Isn’t it interesting how the pattern repeats. Religious leaders, and other cultish leaders, leverage ignorance, fear, and real and perceived difficulties of groups of people to serve their own desire for power at the expense of those very people.
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This was very large per the percentage of Jews in the world.
What is scarier is a potential regional conflict with Syria, Lebanon, and Iran that becomes a total war.
I don’t think Hamas is a creation of Israel. You are entitled to your opinions though.
Their charter calls for all Jews to be wiped out.
I don’t know if you have ever been to Israel. Israel’s archeology throughout the land is filled with Jewish objects, vessels, etc.
This is more than a colonial dispute. This is one rooted in ideology and religion. You may call those offers gaslighting, but I doubt any Israeli would think that. Those were significant offers that would have given up land that many settlers are connected with.
I would bet if the peace process started today Israel would offer much less. Many think the 1967 borders are indefensible. For example, I doubt that Israel would give back the Golan Heights back to Syria because of it’s geography and strategic positioning.
You could say the same of Arab archaeology. Both cultures spent ages in the region. It is the birthplace of 3 major religions.
That wasn’t my point. About two weeks ago you had the same comment on one of my posts.
I was trying to explain the Jewish connection to the land. I did not deny any other connection to the land.
I was trying to explain why the offers were sigmlnifcant from an Israeli perspective and what the land means to the settlers. It is not a colonial expansion in their minds, but a land where Jews lived for thousands of years. A land they are emotionally invested in and want to rebuild.
Yes, but the perspective from the Palestinians is the same. Offering mere scraps from the table doesn’t play for either side.
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What you may call scraps is the heart of Israel to the settlers.
And to the Palestinians. If the argument is that the land is so precious to the Israelis that they have to ethnically cleanse anyone else from the land, they will never have peace.
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The Palestinian population has grown almost tenfold from 800k to 7M.
What is the reference point here? Population in the Palestinian territories was 2.8M in 1997. It was 5.2M in 2021. That’s a healthy growth rate, but nothing close to what you are suggesting. Who knows what the population might be in 2024 at this point.
1948
5M Palestinians + 2M Israeli Arab citizens
I don’t know about 1948, but a quick check turns up 1945 Palestine population as 1.06M Muslims, 554K Jews, and 136k Christians.
Either way I do think that peace is hard to imagine at this point. You would need changes in leadership and time to have a chance to restart talks.
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We can agree on that. The parties in power both believe ethnic cleansing is the answer.
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Agreed.
I believe most posters, and most people more generally, underestimate the power of indoctrination and advertising. Probably because it’s like other things, people know that it happens, but they believe they (and others) are smart enough to withstand that indoctrination. Yet it works time after time throughout history.
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When I was 14 I had some strong and stupid political opinions. However, my worldview wasn’t “my friends and family and home were killed and destroyed by Israel and now it’s difficult to get food or clean water”, so I was just angsty and dumb for a while. It’s entirely understandable why a Gazan child would be pro-Hamas.
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Depends on age limit of children. I guess it is likely there are 17 yo combatants. Not sure how that falls under international law, but carding someone pointing a rifle at you isn’t feasible.
I think as a general rule, young men love dying for their countries (or gods or ideology or whatever). So much so I’d hesitate to call it indoctrination.
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