That's why Israel has systematically taken out every hospital in Gaza: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdd25d9vp2qo
Has blocked and sabotaged aid at every turn, including bombing UN food trucks: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/01/1158746
And when allied countries got too uneasy about them just blocking all aid trucks at the border, they set up their own aid organization to trickle out nominal amounts of food while they take pot shots at people desperate enough to show up: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74ne108e4vo
They didn't just make this up as they go, presumably the plans have been sitting around for a long time waiting for a suitable moment.
There multiple EU signatory countries of the Rome Statute (pledging to cooperate with ICC) that have welcomed these war criminals... who have warrants out by the ICC.
And the same war criminals are invited to give a speech at the U.S Congress to near unanimous applause. It really makes you wonder if we're the "good guys".
-- edit -- If you're curious how much your congressperson receives from AIPAC (Israeli lobby) this website is a great resource: https://www.trackaipac.com/congress
That said the soldiers pulling the trigger are committing crimes. These are patently illegal actions to a common person standard which eliminates any defense of following military orders. That being said the soldiers, at least, are committing crimes. Accountability starts at the source of the crime.
If the government is ordering these actions then those are illegal orders, according to international standards of military conduct. The soldiers on the ground must ignore those orders on the basis of patently illegal conduct according to a common person standard and the officials facilitating those orders can be investigated for issuing war crimes.
As an example read about Slobodan Milošević
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/jun/26...
And after the Israeli opposition leader exposed the whole charade and Netanyahu defended it saying “On the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas. What’s wrong with that? It only saves the lives of Israeli solders, and publicising this only benefits Hamas.”
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/06/netanyahu-defe...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Abu_Shabab
[3] - https://archive.is/20250606144357/https://www.ynetnews.com/a...
"The basis for Lieberman’s allegation of ties to IS was unclear."
It is easy to throw dirt and hope something sticks, but the main thing speaking against his group seems Netanjahu's support in my opinion. But otherwise I don't see the scandal so much here. Especially not compared to the scandal of intentionally targeting civilian population and indiscriminate killing of starving people like the article states.
Edit: But I just read
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerem_Shalom_aid_convoy_loot...
And well, that is indeed better to show who we are dealing with, ruthless criminals who loot and shoot a UN aid convoy for profit.
I've posted about this quite a bit, since it inevitably comes up every time this topic appears on HN's front page. Here's another part of the current thread: >>44403458 .
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Netanyahu prefers Hamas, he was propping them up prior to the current battles, according to the New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...
Also, if, as in the recent New York City mayoral debate, US politicians are supposed to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which it recognizes itself as, then I don't see the big deal over Palestine as an Islamic state. I myself would prefer to see a secular PFLP state, but the Zionist entity, US, Canada etc. fight against the PFLP, proscribe them as "terrorists" etc.
Even before the current siege/semi-siege, the standard response to calls from aid orgs had been essentially "Look, it's not us. We're letting in aid, but it's not our fault if Palestinian armed gangs themselves are looting it after we let it in. Palestinians are just too stupid to organize their own survival."
Of course that response was already ridiculous back then: The 1000s of aid trucks stuck at the Egypt-Gazan border are definitely not kept there by Hamas or armed gangs. Even the looting attacks themselves were suspicions: Aid orgs kept reporting they were happening in areas under full control of the IDF - and IDF was forbidding using any other route[1]:
> Israel is doing the opposite of ensuring aid can be delivered to Palestinians in need. For example, a U.N. memo recently obtained by the Washington Post concluded that the armed gangs looting aid convoys could be “benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence” and “protection” from Israel’s military, and that a gang leader had a military-like compound in an area “restricted, controlled and patrolled” by the Israeli military.
The gangs operate in areas under Israeli control, often within eyeshot of Israeli forces. When convoys are looted, Israeli forces watch and do nothing, even when aid workers request assistance. Israeli forces refer to one area about a kilometer from its Kerem Shalom border checkpoint as “the looting zone.” The IDF-designated looting zone might be the only place in Gaza that Israeli forces won’t shoot an armed Palestinian.
But there was still at least some benefit of the doubt that the armed gangs were just some ordinary criminals exploiting the situation. Claims that the gangs themselves were operating under Israeli orders were conspiracy theories.
