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Comment by salehk | Hacker News Reader

Tensions were running high: over 100 Palestinians, nearly two dozen of them minors, had been killed in the preceding two weeks in violent protests with Israelis forces in Ramallah,[11] and four days earlier, the badly beaten body of Issam Hamad (36) had been dumped outside of the city after being run over by a car, an autopsy revealed. His death, according to Marwan Bishara of Al Jazeera, was attributed by locals to settlers in Halamish.[12]

Both Haaretz and Maariv reported that approximately 13 Palestinian policemen were injured while attempting to stop the lynching

Israel kills and injures 100s of Palestinians, Palestinians try to stop angry mob. Somehow Israel is not at fault.

You're right maps are important and they should be accessible to everyone.

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9/10 on mental gymnastics.

> Israel kills and injures 100s of Palestinians, Palestinians try to stop angry mob. Somehow Israel is not at fault.

the palestineans actions were so virtuous, yet they found the need to break the reporter's camera, and threaten the italian news agency into not reporting about the lynch.

you may claim that the IDF committed crimes (a discussion for another time) but lynching is at the same level as cannibalism. one thing is mistreating/torturing/executing a POW. another is lynching two people, telling the wife of one of them from his cell phone "we are killing your husband" and then raising your blood drenched hands from the window greeting the cheering crowd below.

Do we simply ignore Israel's illegal occupation, and the oppression of the people of Palestine?

I suppose that does provide better framing to pick out and criticise an individual act by the Palestinians.

At what point do we stop calling it an occupation, like it’s a temporary state of affairs, and call it what it is? None of us live in a land that was free from a history (some very recent) of violent conquest, and to be clear I know I’m taking a purely amoral stance here. I’m not saying that Israel is the “good guy” I’m just noting that they clearly won, and international fantasies aside, that’s done.

So when is it just a conquest and not an occupation? 70 more years? 170? When does Israel stop being a special case the rest of the world uses as a distraction from their own recent history of violent conquest? Do you seriously think Palestinians have a future that isn’t as a diaspora of refugees? If we’re just into pure quality of life, I’d argue that resettlement in Jordan, SA, Egypt and other neighbors would be better than leaving them stuffed into a few small regions of a country they no longer control and never will again. Of course then they can’t be used by oppressive Arab regimes as a scapegoat and distraction.

I want to say that I realize how unpopular this view is likely to be here, and I’d just ask that you set aside what you want to be, and just consider what is. I’m not arguing for the right or wrong of the situation, just the reality and immutability of it. I don’t think it’s very fair that the U.S. is built on the graves of a whole series of cultures and peoples, but I also recognize that calling the U.S. an occupying force would be a farce.

Generally people are referring to the on going expansion of Israel into the West Bank (and less commonly these days the occupation on the Golan Heights) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlement

Israel doesn't want it to be a conquest.

The current fiction is that they are going to end up with some sort of two state solution, with the Palestinians getting their own country. If instead, this is really conquest, then we have the one-state solution option. But Palestinians have more babies than the Jewish Israelis do. So in a very short time period the Jews will be outnumbered by Arabs in "their own country."

I suspect the most likely outcome of this whole fiasco, is that Israel continues to build on whatever land they like the best, and if the Palestinians ever get their own country it will be on whatever land is left over. Perhaps all they will have left is Gaza, at the end of the day.

Basically, the Palestinians are fucked.

That's gymnastics.

Other crime being committed is not a defense, even a justification for the broader picture here.

That's what this perpetually comes back to. "Palestine cannot not be occupied, oppressed, etc. If we try it, they'll just attack Israel." It's pathetic.

Are you really trying to justify the lynching?

> Palestinians try to stop angry mob

Composed of... Martians, I presume?

> Somehow Israel is not at fault.

Yes, it is not. Those who perpetrated the murder are at fault. No amount of sophistry and "but what about?" is going to change that simple fact.

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