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Notes -
Apologies for the delayed response - I don't post on the motte on weekends.
Yes, I have, and I've read a lot about the history of the region due to the prominence of the issue. As for accurately summarizing both positions... the Palestinian side would be easy but as for the Israeli side I honestly don't think so - there are real divisions in Israeli society on these topics, and coming up with an answer that could satisfy all of them is hard. There are hardline settlers who believe that all the land God gave them in their scriptures belongs to them with no negotiation, and there are Israelis who want a two or one-state solution to the Palestinian issue. At the same time I have actually discussed the issue with people who were born Israeli citizens and they've agreed with my understanding... but given that I met them at a protest against the genocide, I am not actually sure that they'd qualify for your purposes here. I could definitely come up with an accurate summary of the Israeli position that the current government would agree with, but I would prefer not to lie.
"Israeli partisans". The Amsterdam crew count, but they're a subset of the larger category.
Disproportionate numbers of women and children are showing up in the casualty lists and this is being reported on by reputable media organisations - these figures are actually exceptional.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/nearly-70-gaza-war-dead-women-children-un-rights-office-says-2024-11-08/
I have never in my life heard a football chant that was as offensive and cruel as the ones from Maccabi Tel Aviv. Taking glee and exulting in the mass extermination of children is way beyond the bounds of football banter, at least in my experience. Do you have any examples of ones that were worse or even comparable? As for soldiers in the field, I'm going by reputable third-party numbers as linked above. There's a difference between soldiers in the field getting up to stupid and offensive grunt shit to amuse themselves and "systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, including distinction and proportionality." Even if your argument holds, the idea that they're disproportionately murdering women and children to amuse themselves says worse things about the IDF than any of the claims I've made so far.
I have had conversations with hardline Israelis who would proudly adopt that label for themselves, but I understand those people are a minority in Israeli society. At the same time, I know several people who would object to entirely accurate and factual descriptions of themselves because they don't want to admit something that they actually did. If I murdered someone in cold blood and was convicted, you'd be entirely justified in calling me a murderer, even if I would disagree and describe myself as a patriot who did what I had to do to save my nation. The standard you're applying here prevents any kind of condemnation of the Nazis as well - they'd view themselves as brave heroes protecting their nation from evil parasites, so they'd disagree with any of the negative descriptions that they deserve to receive.
I believe they're ethnonationalists who want to reclaim the territory that their god supposedly promised them in their religious scriptures. That's the explanation! It sounds unflattering to modern, non-Bronze age ears, but that's because the actions the Israelis have actually undertaken are unflattering. You don't get to run an apartheid state and then complain that people are saying you run an apartheid state because you'd call it something else that's not as bad for your reputation.
Likud is currently in power and Benjamin Netanyahu is the longest serving PM the country has had. Unless you want to make the claim that Israel isn't a democracy and their elected leaders do not represent the will of the people, Likud and Netanyahu do speak for the Israeli state. You make the point about extreme republicans, but Zero HP Lovecraft isn't the POTUS right now - and when Trump takes office again, I have no problem saying that he speaks for Americans. Do I think that all Israelis act like this? Absolutely not, I've even mentioned the Israelis I marched and protested alongside. But when I look at the polls, a lot of those more noxious beliefs have incredibly broad support amongst Israeli citizens.
https://truthout.org/articles/polls-show-broad-support-in-israel-for-gazas-destruction-and-starvation/ (yes, the source for this is anti-zionist - I don't believe that means they are just publishing fiction.)
93 percent of Israeli jews support the claim that their god promised them all the territory between the river and the sea. If you put the claim that the Jews are god's chosen people and that he has given them all that territory (including Palestine) to the Israeli people on a referendum, polling data suggests that's what they'd vote for! I don't think you can really say that these ideas don't represent the will of the people when a majority of them say they do when asked.
Me! I can blame them! Not once have I ever in my life said that I would like another ethnicity to just 'go away' because I don't like the political consequences of their continued existence. If you want to defend that impulse, go ahead - but you're forever giving up the ability to criticize antisemites, racists and white nationalists. After all, they would just like the jews to go away - who can blame them, after all this time?