Netanyahu now confirmed those theories as reality.
You have to look at the other side too. Palestinian's are born knowing that Israeli's have taken lots of their land through violent force. And they want to take more of it. And while the Israeli's live in a well developed wealthy nation they are condemned to poverty.
Consider the King David Hotel Bombing[1]. Israeli terrorists murdered nearly 100 people. In 2006 Netanyahu presided over the unveiling of a memorial plaque, alongside some of the terrorists involved in it, with the plaque specifically remembering the terrorist who died in the attack. So Israeli terrorism is fine, even worthy of praise.
And while the Israelis may grow up scared that the Palestinian's want them dead, 10's of thousands of Palestinian children won't grow up at all.
>> I'm German and I really see a lot of the blame for this on our states as well
I agree. It seems that all over Europe at least, the governments are largely going against public opinion on this issue. But it's not the first time we've seen this (Iraq being a recent example).
The late Michael Brooks shared a small thought experiment that might help elucidate this: https://youtu.be/7ebPj_FqM5Q
Unfortunately religious zionism isn't limited to Jews. Christian evangelicals also support it, and they make up a huge percentage of voting americans (and even worse, elected officials).
https://theconversation.com/in-israel-calls-for-genocide-hav...
https://theconversation.com/christian-zionism-hasnt-always-b...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_twent...
After moderate partners abandoned Netanyahu, his only source of support was more right-wing partners, which steadily pushed government policy to the ultra-right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Greeks_from_Istan...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_German...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_of_Turks_from_Bulgaria_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istrian%E2%80%93Dalmatian_exod...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_expulsion_of_Italians_fro...
It was quite common and very accepted method in the 1940s, hell, expelling 15 million germans, some living there for hundreds of years, was proposed by Churchill.
The reason you never heard about the rest of these is because the people were resettled, not kept in a state of permanent inheritable refugee state financed by the UN with financial incentives to be kept that way.
It's non-negligible, but the reasons ultra-right parties like Otzma Yehudit [0] have a voice in politics has more to do with election calculus by Netanyahu.
The ideal 2+ party parliamentary system seems to be >2 but <6.
Below that, you get bad outcomes (US). Above that, you get bad outcomes (Israel, India).
Somewhere in the middle, it forces the right amount of coerced cooperation... most of the time (Germany).
I'd also suggest this (impassioned) video about the event: https://youtu.be/sCW-ARvywto?t=5020
Compare this reporting from a year ago with the Wikipedia page now. How has this reporting from a year ago held up?
An article from October in the NY Times detailing some well-documented atrocities ("44 health care workers saw multiple cases of preteen children who had been shot in the head or chest in Gaza") was published as an opinion piece, in spite of the fact that it consisted of dozens of eyewitness accounts. [0][1]
The incomparable sway that Israel holds in American media and American politics prevents pressure to hold those responsible accountable on an international level. When there's enough pressure within Israel to demand accountability for something terrible (and that's rare enough, outside of their peace movement) the conclusion drawn is typically that the soldiers are just careless, but not acting with malice. [2] If there's a single instance of an IDF soldier being held accountable for a civilian killing in this conflict, someone could make me feel a little better by sharing it.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/09/opinion/gaza-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yotam...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre_denial https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1gb94m1/why_...
It was apparently 2 VCs and not the military that came up with GHF (and if I recall, there even was a brief flare up between the ruling Cabinet and the Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, who did not want the IDF to be responsible for aid).
Even though the early planning was led by the Israeli military, two Israeli technology investors played an influential role in shaping discussions as they progressed, according to six Israeli and American individuals familiar with the GHF’s origins. One was Liran Tancman, an entrepreneur and reservist in the IDF’s 8200 signals intelligence unit, who called for using biometric identification systems outside the distribution hubs to vet Palestinian civilians. Another was Michael Eisenberg, an American Israeli venture capitalist who argued that existing U.N. aid distribution networks were sustaining Hamas and needed to be overhauled.
And the ambivalence and opposition of the Jews of Palestine to the Zionist project is fairly well-documented.
Rabbi Yakov Shapiro talks a lot about that, I think Gabor Mate does to some extent as well.
