Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib refused to apologize Wednesday for saying on Tuesday that Israel is to blame for the hospital explosion that day in Gaza, an accusation that sparked political backlash against her from Republicans as Israel denies fault.
Tlaib joined thousands of protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza during a solidarity rally hosted by the left-leaning group Jewish Voice for Peace at the National Mall. She was visibly emotional, at times pausing her speech to openly weep and criticizing lawmakers who have not backed a ceasefire resolution.
If Israel stopped fighting tomorrow, what do you think would happen?
Would it get its civilian hostages back?
Or would Hamas just set up another invasion and kill more civilians?
Defense does not necessitate apartheid or ethnic cleansing.
I never implied it did.
It does, however, require border security. Most countries have borders, and most countries that have borders with hostile forces try to enforce security at those borders, rather than just letting people come in and rape their civilians all willy-nilly.
That’s not called “apartheid” anywhere else in the world, only when people are looking for a word to demonize Jews with.
You did, because you stated that:
Implying that the only thing Israel is doing is fighting. It’s not, it’s doing a hell of a lot more than that. It’s doing apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
If you’re saying that Israel should stop doing those things and instead only focus on defense then I agree with you. But you’re acting like Isreal is completely innocent.
Yeah, that’s not true.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_apartheid
The term was started in South Africa, being critical of the white people in charge.
How so?
I’m just saying that the calls for a ceasefire are absurd. Israel should be careful, Israel should follow international law, Israel should not start engaging in apartheid or ethnic cleansing (I’m quite happy it doesn’t). Settlements are bad, it should absolutely stop expanding settlements and offer land swaps (again) to try to resolve any existing disputes.
But Israel should not just lay down its arms and let Hamas keep the hostages, and try to use its words to negotiate with terrorists who openly and proudly want to wipe every Jew off the face of the earth, that is not a reasonable concept.
Apartheid occurred within the borders of South Africa. Israel enforces its borders, the same way the United States enforces its borders, and South Korea enforces its borders, and Egypt enforces its borders, and every other country enforces its borders. Again, enforcing your borders is not referred to as apartheid anywhere else in the world—only in Israel, because people want any opportunity they can get to accuse Jews of being evil racists.
What are Israel’s borders? It seems like it conveniently places its borders in one place when it wants to selectively disenfranchise 5 of the 7 millions Arabs, and another when it wants to place settlements.
Israel has a divided judicial system and Palestinian defenders are punished more severely than Israeli defenders. Here is an article about it by a group of Israeli human rights activists.
Have you heard of a country that didn’t have military court or military tribunals? Can you name such a country? Is the country in the room with us now?
It’s not a perfect system, and yes there are racist assholes in the system, but of course Israel doesn’t use its intranational civilian courts to try Palestinians in Palestine, that wouldn’t make any sense.
Every country has military courts, every country has some racist somewhere in the process, you’re going to have to try harder to explain what it is about Israel that makes it so singularly evil.
Whataboutism, but I’ll bite. No, I haven’t heard of a country that colonized inhabited land and unequally punished the people they oppressed and then didn’t need to concede that what they were doing was wrong. Weird how that epiphany always comes after the colonists get what they want tho. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.
Military courts are supposed to govern your armed forces, not any rando you don’t like.
A Palestine state does not exist unless you equate Palestine to the Gaza prison camp guarded by Israel and maybe parts of the West Bank that Israel occupies against international law since I-don’t-even-know-how-long. A convenient excuse for their racist system.
What it boils down to is that in a Zionist state, like the Likud strives for Israel to be, Jewish law only applies to Jews and not to the “gentile”.
I always laugh when people fall over themselves trying to claim Israel isn’t an apartheid state. It’s basically matches the textbook definition of an apartheid state at this point. Even the many Israelis with a conscience call it out as an apartheid state. There’s no legitimate uncertainty there, only propaganda, lies, and ignorance.
So Egypt is an apartheid state too, right?
And Jordan?
Oh yeah, I love whataboutisms! They’re absolutely a valid way to… deflect from the topic actually being discussed.
Where exactly has Israel done this recently? Attacking someone across your border because they’re killing people near yours is war.
See, Ukraine attacking places inside Russia lol. Justifiably so.
They’ve been doing it for decades.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution
As for the more recent:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/13/civilians-trapped-in-gaza-cant-escape-israels-siege.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing
Civilians are getting killed and forced out of their homes, all based on race. It’s an apartheid, and an ethnic cleansing.
The apartheid accusation is solid, nothing to say here.
But ethnic cleansing?
There are 2 million arab israeli citizens… not very homogenous. That’s almost 1 in 5 citizens.
