I genuinely do not know who the bad guys are. S lot of my leftist friends are against Israel, but from what I know Israel was attacked and is responding and trying to get their hostages back.

Enlighten me. Am I wrong? Why am I wrong?

And dumb it down for me, because apparently I’m an idiot.

  • HomerianSymphony@lemmy.world
    1426·
    4 days ago

    Up until 1967, the bad guys were Britain.

    Britain seized Palestine from the Ottomans during WWI with the help of the local Palestinians, promising the Palestinians sovereignty in exchange for their help overthrowing the Ottomans.

    At the same time, Britain promised to create a homeland for Jews in Palestine (in the Balfour Declaration), and Jewish refugees from Europe began settling in Palestine. Britain did this because they thought they might gain the support of Jewish financiers for their war efforts.

    The Balfour Declaration was deliberately vague about whether Britain was giving all of the land to the Jews or just some of the land. It was vague because Britain wanted to appeal to Jewish Zionists (who wanted all of Palestine) while not alienating the Palestinians.

    Britain never did divide the land, resulting in two different populations who felt they legally owned the land, one who had always been there, and one who mostly arrived as refugees.

    When Britain left following WWII, a civil war broke out for control of the land. A border was eventually drawn at the line of control (which ran through the middle of Jerusalem), and Israelis declared the new State of Israel, while Palestinian refugees fled to their side of the border or neighbouring states. That was in 1948.

    So, up until then, it’s a messy situation created by Britain, but one which eventually resulted in the land being split (albeit violently), with both Israelis and Palestinians having a state, and each having part of Jerusalem. The world accepted this as the new status quo and hoped it would be sustained peacefully.

    That changed in 1967 when Israel annexed the Palestinian lands (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) in the Six Days War. Since then, Palestinians have been living under a harsh Israeli occcupation as a stateless people (meaning no citizenship), with their rights and freedoms strictly curtailed. Palestinians have been resisting through a number of resistance movements, usually designated as terrorist groups in the Western media.

    There was a political movement towards peace and repartitioning of the land that peaked in the 1990s, but since then it has been held up by a series of right-wing governments in Israel. Meanwhile, Israel has been aggressively building Jewish neighbourhoods (called settlements) in the formerly Palestinian lands of the West Bank.

    So since 1967, Israel has pretty clearly been the bad guy.

    The terrorist attack that killed 1200 young Israelis was horrific, and we should all hope nothing like that ever happens again. But the root cause of the attack was Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. The way to prevent future terror attacks is to end the oppression of the Palestinian people.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
      605·
      5 days ago

      while Palestinian refugees fled to their side of the border or neighbouring states.

      Technically not incorrect, but too much passive voice. Palestinian refugees were expelled by Israel, either by being directly told to leave or die or through massacres.

      The terrorist attack that killed 1200 young Israelis

      Another correction: The attack that killed 1200 Israelis, 33% of which were legitimate military targets and 66% of which were civilians. Don’t let Israel trick you into thinking Hamas just entered, killed a bunch of civilians and left, because that creates what they consider justification for their genocide.

      • TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
        25·
        4 days ago

        Also do not forget that on 10/7 Israeli helicopters were firing on civilians and the state censors have been covering this up. There are attempts to ban Haaretz, a friendly mouthpiece for state interests, because they have been reporting on this.

      • HomerianSymphony@lemmy.world
        112·
        4 days ago

        Another correction: The attack that killed 1200 Israelis, 33% of which were legitimate military targets and 66% of which were civilians.

        I never said they were civilians.

      • tired_n_bored@lemmy.world
        53·
        4 days ago

        If 66% of 1200 are civilians killed by Hamas then

        Don’t let Israel trick you into thinking Hamas just entered, killed a bunch of civilians and left

        is false (they indeed came and killed a bunch of civilians).

        I’m not a pro-Israel person, I hate Netanyahu with a passion but still Hamas killing innocent people is not deserving of compassion albeit I understand their reason.

        • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
          8·
          4 days ago

          is false.

          How so? Hamas attacked a number of Israeli military bases and outposts on October 7th, which was along with taking hostages the goal of the attack. The Israeli narrative conveniently ignores that, painting the whole thing as one big act of barbarism.

          still Hamas killing innocent people is not deserving of compassion albeit I understand their reason.

