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Apr 28
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Steve QJ's avatar

"À simple approach. What would you do if your neighbor burrowed under your house and he and all his family Said they would accept no outcome otherr than the annihalation of you, your wife and children? Answers on a postcard please."

YES! I love empathy approaches like this. I won't jump straight to whataboutism, I'll answer your question first.

If I had this neighbour, I would want him gone. Anybody would. I understand why many Israelis feel this way. The thing is, I would also ask myself what I had done that made him hate me so much.

And if the answer was that I had stolen his home and driven him from it, if I had spent decades killing his family and continued even up till the present day, I would recognise that his hatred was very largely my fault. And I would hope that at some point along the 76 years I'd been doing this to him for, I would have chosen to stop and make a sincere attempt at peace (no, before you say it, Israel has absolutely never done this).

But here's the whataboutism I foreshadowed. And I'd like you to also answer before any whataboutism of your own.

What would you do, if a group of foreigners came from overseas, declared half your home their territory now, and forced you and your family out of your home at gunpoint, killing and raping any who remained for too long? What would you do if, over the next 76 years years, they slowly but surely stole more and more of your home, occasionally "mowing the lawn" by which they meant killing you and your family?

As for the solution, as I mention in the article (I desperately wish people would actually READ my articles), there's been a solution on the table since 1988. It has near universal international support, hundreds of countries in support, including Palestine, and all it requires of Israel is that they follow the international laws that they've spent decades violating: stay within your borders, stop occupying foreign territory, address the people who you forced from their homes, either by letting them return, or compensating them for their losses.

This solution has been voted on in the UN dozens of times, always with overwhelming international support, almost always with Israel and the US being the only major countries in opposition. In the last vote in 2022 153 countries voted in favour, 10 abstained, and only 9 voted against.

There is a solution. It's a good one. Israel doesn't want it because they want to continue stealing the land.

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