I mean everything about Israel intentionally using illegal settlements to further its genocide of Palestinians is completely true, but I feel like the discussion kinda misses the point of the OP asking why the Israeli government tolerates settlers who attack the IDF. Which is what the quote at the top was about.
My interpretation is they're saying if Israel is sending people there with the implicit understanding that those people will do violence; Israel shouldn't act like surprised when those people do violence even if it is "friendly fire"
Not to mention there isn't an explanation on why those settlers are attacking the IDF. Like, we know the idf is brazenly bulldozing towns and infrastructure in the west Bank. Can we really be surprised the settlers who believe they have a claim to that land would want to defend it? Maybe those settlers settled in only to find they weren't being graciously given their promised land and are instead a civilian paramilitary front line for a apartheid land expansion.
They don't state it in the post, but there actually is a reason why these settlers are attacking the IDF, and it's basically that the IDF isn't supporting them enough. I've followed enough news relating to Israel and done enough research to be reasonably sure of the situation, and this is a particularly insane aspect. These types of settlers are a particularly nasty strain known as the "Hilltop Youth," due to the fact that they set up their little settlements on hilltop and are almost entirely very young, basically always under 25. They are widely hated even by other settlers because they are insanely violent and constantly build settlements that are illegal even under Israeli laws. When you hear about settler violence in the West Bank, it is almost always the Hilltop Youth doing it. They don't get along with the IDF or Israeli government in general since the IDF is constantly demolishing their outposts and sometimes interferes with them attacking Palestinians. They also engage in "price tag" attacks, which is where they attack Palestinian communities or very occasionally the IDF as a response to their members being arrested by the Israeli government or one of their outposts being demolished.
This even has precedence in history, with Zionist Militia's attacking the British who had been key backers to the project for now being supportive enough.
The vast majority of settlers are not the ones who attack Hatzahal, though. Like, whether they moved for economic reasons (due to a mixture of subsidies and geography its often cheaper to live in the WB, especially if you want to live close to Jerusalem, since Jerusalem is surrounded on 3 sides by the OPT and the 4th by a rugged area of hills mostly preserved as a national park) or ideological ones most settlers are...law abiding is a complicated idea in the context of the West Bank, but not steadfastly hostile to the Israeli military. Saying that Israel supports the settlements is true, but it doesnt really explain why it's had such difficulty punishing settlers who actually attack the military.
It all has the same aggrieved-father tone that the IDF uses when explaining why they had no choice but to blow up a Palestinian hospital, or whatever. It's easy to miss the word "settlers" and what exactly that means in this context.
You were expecting a post about Palestine on the internet to follow a logical trajectory? /s
But in all seriousness, Israel tolerates settler violence against the IDF because the settlers and the IDF are part of the same goal. What’s a little friendly fire among colonizers?
As an aside the comment about Romania is essentially nonsensical. Romania is named after the Romans, the precise opposite of Jews being named after Judah (as he correctly points out), but Im genuinely and entirely unsure what point he's trying to make as it seems buried in five layers of historical misconception.
Except if their argument is based on ethnogenesis and origin of names, it obviously falls apart. Jews are called Jews--Yehudim--because theyre originally from Judea--Yehuda--but Romania is called Romania because it was the last region of the Balkans/Carpathia/Pannonia to be inhabited by Latin speakers--i.e. Romans--after the Slavic, Avar, and Magyar migrations.
Has Madagascar ever had anything to do with Taiwan? The Greek claim over Kashmir is obviously Alexander the Great but I’m not sure I remember learning about the Madagascar/Taiwan thing
Most Malagasy people are ethnically Austronesian, which means they share genetic, linguistic and materially cultural links to various people groups in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. We think these people groups originated in Taiwan.
Once you get to well over a thousand years it becomes kind of ridiculous, at best. Wanting Arabs out of Palestine is like wanting Slavs out of the Balkans, or the English out of Britain.
I’m not sure what you’re asking this for as both most Israelis and Palestinians are essentially the same people. Just some adopted the culture of their new polities and some didn’t.
I will never wrap my head around how insanely evil one has to be to claim that these settlers have the right to steal land from Palestinians. And then using the Shoa to justify it??? Wrong on so many levels.
