r/politics • u/Particular_Log_3594 • 6d ago

No Paywall Obama: Israel 'took the land' from Palestinians, 'ceded moral ground' in Gaza

https://www.jpost.com/international/article-911851
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u/elihu 6d ago

The Palestinians, he said, have to understand that they will not "outkill" or "outweaponize the Israelis...We have to look to other examples of how change comes about," he said, pointing toward "nonviolent strategies."

"That's going to take some time," the former president acknowledged.

I'm all for non-violent resistance, but this is a pretty out-of-touch thing to say. Israel is doing what they do because the US supports them. Palestinians can't change that.

As president, Obama actively discouraged Palestinians from taking their case for statehood to the UN and their case against Israel for war crimes to the ICC, actively denying them a peaceful means of improving their situation.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-15014037

https://www.timesofisrael.com/obama-reassures-netanyahu-on-iran-icc/

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u/Tiaan 6d ago

I think he's just saying that it's not realistic to have the goal of "destroying Israel" and that peace takes two sides.

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u/Throwaway5432154322 California 6d ago

Don’t think this comment’s going to be well-received, even though I agree with you 100%

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u/ghostmacekillah 5d ago

the middle ground of "the palestinians have no chance of winning a conventional conflict" and "israel is FULLY responsible for being the ones to leave Gaza and WB in order for the situation to improve" is not well received in general because neither side wants to hear it, because it emphasizes the hopelessness of the Palestinians to control their fate through any channels, and that the conflict will only end when enough international pressure is focused on Israel for them to finally do the right thing

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u/Throwaway5432154322 California 5d ago

But dude, we do not want the Palestinian nationalist factions that exist right now to win a conventional conflict with Israel. Thats not the route to any kind of two-state solution, because of what we know from what those same factions say they will do if they ever somehow destroy Israeli society. Meanwhile, the Israelis will never leave the west bank or Gaza until very legitimate security concerns for any given state in the same situation they are in are addressed for them, and they haven’t been - and these aren’t very hard concerns to assuage for Palestinian nationalist factions that are not extremist.

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u/ghostmacekillah 5d ago

i literally said "they have no chance of winning" a conventional conflict

how did you take that and say that i "want" them to win a conventional conflict?

please explain to me how "if they ever somehow destroy israeli society" happens when one government has an airforce, navy, and ground based army, and the other side has a collection of RPGs from the 1970s?

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u/Zealousideal-Film982 6d ago edited 6d ago

Yeah I mean. Let’s hold both sides to the same standard. If Netanyahu’s gov = Israel, then Hamas = Palestine. In this fair view, Palestine absolutely attempted a genocide.

Peace takes two sides. Before 10/7, Israel had not occupied Gaza for almost two decades. If Palestine had not invaded Israel and killed 1,200 innocent people in one day, this war would not have happened.

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u/stereofailure 5d ago

Every line of this is false. Gaza has never stopped being under Israeli occupation since 1967. Hamas cannot "invade" a land they have the legal right to under international law. 10/7 was in no way an attempted genocide, was not directly targeting civilians, and had a better ratio of armed combatants to civilian killed than any Israeli action before or since. 

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u/onepareil New York 6d ago

Before October 7th, 2023 was already the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank in 20 years. How long are the Palestinians expected to wait quietly for the international community to do something about the illegal occupation of their land? Israel has never been held to account for that, so if we’re going to be “fair,” let’s start there.

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u/Top-Passage2914 6d ago

Maybe if they would stop doubling down on violently trying to wipe Israel from the map like they've done for the past 80 years and just accept what they have, they would be in a much better spot. See: Germany after WWI, and Germany after WWII (and a few decades of hardship).

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u/disisathrowaway 5d ago

The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has been playing nice for quite some time and yet Israel continues to encroach with settlements and displacing Palestinians from their homes and farms.

Gaza looked to them and saw that peacefully waiting for something to change wasn't working out.

Not saying what Hamas did on the 7th is justified, but I can understand where they're coming from.

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u/Throwaway5432154322 California 5d ago

“I have to say I didn’t like it, but I totally vibe with it”

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u/disisathrowaway 5d ago

Not at all.

I'm saying that I'm not all that surprised that an oppressed people with little peaceful recourse resort to violence. You can understand something without condoning it.

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u/currogator 6d ago

And how was Israel established on the map in the first place? Oh, that’s right – through a massive campaign of mass murder and ethnic cleansing called the Nakba.

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u/Top-Passage2914 5d ago

Who started the war that led to the Nakba? Hint: It wasn't Israel...