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/iran/2025-06-27/ty-... (archive: https://archive.is/0qEg9)
One could blame this crackdown on Israel, sure. But that absolves the countries perpetuating persecution of Jews from their own share of responsibility in it. After all, when the American Government interned all those Japanese-Americans - did we blame Japan for it, or did we rightfully blame the American government?
I do not seek to defend Israel's actions against the Palestinian people, but to say that the Jews live "peacefully and with dignity" in places where they often are scapegoated, persecuted, and killed out of hand is not the way. Look at what happened to the Jewish populations of the region between the 40s and now, and you will see a grim picture of persecution, killings, and exodus.
I don't think it's just propaganda. These folks know they'll materially benefit from Palestinians being dispossessed of their remaining land.
"Outsiders" like the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association that funded Zionist settlement in Palestine? The problem with folks who try to claim that this is ahistorical is that contemporary Zionists talked all the time about colonizing Palestine.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Jewish_Colonizatio...
The Anti-Israeli crowd is throwing universal human rights under the bus. That crowd doesn't care about human rights under Arab and Muslim rule. It wants to see some imaginary "justice" at the cost of murdering the Jewish people. It promotes antisemitism including justification of the Holocaust.
I'm Israeli and your "relatable" is nonsense. Israelis engaged with the other side in good faith many times. We made peace with Jordan and Egypt. We negotiated with the Palestinians during the Oslo process. What we got in return was a suicide bombing campaign in the late 1990's early 2000's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_at... and then we got Oct 7th. Israelis would be happy with a solution that leaves the with those human rights that you appear to be championing, such as the right not to be murdered.
Modern anti-zionism is just another incarnation of antisemitism. There is really no other way to look at it or explain it. The selectivity and the images used are 1:1 with antisemitism throughout the ages. This is not about whether you can critique Israel or its government. This is purely Jew hatred and racism under the mask of anti-Israeli.
EDIT: And for people who are reading this comment who think antisemitism isn't a reasonable argument here I would recommend the book: https://www.amazon.ca/People-Love-Dead-Jews-Reports/dp/03935... ... Once you read this you will have a better understanding of the different forms antisemitism takes and learn a bit of interesting history too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_war_crimes_in_the_Gaza...
https://web.archive.org/web/20240104213949/https://www.middl...
https://web.archive.org/web/20240424005326/https://news.un.o...
https://web.archive.org/web/20240409122432/https://thehill.c...
I believe that this is true of most of the people you've worked with. However, polling in the West Bank and Gaza finds that to be a fairly unpopular position. Quoting https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/what-do-... :
> These numbers are not the same as popular support for a single state “from the river to the sea” with equal rights accorded to Arab and Jewish citizens, as in recent international proposals. In 2020 polls, only about 10 percent of West Bank and Gazan respondents favored this option over either a Palestinian state or two states. Notably, a theological premise underpins the one-state preference: A majority of the Palestinian respondents believe that “eventually, the Palestinians will control almost all of Palestine, because God is on their side”—that is, not because Palestinian control will flow from demographic changes or from a joint arrangement with Israel.
I agree with you that it's not accurate to say that the entirety of Jordan or Egypt want Israelis dead. However, if we're trading anecdote for anecdote: I know someone who grew up in Saudi, and he told me that when he was growing up it was completely normal to insult someone by calling them a jew (especially someone you perceive as being stingy, scammy, or reneging on a deal). He said it was so normalized that when he came to North America, he had an awkward adjustment period before he realized that was considered unacceptable here.
Now, there's a big difference between calling someone a jew as an insult and wanting all jews dead, but I have no trouble believing that antisemitism is very common within the middle east. Don't forget that it wasn't so long ago that there was a mass exodus of jews from the Middle East and North Africa to Israel, which can only be explained by some degree of "push factor" pushing them away from those countries. So while "wants them dead" is probably an exaggeration, you have to empathize a bit with the fact that almost every other middle eastern country was quite hostile towards jews in the past 100 years, and there's not an especially good guarantee that they would not be hostile again.