Yes, but that is hardly a convenient fact is it? So of course it is downplayed or quietly forgotten. Besides, claims aside, there is just such an unimaginable level of cruelty going on here, the worst part is it ends being reciprocal, please not I am not justifying anything, there is a massive power disparity, I am just commenting on how tragic it is for the people who suffer from it.
There’s an erroneous assumption in the post, that “Israel” or the “Israeli government” is a single unitary actor. When in reality, like any government, it is a mix of different factions whom all want different things.
So if one faction wants to reclaim judea and samaria, and another just wants Israel to be metro tel aviv, you end up with different aspects of the government working at cross purposes.
I mean that's not quite true. Within that faction are multiple factions with diverging goals and epistemologies. I'll copy and paste part of an earlier comment I made about this:
There's the revanchist lebensraum-type settlers in the West Bank who want to increase the population of Religious Zionists to secure a stronger hold on Israel's institutions, and then there's the fundamentalist terrorists in Jerusalem who are obsessed with Al-Aqsa because they want to build a Third Temple, and then there's the liberal imperialists of the British tradition who want to expand Israeli hegemony over Palestine to bring "human rights and modernity."
That's a non-exhaustive list and the Israeli Right is rife with self-destructive (often violent) infighting at any given moment. Even within the category of "West Bank settlers" you'll have socially liberal gentrifiers from Ohio living in a little HOA on one end and the Hilltop Youth running around with machine guns yelping like Iron Age tribesmen on the other.
Different Ultra-Orthodox factions have different complicated relationships with eachother, the state, and the diaspora. Different ethnic and economic classes have different views of their own place in Israel. A huge part of Netanyahu's base in particular is poorer Middle Eastern Israelis who see themselves as a populist conservative movement against the older "secular elitists" in the cities who are "too soft."
Yeah most people don’t realize that the ruling “party” of Israel isn’t the ruling party, it’s a tortured coalition government that’s been together long enough to know how to make deals with itself while the oppositions still struggle with that
Yeah, one faction thinks they should exterminate all subhuman Palestinians, while the other thinks they should only exterminate most of them. Clear dichotomy. There's also a few thousand vocal Israelis—tops—that think, hey, everything around us is fucking insane and clearly irreconcilable with any human moral framework. "Labor" in Israel (ostensibly "the left") belong to the far right in any non fascist country.
Is it crazy for Jews to want sovereignty over the West Bank under a Jewish state? Of course not. It's a totally plausible nationalist claim that's well within the realm of normal nationalist claims advanced worldwide.
If you're part of a nationalist movement "Is this a plausible claim?" is a good question to ask. If you're not part of that movement, and interested in peace and democracy, it's a bad and dumb question.
If, like me, you're horrified by the actions of the current Israeli government and think the region should have governments that respect human rights, the question is different. "Should this plausible nationalist claim be granted?" is a better question to ask if you're not personally a Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian or Arab nationalist.
I struggle to see how expanded Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank is consistent with establishing human rights respecting administrations. I don't really care though, if someone comes up with a credible peace plan that gives the entire West Bank to the state of Israel: fucking have at it.
[if you are] interested in peace and democracy, it's a bad and dumb question.
Why? The West Bank is at a high ground over Israel, making it a great place to strike from. If you're interested in peace, or at least long term peace, building a new state in a strategic position to attack Israel, composed of people who have been taught to believe that they should give their lives for the reconquest of all of Israel doesn't seem like a good way to do it.
I don't really care though, if someone comes up with a credible peace plan that gives the entire West Bank to the state of Israel: fucking have at it.
The ideal scenario would probably be for Israel to integrate the West Bank and make West Bank Palestinians citizens conditional on good behavior, but that's not the paradigm that the international community wants to accept.
If the question is, "is there a plausible Jewish claim to connection to the West Bank?" and your answer is about high ground and rockets, then you're answering a different question to the one asked.
Your response here makes me think you're a supporter of either the Jewish or Israeli nationalist causes, or both. That's a totally fine position and I'm friends with a lot of nationalists. For what it's worth I am actually a supporter of the nascent London nationalist cause.
