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Steve QJ's avatar

"Are you kidding when you claim Israel has the desire to take all the land?"

No, I'm not kidding at all! I don't even have to look to history.

As I mentioned to Tom, Benjamin Netanyahu stood on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, before October 7th, and held up a map with Palestine completely erased and Israel occupying all the land from the "river to the sea".

In October, an Israeli concept paper laid out a plan to remove all of Gaza's population into Egypt (https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-population-transfer-hamas-egypt-palestinians-refugees-5f99378c0af6aca183a90c631fa4da5a).

In March, another member of Netanyahu's government claimed there was no such thing as the Palestinian people (https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-minister-says-no-such-thing-palestinian-people-2023-03-20/) laying claim to Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and even Jordan!

You can find countless videos (this one contains several examples - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61MjES_3iNE&t=101s) of Israeli's insisting that the land is all theirs.

Israeli settlers have been stealing Palestinian land (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eac1l1ozfLc), by force, for decades. And with the help of the IDF, have stolen more, in the West Bank, since October 7th. Forcing people from their houses at gunpoint in some cases. Again, this is justified by the claim that the land is theirs and ignored, and sometimes aided, by the Israeli government.

I'm not denying at all that there are Muslim extremists who want to kill Jews. Hamas among them. But let's not pretend Israelis are all moderates.

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Wen Jin's avatar

Netanyahu is not Israel, and you know that very well, please don't be disingenuous! Of course there are extremists in every single country, and maybe in Israel more than elsewhere, for good reasons - you cannot live under the threat of daily rockets thrown at you by a neighbor who hates you to the point of beheading your children, and still love this neighbor. But while this idea of a "greater Israel" is an extremist view in Israel, it is mainstream among Palestinians to hold the view that "from the river to the sea Palestine will be free"... of Jews. The reality is that Jews can live side by side or integrated peacefully with others (20%+ of the ISRAELI population is Muslim or Druze or Christian, holding full rights and representation) but Muslims cannot, when they are in charge. Name any Muslim majority democracy in which non-Muslims exist and have equal status. 950,000 Jews were expelled from middle eastern Muslim countries in the 20th century. Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews cannot return to those places where they had many generations of relatives. But non-Jews can absolutely live in Israel peacefully. Maybe if the citizens of Gaza and West Bank stopped acting like terrorists, led by corrupt and genocidal Palestinian governments in blind rage towards Israeli Jews (vs Egypt or Jordan that also controlled these areas at times), they too could live in freedom to pursue their best lives. How did those Muslim Arab-Israelis come to be there? Because they or their forefathers were not "driven out," but instead chose to remain and become Israeli citizens.

On Arabs living in Israel, here's a piece from Wiki about Jerusalem:

"Under Israeli law, Arab residents of East Jerusalem and Druze residents of the Golan Heights (both Israeli-occupied territories) have the right to apply for Israeli citizenship, are entitled to municipal services, and have municipal voting rights; this status is upheld due to Israel's effective annexation of the former through the Jerusalem Law of 1980 and of the latter through the Golan Heights Law of 1981.[22] Both groups have largely foregone applying for Israeli citizenship, with the Palestinians of East Jerusalem and the Syrians of the Golan Heights mostly holding residency status."

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