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The man speaking is Ayman Odeh [1], an Arab Israeli MK and chairman of Hadash, a left-wing Arab Israeli party. Arab Israelis and their political leaders are marginalized in Israeli society. Arab Israeli parties are largely considered illegitimate by a majority of Jewish Israelis.

Political opposition to the starvation of Gaza is still marginal, especially in Jewish society. Protests in Arab cities against the starvation and the genocide are being curbed and prevented by the police. the Jewish majority is still largely silent on these issues, if not outright supportive of the government policy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayman_Odeh

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Israel is where we in the west get shown a mirror in front of our faces. A country led by religious fanatics, who don't respect other religions and for the most part feel no remorse when people of other faith suffer due to their actions or inaction. A genocidal military, that continues its deeds, seemingly aiming to reach ISIS level of despicability. But we have tons of people here, who don't want to see anything wrong with Israel and how it acts. That really shows us our double standards. Religious fanatics are OK for us, as long as they are not against us. Crimes against humanity are OK, as long as they are inflicted upon a group, that is not seen by the mainstream as "us".

We have really lost the plot when it comes to ethics. Not all of us, but many, and especially in our leaderships and governments.

Just to be fair, Israel itself is considered illegitimate by those parties. I doubt most democracies would let parties that are staunchly anti-state run, but Israel, for some reason, does.

Canada has a federal party since 1991, the Bloc Québécois, "devoted to Quebecois nationalism, social democracy, and the promotion of Quebecois sovereignty."[0] They're explicitly separatist by policy. Quebec's last attempt at attaining sovereignty was a provincial referendum in 1995 that lost by 0.5%. Had it succeeded, the provincial gov't was prepared to declare full independence the next day.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloc_Qu%C3%A9b%C3%A9cois

As a Canadian I'd also say that having such a party is a huge boon to the country. Separatists are going to separatist - your choice, as a nation, is whether to allow them to organize and have their voices heard within the system of politics or whether to force them to resort to violence and underground organization. Those underground separatist groups will always exist but giving formal political representation to the desire for separation (even if it isn't granted) can help defuse extremism and provide better methods for airing grievances.

The modern BQ is much more tame than the BQ of thirty years prior - they've mainly morphed into a party focused on franophone rights within Canada and the maintenance of QC labor rights. So while they specifically no longer represent that separatist movement as directly there are other groups focused on prairie separatism that are a better modern parallel.

Do any of the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru or Sinn Féin count? I have no doubt there are similar elsewhere...

Hadash is not an anti-state party. For instance it explicitly supports a two state solution.

Hadash is a communist party, first and foremost. But the Arab parties - Balad, Raam, Taal - they are advocating for Palestinian "right of return" and turning Israel into a bi-national state, therefore ending what we know as Israel today.

Being against Israel's status as an ethnostate is hardly "anti-state".

> Being against Israel's status as an ethnostate is hardly "anti-state"

But it is tantamount to the destruction of Israel.

That's absurd. It would be a major change, but hardly in the way that could be described as the destruction of the state.

Abolishing Jim Crow in the south hardly destroyed the south, despite the gloom and doom of the racists of the time.

> hardly in the way that could be described as the destruction of the state

It would be a destruction of the nation-state of Israel as a state for the Israeli, predeominantly Jewish, nation.

> Abolishing Jim Crow in the south hardly destroyed the south

It certainly felt that way to them! Strongly enough that they fought a war over it. (EDIT: Nobody went to war over Jim Crow. They did over slavery. Jim Crow was basically an attempt to regain part of what was lost in the war. Put another way, even a war--alone--is not enough.)

That's the point. The single-state solution, practically, would require a war. I know we pulled out of Afghanistan. But I thought we'd have a bigger gap before another group of Westerners decided they like drawing borders in the Middle East, and that anyone who disagrees with them--including the people on the ground--should be violently forced to comply.

> It would be a destruction of the nation of Israel as the people of Israel see it.

Just like the people in my home states of Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee thought that ending Jim Crow would destroy them. They were wrong, just as the people of Israel would be wrong.

> It certainly felt that way to them! Strongly enough that they fought a war over it.

No war was fought over the end of Jim Crow.

> That's the point. The single-state solution, practically, would require a war. I know we pulled out of Afghanistan.

At the moment, probably. That can change.

> But I thought we'd have a bigger gap before another group of Westerners decided they like drawing borders in the Middle East, and that anyone who disagrees with them--including the people on the ground--should be violently forced to comply.

Those Knesset members are not asking western intervention to end their ethnostate.

> They were wrong, just as the people of Israel would be wrong.

They may be. Maybe India and Pakistan could peacefully reünify, too. I'm doubtful. But that matters less than the people there being very much more doubtful.