However, it does make me think that your advocacy on the matter of peace and rights might be influenced, even subconsciously, by the other preference. That's a totally normal thing
But, my general policy is to avoid getting into the weeds of specific geopolitics with supporters of nationalist causes where that cause is at hand. And, if you're not interested in discussing the proper borders of Mayoralty of London I'll also take no offense.
If the question is, "is there a plausible Jewish claim to connection to the West Bank?" and your answer is about high ground and rockets, then you're answering a different question to the one asked.
The thing is, you brought in implicit questions about peace and democracy, and said that the original question was "dumb and bad" when looked through with a lens of peace and democracy. So, I answered the peace and democracy concerns.
I don't think there being a Jewish connection to the West Bank is in question; East Jerusalem and Hebron alone contain the top three holiest sites in Judaism, if not more, and both of those places contained thriving Jewish communities before the Jordanian military drove them out during the 1948 war.
But that's not the only concern in the world, peace is a concern too, and if peace could be attained by trading away the West Bank, I'd advocate for it. Heck, I used to believe in such a thing strongly, but after having grown up, the only way I see that being feasible is if Israel is granted NATO membership, thus assuring complete detterance against any future wars started by its neighbors, but I don't see that happening anytime in the future, and that's not even mentioning the levels of corruption in the Palestinian political system which would prevent a hypothetical Palestinian state from turning into a democracy. Thus, realistically, the only way that both peace and democracy prevail is if the West Bank Palestinians are allowed to become Israeli citizens, and Israel reforms the Palestinian education system to not be a call to arms against Israel.
Peace is not a piece of paper, it is a state of existence.
I mean everything about Israel intentionally using illegal settlements to further its genocide of Palestinians is completely true, but I feel like the discussion kinda misses the point of the OP asking why the Israeli government tolerates settlers who attack the IDF. Which is what the quote at the top was about.
I thought the replies answered it tbh.
My interpretation is they're saying if Israel is sending people there with the implicit understanding that those people will do violence; Israel shouldn't act like surprised when those people do violence even if it is "friendly fire"
Not to mention there isn't an explanation on why those settlers are attacking the IDF. Like, we know the idf is brazenly bulldozing towns and infrastructure in the west Bank. Can we really be surprised the settlers who believe they have a claim to that land would want to defend it? Maybe those settlers settled in only to find they weren't being graciously given their promised land and are instead a civilian paramilitary front line for a apartheid land expansion.
They don't state it in the post, but there actually is a reason why these settlers are attacking the IDF, and it's basically that the IDF isn't supporting them enough. I've followed enough news relating to Israel and done enough research to be reasonably sure of the situation, and this is a particularly insane aspect. These types of settlers are a particularly nasty strain known as the "Hilltop Youth," due to the fact that they set up their little settlements on hilltop and are almost entirely very young, basically always under 25. They are widely hated even by other settlers because they are insanely violent and constantly build settlements that are illegal even under Israeli laws. When you hear about settler violence in the West Bank, it is almost always the Hilltop Youth doing it. They don't get along with the IDF or Israeli government in general since the IDF is constantly demolishing their outposts and sometimes interferes with them attacking Palestinians. They also engage in "price tag" attacks, which is where they attack Palestinian communities or very occasionally the IDF as a response to their members being arrested by the Israeli government or one of their outposts being demolished.
This even has precedence in history, with Zionist Militia's attacking the British who had been key backers to the project for now being supportive enough.
Lmao at the other settlers pretending to disapprove of their colonial attack force
The vast majority of settlers are not the ones who attack Hatzahal, though. Like, whether they moved for economic reasons (due to a mixture of subsidies and geography its often cheaper to live in the WB, especially if you want to live close to Jerusalem, since Jerusalem is surrounded on 3 sides by the OPT and the 4th by a rugged area of hills mostly preserved as a national park) or ideological ones most settlers are...law abiding is a complicated idea in the context of the West Bank, but not steadfastly hostile to the Israeli military. Saying that Israel supports the settlements is true, but it doesnt really explain why it's had such difficulty punishing settlers who actually attack the military.
That wasn't even a little bit clear from the OP.
