza. That’s all you need to know. But again, I believe the apologists are no longer trying to save face. It’s an insidious “well, what needed to be done, needed to be done”. Beyond immoral.
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Prayer is in order, as I don’t know what else anyone can do (it’s all be done).
My hope is the Israeli people at the very least prosecute war crimes internally just for the purity of their own soul, and educate their future generations on a modest truth, that being - “we Israelis in 2025 could not find a better solution, and may you never seek a solution we sought in those dark times. May you be better, for we sinned on a scale the bathroom mirror in the morning won’t allow us to forget”.
Before my words are twisted, let me make it clear I am pacifist. I have to literally turn away whenever scenes from Gaza are shown. I don’t support Hamas or the IDF. I believe Hamas commits child abuse by indoctrinating young Palestinians into terrorism. It’s literally a carbon copy situation of black gang violence that’s perpetuated by gang culture (Chiraq, Chicago gang violence). Yeah, believe it or not, teenagers are impressionable and vulnerable everywhere in the world, stop radicalizing them. Hell, we can’t even stop the kids from entering the manosphere here in America, they’ll gravitate right to Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan.
The children cannot fight an endless fucking war, and that is what both the Israelis and Palestinians are doing to these children. It’s child abuse on an epic scale.
Now, in America, we’ve got some sense not to virtually nuke Chiraq, but over there in the Middle East, they have no qualms about bull-dozing the problem.
Some people accuse Israel of being a colonizer. I disagree. The proof that Israel is not a colonizer power is that every colonial power understood much better than Israel how to control a hostile foreign population. The trick is that no society is truly homogeneous, so you find a dividing line and split them along it, and richly reward the side that sides with you.
Israel needs to provide as much help as possible to Hamas' opposition, and undermine their state power. It can do that relatively easily because it can shelter dissidents and their families out of reach of Hamas, amplify their stories, and make Palestinian voices the most prominent ones that denounce Hamas. It can sponsor a government in exile and work to grow their legitimacy. It had a perfect chance to do so with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank but so far Israel has almost completely blown it.