The degree to which a nation is homogeneous is not the qualifying factor for whether an action is considered ethnic cleansing. It is instead the effect, and the effect of forcing Palestinians out of their homes, out of Gaza, counts as ethnic cleansing.
It’s also not just based on race, it’s also got to do with religion.
About 18% of Israelis are Muslim, and they have the full rights of any other Israeli citizen. They serve in Knesset and in the IDF, there are Muslim celebrities, there are Muslim academics, they’re free to practice their religion as they see fit.
Actually, the only thing you can really call “apartheid” in Israel, if you want to be a dick about it, is the temple mount. Only Muslims are allowed to pray there, Jews are forbidden.
The last instance I know of where Israel was accused of “forcing Palestinians out of their homes” is the Sheikh Jarrah situation, where Palestinian tenants stopped paying rent to their Jewish landlords for over a decade and Israeli courts were really slow about processing their evictions. Like, really slow. For obvious reasons. And then, just before they decided, mounting tensions led to riots. You might complain about the property decisions from decades before that, but the tenants agreed to the rent terms in the early 90s, so framing this as “ethnic cleansing” is pretty nuts.
That’s not true.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution
Yeah. Those decisions are exactly what people are talking about when people call it apartheid. And those decisions have never stopped, it’s been happening ever since the Israeli-Palistinian conflict started.
When somebody comes in, says they own your home, and then try to kick you out because of your race/religion, that is apartheid.
“Agreed” is a strong word to use when the alternative is homelessness.
It is the intentional homogenization of a region, dispelling people from their homes that they’ve lived in since their birth. That is by definition ethnic cleansing.
Lol, I’m familiar with the HRW report. It’s funny how this almost entirely unsourced document it starts off saying it’s going to address claims that Israel is an egalitarian state within its borders, and then kind of goes on to say, “well, they can vote and stuff, but they still face discrimination, like, uhh… they can’t trespass on land that used to be theirs, and they can be evicted from land if their landlord evicts them according to the law.”
Yeah, still nothing that can be described as apartheid in Israel.
No, I’m pretty sure most people aren’t pointing to obscure decades-old property rulings as “apartheid.” I’m pretty sure almost everybody who says it just heard somebody who sounded smart at the time say it first.
Feel free to correct me. Can you name any of the decisions that you say constitute apartheid? Have you read any of the opinions? What was wrong with the legal reasoning? How does that legal reasoning relate to the South African system known as Apartheid, aside from the HRW crew deciding it’s really bad and that people will really hate it if they make it sound super duper racist?
Well, the alternative was moving to a different place and paying rent there, instead. Kind of the alternatives most people have when it comes to housing they don’t own.
Again, Israel isn’t homogeneous. You want to look at homogeneity, look at the rest of the Middle East, besides Lebanon. They all chased off their Jews, executing them, launching pogroms against them. Even outspoken antizionist Jews got executed for “zionism.” Nobody fucking accuses Egypt of ethnic cleansing. Or Saudi Arabia, or Iran. And they’re actually doing it. But the world is obsessed with Israel. Shit, if I was a Muslim, and I had to pick a place to live in the middle east, there’s still only one country I’d feel safe in, and you gotta know what it is.
People got evicted from their homes according to boring legal procedures (and failure to pay rent), and they took decades to do it because Israel gave them oodles of procedural protections and special classifications to delay the eviction even after they stopped bothering to pay rent.
You are kidding, right?
Gaza is basically an open air prison. Do they control their own borders?
If Hamas stops fighting, does Palestine get freedom and self determination?
Actually, if the extremists don’t gain control- yes. There have been several instances when they have been close to peace and even a two state solution… But then the terrorism starts.
If both sides stop fighting and start working toward peace, sure. I’d note that those prior peace deals have usually been completely shit for Palestinians
It’s not going to end the blockade of gaza or the occupation of the west bank overnight, but Israel withdrew from Gaza unilaterally in 2005, Gaza was pretty free, and that backfired hard for everybody involved. Hamas took advantage of the freedom of they had to dramatically ramp up rocket power.
The Olmert deal was a big opportunity for peace, but before either party could actually negotiate it, mounting terrorism gave Netanyahu a huge boost in support and he obviously wasn’t nearly as friendly. And obviou
Peace is a process. Trust is a process. There’s obviously no way Israelis will trust the PA while Hamas is still the majority party. There needs to be some kind of good faith on behalf of Palestinian leadership, doesn’t there?
This war is obviously not helping anybody, especially towards building that process. Israel is never going to say “oh, they killed thousands of us, and don’t want to stop? guess we’ll just end the blockade and let them have all the weapons they want!”
I don’t think I fundamentally disagree with you. Hamas aren’t helping Palestinians and I don’t think Likud are helping Israelis.