Google Workers Protest Cloud Contract With Israel's Government (wired.com) 522
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Dozens of Google employees began occupying company offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, California, on Tuesday in protest of the company's $1.2 billion contract providing cloud computing services to the Israeli government. The sit-in, organized by the activist group No Tech for Apartheid, is happening at Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian's office in Sunnyvale and the 10th floor commons of Google's New York office. The sit-in will be accompanied by outdoor protests at Google offices in New York, Sunnyvale, San Francisco, and Seattle beginning at 2 pm ET and 11 am PT. Tuesday's actions mark an escalation in a series of recent protests organized by tech workers who oppose their employer's relationship with the Israeli government, especially in light of Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza. Since Hamas killed about 1,100 Israelis on October 7, the IDF has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians.
Just over a dozen people gathered outside Google's offices in New York and Sunnyvale on Tuesday. Among those in New York was Google cloud software engineer Eddie Hatfield, who was fired days after disrupting Google Israel's managing director at March's Mind The Tech, a company-sponsored conference focused on the Israeli tech industry, in early March. Several hours into the sit-ins on Tuesday, Google security began to accuse the workers of "trespassing" and disrupting work, prompting several people to leave while others vowed to remain until they were forced out. The 2021 contract, known as Project Nimbus, involves Google and Amazon jointly providing cloud computing infrastructure and services across branches of the Israeli government. Last week, Time reported that Google's work on Project Nimbus involves providing direct services to the Israel Defense Forces. [...]
On March 4, more than600 other Googlers signed a petition opposing the company's sponsorship of the conference. After Hatfield was fired three days later, Google trust-and-safety-policy employee Vidana Abdel Khalek resigned from her position in opposition to Project Nimbus. Then, in late March, more than 300 Apple workers signed an open letter that alleged retaliation against workers who have expressed support for Palestinians, and urged company leadership to show public support for Palestinians. Hasan Ibraheem, a Google software engineer, is participating in the sit-in at his local Google office in New York. "This has really been a culmination of our efforts," he tells WIRED. Since joining No Tech for Apartheid in December, Ibraheem says, he has been participating in weekly "tabling" actions being held at Google office cafes in New York, Sunnyvale, San Francisco, and Mountain View, California. It involves holding a sign that says "Ask me about Project Nimbus" during lunch break, passing out flyers, and answering questions from coworkers. "It's actually shocking how many people at Google don't even know that this contract exists," Ibraheem says. "A lot of people who don't know about it, who then learn about it through us, are reasonably upset that this contract exists. They just didn't know that it existed beforehand."
Just over a dozen people gathered outside Google's offices in New York and Sunnyvale on Tuesday. Among those in New York was Google cloud software engineer Eddie Hatfield, who was fired days after disrupting Google Israel's managing director at March's Mind The Tech, a company-sponsored conference focused on the Israeli tech industry, in early March. Several hours into the sit-ins on Tuesday, Google security began to accuse the workers of "trespassing" and disrupting work, prompting several people to leave while others vowed to remain until they were forced out. The 2021 contract, known as Project Nimbus, involves Google and Amazon jointly providing cloud computing infrastructure and services across branches of the Israeli government. Last week, Time reported that Google's work on Project Nimbus involves providing direct services to the Israel Defense Forces. [...]
On March 4, more than600 other Googlers signed a petition opposing the company's sponsorship of the conference. After Hatfield was fired three days later, Google trust-and-safety-policy employee Vidana Abdel Khalek resigned from her position in opposition to Project Nimbus. Then, in late March, more than 300 Apple workers signed an open letter that alleged retaliation against workers who have expressed support for Palestinians, and urged company leadership to show public support for Palestinians. Hasan Ibraheem, a Google software engineer, is participating in the sit-in at his local Google office in New York. "This has really been a culmination of our efforts," he tells WIRED. Since joining No Tech for Apartheid in December, Ibraheem says, he has been participating in weekly "tabling" actions being held at Google office cafes in New York, Sunnyvale, San Francisco, and Mountain View, California. It involves holding a sign that says "Ask me about Project Nimbus" during lunch break, passing out flyers, and answering questions from coworkers. "It's actually shocking how many people at Google don't even know that this contract exists," Ibraheem says. "A lot of people who don't know about it, who then learn about it through us, are reasonably upset that this contract exists. They just didn't know that it existed beforehand."