And listen times were different back then. The world played by different rules. Land was owned by those who could take and keep it by force. What happened in 1948 may not have been right, but the 80 years since of Palestinians refusing to just accept their losses and move towards peace has only entrenched them much, much further into suffering. 

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/Top-Passage2914 5d ago

Also, there are no "victims" in this conflict. I know it would be easier if that were the case, but both sides have been terrible to each other for a century. That's kinda why it's such an enduring conflict that splits people's opinions--you really think if Israel was just evil incarnate and Palestine was an innocent victim who did nothing wrong, that pretty much every non Arab nation in the world would've just sat around and supported Israel for eight decades? Both sides are locked in a cycle of hatred and violence that makes them do terrible things to each other.

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u/Top-Passage2914 5d ago

I am blaming the people that began the violence. I am not saying what happened and has happened to Palestine is fully right, of course not, but if you provoke war and then lose, you tend to end up facing pretty severe consequences. That is how it has always worked through history--Southern Reconstruction after the Civil War, Germany losing territory after WWI, the occupation of Germany and Japan after WWII including decades of suffering in East Germany...

The only time you hear people complaining about a country facing hardship after starting and losing a war is when it's Jews that won. Wonder why that is

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u/currogator 5d ago edited 5d ago

It absolutely was Israel. The Nakba was literally preceded by decades of colonization and a campaign of terrorism designed to lay down the foundations for a future state.

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u/Top-Passage2914 5d ago

Wrong. See this is what happens when you just parrot what TikTok told you without actually learning the history.

The civil war started in 1947 because Arabs started revolting in response to the UN splitting Palestine into two, then it escalated to a full scale war when other Arab nations invaded the next year. 

Israel did not start the 1948 war, Palestinian Arabs did. In fact pretty much every year since then with the exception of maybe the 1956 and 1967 one, has been the result of Palestinians or other nations attacking Israel. And every time they get their shit rocked, and end up in an even worse position than they started out, but instead of learning their lesson they just keep doubling down on violence. And now their strategy is brainwashing naive western minds through social media with narratives like the one you're parroting, in the hope that if the international community also hates Israel, that they'll finally get their way.

Please, go do even some basic historical research, I beg you.

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u/Throwaway5432154322 California 5d ago

Nope, due to 3 generations of migrations of Jews joining and augmenting the preexisting community of Jews in the region

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u/Throwaway5432154322 California 5d ago

>2023 was already the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank in years

But WHY? Why? You can’t just say that like it’s some kind of conclusion.

The West Bank is also not part of Hamas’ territory.

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u/oldmonty 6d ago

Attacking 1200 people in one day is a genocide but killing 200k Palestinians over the course of multiple years including 50k or more children isn't one? 

Also, the only way you can say the war "started" on Oct 7th is if you had no idea about all the deaths and atrocities israel was committing before then.

Most people's memory starts on Oct 7th because that's when it hit mainstream news.

I'd been watching the shit israel was doing for years.

I'll give you an example: 

Two years before the Oct 7th attack there was a kid shot by an IDF soldier going to a mosque. The soldier walked up to him going up the steps of the mosque and shot him in the back.

The family petitioned the IDF for a trial to hold the soldier accountable. The IDF said there was no footage of the incident and declared the soldier had done nothing wrong.

This mosque was one of the most highly surveiled places in the entire area, I saw photos of cameras pointed at other cameras like something out of China.

6 months after that in 2022 there were reports of israel turning off water access to Gaza. They would just intermittently disable water from the lakes they had dammed up.

Gaza would get water for like 2 days out of the week and then 5 days of nothing.

While israel said it was fighting hamas over on the west Bank where there is no hamas presence there has been steady killings, especially if kids. Around 10-15 kids a month are killed there.

It's nuts to call it a war that started in 2023. Osama bin laden stated that israels actions against the Palestinians were one of the main reasons for the 9/11 attacks.

It seems they saw the murders and were outraged, we didn't see them so we didn't understand why we were being attacked.

We didn't know this because it was kept from us.

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u/kinetik 5d ago

The problem with this statement is that Netanyahu is not Israel, and Hamas is not Palestine. All the people of Israel cannot be lumped in together with Netanyahu’s crimes, even if he has a large following. His militarized supporters back that effort because they are afraid of losing what they have built and they are growing more bold. This doesn’t mean that all Israelis are bad, and it doesn’t mean that all Jews are bad. Just as in any population, there are those that do not support this. It is a false statement to lump all of Israel with Netanyahu.

