Comment by edanm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by edanm | Hacker News Reader

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> An act of terrorism met with a tenfold response in terrorism and violence is needless and cannot be condoned.

I don't think this is an accurate description. It wasn't "an act of terrorism". It was an invasion and jointly, a rocket attack, by a neighboring semi-state with a military, that has stated it will invade over and over again. And of course, the capture of 250 hostages.

This isn't a kind of one-off terror attack that was met with revenge for the sake of it. For the months after the initial invasion, Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel, essentially shutting down the country for a few weeks, until they were forced to stop. Hamas militants were literally running around inside of Israel for two days.

No nation on Earth could afford to effectively cease functioning as rockets rained down on it, and as other parties like Hezbollah were threatening to widen the conflict to a far more serious attack as well.

> If the Palestinians stop defending themselves with terrorism would Israel play nice?

I can't answer that, but it's worth noting that during the 1990s there was a sizeable Israeli left that was pushing for peace, there were talks, there were accords that gave the Palestinians self-governance in the West Bank, etc. This was met with terrorism, with the express purpose of stopping the peace process.

It's also worth noting that Israel completely left Gaza in 2005, removing all its settlements there and the soldiers there. Gaza then elected Hamas, which immediately started shooting rockets at Israel.

So while I highly dislike Israel's right-wing government and extremism, and highly dislike the settlements, I don't think it's accurate to say that the terrorism is helping protect against anything. It comes from a worldview in which Israel will eventually be completely destroyed and the Palestinian will take over all the land.

>>Palestinian will take over all the land.

You mean Palestinians will go back home.

No, I don't mean that.

Look, it's a complicated issue. There is some validity to it being "their land", but... even if you don't think the historical connection of Jews to the land means anything, my father was born in Israel. I was born here. My kids were born here. Do we not have any connection to the land at this point? If Hamas's goal of "going back home" (as you put it) is met, what should happen to us?

Figure out a way to live together and not shoot at each other for 80+ years. Since I have been a baby it has been a conflict and blame throwing around, please don't kill anymore people, any people on any side!

Of course that's what I want.

The only way to achieve that is a two-state solution, where each populace has its own state. The root problem is that there has never been a Palestinian leadership willing or capable of agreeing to a deal (despite multiple efforts), or at least not at the same time as an Israeli leadership existed that could make it possible. And given the failures and continued violence (and demographics!), the Israeli left has lost almost all power, and Israel's right-wing has ruled for most of the last 15 years, and is at best, not contributing to peace. (And I'd say much worse - very actively preventing peace!)

Why must the Israeli State be in Palestine?

Approximately zero Israelis have a connection to Israel that wasn't created by immigration, invasion, and conquer in the last 100 years, vs centuries of continuous inhabitation by Palestinians.

> Why must the Israeli State be in Palestine?

A great question, but not very relevant anymore. Let's set aside for a minute whether Israel should have been founded in that land in 1948 - it was founded there, and it's been 75 years. There are 9 million Israelis (or 7 million Jews if you want to break it down that way) that live there now. I was born here, my father was born here, my son was born here. Do I have less connection to the land, right now, than the million Gazans who are under the age of 18 and have never lived here? More importantly, what do you propose? That all 7 million Jews in Israel be relocated somewhere else? Where? Who would pay for moving an entire country elsewhere?

As for the question itself of why the Israeli state should be in Palestine, like I said, while I think it's relevant, it is a good question. Personally, I would've chosen to locate it elsewhere, but then I don't really care about religion or sentimentality "for the land" or anything like that. Practically, I don't think Jews really had another place to go - remember, most of the Jews of Israel were either fleeing Europe before the Holocaust, or were the survivors of the Holocaust, or were ethnically cleansed from surrounding Arab countries. It's not like they had anywhere else to go.

That said, I do question your premise:

> Approximately zero Israelis have a connection to Israel that wasn't created by immigration, invasion, and conquer in the last 100 years.

This is very wrong. For one thing, you're ignoring the 20% of Israelis that are Arabs/Palestinians, but I'll assume you meant the Jewish ones. There has been continuous Jewish habitation of Palestine for literally 2,000, since the Jews were forced out. If you look at the demographic history of Palestine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palesti...), you can see that roughly 100 years ago, 10% of the inhabitants of Palestine were Jewish. And IIRC, all of them got there by completely legal immigration, not "invasion" or "conquest".

> Practically, I don't think Jews really had another place to go - remember, most of the Jews of Israel were either fleeing Europe before the Holocaust, or were the survivors of the Holocaust, or were ethnically cleansed from surrounding Arab countries. It's not like they had anywhere else to go.

Not true. One proposal was the Kimberly plan, which received strong push back from proponents of Zionism that simply refused to settle for anything less than Palestine. Theresa very real case to be made that had there been stronger support from Jewish community as a whole that this may well have actually ended up being the outcome.

