r/Israel_Palestine

I managed to upset and annoy people on both the Palestine and Israel sub-reddits leading me to be banned on both. TBF to Palestine sub-reddit, I was banned by an auto-moderator following a pile on from other redditors and a human moderator quickly reinstated me. Here are my reflections:-

Palestine Sub Reddit

I was banned having been accused by multiple redditors as being a zionist shrill spreading hasbara before a human moderator realised it was a ridiculous accusation and reinstated me. The Palestine sub reddit advocates for multi ethnic, multi religious state between river and sea with equal rights for all.

I caused offence because someone posted a video of Palestinian peace activist Aziz Abu Sarah and Israeli peace activist Maoz Inon being interviewed on American TV. The poster said that they were fed up of needing to find 'common ground' between Israelis and Palestinians. I simply asked what the alternative would be? If we wanted one state where Jews and Arabs lived freely as equals, how could it be done without finding common ground and what is the solution?

The original poster went off on one, told me I was naive and didn't know what I was speaking about and that I was not welcome to the Palestinian cause. I didn't bother telling him that i've been advocating for Palestinian human rights since before the little pr*ck was born although I did mention that I believed Maoz Inon to be a genuine guy, that i've met one of his family members, that Maoz Inon has lived and worked amongst Palestinians in the city where my In-Laws come from (Nazareth).

If there is to be one democratic free state between the river and sea it means Israeli's and Palestinians will need to work together for it and i'll never demonise Palestinians or Israelis looking to make that step. It seems like this idea was too much to take for some on the Palestinian sub-reddit who see this type of dialogue as surrendering to Israelis (ie Liberal Zionism)

AskIsrael sub-reddit

I was banned for 'pushing an agenda'. I actually agree with their ban as I was pushing an agenda by continuing to push a point on Israeli terror attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank and 'AskIsrael' is supposed to be a place for the genuinely curious to find out something about Israeli life, not to use it as a soap box to push their own narrative.

However, being an observer on Ask Israel shows alot about Jewish Israeli society and its collective delusions. Someone recently asked a question whether Jewish Israelis think about the suffering of Gazans and feel any sympathy. A minority said 'no, we should have gone further and wiped them all out', more said 'I know the suffering is bad but find it hard to care deeply after October-7th' and some said 'they brought it all on themselves'. Almost no one could say 'yes, the suffering is appalling'.

I struggle the most with the 'they brought it all on themselves' line of thinking the most. I challenged other pro-Palestinian advocates on October 8th who said 'well, given the horrendous violence Israel has subjected Palestinians to over the last 100 years, what did Israel expect?'. It sounds like an excuse, for the brutal murder of innocent people- innocent people like me and you. I don't see many Israeli's looking to think about how their language would sound if it was used to justify the killings of Israeli civilians (or even soldiers). The lack of introspection is startling.

I had started engaging with one Israeli who I thought was sincere, thoughtful and rational but soon after our conversation took a nose dive when we were discussing early Zionist history leading up to the Nakba. He/She was determined to selectively quote from history books as if it were gospel whilst ignoring other historical artefacts which would suggest ill intent on behalf of early Zionists towards Palestinians i.e. it felt very dangerous to this person to even give a little weight to the idea that Israel have been aggressors and not victims at any point in its history. He/she started ignoring specific cases and resorted to calling me names to get out of having to confront uncomfortable truths.

So for both, what I am seeing is that to acknowledge each others humanity, each others suffering means to diminish your own. We need to move beyond that.

Today I celebrated an early Yom Ha’atzmaut - Israeli Independence Day. Before I went to sleep last night, I saw the a reel by Bill Clinton talking about the most generous offer Israel has ever made - an offer that Yasser Arafat rejected without even a counter offer.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DDPVEHPR46C/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

After that I saw a reel where a worker for UNRWA - the UN body whose sole job was supposed to be the resettling of Palestinian refugees, explained how she has seen UNRWA turn Palestinian children into child soldiers for terrorist organizations like Hamas.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXEwvB0DaUN/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

I went to sleep thinking about what a tragedy it is that the world uses Palestinian children as a weapon against Israel at the expense of their own best interests for a war they will never win. I thought how the people of Israel would love nothing more than to finally experience peace that most of us in the western world take for granted.

When I went to sleep, I had a dream that I was able to bring world leaders together and explain just how toxic UNRWA and Hamas are, and that we were able to disband them and prevent any further generations of Palestinian children from being indoctrinated with hate against the Jewish people. In the dream, the Palestinian people had a wise, strong and selfless ruler who chose peace and established a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with a capital in East Jerusalem over a forever war where everyone loses, and no one wins understanding that he himself would become a likely target for assassination - something Yasser Arafat was never willing to do. In my dream the Israeli government was willing to make the type of offer Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak would have made.

I had a dream that I was so convincing that even the skeptics on both sides - who were open minded in a way they had never been before in the wake of October 7th and the War with Gaza that followed - were willing to give up more than they wanted in the deal to finally make peace a reality in the context of a 2 state solution. Because the reality is neither Jews nor Palestinian has any place else to go, and neither of us would be willing to go anywhere else even if they could. We mine as well live our lives in peace, nothing else makes sense. There is no other long term solution to this conflict - why can’t today be the day that both sides take a definitive step towards peace by removing the impediments that have kept us trapped in war?

Israel’s coming for Free Speech in the US and I’m afraid the effort has some momentum. They are absolutely obsessed with it.

I post it whenever I see it but I think the issue is way overdue for more publicity and activism, and much more prominent news coverage — where are the newspapers??

