No Stupid Questions

It's pretty easy to explain: It's complicated.

Basically, it's a conflict that had been running for a really long time.

Before WW1, the area of Israel/Palestine was inhabited by Arabs and controlled by the Ottomans.

During WW1, the Brits promised the Arabs that they'd back an independent arab state there, if the Arabs revolted and successfully kicked out the Ottomans.

The Arabs did their part, so Britain, being as trustworthy as ever, turned around and divvied the Ottoman empire up between them, and Britain got control over what was then called Mandatory Palestine, which the Arabs saw as a betrayal. The official plan was for the Brits to rule the Mandate "until such time as they are able to stand alone".

At the same time, the Zionist Jews wanted to have a national state, where they could live without persecution, and many European nations, where antisemitism was rampant, wanted them gone from Europe, so they kinda had an agreement there. The original plan was to move them to a part of Uganda, but that fell through so Palestine was chosen.

Already long before the national state was created, lots of Jews moved there and created settlements. The Arabs there weren't exactly happy about that massive influx of settlers and the Jews also weren't happy about the natives. Each of them started an uprising over the following years, and with tensions rising, the UN drafted a partition plan.

While the opinion of the Jews over that partition plan was ambivalent, though leaning towards being happy about it, the Arabs were decidedly unhappy about it. They thought, that the UN was overstepping it's rights and that the partition plan was violating the principles of self-determinism set forth by the UN charter.

So a war broke out between the Arabs (including surrounding arab countries) and the Jews there, which resulted in a victory for the Jews. After that, the area was divided up between Jewish Israel, the west bank area controlled by Jordan and inhabited by Arabs, and the tiny area called Gaza strip, controlled by Egypt and inhabited by Palestinians.

The area the Palestinians received after the war was significantly smaller than what was outlined in the UN partition plan.

In 1967, during the six-day war, Israel captured the Gaza strip and it's been under Israeli occupation ever since. In 1993, Israel granted the Gaza strip limited self-government over the area. Basically, Gaza was allowed to self-government about matters of the populated areas, but Israel remained in control in regards to the airspace, the territorial waters and all border crossings except the one towards Egypt, which is controlled by Egypt.

In 2007, Hamas took over the government of Gaza. Most of the world classify them as a terror organisation, and they have been e.g. shooting home-build missiles into Israel and also have mounted a few small-scale insurrections and attacks against Israel.

Israel on the other hand has been casually bombarding and killing Palestinians for a very long time. Also, they let Israeli settlers illegally settle in occupied Palestinian territories, which the Palestinians are not so happy about.

From 2008 until 2020, roughly 5600 Palestinians and 250 Israelis (including many civilians on both sides) have been killed, and 115 000 Pakistanis and 5600 Israelis have been injured (source: https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/16516/israeli-palestinian-casualties-by-in-gaza-and-the-west-bank/).

The Gaza strip is pretty much an outdoor prison, with a massive population density, low life expectency and abysmal living standards. People are generally not allowed to leave from there. Israel routinely cuts water/electricity, which are both supplied by Israel in response to attacks from Palestine.

All in all, it's a right mess that's been brewing for over 100 years, with no easy solutions. By now, everyone who has been responsible for causing the original mess is dead. Of the leadership neither side is in the right, both sides are making everything worse. There is no solution in sight.

The Palestinians fight the oppression by killing civilians, the Israelis counter by killing civilians and making life even more hell for the people in the occupied territories, who in turn fight even harder and kill more civilians.

Reducing oppression is hardly possible, since that would allow the Palestinians to mount bigger attacks.

Which brings us to the current situation. Palestinians managed to break out of Gaza, at many places even destroying the perimeter fence. They then invaded some towns and a music festival in the border regions, killing a few hundred Israeli civilians and taking some more hostage. Israel countered by bombarding the Gaza strip, killing a few hundred Palestinian civilians. They also, again, cut power and electricity, and the whole western world then responded with cutting food supply.

This in turn will radicalize the Palestinians even more, who will fight harder, and who knows where it ends. Probably with the Israelis finally finding the same answer to "the Palestinian Question" that Germany found for the "Jewish Question" in the 1940s.

How long do you have? Here’s the very brief summary, and full disclaimer, I don’t have dog in this race.

1. Jerusalem is an important place for both Jews and Muslims.

2. They’ve been fighting over this space for two millenia. The Roman’s had it for a long time (Christian), the Ottomans had it for a long time (Islamic).

3. After WW1 and the Ottomans were defeated, it passed onto the Turkish (Islamic).

4. After WW2, with Britain now in control of it (Palestine) and with the surviving Jews now displaced worldwide with no country to live, the U.N decided to give Jews a new home and call this new place the State of Israel. They put Israel right in the middle of Palestine, which no Islamic nation could object to because they were all defeated in war.