> This is very wrong. For one thing, you're ignoring the 20% of Israelis that are Arabs/Palestinians, but I'll assume you meant the Jewish ones. There has been continuous Jewish habitation of Palestine for literally 2,000, since the Jews were forced out

Not the person you're responding to, but personally I'd say that's largely irrelevant. Any perceived connection to a land that anyone has is something learnt from cultural context. There's nothing that empirically literary connects people to an arbitrarily divided portion of land. Countries are an abstractional fiction. Religions and cultures build stories upon these abstractions with varying levels of historic accuracy. Through exposure to these stories people develop a perceived connection with essentially no direct physical basis in reality. More succinctly - a person's perceived connection to the land depends almost entirely upon their exposure to certain cultural stories.

A small portion of the perceived connection to an area is obviously related to literal experience and exposure to said area. The fact that the is often mentally tied to back to an abstraction like a "country" implies that these experiences are secondary to the broader cultural stories.

In terms of immediate (non-cultural) connection, it seems pretty accurate to say that immigration and conflict is going to be a significant factor for everyone currently in Israel. Be they the descendants of immigrants, direct immigrants, or the descendants of people historically living in that area (having ancestors that lived there doesn't historically doesn't preclude them or their parents from being impacted by the creation of modern day Israel)

> Theresa very real case to be made that had there been stronger support from Jewish community as a whole that this may well have actually ended up being the outcome.

Maybe. I honestly don't know enough to say one way or the other, though I do know enough to say that most countries closed their doors to Jews during the Holocaust specifically, and I'd be rather astounded to discover a country that was willing to absorb millions of new people. E.g. I don't know anything about the Kimberly plan except reading Wikipedia just now, but it seems like it was vetoed by the Australian government? Ironically, there are signs from European countries in the 1930s telling the Jews to "go back to Palestine".

> Through exposure to these stories people develop a perceived connection with essentially no direct physical basis in reality. More succinctly - a person's perceived connection to the land depends almost entirely upon their exposure to certain cultural stories.

Again, I'm probably not the best person to ask, but I couldn't care less about this specific land itself. I wouldn't have minded Israel being located somewhere else.

I do live here though, that's my connection to the land, as well as the connection that 9m other Israelis have to the land. We're not going anywhere.

(And neither are the Palestinians! If both sides just accepted the obvious reality that neither side is going to disappear, we could just divide up the land and sign a peace treaty already.)

> Be they the descendants of immigrants, direct immigrants, or the descendants of people historically living in that area

But, if I'm understanding you correctly... that's true of literally everyone everywhere. Everyone is a descendent of someone who at some point came to that land, and in many cases that's even fairly recent. Including many (though not all) Palestinians.

> The only way to achieve that is a two-state solution, where each populace has its own state.

Or the Tel Aviv regime could just follow the steps of South Africa and end apartheid. The regime can't claim in good faith support for a two-state solution while pumping the palestinian territories in the west bank full of settlers, over 700 thousand of them, so far. There's even a video of Netanyahu boasting on how he sabotaged the Oslo Accords and the prospects for a two-state solution. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvqCWvi-nFo

Well I completely agree with you about the fact that Israel hasn't been doing anything to work towards a two-state solution for many years, and has been doing plenty to work against peace.

That said...

> Or the Tel Aviv regime could just follow the steps of South Africa and end apartheid.

I'm not sure what you mean here. I don't agree with the characterization of what's happening as apartheid, but semantics aside, how is that different from me saying I think we need a two-state solution? Do you think Israel needs to unilaterally go for a two-state solution? How, by removing all its forces and all settlements from the West Bank?

Cause that's what Israel did in Gaza, and we see how well that went. Everyone in Israel assumes, probably correctly, that if we ever did that in the West Bank, we would be viciously attacked in a manner that's 100 times worse than October 7th within years.

> there were accords that gave the Palestinians self-governance in the West Bank

If they couldn't stop the settlements, there was no self-governance.

> This was met with terrorism, with the express purpose of stopping the peace process.

Whereas Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir were just peace loving dudes right?

> If they couldn't stop the settlements, there was no self-governance.

Forgot absolute terms for a minute. The Oslo accords gave Palestinians more self governance than they had before. It was a step in the right direction.

The PA does have a form of self government over the Palestinians. It's not a full state, and I hope that we reach an agreement in which the Palestinians do get statehood, but we're not gong to get there by insisting that steps in the right direction are meaningless, and certainly not by increasing the amount of terror attacks to prevent the peace process.

> Whereas Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir were just peace loving dudes right?

No, of course not. They were terrible terrorists. In the case of Yigal Amir, he's sitting in jail where he belongs (Baruch Goldstein was beaten to death in the place he was attacking). Luckily Goldstein didn't derail the peace process, though Amir probably did.

> The PA does have a form of self government over the Palestinians. It's not a full state

Yes, it is, and it is recognized by much of the world as such (its a state that has spent its entire existence at war with and partially occupied by Israel, but saying it isn't a full state is like saying Ukraine isn't because of the war and Russian occupation.)

Well, ok. That makes my point stronger, maybe you should be replying to parent comment? They said this:

> If they couldn't stop the settlements, there was no self-governance.

I was reacting to that.

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