I suppose Israel will use Azure or AWS then (Score:3)
Good luck convincing them to not take business.
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Amazon and MS don't want drama either....unless it's super-profitable.
Take names (Score:5, Insightful)
Should simplify the next layoff roster.
These protests make a difference (Score:2)
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We dropped 2 atomic bombs on Japan. (Score:3)
Re:We dropped 2 atomic bombs on Japan. (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. The sole reason that Hamas exists and controlled the Gaza Strip was because Israel unilaterally agreed to it - land for peace. Hamas violently broke that agreement (as anyone older than about 25 could have easily predicted) with a series of brutal, barbaric murders. Now they are running off the the world community again hoping for someone else to intervene. Classic chickenshit "punch someone in the back of the head and run for home". This is just the latest example, I have seen it over and over in my lifetime.
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Meanwhile in the real world it's been over a half century that the Palestinian territories have been occupied by foreign occupiers relative to the population living there and 20 years since Israel even attempted to engage with the Palestinians about coming to some sort of peaceful resolution to this occupation. Plus, let's not forget the constant settlement building on top of bulldozed Palestinian homes and the harassment and murder of Palestinians at the hands of Israeli settlers. What people would just si
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What people would just sit peacefully by under these conditions?
Ones with even an iota of care for their children or any sense of self-preservation at all. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Terrorists are not reasonable governments, you don't make deals with them and you definitely do not negotiate with them. The only thing you can do to terrorists is kill them. If you kill enough of them, it discourages the formation of new terror groups. If new ones do pop up, you kill those also. This isn't complicated.
We dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan at the end of WW2, and in
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If you kill enough of them, it discourages the formation of new terror groups. If new ones do pop up, you kill those also. This isn't complicated.
While you're correct this isn't complicated you manage to somehow muss it up. Israel has been killing Hamas members for decades now and yet somehow here we are. Furthermore, all that these mass civilian casualties will do is serve as recruitment materials for Hamas. "Angry that half your family is dead due to bombing done by foreign occupiers? Welcome to Hamas!"
As long as Israel occupies the Palestinian territories as it is now this conflict will continue. You can cite Japan all you want but we got in and o
Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow. A whole dozen people (slightly more, even!) protested outside the office, with dozens inside. Dozens out of 150K+ US Google workers. I am so impressed.
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Most people just don't give a fuck. That's pretty much the reason.
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It Didn't Bother Them Before They Took The Job (Score:2, Interesting)
Apparently these are just cry babies wanting attention. You know all the countries the company you work for deals with, right? Right??
And you live in a country that supports all kind of crazy shit. You protest that too and are moving? Give me a break, and others said, get back to work or hit the road.
Solution (Score:2, Redundant)
If you don't wanna work for google, then quit. Disrupting a company's operations deliberately is illegal last I checked.
Re:Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
If you work for an organization who started doing evil things, you don't just quit and leave the organization to do those evil things, you stay and try to stop evil.
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If you work for an organization who started doing evil things, you don't just quit and leave the organization to do those evil things, you stay and try to stop evil.
Sure, but only do that once your career is already in the shitter. Don't pretend after protesting the direction of a company (who employs you to do as your told, if they employed you to set the direction you'd have a different job) that you have a loving and fruitful future career at the company.
I don't understand this idea that you would want to work for a company whose management direction you so disagree with that you would stage a protest. These's aren't family members, despite what the CEO tells you. Y
Support Palestinians! (Score:5, Insightful)
Then ask Hamas to surrender, it's as simple as that. The war can be over in one hour if Hamas surrenders for being total idiots and chicken shits. I get it, that Hamas wants to do genocide -- hey each have our own hobbies, and that's cool. But I am increasingly confused as to whose genocide they're aiming for --all evidence indicates it's NOT of the Israelis. They went and provoked Israel on Oct. 7th .. what did they think would happen? I mean, you don't need to be Carl von Clausewitz or Sun Tzu to know that was a strategic blunder. Now they've lost most of the Gaza Strip to the IDF. So what kind of idiotic move was Oct. 7th? Saladin they're not. If you REALLY hate Israel, then all objective thinking and logic dictates you should be first in line to kick Hamas out. Protest Hamas, not Israel.
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Hamas was only in control of the Gaza Strip in the first place (for the last 20ish years) solely and entirely at the agreement and behest of Israel trying to gain peace. The attacks broke that agreement, what did anyone think was going to happen?
