ForestBoard

Canaltia wrote:

For my last senior elective, I took a political science course on the interplay between religion and politics, and I got a B+, so I'm automatically an expert on the Israel-Palestine conflict (/s). In all seriousness, I've not read all 150+ new RMB messages, so sorry if I'm retreading old ground.

Fundamentally, this is a good summation of my opinions on Hamas. I'm obviously against the killing of innocent civilians, and when people in Hamas advocate for that, it is bad, but an axiomatic opposition to civilian deaths also leads me to being very anti-Israel. Hamas' October 7th attack was bad, but I think one can think that and simultaneously recognize it was probably inevitable. If we're name-dropping MLK, "Violence is the language of the unheard".

If Israel really wanted to de-escalate, and we're assuming Hamas is too far down the militant resistance pathway to negotiate with, Israel is in luck, as I'm sure the Palestinian National Authority would love to come to a peaceful resolution. Or rather, Israel would have been in luck if they hadn't done their best to undermine the Palestinian Authority, refusing to negotiate in good faith with them while encouraging Qatar's funding of Hamas. Maybe I'm being cynical, but to me, it seems like Israel wanted a militant Islamist faction in charge of Palestine rather than a peaceful one, because it lets them "fight the bad guys" by bombing anything and everything in Palestine, no doubt with the intention of occupying it and moving civilians in. The settler colonialism they were already doing was kinda slow, and they were getting some backlash from the U.N., and this speeds things up.

I'm personally not a fan of Hamas, as they've advocated for and done some pretty bad stuff, but realistically, I can't blame Palestinians who support Hamas, because there's not another option. If Israel wants Hamas gone, the easiest way to do so is to give Palestinians that option, and actually negotiate in good faith, as I'm sure the average Palestinian is more concerned with not getting shelled than they are with the eradication of Israel. But Israel seems to want to get rid of Hamas by getting rid of all Palestinians, and if that doesn't validate Hamas' positions, I don't know what does. Israel, as a nation-state, has a right to self-defense, but that's not what they're doing; they are, at best, engaging in ethnic cleansing, which I think they shouldn't have a right to do. The extent to which Hamas' actions are justified are the extent to which they fight against Israel's genocide of Palestinians.

This sentiment is where things get a bit more murky in my mind. On the face of it, there's nothing I disagree with here, so I'm not arguing against you as much as I'm using this comment as a jumping off point.

I think people tend to be too loose with their definition of "settlers" in this context. In my mind, a "settler" is someone actively engaging in a settler-colonialist project by moving to, and occupying, land previously held by others. Simply living on the land does not rise to that level; a child born to Israeli settlers and raised on Palestinian land is not a settler, as they didn't chose to be born where they were. If you use the label over generations, you can make an argument for literally anyone being a settler, as some time in the past, they almost certainly had an ancestor who displaced someone else to live where they live now. That's not to say non-settlers are blameless; most white South Africans were not settlers in the later years of apartheid, but many upheld apartheid nonetheless, and are morally culpable for the harm that said system brought about.

I'm also hesitant to say that Israeli settlers can't be civilians. They definitely aren't innocent civilians, but unless they are active members of the military, they are civilians, and it is unjustifiable to target them as combatants. October 7th saw the deaths of many civilians, and I doubt Hamas was trying to determine levels of moral culpability, so the Hamas combatants involved were absolutely wrong to kill them, absent resistance justifying self-defense. I'd actually argue that if Hamas just occupied territory and took hostages, they'd be right to do so, as that would be a proportionally fitting means of resistance against Israel. Not to say that the civilians taken hostage deserve it, but there has been a lot of undeserved actions taken against Palestinians, including members of Hamas, and Israel has provided no peaceful way of preventing future harm, let alone rectifying past harm. Israel created the conditions, and Israel is responsible for the outcomes.

Broadly, I think that Palestinians have a right to stability and ownership of land, but things get complicated when you get into specifics. They absolutely have the right to remove settlers and re-occupy their own homes, but if you're talking about a property that has passed through a couple generations since being taken, I'd argue that Palestinians should be given land and compensation, but not necessarily that specific piece of land. Ideally, any disputes should be resolved in the manner that produces the best outcomes, but good luck getting that passed as law, so I'd say that Palestine should be given enough land to equal Israel's population density, using the pre-active genocide number of Palestinian citizens adjusted for time. If non-settler Israeli citizens end up displaced as a result, that's unfair to them, and unfortunate, but it'd be far more unfair to deprive Palestinians of homes altogether, so it would be up to the government of Israel to compensate for that, as the entity ultimately responsible. Of course, this is impossible to do as of now, because Israel is not interested in "doing what's right", and they're the ones with the power to do so, so it's more productive to advocate for solutions that actually work.

I think I might be falling into this, so I'm going to stop writing stuff. I'll just finish by saying that I don't have an issue with a predominantly Israeli country in the Middle East named Israel, but if the current iteration of Israel is the form in which it takes, it should not exist.

Vantser wrote:

You come short of mentioning that Jewish immigrants, not the followers of the Zionist movements, owned less than six percent of all land in Palestine. Buying land doesn’t mean you get to make a new country. After the Nakba, more than 80% of the Palestinians were expelled and their properties were seized by the Israeli government. Prior to and through the foundation of the state of Israel, Zionist paramilitaries like Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi conducted depraved acts of terrorism against the Palestinian people as well as the British authorities, such as the bombing of the King David Hotel and Deir Yassin massacre.

