"It should be a matter of principle: if Jews born in Brooklyn have a right to a state in Palestine, then Palestinians born in Jerusalem have a right to a state in Palestine. Anyone who doesn't agree with that principle, I think, is suspect."

@Xanne still, even if because of how much Mercator projections stretch land close to the poles, Antarctica looks HUGE on the maps

@Færd I wouldn't be too sure. You look around, and no one has any problem condemning China for the Uighurs they beat up. Israel has been killing women and children for 70 years and whenever talk of Israel comes up, everyone is like "Whoa there, let's not jump to conclusions, one Palestinian stabbed two Israelis" as if it's surprising that an oppressed people violently fight back.

Human rights violations are rightfully condemned everywhere, but when it comes to Israel we're supposed to hear the oppressor's side of the story.

@M.A.R. Israel has been killing terrorists. If terrorists hide among women and children, it's the terrorists who are to blame for their deaths.

It's like the Russian terrorists who set up artillery points right inside living areas in Donetsk. Especially to draw fire from Ukrainian army. And then blame Ukraine, blame NATO, blame USA. The same strategy is used by Palestinian terrorists.

@M.A.R. Chine is grabbing Uighurs en masse and locks them up in concentration camps, forcing them to work. I don't recall Israel doing the same with peaceful Palestinians.

It's very simple. Terrorism is terrorism. For instance, the Russian Tsarist regime committed a crime by not allowing workers to establish trade unions, and by suppressing democratic institutions. But still those who blew up and shot officials in the years 1880-1905 were simply terrorists.

They just killed officials for being officials, not for specific crimes or whatever.

And Palestinian terrorists just kill innocent people, firing rockets randomly.

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@CowperKettle Quick big-picture question: if you were informed that there were some Islamic fundamentalist groups being trained among Uyghurs, would you condone, then, what the Chinese government is doing now to the Uyghurs en mass?

Another one: if you were presented with the gruesome violence that some rebellious slaves and later some armed black gangs visited on some white people, would you find it difficult to say Jim Crow and slavery and anti-Black racism were wrong?

Or if you heard about some atrocious act of violence that an African tribe committed against the families of some European masters, would it be a problem to say colonialists were on the wrong side of history?

Looking at the imbalance of power in each case, I would find no difficulty in saying that China has zero excuse for what they do to the Uyghurs, that those who committed slavery and Jim Crow and anti-Black racism and colonialism were on the wrong side of history and were fundamentally responsible, and that Israel is a settler-colonial apartheid state. At this level, it's not even complex. At this level, I'm not talking about the state of Israel's right to exist, or terrorist attacks or whatever.

It's not even complex.

It was a state started by driving Palestinians out of their lands, which has continued to this day, and is now the most powerful country in the region and treats what's left of the local population in any way it deems in its defense with total impunity from serious consequences because it's backed by the world super power.

And, tho it's not exactly the main point, it's worth mentioning that the victims of the 'conflict' for the past dozen years have been on the Palestinian side with the ratio of 20:1. This should give us an idea about the asymmetry of power.

Gaza is under a sever blockade and is denied basic needs, and the West Bank has been under comprehensive Israeli control for decades. It's so transparent that even media outlets like MSNBC (which are kinda conservative when it comes to challenging US foreign policy) are calling it apartheid now.

We could agree that shooting rockets into populated areas is 100% a crime, and we could quibble over this attack or that accord, but I cannot for the life of me see any complexity in the big picture here.

(Typo correction: *en masse)

@Færd Of course no. I would grudgingly accept the destruction of specific terrorists. Grudgingly because I will never, ever believe 100% to any totalitarian state like China. They can lie.

@Færd Why is Israel an apartheid state? Are there legal restriction to what a non-Jewish citizen of Israel can do and where he can work?

@Færd Maybe this 20:1 ratio is what the terrorists want, to jusfity their funding from the neigboring Arab states? Why do they fund terrorists, which costs quite a penny, instead of building schools, hospitals and hi-tech companies there? Maybe because it's a profitable media campaign for terrorists and a good tactic for neighboring states to instill hatred towards Jews and thus to control their own populations.

@Færd I've read that several high-power electrical lines were damaged by the terrorists, nearly causing a total collapse of the infrastructure. How is it under "total blockade" if evil Israel is supplying it with electrical power?

In an apartheid state there are laws making some ethnicity unable to hold some positions (elective positions, high authority, high-paying professions). Are there such laws in Israel?

I see that neigboring countries even deny that there is such a state as Israel, so of course my sympathies are with Jews, whose opponents want to "drive them into the sea".

Increasingly Bold Israel Begins Building Settlements In Downtown Albuquerque

As for settlements, it looks like a crime. I don't know how Israeli officials justify this. I don't feel enough energy to read in-depth about this.

@M.A.R. I don't know about you, but we have been bombarded by the terrible actions of Israel here since I was a child, in various media.

@CowperKettle By law, Israel is a Jewish state. So that makes many things difficult for non-Jews, who are mostly Palestinians.

In practice, Palestinians cannot go everywhere, they are even forced out of cities and land where they have lived for a thousand years.

I think the word apartheid is not inappropriate: Israel forces them to live apart from Israelis in many places.

The red lines are actual walls, to keep Palestinians out of Israeli land.

@Færd Why surprised?

@CowperKettle yeah, they do it much worse actually.

@CowperKettle That's like saying Russia was right to invade Afghanistan because some Afghan war lords were war criminals. If it's not like saying that, please do tell me where the analogy is flawed.

@CowperKettle Arguing from that point is moot and fallacious. What the heck does the Arab governments' hypocrisy have to do with Israeli human rights' violations?

@CowperKettle That's posing Israel, one of the most powerful militaries in the world, as the oppressed victim.

@CowperKettle That is trivially false. Unless by peace you mean the peace the colonizers brought to native Americans and Australians.

Though, of course, because we're living in this century, it's nowhere near as brutal as that, I admit. But this is the equivalent of saying that there would have been peace if the slaves didn't revolt.