Likewise, Hamas is not Palestine. The Palestinian people have been terrorized by the Israeli government and their military and settlers under Netanyahu’s regime have battled with retaliation and terrorist assault, but those are not the acts of all the Palestinian population. It is a fallacy to dehumanize them by people who wish to exterminate them. There is no room in this world for that kind of talk, and it is completely unjust and immoral to think that the crimes of a subset of a population make the whole population guilty for their crimes against humanity.

This would be like lumping everyone in the US in with Trump’s decisions even though we think he’s a traitor and an idiot. It just doesn’t make any sense to scapegoat them like that. We need to focus on the people who are actually at fault and hold them all accountable, as difficult as that may be. There are lovely and innocent people on both sides, and those people need to be cared for and protected, and their homes and their rights protected.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago edited 6d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/currogator 6d ago

Is it too much to ask people to know what their talking about? Hamas rules Gaza. It does not rule the West Bank, and has never ruled the West Bank. The West Bank (or at least those parts that haven’t been illegally annexed or settled) is ruled by Fatah.

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u/elihu 6d ago

Hamas doesn't speak for Palestinians generally. They run Gaza, they don't run the West Bank. The internationally recognized government of Palestine is the PLO, not Hamas.

I'd be willing to call the October 7th attack an act of genocide. But there's a big difference between a genocidal act committed at a particular point in time and a genocide that's been continuously ongoing for years and that has killed vastly more people and made life very difficult for millions of people (or as many of them as are still left).

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u/elihu 6d ago

Yes, but Obama was also actively blocking some of the legitimate avenues to peaceful conflict resolution when he was in office because they didn't align with what Israel wanted. He's putting the responsibility on Palestinians to solve a problem that can't be solved as long as the US is sabotaging their efforts. Violence doesn't work. Non-violence doesn't work. The status quo is to be killed and forced off their land, whether slowly or quickly. "The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must."

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u/TerrorKingA 6d ago

Palestinians also tried peaceful protests multiple times and got rewarded with brutal Israeli violence that resulted in maiming and deaths.

In the West Bank, they don’t even fight back because they know Settler reprisal will be backed by the IDF, and result in even greater catastrophe.

This “both sides” nonsense obfuscates the reality. It is entirely in Israel’s hands to stop the violence.

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u/currogator 6d ago

Netanyahu literally accused PA leader Mahmoud Abbas of “diplomatic terrorism” for asking the UN to mediate between the PA and Israel. The PA (which nominally governs the West Bank) is controlled by Fatah, which opposes Hamas.

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u/Financial-Painter689 Europe 5d ago

Everybody should watch the Gaza Fights for Freedom documentary to see how Israel handles Gaza peaceful protests

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u/walkallover1991 District Of Columbia 6d ago

Exactly. Every Palestinian tomorrow can wake up tomorrow, sing kumbaya, do a peaceful "Baltic Way" style human chain, and would still be rewarded with Israeli bullets - Israel would somehow spin the human chain was somehow violent.

All one needs to do is look at the 2016 Gaza border wall protests...that weren't even initially sanctioned by Hamas.

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u/cited 6d ago

They've never done it. Never. This conflict would have been resolved decades ago if they had. It would have been resolved day 1 because that's exactly what the UN proposed in 1948. Israel's moral ground is because they are fighting terrorists who act like terrorists and have done so for 80 years.

Until they do actually want peace, what should Israel do against nonstop aggression?

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u/shoto9000 5d ago

Since you already ignored it twice, I expect you'll just do it again, but regardless: what about the peaceful protests that did happen? The ones that ended in the protesters being kneecapped or killed by snipers, and their demands getting absolutely nowhere. If all it took was peaceful protests, why didn't it work, and why did Israel respond with violence anyway?

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u/ALargeClam67 5d ago

what were they protesting for?

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u/shoto9000 5d ago

The end of the blockade of Gaza? The end of the occupation/settlement of the West Bank? The killing of Palestinians by the IDF/Settlers/both?

But more importantly, which causes do you think it would be acceptable to kneecap and murder peaceful protesters over? What could they have possibly be doing to justify that response in your eyes?

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u/cited 5d ago

Which protests? The ones where they were breaking barriers and throwing rocks at soldiers?

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u/currogator 6d ago

I mean, not killing everyone and stealing their land would be a start.

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u/disisathrowaway 5d ago

The West Bank has been peaceful and passive for a long time and yet Israel continues to cosign on settler encroachment and the victimization of Palestinians there.

