The girls, aged 14 to 16, have come for settler training to learn how to occupy Palestinian land — breaking international law. “God promised us this land and told us if you don’t take it, bad people will try and take it and you will have a war,” says Emuna Billa, 19, one of the camp supervisors. “Why do we have a war in Gaza? Because we don’t take Gaza.”
Their guru is Daniella Weiss, a 79-year-old grandmother in a long skirt and patterned headscarf. Founder of the Nachala or Homeland movement, she has been setting up illegal settlements for 49 years and was recently put under international sanctions. “You will be the new emissaries,” she tells the 50 or so girls at the camp. “I call it redeeming, not settling and this is our duty.”
She unfurls a map of Israel and the Palestinian territories dotted with vivid pink house symbols to represent existing and proposed Jewish settlements. Not only are these all across the West Bank, but also in Gaza. Already 674 people have signed up for beachside plots there, she tells me, and “many more want to join”. When someone asks her about settling Lebanon she smiles and says, “Yes, there too”.
Then can you comment on the settlers’ terrorism? What did the state of Israel did or is doing to prevent this from happening again? How many settlers were convicted and got effective sentences?
Shall I also remind you about the Irgun who were also considered a terrorist organization? Resolution 181 assigned 55–56% of Mandatory Palestine to the Jews. At the time, the Jews were about a third of the population and owned around 6–7% of the land. Arabs constituted the majority and owned about 20% of the land, with the remainder held by the Mandate authorities or foreign landowners. And now ask yourself, if you are on the other side of history, how would you really feel? And then over 700,000 Palestinians were expelled by or fled by Zionist militias and the Israeli military—what would become known in Arabic as the Nakba (‘catastrophe’).[200] The events also led to the destruction of most of Palestine’s predominantly Arab population’s society, culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations. Some 156,000 remained and became Arab citizens of Israel.
And also to let you know that generalizing the whole Palestinian population is a sure sign of racism. Shall I also remind you that once Germany elected the NS party, how would you feel if I come to you and tell you all the Germans are Nazis because they were once voting for NS? So don’t fall into that trap of bigotry and racial hatred. You know terrorism is fueled by people’s hardships and struggles, with the lack of future and prosperity. And again to make a parallel with Nazi Germany, Germans back then voted for NS, because of their economic hardships after the Treaty of Versailles and the enormous reparations they were forced to pay, including the high unemployment rate. Simply people were desperate back then and looked to the NS as a possible savior of their hardships.
Sure the settlers violence has to be stopped. Israel used to be much better at this. The voluntary disengagement from Gaza demonstrated that it’s able to do it. They dragged settlers from their houses. The current extremists in government Smotrich and Gvir are the problem. They will be out next election.
Yes, during the Nakba around 700,000 Palestinians fled. It was a war and people flee during wars from fighting and danger. If you compare this to other wars from that era it was minor. Have you ever considered what would have happened to the Jews if the Arabs had won Israel’s war of independence? It certainly would have been worse than moving 50 km inside the same country. Did the Zionists seize the opportunity to change the demographics in their favor? Yes.
Irgun and Lehi were always a tiny minority of the Jewish militias. The Haganah always stressed defensive operations before the war started. If you want to go back to the Mandatory days, please also mention the Hebron massacre and Arab revolt among others. Hamas has been the major political party among Palestinians since Fatah became more moderate. The approval ratings for Hamas are very high as you can see on PCPSR polls. Irgun/Lehi we’re fringe like PIJ maybe.
A huge part of the land assigned to Israel in the UN partition plan was the Negev desert. So yes, the Jews got more land, but also the worse land: mosquito plagued swamps and empty desert.
Instead of accepting a Jewish state as a neighbor, the Arabs chose war, which they then lost. The 1949 armistice line (green line, aka 1967 borders) was explicitly not a recognized border because the Arabs didn’t want to accept Israel’s existence. This pattern of not being able to compromise or even negotiate and wage war then repeated over and over. As a reference see the three Noes from Khartoum: no peace, no recognition, no negotiation.
Palestinian political leadership has been terrible since the grand mufti Al-Husseini, who was Hitler’s buddy. His legacy of antisemitism can still be seen in Abu Mazen, who wrote his thesis on holocaust denial. Palestinians are now at 100 years of bad political decisions and are still on a trajectory to make it worse. Their cause might be just, but they suck at execution. Every chance at peace is discarded because of unrealistic goals and inability to let the past go.
And again you are cherry picking facts and show very simplistic and one sided version of the historical events, where you blame only Palestine of the collapse of the Oslo accords, but conveniently forget to mention that Yitzhak Rabbin was killed by a far right settler, and that Bibi who was back then in opposition called the Oslo accord mortal threat to Israel.
The same far right leader who is governing Israel, who has been accused of war crimes, who is surrounded by other far right and even more extremist ministers, etc. This is the same like in Germany the kanzler to be from AfD, how happy are you going to be then?
And then I asked you to give me statistics of how many settlers had received effective convictions over unprovoked violence against the Palestinian population? You once again dodged to reply to the question by vaguely claiming that Israel was better before the war, but the reality is that even then, those incidents weren’t uncommon and Israel was doing very little to rein it and prevent it from happening.
Another question for you, how many kids below 14 have been killed on both sides in the last let’s say 20 years? Because with all due respect kids below 14 cannot be persecuted in Germany, correct?
And about Nakba, I really wonder if tomorrow Russia expels 700K Ukrainians, and tell them that they cannot return to their homes you will again shrug it off and say that it is war and that’s what happens in war.
Oh and another challenge for you. I dare you to find a single human rights organisation that’s not affiliated with the state of Israel that is claiming that all the human rights of the Palestinians in Israel are well protected.
Yes, the Oslo accords also had resistance in Israel. However Israel still made a peace offer and Arafat refused and launched the second intifada. Look up Intrafada to see political murders among Palestinians of the time.
Sure settlers suck and need to be stopped.
The number of dead is asymmetric because Palestinians send their children to attack, including as suicide bombers. Israel is vastly superior in equipment, training, and organization. Of course less Israelis are killed. This tells you nothing about morality, only which side is stronger. Would you be happier if the numbers were equal?
Do you think the great-grandchildren of Ukrainians who fled to Poland today will massacre Russians at a festival in 70 years?
German terrorists don’t shoot unguided rockets at Danzig. Polish terrorists don’t blow up buses in Lviv.
Yes, the human rights situation for Palestinians is bad. It’s especially bad under the Islamist dictatorship of Hamas and the police state of Abu Mazen.
You know you aren’t much better than your predecessors. You still refuse to see those people as human beings. I can only feel sorry for you.
No, idea what you mean by predecessors.
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