The protections for social media in Section 230 are one focus and this is already getting tossed around by politicians.

If you oppose new, probably criminal, limits, on speech you’ll be labeled antisemitic, and beneath debate. You’ll be the underdog going into the battle, which has already started.

They will try to pull off changes without the opposition having a seat at the table and a say in the debate, using the accusation of antisemitism to foreclose on them.

It’s preposterous considering the First Amendment contains our most precious rights and Israel is way overdue for an analyst's couch for thinking it is OK to meddle nonstop in the affairs of other countries, never mind undermine them from their very foundations. But here we are, yet again.

You wouldn’t attack speech rights unless you wanted to undermine the country on the deepest level and didn’t mind making enemies who will never forget.

The Israelis involved all probably know these efforts will create tons more antisemitism, not dissipate it. They don’t seem to care because it would give them control, a forceful, legal grip on our throats. They will opt for control rather than a less prejudiced society

Social media is less conducive to top down control. It’s a place to find opinions in the wild. They are demanding control

So, Israel probably believes it has standing and a legitimate interest in the internal affairs of every country on earth because any country can potentially become a source of dangerous antisemitic pogroms. This multiplies the problem.

The headline is from an annual report on antisemitism published by the university in Tel Aviv

Here is the full excerpt and the link :

>Prof. Shavit: Would you support stronger restrictions on social media? The United States has a unique problem. It’s called the First Amendment. America has become a safe haven for racists, the worst of the worst. And I don’t think that was the intention of the Framers of the Constitution.

>Prof. Browning: Yes, I mean, everybody has the right to speak, except for the limits of inciting actual violence or yelling fire in a crowded theater, or defamation. The problem is with media that are classified legally as a neutral platform, a bulletin board on which people pin up their various views. Which that media are not. I mean, newspapers don’t enjoy that privilege [to be considered a neutral platform with no responsibility for content]. Newspapers are responsible and could be sued for libel when they publish, you know, false things.

>And so, my feeling is that American law has to be changed in a way that social media have to exercise some self-policing or become liable for defamation or liable for damages when they harm people. That doesn’t curb freedom of speech. We have those restrictions on speech already.

>https://cst.tau.ac.il/interview-ordinary-men-and-worse/

Neither of them are correct. Shavit a prof.from Tel Aviv U, thinks he’s a Constitutional law expert when he doesn’t even know what antisemitism is. ( notice too he is oblivious to bigotry in Israel)

And Browning is wrong that you could possibly run large forums like reddit, facebook, X, bluesky, etc, if you faced liability for libel like a newspaper. That’s why we created Section 230. These forums create their own community rules which is nice. But what he is proposing would shut them down. He’s no expert in this area either

Israelis have been asking social media for new, voluntary community policies but the rules are such an offense to everyone's values, and so incompatible, everyone turns them down. They got nowhere, so, they will try to railroad us with new unconstitutional laws.

The First Amendment is not a problem, it’s an exceptional delineation of rights. It has no parallel in any nation. Israel has convinced itself it can drill down and make unreasonable demands on other countries to stop the very thing it will exacerbate by so doing and has been exacerbating

There is antisemitism out there but all these measures make it worse and they are harming the United States. We have to prevent that.

All eyes should be on winning peace and justice for everyone in the Mideast, including Israelis. This is an outrageous war that was unnecessary

In a thread of tweets, Adam Johnson introduced this article thus:

> I wrote about J Street’s “cut off military aid to Israel” PR gambit which, upon closer inspection, is clearly a time-buying scam that 1) aligns w/ Netanyahu’s “phase out” plan & 2) provides a fake Israel-critical talking point for Dems increasingly under pressure from their base.

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2:

> Jonathan Chait joins the campaign, along with J Street, Lindsey Graham and Netanyahu, to severe US military funding of Israel to blunt opposition and give the appearance of distance between democrats and Israel while maintaining the status quo of arming genocide and apartheid

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3:

> Also this is one of the most evil and cynical things I’ve ever read: here Chait argues there’s been “selective attention” on Gaza by activists vs the West Bank not because 100X more people have been killed/it’s widely seen as a genocide but because they all secretly love Hamas

> > Revealingly, the movement is focused on Gaza, to the point where Gaza is often used as shorthand for its goals. Although Gaza has seen the worst carnage, it was also the staging ground for horrific mass attacks on civilians. Pogroms by Israeli settlers in the West Bank have no defensive rationale, yet they have received a fraction of the attention bestowed on Gaza. The most convincing explanation for this selective attention is that Gaza, but not the West Bank, is controlled by Hamas, and the pro-Palestinian activist network in the U.S. is in solidarity with Hamas.

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4:

> Just to clarify: there’s an emerging consensus among israel defenders to push for a “cut US military aid to Israel” because technically “aid” only means funding (despite it colloquially meaning military sales but whatever). So it’s clearly not “a good first step” but cynical PR

Senior Trump official Lightstone meets with Hayya, as Hamas bucks ceasefire’s 2nd phase requirement that it give up weapons, arguing that Israel violating truce’s first phase.

Greetings all!

I am a big history nerd interested, among other things, in the history of the Levant from deep antiquity to the modern day. I am, of course, aware of the existence of competing narratives and would therefore like to learn more about Palestinian history and how Palestinians understand and view their past.

It would probably be very difficult to outline a complete historical narrative, but I would appreciate it if you could at least sketch a timeline of your history from as far back as possible. An overview of political entities, key people, wars, border changes, migrations in and out, at what point in time do you see your ethnogenesis, etc., would all be super helpful.

Thanks.