I said it because the polling data supports it. That's what it means when over half the population says that they are god's chosen people, and 93% of them of them believe that the territory promised to them in their scriptures belongs to them.
I'm not just aware, I've spoken to and argued with them. And you're totally right - very few of them would accept as uncharitable a description of their motives. But at the same time, I'm willing to bet if you assembled all the white nationalists here on the motte and asked them if they were willing to go to the lengths Israel has gone to in order to rid their country of jews and non-whites, many of them would actually say that they would prefer less overtly violent and bloodthirsty methods. I have no problems criticising white nationalists and other ethnic supremacists who would support the disproportionate murder of women and children in support of their ethnostate, and when I see white nationalist troops blowing up hospitals I'll be protesting against them too.
Most of them I read over fifteen years ago and can't recall, but the most recent one was Righteous Victims.
I'm not asking you to summarize what all Israelis think. That would obviously be ridiculous. I'm asking you to summarize what the hard-liners who believe in a Jewish ethnostate believe, in terms they would agree with.
That isn't what I meant by "stupid grunt shit," and I think you are being disingenuous in claiming that you think that's what I meant. I was thinking more of the videos of them making offensive jokes and raiding Palestinian women's underwear drawers.
I know that the Palestinians (and our resident Jew-haters) claim that Israelis are sniping Palestinian children for fun, but there's been no substantial evidence of this, and to believe that it's happening at scale requires, again, believing that Israelis are so psychologically different from most people, and so bloodthirsty, that "monsters" would be an appropriate description.
I have definitely heard racist and bloodthirsy shit from Russians about Ukrainians, from Arabs about Jews, from Americans about Iraqis, and that's just in recent memory - surely we don't need to take a trip down memory lane to Viet Nam or Korea or WWII. I am not defending what the Maccabi fans said, it's obviously vile, but I am disputing your argument that this shows some uniquely evil and genodical spirit among Israelis. Drunken footballers have always done awful and offensive things, and drunken footballers from a country currently at war? I think the press coverage has been wildly uncritical (presenting it as an "attempted pogrom of Jews of Amsterdam"), but I think you are just using it as another story about how evil Israelis are.
Using the "Aparthead state" rhetoric kind of gives the game away, but as far as the first statement, yes, Zionists believe they are entitled to Israel because it is their ancestral homeland. And you know what? I agree that that's bullshit. You don't have a natural rightful claim to land that your ancestors happened to live on 2000 years ago, or the entire world would be subject to pretty dramatic redrawing of borders. At the same time, it's a lot more complicated than your simple anti-Zionist narrative of "Jews showed up to commit genocide because God told them to take back their land." I mean, have you read any other books? I haven't read Righteous Victims but I've read some of the other stuff by Benny Morris and the New Historians, and even they don't tell it that way.
I mean, no, I don't really blame Palestinian youths for hating Israelis. I'm sure I would too if I grew up as they did. That does not make their position objectively right. If you think that terrorism and unending warfare is a "political consequence of their continued existence," though, then you apparently share the most pessimistic Israeli view of Palestinians. I don't blame people constantly subjected to violence for hating the people responsible and wishing they'd just go away (and this goes for both sides). We can hope some leaders will rise above this, but we can also recognize that the motives are very understandable.
Some of them might say that, and I might even believe a couple of them. On the other hand, we're back to how you characterize "the lengths Israel has gone to." You evidently believe the genocidal apartheid state version where Israelis (a critical mass of them, anyway) are just that evil and hate Palestinians and have not exterminated them only because it would be bad PR. The Israeli version would be quite different from that, and a lot closer to what the white nationalists would call reasonable measures to separate and suppress a violent population that is making war on them. (No, I would not agree with that characterization, any more than I agree with the more ungenerous Israeli characterizations of the Palestinians, but it's at least more coherent than "They're just evil genocidal religious fanatics.")
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