          It’s not about compassion. They definitely committed a bunch of atrocities on October 7th, and that very much deserves condemnation, but ignoring the very real military goals behind the attacks helps no one but Israel. Nobody really talks about that anymore, but if you remember before it was overshadowed by the genocide in Gaza things like how much of Israeli accusations against Hamas was true, how many casualties were Israeli friendly fire, what Hamas’s goals behind the attack were, etc etc were still open questions. The world quite reasonably stopped focusing on these things because Israel kept one-upping themselves in genociding Gazans, but that had the side effect of cementing the Israeli narrative on them as reality in the minds of most pro-Palestinian Westerners. What I’m saying is: Condemning terror that happened during the attack and condemning the attack itself are a different things, and one of them invalidates many legitimate acts of resistance.

    • HomerianSymphony@lemmy.world
      231·
      4 days ago

      There’s something else I want to mention.

      In 1947, the UN attempted to sort out Britain’s mess by creating a “partition plan” in which the land would be split between a state of Israel and a state of Palestine.

      Though adopted as a UN resolution, it was never implemented, and the aforementioned civil war broke out instead.

      I just mention this because I find a lot of people are under the misimpression that Israel was created by the UN in 1947 as some kind of compensation for the Holocaust, and that’s not what happened.

    • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
      6·
      4 days ago

      That’s a pretty good summary. I will add that the partition plan was deliberate tactic by Ben-Gurion to set a precedent for the Ethnic Cleansing needed to create the Settler Colonialist Ethnostate within Palestine. The alternative presented by Palestinian Representatives was a Unitary State for both Israelis and Palestinians.

      Partition

      The Zionist position changed in 1928, when the pragmatic Palestinian leaders agreed to the principle of parity in a rare moment in which clannish and religious differences were overcome for the sake of consensus. The Palestinian leaders feared that without parity the Zionists would gain control of the political system. The unexpected Palestinian agreement threw the Zionist leaders into temporary confusion. When they recovered, they sent a refusal to the British, but at the same time offered an alternative solution: the partitioning of Palestine into two political units.

      • Pg 132 of Ilan Pappe - A History of Modern Palestine

      On 31 August 1947, UNSCOP presented its recommendations to the UN General Assembly. Three of its members were allowed to put forward an alternative recommendation. The majority report advocated the partition of Palestine into two states, with an economic union. The designated Jewish state was to have most of the coastal area, western Galilee, and the Negev, and the rest was to become the Palestinian state. The minority report proposed a unitary state in Palestine based on the principle of democracy. It took considerable American Jewish lobbying and American diplomatic pressure, as well as a powerful speech by the Russian ambassador to the UN, to gain the necessary two-thirds majority in the Assembly for partition. Even though hardly any Palestinian or Arab diplomat made an effort to promote the alternative scheme, it won an equal number of supporters and detractors, showing that a considerable number of member states realized that imposing partition amounted to supporting one side and opposing the other.

      • Pg 181 of Ilan Pappe - A History of Modern Palestine
      Ethnic Cleansing and Settler Colonialism

      Israel justifies the settlements and military bases in the West Bank in the name of Security. However, the reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.

      This type of settlement, where the native population gets ‘Transferred’ to make room for the settlers, is a long standing practice.

      The mass ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948:

      Further, declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967:

      While the peace process was exploited to continue de-facto annexation of the West Bank via Settlements

      The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.

      Apartheid Evidence

      Amnesty Report

      Human Rights Watch Report

      B’TSelem Report with quick Explainer

      Visualizing the Ethnic Cleansing

      Peace Process and Solution

      Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution

      How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution

      ‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe

      One State Solution, Foreign Affairs

      Hamas proposed a full prisoner swap as early as Oct 8th, and agreed to the US proposed UN Permanent Ceasefire Resolution. Additionally, Hamas has already agreed to no longer govern the Gaza Strip, as long as Palestinians receive liberation and a unified government can take place.

      Historian Works on the History
      • TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
        19·
        4 days ago

        Israel started the six day war by striking its neighbors. It wanted that war, it knew it had dedicated sponsors that would back them up.

        PS Israel, as an apartheid ethnostare premised on settler colonialism, should not exist. The “state” of Israel should be abolished and replaced by a non-apartheid, non-ethnostate that includes all of the people and guarantees a return of stolen homes and land.