" In July 2007, Iran's Jewish community rejected financial emigration incentives to leave Iran. Offers ranging from 5,000 to 30,000 British pounds, financed by a wealthy expatriate Jew with the support of the Israeli government, were turned down by Iran's Jewish leaders.[90][106][107] To place the incentives in perspective, the sums offered were up to 3 times or more than the average annual income for an Iranian.[108] However, in late 2007 at least forty Iranian Jews accepted financial incentives offered by Jewish charities for immigrating to Israel.[109]"
HN readers can recognize the tactic in other parts of our world too. It’s the strategy of people in power who believe they can control the chaos. When chaos in one group is a benefit to the other, chaos becomes a worthy status quo. When your military is infinitely more powerful, any uprising can eventually be exhausted, and you get automatic casus belli. The Cold War was full of this destabilizing politics, where superpowers tried their best to turn functioning socities into hellholes, in the hopes that it would spread in the enemy’s region. The same works for Israel. The less legitimacy Gaza and the West Bank Palestinians have, the longer they can keep building settlements. If they ever gain independence, it will cause another war, which has been planned for, because settlements have been overwhelmingly built on higher ground. Illegal settlers will not give up easily, and will likely gain military assistance.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950%E2%80%931951_Baghdad_bo...
Fewer than you’d think [1]. (We send aid to Sudan and are practically uninvolved in Myanmar.)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_confli...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displaced_persons_camps_in_pos...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_insurgency_in_Sout...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinai_insurgency#Gaza_Strip_sp...
Or that engrained in the joint Israeli/American coup that overthrew Iran's last democratically-elected leader. The one that installed a secret police that tortured and disappeared tens of thousands of citizens under the training of CIA and Mossad operatives: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/legal-and-political-mag...
If you think his comment reads like revisionism, imagine how ridiculous you sound to an educated audience. C'mon now.
(A basic law in Israel is roughly like a constitutional amendment in the US.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law%3A_Israel_as_the_Nat...
Let's get some scale here. - Probably more than 160K killed in this war. Maybe half civilians. - Siege and constant bombardment/destruction of cities like Mosul. - Millions of civilians displaced. - Many war crimes by western powers.
This was in response to what? A few westerners beheaded? Terrorist attacks killing a few dozen people?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_against_the_Islamic_State
Can you really say honestly that the amount of criticism Israel is attracting due to its war in Gaza and the circumstances are comparable? This might just be me but I don't recall huge rallies against the war. I don't recall much negative media coverage. I don't recall anyone held accountable for war crimes. I don't recall the ICC being involved.
Yes, the US bombings of random weddings in Afghanistan with Predator drones and air to surface missiles, or bombing hospitals has occasionally drawn some weak protest. Nothing at the scale of the anti-Israeli sentiment.
This isn't what-about-ism. It's not ok to bomb a wedding and it's not ok to fire into a crowd of people trying to get food. But there is no comparison of the sentiment and focus.
That is, I think, an excellent and pertinent question.
For starters may I suggest applying straightforward quantification on a linear scale and observing the results? See the following two wiki articles / subsections:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_co... (see chart preceding the Gaza war (follow anchor))
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war (Gaza war; see top table (and subsequent charts for more detailed breakdown if interested))
Based on this quantitative data where would you place Israel on that aforementioned scale?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_the...
Yes, everything can be litigated to the beginning of time, WW-2, WW-1, the Romans. But the fact still stands that all those "moral" countries didn't hesitate to lay siege, starve people, bomb civilians, for tbh little reason. I don't recall hearing even crickets protest.
Why can't the "Islamic State" have their own country? Sure their culture of beheading and kidnapping Yazidi as slaves is a bit weird but come on.
Can you present one counterexample as regards quantities / proportions of figures please? One source. (More of course if you'd like)
(My implicit point is that the proportions are so one-sided (orders of magnitude in difference; yes plural) that you will not find one; but please do find one (with actual quantities) and we can all check veracity of your source)
P.S. edit here is one of the sources the first wiki article lists (of multiple):
Lappin, Yaakov (2009). "IDF releases Cast Lead casualty numbers". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on 26 March 2013. Retrieved 5 January 2024. =>
- https://www.jpost.com/israel/idf-releases-cast-lead-casualty...
- https://web.archive.org/web/20130326192603/http://www.jpost....