> No war was fought over the end of Jim Crow

Sorry, fair enough. Ending Jim Crow wasn't a credible threat to the South at that time. The war had already been fought.

> At the moment, probably. That can change

Sure. But sentiment has to shift before one can peacefully move borders.

> Those Knesset members are not asking western intervention to end their ethnostate

I've lost your argument. (Also, ethnostate and nation-state are practically synonymous.)

The war for a single state is already happening mind you, and westerners are already involved and influential in it. i disagree that there is now an option to decide now that we dont want to draw borders, only whether we're satisfied with the new borders or not.

How so? There are so many multinational states in the world that manage to exist, somehow.

> there are so many multinational states in the world that manage to exist

Not many with that sort of history. It's barely working in the EU, and that's because America took away the toys for a while.

You don’t seem to be a particularly reliable narrator of history in this thread, so I’ll take your uncited assertions with a grain of salt.

Not a real argument, but I don't think I can come up with a real argument for your case, so fair enough.

Show me a single case where previously-warring nations peacefully unified (i.e. not through conquest or subjugation)? Poland-Lithuania and England-Scotland are the only two I can think of.

Because the counterexample--multiethnic nations that split along national-identity lines--is far more frequent since the age of conquest. Former Yugoslavia. Pre-Partition India. Sudan. Ethiopia. Algeria.

Multiethnicisim is hard. Where it works, it happened through immigration. Combining previously-warring nations under one roof is basically just assisted civil war.

Mostly the ones where multinationality has been reduced to a different set of cuisines. If you look around the Middle East region, then every multiethnic state there has had civil wars recently.

"Israel should be different" is not the same as "Israel shouldn't exist". Calling them anti-state is nonsense.

A bi-national state will differ in anthem, in symbols, in government, in military, in beliefs and in values. What of Israel would remain?

A democracy. A government supported by the people it governs is the primary factor in determining whether a state is legitimate.

> A government supported by the people it governs is the primary factor in determining whether a state is legitimate

Not really seeing who in the region would want to support that narrative.

the new syrian government is trying to sell that narrative. see this recent conversation at the CFR: https://youtu.be/-CGM6aSontQ?si=CzIWJuZiCb7XRXL-

It’s borderline bigoted to force your values onto a completely different population that’s Islamist, tribal and radicalized. After Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza people thought it would be a good idea to hold elections there. Hamas, the Palestinian equivalent of ISIS, won. There haven’t been elections since. In the West Bank, no PA elections since 2005 because the PLO feared Hamas would win there too.

So what democracy are you talking about?

> Hamas, the Palestinian equivalent of ISIS, won. There haven’t been elections since

To be fair, we tried to depose them. That tends to make one paranoid.

That doesn't make Hamas's despotism and terrorism our fault. But it's also unfair to use that as an example for why democracy can't work in Gaza.

hamas killed or tortured into submission all opposition in gaza.

palestinian authority stopped having elections as well. because hamas will win. latest polling (in link that i sent you in other thread) shows hamas polling at 40+%

> latest polling (in link that i sent you in other thread) shows hamas polling at 40+%

Not a majority? Also, can you provide the link? Super curious about polling methods in a war zone.

got mistaken with previous polls. hamas not 40+ but 30+. 10 points higher than fatah and in case those that don't know who they vote for, won't vote - i guess hamas gets majority.

But PA promised to France/UK/Canada/Australia that Hamas wouldn't be allowed to participate in elections, so...

https://pcpsr.org/en/node/997

they have people that interview people in gaza (mentioned on front page)

Thank you. I don't have a sense for the credibility of the poll.

But taking their numbers at face value, we have 58% of Gaza residents saying Hamas was incorrect to launch its 7 October offensive. (Surprisingly, 59% in the West Bank say it was correct. That's problematic.)

Problematically, too, is the 2/3rds of respondents in Gaza who oppose Hamas disarming. Based on this survey, which again, I have zero ability to judge in terms of accuracy, there would need to be a long civic transition to democratic self-rule while new political parties are given a safe space to form and grow.

west bank population more radical because they don't feel the consequences of the hamas actions in gaza

how long civic transition given those:

https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/UNRWA-Education...

https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/Review-of-2023-...

https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/Gazas-Education...

The same part of israel that is similar to the one from 2000 years ago.

Is Israel so perfect today that it should be frozen in amber and never allowed to become something different?

Seeing that Israel has done very little good around itself ever, maybe changing the character of it would be a good thing. It's not working well.

They are not parties considering Israel illegitimate nor are they calling for the destruction of Israel. They are parties calling for a two-state solution, and consider the globally-recognized-as-illegal settlements as illegitimate i.e. they call the ever expanding borders of Israel as illegitimate.

If you were to make them illegal, you're basically legally disenfranchising 25% of Israel's population.

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