The Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Distant, recent history and News

[gegyx]

Just saddened, faced with an irrecoverable case

[Christophe]

A bit boring, but I like it.

A debate of wankers in (bay of) sum…

ps: look for the origin before insulting me (I gave a hint)...you're welcome...

[GuyGadeboisTheBack]

Trial. For David Grossman, “Israel is sinking into the abyss”

In this essay published by “The New York Times” and translated exclusively for “Courrier international”, the famous Israeli writer confides his doubts and his despair about the state of Israeli society and the war in Gaza. He clings to the possibility of an “ethical, reasonable and humane resolution” to a conflict that has lasted for more than a century.

As the date of October 7 passes, the horror paradoxically seems to amplify. We Israelis spend our time going over what has become an integral part of the history of our identity and our destiny: for hours, Hamas terrorists stormed Israeli homes, murdering some 1 200 people, raping, kidnapping, looting and burning. In those nightmarish hours, before the IDF shook itself out of its state of shock, Israelis got a searing, concrete glimpse of what would happen if their country not only suffered a terrible ordeal, but ceased to exist. If Israel were no more.

I spoke to Jews living outside Israel who told me they felt vulnerable, both physically and spiritually, during those dark hours. But that's not all: they also told me that part of their life force had been taken from them, and forever. Some were even surprised by how much they needed Israel to exist, both as an idea and as a concrete entity.

As the Israeli army launched the counterattack, civil society was already massively involved in rescue and logistics operations, with Israelis volunteering in their thousands to do what the government should have done. if he hadn't found himself in a state of paralyzing torpor.

“All the blood rushes to the wound”

As I write this, more than 30 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since October 000, according to reports from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. Among them, many children and women, but also many men, most of whom were not members of Hamas and played no role in the spiral of war. “Uninvolved”, according to the term used by Israel, which uses the military jargon with which nations at war lie to themselves so as not to have to face the consequences of their actions.

It is to Gershom Scholem, famous specialist in Kabbalah, that we owe this adage: “All the blood flows to the wound.” Nearly five months after the massacre, that is exactly how Israel feels. The fear, the shock, the fury, the grief and humiliation, the thirst for revenge, the mental energy of an entire nation has continued to flow towards the wound, towards the abyss in which we find ourselves. still sinking.

We cannot shake from our thoughts the young girls and young women, and even the young men, it seems, who were raped by the attackers from Gaza, murderers who filmed their crimes and broadcast them in direct, allowing victims' families to attend; babies murdered, families burned alive.

And the hostages. These Israelis who, for one hundred and forty-six days (as of March 1), have been held in tunnels, some perhaps in cages. They are children and the elderly, women and men, some of whom are sick and perhaps dying, for lack of oxygen and medicine, and of hope. Or perhaps they are dying because ordinary human beings exposed to absolute evil often lose the innate will to live – the will to live in a world where such wickedness and cruelty are possible. A world in which people like Hamas terrorists live.

A country split in two

The enormity of the events of October 7 is such that it sometimes erases the memory of what preceded. However, alarming fractures were emerging within Israeli society approximately nine months before the massacre. Benjamin Netanyahu's government was attempting to force through a battery of measures intended to undermine the authority of the Supreme Court, thus dealing a fatal blow to Israel's democratic essence. At the time, hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets, week after week, to denounce the designs of the government, which could count on the support of the Israeli right wing. The entire nation was visibly divided. What was once a legitimate ideological debate between right and left was giving way to a deluge of hatred between two clans. Public debate has become toxic and violent. There was even talk of splitting the country into two distinct peoples. Public opinion then felt that the national home was wavering on its foundations and threatened to give way.

To those of you who live in a country where the concept of home is taken for granted, I should perhaps point out that, from my perspective as an Israeli, the expression conveys a sense of security, of protection and belonging that wraps my soul in cozy warmth. Home is the place where I can exist at ease. And it is a place whose borders are recognized by all – especially my neighbors.

But all this, in my eyes, still amounts to an aspiration for a state which has never quite been achieved. Right now, I fear that Israel is more synonymous with fortress than home comfort. This country offers neither security nor well-being, and my neighbors often express doubts and demands regarding the rooms and walls of the home in question, or even its very existence. On this horrifying Saturday, October 7, it turned out not only that Israel was still far from being a home in the full sense of the term, but that it was even incapable of being a worthy fortress. of this name.