My man, the very first thing at the tippity top of the image is (and I'm cutting a few things out here to highlight the important bits)
It all has the same aggrieved-father tone that the IDF uses when explaining why they had no choice but to blow up a Palestinian hospital, or whatever. It's easy to miss the word "settlers" and what exactly that means in this context.
You were expecting a post about Palestine on the internet to follow a logical trajectory? /s
But in all seriousness, Israel tolerates settler violence against the IDF because the settlers and the IDF are part of the same goal. What’s a little friendly fire among colonizers?
Agreed, on both fronts.
As an aside the comment about Romania is essentially nonsensical. Romania is named after the Romans, the precise opposite of Jews being named after Judah (as he correctly points out), but Im genuinely and entirely unsure what point he's trying to make as it seems buried in five layers of historical misconception.
[deleted]
Except if their argument is based on ethnogenesis and origin of names, it obviously falls apart. Jews are called Jews--Yehudim--because theyre originally from Judea--Yehuda--but Romania is called Romania because it was the last region of the Balkans/Carpathia/Pannonia to be inhabited by Latin speakers--i.e. Romans--after the Slavic, Avar, and Magyar migrations.
Italy claiming romania would be like israel claiming villejuif and the jewish autonomous oblast of russia
Has Madagascar ever had anything to do with Taiwan? The Greek claim over Kashmir is obviously Alexander the Great but I’m not sure I remember learning about the Madagascar/Taiwan thing
I don't think there's been any geopolitical interaction on the point but I assumed they were referring to Madagascar being settled by Austronesian colonists about 1500 years ago.
Most Malagasy people are ethnically Austronesian, which means they share genetic, linguistic and materially cultural links to various people groups in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. We think these people groups originated in Taiwan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_peoples
Thanks! I didn’t know that there were that many Austronesian people in Madagascar
Madagascar is an Austronesian-speaking country.
Oh so suddenly "from the river to the sea" isn't hateful when they say it.
Palestinians are also indigenous to the land
How long in the past must colonialism have taken place that it becomes indigenousness?
Once you get to well over a thousand years it becomes kind of ridiculous, at best. Wanting Arabs out of Palestine is like wanting Slavs out of the Balkans, or the English out of Britain.
Why do you ask?
I’m not sure what you’re asking this for as both most Israelis and Palestinians are essentially the same people. Just some adopted the culture of their new polities and some didn’t.
I will never wrap my head around how insanely evil one has to be to claim that these settlers have the right to steal land from Palestinians. And then using the Shoa to justify it??? Wrong on so many levels.
Yes, but that is hardly a convenient fact is it? So of course it is downplayed or quietly forgotten. Besides, claims aside, there is just such an unimaginable level of cruelty going on here, the worst part is it ends being reciprocal, please not I am not justifying anything, there is a massive power disparity, I am just commenting on how tragic it is for the people who suffer from it.
Madagascar's claim to Taiwan? mfs getting around
Seriously read into the history of the Austronesian expansion, shit's wild.
(Wikipedia has a pretty good summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_peoples )
There’s an erroneous assumption in the post, that “Israel” or the “Israeli government” is a single unitary actor. When in reality, like any government, it is a mix of different factions whom all want different things.
So if one faction wants to reclaim judea and samaria, and another just wants Israel to be metro tel aviv, you end up with different aspects of the government working at cross purposes.
Only one faction has had power for decades
I mean that's not quite true. Within that faction are multiple factions with diverging goals and epistemologies. I'll copy and paste part of an earlier comment I made about this:
That's a non-exhaustive list and the Israeli Right is rife with self-destructive (often violent) infighting at any given moment. Even within the category of "West Bank settlers" you'll have socially liberal gentrifiers from Ohio living in a little HOA on one end and the Hilltop Youth running around with machine guns yelping like Iron Age tribesmen on the other.
Different Ultra-Orthodox factions have different complicated relationships with eachother, the state, and the diaspora. Different ethnic and economic classes have different views of their own place in Israel. A huge part of Netanyahu's base in particular is poorer Middle Eastern Israelis who see themselves as a populist conservative movement against the older "secular elitists" in the cities who are "too soft."