5. Since then, Jews call Israel their home country. Surrounding Islamic countries don’t recognise Israel and want the Jews to leave.

6. Islamic nations including Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, Syria have all gone to war with Israel (the 6-day War) to kick the Jews out. They’ve all lost because Israel is militarily backed by world powers. Israel is now a military powerhouse and have full control of the region.

7. Israel allow Muslim Palestinians small areas to live in the area, namely Gaza and the West Bank, but they’re not particularity nice to the Muslims living there. This is the Palestinian/Israeli war that’s been going on for almost a century.

8. This space is now two main religions crammed into a very small space. Both claim that it’s their ancestral land. Islamic nations don’t recognise Israel as a country. Most of the rest of the world does.

9. Israel has become a defensive fortress with nukes, and is surrounded by five countries that hate it. No Islamic nation is strong enough to beat Israel. Skirmishes and shit fighting continues. Sometimes it gets serious. This week it got really serious.

10. This fight will probably go on forever because of the religious significance of Jerusalem which neither the Israelis or Palestinians will ever give up claim to.

11. So who’s right and who’s wrong? Probably neither. Probably both. Probably humans are just shit.

EDIT: I know there’s lots of missing parts here but honestly, the full story would be a semester of university worth of info. I tried to keep this ultra-digestible, without bias or conspiracy or finger pointing.

Thank you below for the corrections.

Israel/Palestine was the ancestral home of the Hebrew (ie. Jewish) people, up until about 700AD.

From then, right up until 1948, it was held by the Arab people in the region, the people now known as Palestinians.

At the end of World War II, there were hundreds of thousands of displaced Jewish refugees all over Europe and the rest of the world - and no country really wanted to take them.

So the United Nations put some weight behind a rather niche interest group (the Zionists) who wanted to reclaim Palestine for the Jewish people, 1200 years after they left.

Palestine wasn't OK with losing a major chunk of its land with no recompense, but the UN said tough shit sucks to be you lol, and gave them no choice, establishing the modern country of Israel within its borders, kicking out the Palestinians who had been living there for the past 1200 years and settling vast numbers of refugees in a ready-made country.

This held a certain amount of strategic value to the West, as a political, economic and military power base smack bang in the middle of the Middle East, standing opposed to the Arab nations surrounding it, and giving the west a foot in the door and a finger in all the pies, as it were.

As a result, Israel has had virtually unlimited economic and military aid from the west ever since, and become comfortably rich despite having no exports, resources or trade to speak of.

Since 1948, Palestine has made various efforts to reclaim some of its land - and each time, has been beaten back by the combined military might of the entire west, losing ever more territory with each attempt.

Israel now holds virtually all of Palestine, except for tiny fractured and scattered pockets of land - which they keep 'settling' - eg. annexing and invading, killing the Palestintian inhabitants, demolishing their homes, burning their farms and taking their land. Palestinians are allowed into Israel, but as second-class citizens in an apartheid regime, exploited for cheap labour.

Palestine no longer has the resources, organization, wealth or strength to maintain an actual military or to mount actual resistance - with guerilla warfare being the only tactic available. And of course where you have poverty and oppression, that's fertile ground for radicalisation - and this has lead to exploitation by various terrorist groups.

Now, Gaza is a small contiguous chunk of Palestine, bordering on Egypt - and Israel has been blockading it for decades, severely limiting access to food, water, building materials, etc - basically a giant open-air prison camp, with severe reprisals (such as bombing schools and hospitals - collective punishment, which is a war crime) for any attacks on Israel.

It's this region that's been the source of the latest conflict - with Hamas (a very unpleasant bunch of people) launching a major offensive, consisting of both rocket strikes and armed incursions, targeting Israeli civilians.

There's every indication that this was planned and supported by Iran, who have their own agenda, and are happy to see Palestinians and Israelis both get killed.

Israel has responded to the attacks by bombing Gaza quite indiscriminately, and shutting off power, water and food supplies entirely to all of Gaza.

Israel is continuing to act the victim/hero for its actions, as always, and is receiving a vast outpouring of western aid, support and political clout in return.

To complicate matters, half of the religious right in the US is fervently pro-Israel, because despite disapproving of Judaism for rejecting Jesus, they believe that biblical prophesy is predicated on Jewish control of Israel. Yes, seriously. They can't have their Armageddon and be carried up to heaven unless the events in Revelations come to pass, and yeah.

Also, ever since WWII, Israel has been playing the fuck out of the antisemitism card, loudly declaring that any opposition to their policy and actions must be rooted in hatred of Jewish people, and is obviously just softening up the ground for neo-nazis. And of course, no politician wants to get tarred with that brush.

Meanwhile, children in Gaza are dying.