There's a database tracking those: https://law4palestine.org/law-for-palestine-releases-databas...
From a recent review in the LRB of a book (Lost Souls) about those camps and their inhabitants. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n10/susan-pedersen/owner...
Europeans were eager to see Jews gone, one way or another. “Pogroms and hatred” sounds pretty violent.
Although the book was published back in 2020 prior to the current conflict, he correctly labeled the many years siege on Gaza by Israel as the act of war against Palestinian people, and it turn out to be manifested in the all out war in 2024.
1] The Hundred Years' War on Palestine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hundred_Years%27_War_on_Pa...
[2] A new abyss’: Gaza and the hundred years’ war on Palestine (2024):
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/11/a-new-abyss-ga...
It doesn't really take away from my main point. Yes, Western Europe and pretty much all New World countries are "civic" oriented. No Western state, Israel included I am pretty sure, has in their constitution or equivalent that a subset of citizens has legal rights other citizens do not. The closest I can think of to what you asked for is actually the Baltics - not a citizen-subgroup distinction, but where there is a complex situation due to not having granted most non-ethnic residents at the time of independence automatic citizenship. Otherwise, we are primarily talking about symbolism in the legal documents and cultural norms in the population. Japan is pretty clearly an ethnic nation-state. Eastern European states were generally ethnic nation-states at the time of independence, but some are moving closer to civic nation-states now.
But that's defining the word "nation" in a sense which deliberately skews it towards "ethnic nationalism" and away from "civic nationalism". If you are going to insist on defining it in that narrow way, then arguably France and Germany aren't "nation states" any more either, even though they used to be.
And while contemporary mainstream American self-definition is predominantly civic, 19th century Americans commonly viewed their nation in racial terms, as a state for the white race – so, if France and Germany have become "non-nation states" by transforming ethnic nationalism into civic nationalism, then in fundamentally the same way, America has become a "non-nation state" by transforming racial nationalism into civic nationalism
> No Western state, Israel included I am pretty sure, has in their constitution or equivalent that a subset of citizens has legal rights other citizens do not
Israel's constitution insists that all citizens are formally equal in the rights of citizenship, but at the same time officially relegates non-Jewish citizens to the symbolic status of "second class citizens" – what Western state has a constitution that does that? And, the reality on the ground is – there are complaints of real discrimination in practice against non-Jewish citizens of Israel, and unless you are going to argue that none of those complaints are valid, the idea that official symbolic discrimination in the constitution has no causal role to play in sustaining practical discrimination on the ground is rather implausible
> The closest I can think of to what you asked for is actually the Baltics - not a citizen-subgroup distinction, but where there is a complex situation due to not having granted most non-ethnic residents at the time of independence automatic citizenship
The Baltics do not have any legally recognised category of "citizens of the state but not members of the nation for whom it exists"; Israel does. The complex issue of long-term residents who lack citizenship you point to is real, but it isn't the same thing as what Israel does
> Japan is pretty clearly an ethnic nation-state
De jure, it isn't. Japanese law and court decisions are very clear: naturalised Japanese citizens are officially just as Japanese as anyone else. Membership in Japan's historical ethnic supermajority (the Yamato people) has no formal constitutional significance
Now, no denying the social reality that there is a lot of informal discrimination against non-Yamato Japanese citizens. But that social reality has no constitutional basis.
So you are comparing a state which officially declares in its constitution that some of its citizens are "not members of the nation for whom it exists", to a state whose constitution and laws never officially say that, even though it arguably remains a widespread informal belief/attitude amongst its population. Both de jure and de facto "second class citizenship" are bad, but there is an important sense in which the former is a lot worse
> For Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth, the colonizer's presence in Algeria is based on sheer military strength. Any resistance to this strength must also be of a violent nature because it is the only "language" the colonizer speaks. [1]
Olmert, who was the 12th prime minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, wrote in an opinion piece for the Israeli newspaper and website Haaretz that “the government of Israel is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning and with no chances of success”.
He added: “Never since its establishment has the state of Israel waged such a war … The criminal gang headed by Benjamin Netanyahu has set a precedent without equal in Israel’s history in this area, too.
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-05-27/ty-article-opinio...