Yeah most people don’t realize that the ruling “party” of Israel isn’t the ruling party, it’s a tortured coalition government that’s been together long enough to know how to make deals with itself while the oppositions still struggle with that
Yeah, one faction thinks they should exterminate all subhuman Palestinians, while the other thinks they should only exterminate most of them. Clear dichotomy. There's also a few thousand vocal Israelis—tops—that think, hey, everything around us is fucking insane and clearly irreconcilable with any human moral framework. "Labor" in Israel (ostensibly "the left") belong to the far right in any non fascist country.
Is it crazy for Jews to want sovereignty over the West Bank under a Jewish state? Of course not. It's a totally plausible nationalist claim that's well within the realm of normal nationalist claims advanced worldwide.
If you're part of a nationalist movement "Is this a plausible claim?" is a good question to ask. If you're not part of that movement, and interested in peace and democracy, it's a bad and dumb question.
If, like me, you're horrified by the actions of the current Israeli government and think the region should have governments that respect human rights, the question is different. "Should this plausible nationalist claim be granted?" is a better question to ask if you're not personally a Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian or Arab nationalist.
I struggle to see how expanded Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank is consistent with establishing human rights respecting administrations. I don't really care though, if someone comes up with a credible peace plan that gives the entire West Bank to the state of Israel: fucking have at it.
Why? The West Bank is at a high ground over Israel, making it a great place to strike from. If you're interested in peace, or at least long term peace, building a new state in a strategic position to attack Israel, composed of people who have been taught to believe that they should give their lives for the reconquest of all of Israel doesn't seem like a good way to do it.
The ideal scenario would probably be for Israel to integrate the West Bank and make West Bank Palestinians citizens conditional on good behavior, but that's not the paradigm that the international community wants to accept.
If the question is, "is there a plausible Jewish claim to connection to the West Bank?" and your answer is about high ground and rockets, then you're answering a different question to the one asked.
Your response here makes me think you're a supporter of either the Jewish or Israeli nationalist causes, or both. That's a totally fine position and I'm friends with a lot of nationalists. For what it's worth I am actually a supporter of the nascent London nationalist cause.
However, it does make me think that your advocacy on the matter of peace and rights might be influenced, even subconsciously, by the other preference. That's a totally normal thing
But, my general policy is to avoid getting into the weeds of specific geopolitics with supporters of nationalist causes where that cause is at hand. And, if you're not interested in discussing the proper borders of Mayoralty of London I'll also take no offense.
The thing is, you brought in implicit questions about peace and democracy, and said that the original question was "dumb and bad" when looked through with a lens of peace and democracy. So, I answered the peace and democracy concerns.
I don't think there being a Jewish connection to the West Bank is in question; East Jerusalem and Hebron alone contain the top three holiest sites in Judaism, if not more, and both of those places contained thriving Jewish communities before the Jordanian military drove them out during the 1948 war.
But that's not the only concern in the world, peace is a concern too, and if peace could be attained by trading away the West Bank, I'd advocate for it. Heck, I used to believe in such a thing strongly, but after having grown up, the only way I see that being feasible is if Israel is granted NATO membership, thus assuring complete detterance against any future wars started by its neighbors, but I don't see that happening anytime in the future, and that's not even mentioning the levels of corruption in the Palestinian political system which would prevent a hypothetical Palestinian state from turning into a democracy. Thus, realistically, the only way that both peace and democracy prevail is if the West Bank Palestinians are allowed to become Israeli citizens, and Israel reforms the Palestinian education system to not be a call to arms against Israel.
Peace is not a piece of paper, it is a state of existence.
Judea was independent under two millenia ago, not two and a half. It was last independent under Agrippa
(I am a professional nitpicker)
Some people seem to find it offensive when Palestinians say "From the river to the sea", but Israelis don't need to say it: they just do it.
Hebrew twitter is like finding lost pages of Mein Kampf exhibit ten million
As horrible as Israeli policy is it hasn't been remotely comparable to the Holocaust.
Sure thing. Here’s a fun, light comment under that post: Judea and Samaria sounds like a buddy cop show
Judea and Samaria? Sounds like a legendary buddy cop show