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u/senator_mendoza 5d ago

lol what??? Look I’m very opposed to how the settlers behave in the West Bank and the IDF support for settler violence, but acting like the Palestinians don’t commit their own attacks is being willfully blind.

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u/Continental__Drifter 5d ago

what should Israel do against nonstop aggression?

The state of Israel exists as an act of aggression.

The state was formed in an act of ethnic cleansing and land theft by a colonizing, occupying power.

You might as well ask what should Russian forces in Ukraine do against Ukrainian aggression.

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u/iadnm 6d ago

what should Israel do against nonstop aggression?

Probably stop perpetuating it, that will probably help.

And ooh all those terrorist children, real moral high ground.

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u/cited 6d ago

"The citizens will continue defending their pride and houses and will continue to serve as human shields until the enemy will withdraw." Hamas spokesman Mushir Al-Masri

"The fact that people are willing to sacrifice themselves against Israeli warplanes in order to protect their homes, I believe this strategy is proving itself. And we, Hamad, call on our people to adopt this practice." Sami Abu Zuhri, Hamas spokesman after the IDF aborted an airstrip due to potential civilian casualties 9 July 2014

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u/iadnm 5d ago

Is that why Israel gave Hamas literal breifcases of money?

Any time you bring up in Hamas in relation the genocide of the Palestinians conducted by Israel, it's underminded by the fact that Israel has funded them.

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u/cited 5d ago

https://checkthisfact.com/factchecks/israel-and-netanyahu-financed-and-created-hamas

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u/iadnm 4d ago

I love this shit cause it refutes nothing I said. Obviously Netenyahu didn't create Hamas, Hamas existed before he was prime minister.

But he did give them briefcases of money while prime minister, which means he funded them directly.

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u/cited 4d ago

Does this excuse Hamas's actions?

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u/_Fred_Austere_ 6d ago

That's the ceding part. I had exactly OPs attitude. I remember them rejecting tons of peace deals over multiple presidents, over my whole life. These guys deserve everything they get.

But Israeli settlers stealing houses, soldiers raping civilians, kids being killed. Took a while of wearing out the benefit of doubt, but now fuck these guys too.

I think most Palestinian civilians are not as innocent as some want to believe, but there's some things you still don't do, no matter what.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/cited 5d ago

I'm talking about the Palestinians pursuing peace.

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u/Santandals 5d ago

Nope, israelis are terrorists

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u/BillyJoeMac9095 5d ago

What they did not do was give Obama a serious commitment to support a peace process, which Kerry was seeking.

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u/elihu 6d ago

It is entirely in Israel’s hands to stop the violence.

Mostly; not entirely. It's also in the US's hands to stop giving Israel weapons and protecting them from repercussions.

It's up to the Palestinians to be ready to negotiate a peace in good faith if ever Israel is willing (or at least unwillingly compelled) to do the same.

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u/alienbringer 6d ago

At present Israel is doing what they are because of US support. However, Palestine has also had multiple chances to have their own land. Neither side has been in the right here since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

As for the UN and ICC. The ICC has no teeth and could do nothing since Israel, and the U.S. which as you noted supports them, do not recognize their authority. The UN is also likely to be struck down because of again current leadership of the U.S. and they have veto powers.

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u/Continental__Drifter 5d ago

Palestinians have never had a chance to have their own land - their land was stolen from them in the ethnic cleansing which was the formation of Israel.

If someone breaks into your house and claims it for their own, but then allows you to keep 20% of your home, that's not being "given a chance to have your own home". That's 80% of your home being stolen.

You might as well say Russia is "allowing Ukraine the chance to have its own land" except for Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk.

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u/Ok-Detective3142 6d ago

Palestinians have never been faced with a good outcome. They have always been asked to give up most of their territory to foreign invaders. No other people on Earth would be expected to accept such a deal.

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u/alienbringer 6d ago

I mean, that is absolutely not true. How the hell do you think the U.S. came to be. Let alone several of the other countries in the region at the same time formed when they agreed to the mandates of France and Britain. Syria and Lebanon, from France, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt, Palestine, Israel from Great Britain. The only ones who didn’t accept the deal was Palestine. Jordan being particularly important since it was created in the same mandate as Palestine.

In addition, they didn’t “have” territory (in the sense of being their own actual self governing body of land). They were under the Ottoman Empire as part of the larger empire, before that Egypt, before that sultanate, kingdom of Jerusalem, a number of differing Muslim dynasties, Rome, so on and so forth.