A strange inclination towards self-destruction

However, Israelis are rightly proud of the speed and effectiveness with which they mobilize to support each other when the country sees itself threatened, whether by a pandemic like Covid-19 or by a war.

In all four corners of the world, reservists have climbed onto planes to join their brothers in arms already mobilized. They were going to “protect their home,” as we often hear in interviews.

There is something moving in this unique story: these young men and women leaving the ends of the world in a hurry to protect their parents and grandparents. And being ready to give up their lives. The feeling of unity that reigned under the soldiers' tents, where political opinions no longer mattered, was no less moving. All that mattered was camaraderie and solidarity.

Still, Israelis of my generation, who have experienced their share of wars, are already wondering, as we always do after a war: why does this unity only emerge in times of crisis? How is it that only threat and danger make us close ranks and give our best, and tear us away from the strange inclination we have for self-destruction – the destruction of our own home?

These questions lead us to a painful realization: the immense despair felt by most Israelis in the aftermath of the massacre could be explained by the Jewish condition to which we were forcibly returned once again. This is the condition of a vulnerable and persecuted nation. A nation that, despite its immense achievements in a multitude of areas, remains at its core a nation of refugees, obsessed with the fear of being uprooted one day, even after almost seventy-six years of sovereignty.

Today, it seems more obvious than ever that we will have to stand guard to protect this fragile and leaky home. What is also striking is how deep the hatred of this nation runs.

Two peoples tortured and incapable of compassion

Which brings me to another thought about these two tortured peoples: while the fear of becoming refugees is fundamental and original for both Israelis and Palestinians, neither side seems capable of considering the tragedy of the other with an ounce of understanding – let alone compassion.

Another shameful phenomenon has emerged in the wake of the war: Israel is, throughout the world, the country whose elimination is most openly demanded. In demonstrations bringing together hundreds of thousands of people, on the campuses of the most respected universities, on social networks and in mosques around the world, Israel's right to exist is regularly contested loud and clear. A balanced political criticism that takes into account the complexity of the situation can give way, when it comes to Israel, to hate speech that cannot be appeased (if it can be at all). be) than by the very destruction of the State of Israel.

When Saddam Hussein murdered thousands of Kurds with chemical weapons, for example, no one called for the destruction of Iraq, its erasure from the face of the Earth. Only in the case of Israel is it considered acceptable to publicly demand the elimination of a state.

The existential loneliness of Israel

Protesters, opinion leaders and political leaders should ask themselves what, in Israel, arouses such hatred. Why is Israel, out of the 195 countries on the planet, the only state to give the impression of being subject to conditions, as if its existence depended only on the goodwill of other countries on the globe?

It is revolting to think that this murderous hatred is focused solely on a people who, less than a century ago, came close to eradication. There is also something infuriating about the cynical and tortuous connection between Jewish existential angst and the publicly expressed wish of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and others that Israel cease exist.

It is also intolerable that certain actors try to force the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a colonialist pattern, knowingly and stubbornly forgetting that the Jews have no other country, unlike the European colonialists to whom they are compared. wrong, and obscuring the fact that the Jews did not arrive in the land of Israel in a spirit of conquest but in search of security; that their deep affinity with this land dates back almost four thousand years; that it is there that they forged their nation, their culture, their language and their religion.

We can imagine the malicious joy with which these people attack the most sensitive point of the Jewish nation, namely its feeling of being a foreigner, this existential solitude from which it cannot free itself. It is this sensitive point which very often condemns her to commit fatal and destructive errors, destructive both for her enemies and for herself.

No other option than peace

Who will we be, Israelis and Palestinians alike, when this long and cruel war ends? Not only will the memory of the atrocities inflicted on each other set up barriers between us for many years but, as none of us are unaware, as soon as it has the opportunity, Hamas will hasten to implement the objective clearly stated in its original charter, namely the destruction of Israel, assimilated to a religious duty.

How can you sign a peace treaty with such an enemy?

And yet, what other option do we have?

Palestinians will see noon at their doorstep. As an Israeli, I wonder what kind of people we will be when we come out of this war. Where will we direct our guilt – if we have the courage to feel it – for what we have inflicted on innocent Palestinians? For the thousands of children we killed. For the families we destroyed.

