Just a guy... trying to do some good... thankful to be living in the free world. Pro Israel - the free country that must defend itself from destruction daily.
I'm sorry for what happened to your family.
There is no turning back the clock to 1948 and living where your grandparents lived.
Jews accepted the UN partition plan. Arabs rejected the partition plan and said the whole land would remain Arab from the river to the sea. Five Arab nations attacked the newly formed Israel, which was from the United Nations to be formed alongside an Arab Palestine, and your side lost despite it being five nations against one small people.
Jews allowed all of the Arabs that didn't flee to stay on their lands and become citizens of Israel if they chose. Many chose not to be a citizen of a Jewish country and left at that time as well.
Nazareth is 99% Arab to this day.
The best you can hope for is to settle a couple dozen kilometers away in the West Bank.
Waging a war has consequences. Your side chose not to accept the United Nations partition plan.
It's not an "injustice" that has been done "to" your family.
Your grandfather made a choice at the time and it was the wrong one. Your side made a choice at the time to attack and it was the wrong one.
Israel is Israel now and forever and won't be "Palestine."
Your side needs to give that up and stop holding onto a key to your grandparent's home and focus on nation building the West Bank and Gaza and making peace with the Israelis rather than waging endless wars and losing over and over again and thinking you will win someday.
It's sad to watch your side continually make horrible choices.
Choose peace and normalization.
Choose nation building of your own nation.
The West Bank is ancient Judean land and has ancient Jewish archaeology and biblical history all through it.
Israel has offered the West Bank and Gaza to Palestinians as your own state several times now and your side continues to refuse and shout "from the river to the sea."
Things don't have to be the way they are.
Israel is done offering peace, especially after October 7.
If your side doesn't step up and make an offer of peace to Israel and your side continues to be stubborn as a mule then you won't have anything but occupation of the West Bank and Hamas ruling Gaza and endless war.
Olmert offered AGAIN in 2008 despite Hamas taking over Gaza. Abbas refused to even begin to negotiate.
Take accountability for the grave mistakes on your own side and stop being perpetual victims that have no agency. It's not working. It's getting your side nowhere.
Jews built an amazing and free country where Jews and Arabs have equal rights within it's borders. Jews have shown we are willing to live peacefully with any Arab that wants peace: from Arab Israeli citizens to Egypt and Jordan, UAE, Saudia Arabia....you name it. If Arabs want peace, Israel accepts and lives in peace.
Until your side understands this and stops trying to destroy Israel you will be contained as a security threat.
Why would Israel do anything other than try to contain your people as a threat when they continue to vow to destroy Israel? Do you think Jews will just willingly lay down and die and hand over the state we worked so hard to build on our ancestral homeland?
We spent years in exile longing to return to our land. We were exiled to other parts of the world and not even on our land a few kilometers away. Your people still live a few kilometers from where their grandparents lived. On the land between the river and the sea.
And if you're anywhere else, that's a choice. You could be living in the West Bank and nation building and forming peace movements.
Israel has had gigantic peace movements this entire time. Meanwhile Palestinians have less than 10 people total that are peace activists and they nearly all live outside of the West Bank and Gaza.
The culture there is to call anyone that wants peace a "collaborator" and to literally kill them, or if you are lucky jail and torture them until they conform.
Focus on changing your own culture.
Until your side very loudly declares they want peace with Israel and normalization and forms new political parties that are focused on peace and nation building, rather than destroying Israel, you will be stateless.
I can name a lot more than 5. Let's start with 23 easy ones:
1. Designating a combatant a journalist automatically immunizes that combatant from attack.
2. A territory is occupied even if there is no presence whatsoever after a hostile armed force by virtue of being blockaded.
Jews live in Europe.
'GO BACK TO ISRAEL'
Jews build an entire state in Israel.
'YOU STOLE THAT LAND GO BACK TO EUROPE'
Jews utilize government benefits.
'PAY FOR IT YOURSELVES'
Jews pay for their own medical services.
'WHY DO JEWS GET A PRIVATE SERVICE?!'
Jews exist in society.
'JEWS ARE WEIRD AND WE DON'T WANT THEM HERE'
Jews build communities that cater to their customs.