Also, Israel is a trade partner, which is important because the non-western countries are hesitant to trade with them. Israel is culturally integrated into certain European institutions, in part due to German support (soccer, Eurovision, other sports).
It found that 82% of Israelis want to expel Gazans, and 47% of support killing all Palestinians in Gaza.
Article was featured in Haaretz - linked to here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/poll-82-of-israelis-wan...
There are reasonable discussions to be had, but the submissions which might catalyze them are quickly flagged (as opposed to defended, like this one).
Examples:
If you're going to defend how this inflammatory post is some kind of exception to your policies, you're going to have to do a better job.
In contrast, if the actions look closer to those of literal Nazi collaborators, then there is only depravity in that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khatyn_massacre
https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Ele...
Israel has been killing Palestinian civilians. Israel has been restricting food and medical supplies going to Palestinian civilians. All of that was beyond reasonable in regard to military objectives (e.g., bombing hospitals to take out a weapons stash). Israel's political and military leaders have expressed their opinions that Palestinians (not just Hamas or militants) are an ethnicity deserving punishment.
Note that, in the ICC's definitions, genocide does not require intent to eliminate the entirety of a group. It only requires targeting people based on their belonging to a protected group with the intent to diminish that group.
The latter happened as recently as this month; the IDF commandeered a boat delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza and arrested its passengers in international waters. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/06/israeli-forces-commandeer-aid...
To the best of my knowledge, they are the only Western country in which there are far left groups that proactively support Israel specifically wrt what it's doing in Gaza. And by "support" I mean e.g. posters encouraging to drop more bombs on "Hamas Nazis".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Germans_(political_curren...
Violent conflicts between Jewish settlers and local Arab populations have started long before that, pretty much as soon as the initial settlement began in the 19th century. Nor was it some kind of isolated incidents - Jabotinsky wrote https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-iron-wall-quot in 1923, and he wasn't alone in such views:
> There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority. ... Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the "Land of Israel."
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-iron-wall-quot
> There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority. ...
> The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage. ... Every native population, civilised or not, regards its lands as its national home, of which it is the sole master, and it wants to retain that mastery always; it will refuse to admit not only new masters but, even new partners or collaborators. This is equally true of the Arabs. Our Peace-mongers are trying to persuade us that the Arabs are either fools, whom we can deceive by masking our real aims, or that they are corrupt and can be bribed to abandon to us their claim to priority in Palestine , in return for cultural and economic advantages. ...
> We may tell them whatever we like about the innocence of our aims, watering them down and sweetening them with honeyed words to make them palatable, but they know what we want, as well as we know what they do not want. Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the "Land of Israel." ... Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim.
> We cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for Palestine. And therefore, there is no likelihood of any voluntary agreement being reached.
Now, Jabotinsky was arguably naive in that he thought that after the inevitable forcing of the Arabs to accept Jewish colonization of their homeland, once they have "given up on all hopes", they could be negotiated with on the terms of settlement:
> In the second place, this does not mean that there cannot be any agreement with the Palestine Arabs. What is impossible is a voluntary agreement. As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall. Not till then will they drop their extremist leaders, whose watchword is "Never!" And the leadership will pass to the moderate groups, who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions. Then we may expect them to discuss honestly practical questions, such as a guarantee against Arab displacement, or equal rights for Arab citizen, or Arab national integrity.
The problem, of course, is that once you have that amount of upper hand over someone, you don't actually have to negotiate. You can just keep taking everything you want, by force. And that is exactly where Israel found itself in the long term.
> The movement, founded in 2006 by activists during Israel’s war on Lebanon, went on to launch 31 boats between 2008 and 2016, five of which reached Gaza despite heavy Israeli restrictions.
> Since 2010, all flotillas attempting to break the Gaza blockade have been intercepted or attacked by Israel in international waters.
Why do you say its "unverified" ? The commander in question: Brigadier General Yehuda Vach is formally under investigation for several crimes already: https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-said-to-launch-probe-into-...
This nutcase general has faced consistent accusations from soldiers under his own command over the last year for over a dozen incidents alone. What is your holy threshold for evidence ? How can you "wait and see" if the press is not allowed at the food distribution site ? Basically, you are saying "wait and sweep it under the carpet".