The safe position is, Israel did bad things but Hamas is bad for wanting to commit genocide/attacking random festival. I think.

It's not as complicated as portrayed. Everyone has some kind of point. But the people controlling the attacks are pretty much assholes, and the citizens getting killed are innocent victims

It's not a good idea to lump the left into "Palestinian support". Some people on the left are still pro Israel, although probably a result of western propaganda. Those that are not pro Israel, all recognize that Israel is bad. The level of bad ranges from as little as kills women and children all the way to genocide. Some people take it as far as being anti Jew, which sucks because all of the Jews that wouldn't live in Israel/support the oppression of those that were there first don't live in Israel. The problem isn't Jews, it's western imperialism and Israel.

My take is, Israel was created 75 years ago by the US and UK as a way for the west to maintain control in the middle east when their previous efforts failed. Israel has never respected their borders, has constantly been expanding by brutal force, holds the Gaza strip hostage, and doesn't allow Palestinians within their borders to leave or get citizenship. (I don't recall the number of Palestinians within the border but 200,000 is sticking in my head?)

Israel's "right" to the land is imposed by the west after WWII, and the reality is it was the home of Palestinians.

Now, on the other side of things, Hamas has expressed the desire to eradicate Jews from the earth multiple times. If they had the backing of the west the situation would be reversed, potentially worse. But I would argue Hamas wouldn't be in power if Israel wasn't formed 75 years ago. When millions of people are oppressed and murdered on the regular for 75 years, that's a recipe for radicalization.

Oh, and I didn't even get to the religious part. Islam is an abrahamic religion, a descendant of Judaism, although they don't seem to like to talk about that. Jerusalem is the holy land of the Jews, and therefore it's also the holy land of Islam (and technically Christians too, although I don't think any of them care anywhere near as much). Both the Jews in Israel and the Palestinians believe they are gods chosen people of that land. I would say most Jews today don't feel the need to own that land, but most Jews in Israel do. Trump moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem which was a dick move, because it was technically still shared territory at that point. But anyway, radical religious conservatives become terrorists when given the right environment.

My final take, Israel and Hamas are both terrorist organizations who desire eradication of the other ethnicity, but Israel has the backing, propaganda, and sympathy of the West.

Little bully got the nerve up to kick big bully in the nuts. Big bully didn’t like that and now has little bully in a sleeper hold while punching little bully in the nuts repeatedly.

More news to come.

It's a complicated can of worms. Good luck getting a thorough, unbiased opinion from strangers on the Internet. The more you read about all the different political and religious factions involved in the Israel-Palentine conflict, the more you will find that it's a tangled mess of alliances, political desires, religious convictions, and international proxy fights that reach back a century or more.

Image showing land ownership changes over the last century:

https://sites.psu.edu/anaouf2/files/2017/02/israel-palestine_map_19225_2469-vrwani.jpg

I felt like a safe default option is treating both HAMAS terracts and israeli oppression of palestinians as bad and continuously fueling each other. One is right-in-your-face brutal, one is rather impersonal and systemic. That's the baseline.

Then, opinions start to differ by who is historically to blame there or who can affect this problem and try to solve it (without any final solution some radicals want). Israel is claimed to be that, in both cases but by different parties. Two major schools of sofa thoughts are either free Palestine (and I hope it's also free from, not for fucking HAMAS of all people?) or Israel handling it whatever it takes and staying as a beacon of the international influence (control?) in the Middle East. Whatever, pick your poison.

There are influxes of hell knows what in discussing this ongoing shitstorm, from infantilizing palestinians to adoring the jewish ethnostate. I feel it's vital not to engage in deciding the future for these groups of people having a bloody conflict we don't really understand, but to support humanitarian causes, relief for those affected, and reaching out to those who can help freeze this conflict. It's hard to talk over exploding munition.

My general sympathy is with the Palestinians who struggle from systemic oppression, but defo not with the atrocities committed by Hamas. How one can support and excuse the recent events is beyond me.

Just because you're oppressed doesn't mean you can just go out there and slaughter random people. I mean they even killed tourists, who have no role in this ethnical conflict. But I don't think they even care..

An apartheid state experienced an attack from a terrorist group. More violence ensues.

If you ask for the "Why" often enough, it always comes down to Antisemitism.

Israel wouldn't exist if not for the unhinged antisemitism of German Nazis in the 1930/40s.

In the last 20 years, Israel found itself to need new settlements, with all the accompanying political changes and pressures. Why? - because many Jews from all over the world migrated there. Why? - Antisemitism in their home countries makes those a less habitable place than an Israel, even though it is continuously on the brink of a war.

And this doesn't even touch the rampant antisemitism in the Muslim world that wants to drive the Jews into the ocean and doesn't accept a state Israel under any circumstances.