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Notes -
"Israel is the exclusive nation-state of the Jewish people. It consists of the lands that God agreed to give us in the torah (or talmud, not up to date on the specifics of jewish religious texts), stretching from the river to the sea. As God's chosen people, we are justified in conquering the lands he promised us."
Apologies for misunderstanding - there has been a recent (well not terribly recent but the process has stretched on for a long time) high-profile case in my country where someone was prosecuted for "stupid grunt shit" that turned out to actually be warcrimes. This included kicking a man in handcuffs off a cliff and giving the soldier that did it the nickname Leonidas, as well as multiple murders of civilians (look up Ben Roberts-Smith if you want more information) - that's the sort of behavior I assumed you were describing here.
Actually, I don't think that this behavior marks them as being psychologically different from most people. Go back through history and you'll be hard-pressed to find a people that hasn't engaged in these kinds of brutal acts - you don't even need to go that far back at all when you look at Germany. It is eminently human to get caught up by powerful feelings of nationalism, ethnic chauvinism, esprit de corps etc, and take actions that will haunt you for the rest of your life. That is actually one of the pieces of information that went into forming my view on the topic - the (supposed) increased rates of suicide and psychological issues amongst IDF soldiers as a result of what has happened in Gaza. Take this article for instance - https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/21/middleeast/gaza-war-israeli-soldiers-ptsd-suicide-intl/index.html
Here we have a man who gets radicalised by what happened on October 7, goes to fight in Gaza, commits atrocities and brags about it on social media (I'm sure you can see why my mind went to the place it did when you discussed stuff being posted to social media by Israeli soldiers)... then kills himself because he's unable to live with what he's done. I don't think this man was uniquely evil or some incomprehensible monster with alien psychology, and I can understand why he took the actions he did. But that doesn't excuse the fact that what he did was monstrous, and I'm not going to back down from the description of "blood-drenched" when we have an actual soldier who took part in those deeds repeatedly telling his family that "invisible blood" is coming out of his skin. I like to think that if I was in the same position I'd take a different course of action, but that's very easy to say when it isn't my relatives being kidnapped.
I have never claimed that the Israelis are non-human or otherwise incomprehensible. I believe that deeds like the ones Israel is committing are morally wrong, but also that they have an incredibly negative effect on the people who commit them as well. The stoics and the buddhists both view harming others as an act that harms the self as well, and I'm honestly inclined to agree with them. Bulldozing people alive in great numbers as you demolish their homes leaves a stain on the soul that is impossible to remove - but with that said, I'm going to be largely reserving my empathy for the victims.
Is Israel not an apartheid state? If you can provide some evidence that Palestinians and Israelis are treated equally under the law I'd be very happy to be proven wrong. But when I hear about laws that say things like "The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people." I can't help but think of apartheid. I'm not a big fan of Ta-Nehisi Coates, but I think his description was right on the money.
I've read other books, yes. But some of those books are from the Palestinian perspective, and my view is informed by both.
I think that terrorism and unending warfare is a political consequence not of their continued existence but rather a reaction to Israeli policy. Change those policies, give them justice and a lot of that terrorism and unending warfare will vanish. I personally support a single-state solution with full franchise for the Palestinians and prosecutions for the minority of Israelis that were actually engaged in planning and carrying out the blood-drenched, bronze-age deeds that have rightfully garnered so much opprobrium from the rest of the world.
I feel like I addressed several of the other points here earlier, but I'm basing this off widely accepted and reputable sources. I think the UN and ICC are worth listening to when it comes to questions of genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing, and even pro Israeli sources largely agree that the north of Gaza has been destroyed and the people who lived there displaced in order to let the settlers start moving in as soon as possible. Even if I go solely by the deeds actually announced by Israeli government officials, I still think that "the lengths Israel has gone to." are that bad.
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