I'm a centrist in that I think the Israelis and Palestinians should live happy, productive lives and not be shot.
It just so happens that only one side seems to disagree with that.
this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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Judging from other commenters here, there are radicals from both sides wilfully ignoring atrocities of the team they pick. Two state solution is the only way that would allow peace for both Palestinians and Israelis.
fnuny meme but if you read the article i don’t think calling them “centrist” is defensible:
Mr. Aboutboul is a founding member of Students for Standing Together, a new student group at U.C.L.A. that aims to unite Israelis and Palestinians to call for a cease-fire in Gaza.
so these “centrists” are doing statistically better than your representatives. the comments here talking about “only committing a half genocide” are just doing bad faith echo chamber discourse, which i don’t find the be productive.
At Columbia University, Aharon Dardik, an Israeli American student, formed a group called CU Jews for Ceasefire after finding that his viewpoint wasn’t fully reflected in the main pro-Palestinian student movement. He is a pacifist who spent his teen years with his family in the West Bank but who ultimately refused to serve in the army in Israel. He believes in working with Israelis and Palestinians toward collective liberation and a world not divided by ethnonationalist allegiances.
Dr. Waxman also became a target of right-wing pro-Israel groups, including after he wrote on social media that he supported the International Criminal Court’s request for an arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a position he said he took as a supporter of international law.
no hate to OP but let’s laugh loudly at the ones who deserve to be scoffed and mocked, not the people who are actively supporting Palestinian emancipation. i’m sure there’s stuff to be criticized in these folks but if there is, find it and call it the fuck out specifically instead of hand-waving “centrist”—especially when doing so just deplatforms the underrepresented Jewish Anti-Zionist population.
(honestly let’s laugh at whoever wrote and approved that headline, it does no service here.)
The most middle of the road opinion on Israel-Palestine issue is the two state solution. It worked on Northern Ireland with the Good Friday Agreement and it should work between Israel and Palestine. Many scholars from both sides also want to use NI peace deal as the blueprint. Compromise is the key just like with Protestants and Catholics did in Northern Ireland.
The problem is, of course radicals from both Palestine and Israel do not want this because-- well-- they're radical.
How will creating two segregated ethno-religious states help anything?
What do you mean? The issue of Palestine and Israel isn't ethno-religious, it's nationalism in nature. There are still Muslim Arabs in Israel especially in the north where they live peacefully with Israeli Jews.
This is false. Only Israel does not want a two state solution. Even Hamas accepted it in 2017.
This is what people mean with enlightened centrism. There are no two sides preventing peace. There is only Israel preventing peace.
The 2017 Hamas charter is openly available on the Internet, and it says it still doesn't recognise Israel as a state and strive for "complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea." This is not really a two-state solution. Two states recognise each other's right to exist if this is indeed a two state solution.
Of course Hamas is not stupid like the PA. They will not recognize Israel unless Israel agrees to a two state solution.
Your arguments are the most generic Hasbara so I am not assuming you are speaking in good faith.
Hamas stated "from the river to the sea" in that charter you yourself mentioned. That could not be any more ambiguous.
Yeah those radical Palestinians, not wanting half their home cut off for colonizers.
You could say the same to most modern states. Colonisation is wrong, but mistakes were made and recognised. It's impractical to deport people back to their ancestors' homeland. You can't expect white Americans and South Africans to return to Europe, or black people in the Americas to return to Africa. That's like trying to abort an already born baby. Go far back enough, and we all came from Africa and you might as well say all humans should vacate the rest of the world and return to Africa.
Countries who support Palestine also support two-state solution. Israel is there to stay and Palestine has the right to exist. It's simple as that. Frankly, any one who does not support two state solution are radicals. That goes for Israeli, Palestinians and outsiders who don't support two state solution. Someone mentioned Hamas 2017 charter, but it still doesn't recognise Israel's right to exist. And if Hamas really want a two state solution, they would not have taken hostages, many of whom are foreigners with no dog in the race. Is this really the act of freedom fighters? Had resistance fighters in World War 2 killed civilians? Last time I asked this rhetorical question to someone, the person said it's justified as price of freedom. If your answer is yes, then you are a radical and need time to think about your life.
Most people, specifically outsiders who don't even live in the region and feeling safe behind the rule of law, too opinionated on Israel and Palestine issue, don't really have a clue when they are prodded down to the kernel. They consume information from what I would call "fast food" sources and from biased ones, and thus adopt radical stances. Two state solution IS the solution.
Go far back enough, and we all came from Africa and you might as well say all humans should vacate the rest of the world and return to Africa.
You confusing migration with the colonialism. Colonialism disempowers indigenous peoples from determining how the land they lived on should be used.
Israel took the land and removed the people of that land from the land. Two states do not remediate the harm or re-empower the indigenous people to have a role in determining the use of the land. The extermination of the Israeli population is not the solution, but flooding the region with colonists in three separate ways and leveraging those people to steal more and more land was both explicit and implicit.
Have you ever looked at the two state solution map? It is insane.
Precisely why radicals on both sides need to stand down and recognise each other to create separate states. It's already too late to remove Israel as a state. Right now what should happen is Israel stop colonising West Bank and Gaza, while Israel has to allow Palestine their own state and thrive in peace.
When you're born in a country you're only a colonizer if you start conquering more territory.
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If you don't support indigenous resistance to occupation, you're on the side of the occupation. There is no center.
Where do you stop? At single called organisms, or when they invaded the earth?
Next you're going to tell me the Cardassians were the bad guys.
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Yep. Also calling it the“Israel-Hamas war” is propaganda. Makes it sound like the only people dying in Palestine are Hamas soldiers, which is obviously nowhere near the truth.
Centrists are literally just anti-opinion and spineless.
Free Palestine.
Centrist just support the status quo. So if the status quo is genocide then they just support genocide.
So you agree the people in the article are not centrists and that the post is all a shame then? Because they don't support the status quo and want a ceasefire and peace talks.
Calling them centrists was a lashing out against people they didn't know and the views of various people that weren't the same.
Overall I would argue this post is pro war, pro genocide propaganda.
Thats and worse. They do what they are paid to do. DNC centrists heard from their consultants that whoever had the most money tended to win elections, so they sold out in every way they could. Theyve almost abandoned the idea of having a party platform at all. Youd think that means we could just gofundme some government action, but you have to gofundme an amount that beats the corporate donaters' preference. Good luck with that. Centrist will do anything to simply win, which leads directly to oligarchy.
When one side is committing genocide and the other side wants no genocide, you don't pick the middle and support half-genocide.
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At my university the police literally threaten anyone who tries to be pro Palestine… every Jewish group is pro zionist
The US government is violently supressing free speech where it relates to Israel, and pretending its because of a threat to all Jews. Heres whats in that bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/6090/text SEC. 4. DEFINITIONS.
For purposes of this Act, the term “definition of antisemitism”—
(1) means the definition of antisemitism adopted on May 26, 2016, by the IHRA, of which the United States is a member, which definition has been adopted by the Department of State; and
(2) includes the “[c]ontemporary examples of antisemitism” identified in the IHRA definition.
Whats in the IHRA definition?
This definition for what antisemitism is:
- Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
- Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
- Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
- Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
It attached itself to the civil rights bill of 1964. So it can take action against anything related to the federal government, like schools, federal contracts, etc, but it does not apply to you and me as private citizens (yet). I can and will say all day that Israel is a genocider, is a violent theocratic racist state, should not have been granted statehodd by the UN, and is as bad as the Nazis.
We must only kill half the Palestinians.
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