'WHY DO JEWS GET TO TAKE OVER NEIGHBORHOODS AND DO JEW STUFF NO ONE ELSE GETS TO DO'
Jews express their religious beliefs in public schools.
'WHY DO OUR KIDS HAVE TO OBEY THEIR RELIGIOUS LAWS'
Jews build religious schools.
'WHY DO JEWS GET THEIR OWN SCHOOLS MY KIDS CAN'T GO TO'
Jews ask for kosher options.
'WHY DO I HAVE TO CHANGE SO THEY CAN FOLLOW THEIR RELIGIOUS RULES'
Jews set up their own kosher restaurants and grocery stores.
'WHY DO JEWS NEED ENTIRE GROCERY STORES'
Jews participate in politics and mention Israel.
'IF YOU WANT TO ADVOCATE FOR ISRAEL GET YOUR OWN ORG'
Jews set up their own lobbying org to specifically advocate for Israeli-American relations.
'ZIONISTS ARE FOREIGN ENTITIES INFLUENCING OUR GOVERNMENT'
Beware anyone claiming any group of people - including Palestinians - maintains an inalienable right to self-determination pursuant to international law. They are either misinformed or they're deliberately attempting to mislead you - or both.
Take this tweet from @Heidi__Matthews as an example.
There are some sources of int'l law that refer to an inalienable right of self-determination, specifically related to "the Palestinian people." HOWEVER, this rhetoric is taken from texts such as @UN General Assembly Resolution 42/95 from 1987 (pic 1). The thing about UNGA Resolutions is that they DO NOT establish binding int'l law.
The General Assembly is an important forum for int'l diplomacy, but resolutions adopted here do not establish int'l law...yet UNGA resolutions are the primary source typically cited by those claiming any group of people - particularly Palestinians - have an inalienable right of self-determination. Those advancing this claim are either misinformed or being deliberately misleading - or both.
Now, there IS a binding source of int'l law that DOES refer to the principle of self-determination of peoples. That reference comes from art. 1(2) of the UN Charter (pic 2). HOWEVER, this addresses friendly relations AMONG NATIONS - and the Charter applies, by definition, among MEMBER STATES to begin with.
This means, at a minimum, MEMBER STATES possess a right of self-determination on behalf of their respective populations. At the national level, this right is also reflected in art. 2(4) of the UN Charter, which reflects the obligation among MEMBER STATES to refrain from threat or use of force against territorial integrity & political independence of OTHER STATES (not pictured).
So MEMBER STATES - like @Israel - have an inherent right of self-determination, but not individual groups of people. Beyond doctrinal int'l law, this also just makes sense intuitively. Granting an inalienable right of self-determination to any group who claims it would immediately unravel the existing structure of national sovereignty among states. Groups as disparate as he Islamic State, Parti Québécois in Canada, and "sovereign citizens" the world over would all have the inalienable right to ignore existing governance structures in the name of "self-determination."
Claims of individual or group "self-determination" are a hoax. They always have been.
In the Palestinian context specifically, these claims today ignore (at least) one immensely inconvenient truth: Palestinians HAVE been exercising "self-determination" since at least 2005 when 🇮🇱 disengaged from 🇵🇸 territories.
UNGA Resolutions such as 42/95 (1987) emphasizing a supposed inalienable right to self-determination are rooted in a time when 🇮🇱 maintained direct governance & control of 🇵🇸 territories. The claim that Palestinians were "under foreign and colonial domination" back then was already tenuous & contestable. After Disengagement in 2005, though, this claim is now completely detached from reality.
As messaging from the Quartet emphasized at the time, the expectation in 2005 was for Palestinians to "end all violence and terror" and "dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure" (pics 3 & 4).
Instead, the "resistance" known as #Hamas diverted billions of $$ from international aid through agencies such as @UNRWA to expand "terrorist capabilities and infrastructure." And the end result, so far, was one of the most horrific atrocities committed in living memory on Oct 7 - followed by a large-scale armed conflict Hamas deliberately instigated by committing these atrocities - that has since devastated #Gaza.
This IS how Palestinians have exercised the supposedly inalienable right to self-determination. Trump's peace plan demands a new approach IN LIGHT OF the way 🇵🇸 has exercised the principle of self-determination.
Claims that this is somehow a violation of int'l law are either misinformed or misleading - or both. I'll leave it to you to decide which this QTd post is.