The current conflict is an extension of, and the lengthy result of, the material conditions imposed by the occupier on the occupied in the past 75 years. It would be incredibly shallow to look at the past several months of depravity and decide that the trigger for it was October 7. During the same year, armed Israeli settler mobs in the occupied West Bank targeted Palestinian civilians and burned their properties; Israeli government officials were (and still are) calling for Palestine to be wiped off the map; the Israeli government approved the construction of 4,500 new illegal settlements in the West Bank and murdered numerous Palestinians who refused to give up their properties; Pogroms were being carried out against Palestinian villages; the IDF launched its largest raid in the West Bank in 20 years and raided a hospital in Jenin; and between August-September injured more than 100 Palestinian civilians during collective punishment raids. Israeli officials routinely refer to the practice of occasionally bombing the Gaza Strip, during which civilians and aid workers were also dying, as "mowing the lawn." It is, actually, disingenuous to focus on Hamas considering Israel's actions in the few preceding months alone.

Vantser wrote:

During 76 years of existence, the genocidal state of Israel has continued to erode the occupied territories of Palestine with total and complete disregard for any and all international laws. To believe that, after all what it has done, Israel as a Zionist project can be a "beacon of change" and a "positive precedent" in the Middle East is as morally unacceptable as leaving apartheid South Africa up to its own devices would've been. As I highlighted in my original message, again, there is a subversion of focusing everything on Hamas instead of confronting what Israel is and has been doing for much longer than Hamas even existed. I would hope that you similarly condemn the massacres that have been carried out by the IDF as acts of terror, including the mass sexual violence perpetuated against Palestinians.

A colonizer has no right to self defence, as they are always the aggressor.

Moreover, I did not promote justification for Hamas' actions; I stated that their actions were as a result of Israel's oppression and the material conditions which are imposed upon the Palestinian people. These material conditions in of themselves have spurred Hamas' rise and could not have been done without Israel's actions and involvement. Israel has repeatedly and consistently shown that non-violence by Gazan and Palestinian protestors will be met with violence. Just like the whites in South Africa, the Israelis aren't going to wake up one morning and say that the occupation is too cruel and apartheid is illegal by themselves. Therefore, there is only the choice of being one democratic country with equal rights for all, that struggles for equal rights for all, supported in every way possible. Asking Israel, as the apartheid state and occupier with all of the power, to abandon Zionism and Apartheid for true and equal democracy with the Palestinian people should not be a tall order nor an outrageous request.

Esterild wrote:

I continue to be disturbed by the style of rhetoric I see around this issue. For example, while I understand the reason for the linguistic choice of "Zionists" in preference to "Israelis" or "Jews" - which would be much too broad! - that term is also used by anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. When people refer to "the Zionists" like they're part of an enemy camp, that concerns me.

It's also not a particularly apt term here, since Zionism incorporates a lot more than the question of an Israeli state and also does NOT inherently include support of Israeli policies in/takeover of Palestine. When people in the current debate talk about "Zionism" like it's the enemy, it also leaves some (intentional??) ambiguity about what THEY mean by Zionism. Israeli settlers in Palestine? The existence of Israel itself?

I'm confused about why you would say Israel would never support a two-state solution, when Palestinians have more than once rejected such a solution, most notably after the Camp David Summit in 2000.

I also don't like the insistent language I see everywhere about "colonizers" and "settler-colonialists," and especially when it's tied to the sentiment that, well, sure, violence is bad and all, but what can you expect when you're being oppressed by colonizers? It seems dehumanizing, like calling cops "pigs" or illegal immigrants "illegals." It seems designed to erase all nuance from the discussion, when the situation is a lot less simple than just "oppressors vs. oppressed."

None of this is intended to take away from the fact that Israel's response to the October attack is wrong. I don't think anybody, at least in Forest, disputes that.

I would just ask people to consider their language a little bit more carefully, to consider what impact their words might have on Jewish people reading them, to consider whether their language might unintentionally encourage anti-Semitism, and to remember that this is a nuanced situation with humans AND bad behavior on BOTH sides.

Zerphen wrote:

• Forest Arboretum as the [b]Forest Arboretum with powers over Appearance. This will be the new regional nation where we will get all of our important government dispatches into one account, and fix up our dispatch network in general. There will be a few people with access to this account for working on this project: Myself, Garbelia, Kannap, and Anxious and Kevin. I believe Kannap will be good for this role since they have experience in writing, and they have also been around in the region for a long time so they can be helpful with any historical stuff we may need. A&K will also be a great person to have helping out as she also has some writing experience, has been quite active recently, and is excited to help out :] Garbelia has experience in making dispatches actually look good, and they have a plan to incorporate a Discord bot so that government members may easily add things to our dispatch system. Ruinenlust will also have access to the account so that it may be passed down to future administrations.

• Kannap as the Librarian with powers over Appearance. Kannap has previously expressed interest in restarting and breathing new life into our old Forest Library which has otherwise been forgotten in the recesses of our current dispatch system :P I think this would be a lovely project to revive so I look forward to seeing what they will do with it!