And how will we learn, so as never to be surprised again, to live a whole life on the razor's edge? But who wants to live their life and raise their children on a razor's edge? And what will be the price of a life on the lookout, lived in perpetual fear and suspicion? Who among us will decree that he does not want or cannot live the life of an eternal soldier, of a Spartan?

Who will choose to stay here, in Israel? And will those who remain be the most extremist, the most fanatical, the most nationalist, the most racist? Are we condemned to watch, petrified, as this Israeliness made of audacity, creativity, originality is gradually absorbed by this tragic wound which strikes Judaism?

While these questions will undoubtedly accompany Israel's history for years to come, there remains the possibility of a radically different reality emerging. Perhaps recognizing that this war cannot be won and, moreover, that we cannot maintain the occupation ad vitam aeternam, will force both sides to accept a two-state solution, which, despite the disadvantages and risks it entails (first of all, that Hamas takes Palestine under its control following a democratic election), remains the only one that is feasible?

A resolution born of despair

Now is also the time for countries that may have influence on both sides to put that influence to good use. This is not the time for politicking and diplomatic cynicism. This is one of those rare moments when a shock wave, in this case the one triggered on October 7, has the power to reshape reality. Do the countries linked to this conflict not see that Israelis and Palestinians are no longer capable of saving themselves?

The coming months will decide the fate of two peoples. We will then know if this conflict which has lasted for more than a century is sufficiently mature to leave room for an ethical, reasonable and humane resolution.

What is tragic is that this solution will arise (if it ever comes to fruition) not from hope and enthusiasm, but from despair and exhaustion. Because unfortunately it is often this state of mind that leads enemies to make peace, and that is all we have left to hope for today. So we will be content with that. As if one had to cross the underworld to arrive at the place from where one can see, on an exceptionally clear day, the distant edge of paradise.

David Grossman

https://www.courrierinternational.com/l ... ns-l-abime

[Remundo]

an interesting little debate between Natacha Polony and the Israeli-American agent BHL

[gegyx]

Salame
Don't you dare say "shut up" to the other horny guy?

The other sneered at the countries of the global south regarding respect for international law, citing cases here and there...
And he doesn't even realize the brazenness that Israel has systematically flouted international law since 1945?
And he comes to present another book!
A pearl for sure...

[gegyx]

The UN finally succeeded in getting a vote to stop the bombings, imperatively this evening (USA abstention)

Satanthug not happy with his US sponsor.

But encouraged by BHL, he doesn't care about UN resolutions...

[gegyx]

The United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories affirms that “there are reasonable grounds” to believe that Israel has committed several “acts of genocide”, in a report published this Monday, March 25, also referring to “ethnic cleansing” .

“The overwhelming nature and scale of the Israeli assault on Gaza and the destructive living conditions it has caused reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group,” says Francesca Albanese, in her report which she is due to present Tuesday to the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

This report - entitled "Anatomy of a Genocide" - concludes "that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating that acts of genocide "have been committed" against the Palestinians in Gaza has been reached."

In her conclusions, Francesca Albanese lists three acts of genocide: “murder of members of the group; serious harm to the physical or mental integrity of members of the group; and intentional subjection of the group to conditions of existence calculated to bring about its total or partial physical destruction.”

“Genocidal tools to achieve ethnic cleansing”
These are three of the five acts of genocide included in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The Israeli representation to the United Nations in Geneva “completely rejected the report” and said in a statement that it is part of “a campaign aimed at undermining the very establishment of the Jewish state.”

https://www.nouvelobs.com/monde/2024032 ... -gaza.html

[Remundo]

and there, Macrounette does not invest much in arming the Palestinians...

However



Yesterday on the radio France Info, they spoke openly of genocide, by bombs, and by hunger/thirst

[Macro]

and there, Macrounette does not invest much in arming the Palestinians...

Don't worry, the Russians will provide them with Kalash

[Christophe]

and there, Macrounette does not invest much in arming the Palestinians...
(...)
Yesterday on the radio France Info, they spoke openly of genocide, by bombs, and by hunger/thirst

There are others, certainly better placed than France, who don't do much for their "brothers" eh...

Why hasn't Egypt, right next door, opened its borders widely for months? These are their Muslim brothers and sisters, we must help them, right? Is Islam not a religion? of peace, appeasement and fraternity ?

Well shit...I thought...