“That Israel is perpetrating a “genocide” in Gaza is a preposterous lie, easily disprovable to anyone not determined to believe it, but a shocking number of academics, intellectuals, Hollywood actors and Democratic politicians accept the claim without qualm.” @WSJ I am an academic, and as preposterous as the claim is the crisis of critical thinking that fuels it. https://t.co/bnboTYvbZi
It is the asymmetry that gets to me.
Hundreds of thousands of people can gather to spew antisemitic slogans like "from the river to the sea" and "Globalize the Intifada" and they have no fear any of those genocidal Zionists they are warning about will come there and start shooting.
A couple of thousand Jews with their families get together to celebrate Chanukah and they have to worry that this might be their last day - at the hands of the people supported by the "peace activists."
And the media and political leaders act as if this is the way it is supposed to be.
This is misleading nonsense.
This is the only group in the world where refugee status is passed on to children and grandchildren born elsewhere. You made up a fake definition of refugees exclusively for one group to perpetuate the conflict. There is no reasonable explanation for why a different definition of refugees applies to Palestinians than every other group in history.
You lead an agency that is dedicated to extending the conflict by investing in hate, promoting violence, and laundering money to those most responsible for it.
Dismantling UNRWA is an important step in eliminating the elements that currently make a political solution impossible. And it needs to happen sooner rather than later.
@BKLemons@misfitpatriot I respect that you believe that. No problem with it. Jews obviously do not or we would be Christians.
You respect me and I respect you. That's ok.
These people are evil
They also have a right to peaceful protest (which if they weren't evil antisemites they would do in front of the Israeli consulate)
A healthy society would make this so socially outlandish that no one would do this
We are not living in a healthy society
🚨🚨🚨 HAPPENING NOW OUTSIDE PARK EAST SYNAGOGUE
Antisemites have showed up outside Park East synagogue and are chanting for intifada.
The Rabbi of the synagogue is a holocaust survivor who remembers vividly the horrors of Kristallnacht.
Now, he gets to see the same human material that shattered the glass of synagogues in Berlin and Vienna in 1938, outside his own synagogue.
This is not about Gaza and has never been about Gaza.
This is an attack on the Jewish people.
Welcome Home, Eitan Abraham Mor
Eitan Abraham Mor, 25, was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, from the Nova music festival where he worked.
Born and lives in Jerusalem, he is the eldest of Efrat & Tzvika Mor’s 8 children.
He is a barista in Jerusalem and has a deep connection to his dog.
Before being kidnapped, he reportedly saved others during the attack, helping evacuate people under dangerous conditions. His family fought for his release.
We are so happy to have you back home, Eitan!
Welcome Home, Gali Berman
Gali, 28, was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023 from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, as was his twin brother Ziv.
He and Ziv worked as light & sound technicians and often traveled together.
They were very close, almost inseparable but held apart in cruel captivity.
Their family includes 2 older brothers, Liran and Idan and their parents.
Gali is described by friends as warm-hearted and outgoing, someone whose greeting “Shalom” would echo throughout the office and a friend who would always help others.
His family fought passionately for his safe return, keeping his name alive in public and diplomatic efforts.
Welcome home, Gali. Absolutely thrilled you’re back!
Welcome Home, Ziv Berman
Ziv, 28, was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023 from Kibbutz Kfar Aza as was his twin brother, Gali.
He and Gali worked together as light and sound technicians, often collaborating on music and event projects.
Ziv and Gali also work on Israel’s iconic annual “Festigal” where everyone is waiting for him.
Friends and family describe Ziv as reserved, someone who enjoys life: he loves shopping, collecting perfume and balancing work with play.
His family fought passionately for his safe return, keeping his name alive in public and diplomatic efforts.
Welcome home, Zivi. Absolutely thrilled you’re back !
Welcome Home, Omri Miran
Omri, 48, from Kibbutz Nahal Oz, was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023 from his home in front of his family.
He is married to Lishay. They have 2 young daughters.
Videos released by Hamas show him in dire conditions, pleading to return home.
He is known as a family man who fought to stay alive for his daughters.
His family fought for his safe return, clinging to signs of life and drawing on hope amid deep uncertainty.
We are so happy you’re back home, Omri!