And the last is rhetorical, of course, because what is happening now is exactly what Hamas and all their supporters expected. They got in their licks, of course the Israelis responded just like any state would to such an attack, a bunch
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What does that mean? You sound like you wouldn't care what happens to the people in Gaza -- 20% of whom even you concede don't support Hamas. You're not seeing that as evil? Are you sure you don't have the same genocide lust as them? Btw, if that 80% statistic is true why hasn't Hamas held an election since 2007?
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The Israelis are the only ones who DO care about the Palestinians. Hamas steals their food and water and uses them as human shields.
Israel only wants to kill Hamas.
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Yeah I can agree that most Israelis care a lot more about Palestinians than Hamas does.
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Israel only wants to kill Hamas.
And they are achieving this goal by the way of genocide against civilians?
Re:Support Palestinians! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, they're not. Hamas is, via human shields.
I remember back in the 90s when every few weeks there'd be a big Palestinian terrorist attack on Israel, then immediately after the Israeli retaliation, suddenly the PLA would come out with a few suspiciously well produced and framed videos of wailing Palistenian mothers, pulling their "children" out of the rubble.
Only, sometimes they'd reuse the same dead children's bodies in different videos. Same kids, same clothes, same markings.
They made mistakes like that all the time back then. It was humorous and everyone in the western world simply stopped believing their bullshit.
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And havent human shield worked so well, Israel never kills civiliansoh wait, yes they do they ignore danger to civillians. Gaza is tiny, there is nowhere that is not around civilians.
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Hamas surrendering wouldn't stop the genocide. Israel would just claim that they didn't all surrender, that they need to destroy the secret command centre that teleports under every hospital they bomb, and that the war must continue.
The goal is not to destroy Hamas. Israel needs Hamas to justify continuing with their real goal - annexing and ethnically cleansing Gaza.
Unless something dramatically changes, in a few years all that prime beach front will be Israeli holiday homes. They do it every time. Destroy
Re:Support Palestinians! (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much every day in the West Bank.
Re:Support Palestinians! (Score:4, Informative)
From just a few days ago: https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
Note that the new settlements are illegal under international law.
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Palestinians used to have towns and villages there, before Israel stole their lands and demolished their homes in the 1980s.
Re:Support Palestinians! (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know much about this issue, but I do know how to search the Internet. The following top link from Google seems relevant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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They do it every time. Destroy what the Palestinians built, replace them with Israeli settlers.
Name one case where this has actually happened.
Not sure if you're being deliberately daft or not, but this pattern is very [wikipedia.org] well [aljazeera.com] established [nytimes.com].
Fuck those anti-Semites (Score:2, Insightful)
Fire those anti-Semites.
Re:Fuck those anti-Semites (Score:5, Insightful)
"Questioning the actions of the nation state of Israel is antisemitism"
What an idiot... the nation of Israel is somehow beyond reproach because 80ish percent of its population is Jewish? How the fuck does that make any sense?
New York and LA have tons of Jews. Does this mean conservatives who question the policies of the states those cities reside in are antisemitic? Of course not.
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Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala! Allah Admiral Ackbar!
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Jew hate has always been rooted in ignorance and propaganda.
No, there is no genocide. Israel is not attacking civilians. Hamas is stealing the food and water, and using Palestinians as human shields.
Just as the PLA produced videos of supposed 'dead children' being pulled out of the rubble of an Israeli strike against military targets, this too, is faked. Those "dead children" and their wailing "mothers" were literally reused in various videos. It was literally all staged. Hamas killed the kids. The mo
Too Profitable (Score:2)
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How exactly are ethics and principles profitable? If anything, they're highly detrimental to profit.
For reference, see any "successful" CEO.
What else should they be doing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Out of interest, what would your country do if a neighbour invaded its territory and slaughtered its citizens? By the USA's own admission [whitehouse.gov], Israel is doing more than Western powers to protect enemy civilians during wartime.
Perhaps the allies should have surrendered to the Nazis, or arranged a ceasefire when they got to Berlin, to spare German civilian casualties? At least the Wehrmacht didn't make a strategy out of using their own population as human shields.
War is tragic, and firing from behind civilian inf
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Out of interest, what would your country do if a neighbour invaded its territory and slaughtered its citizens?
Out of interest, what would the citizens of your country do if it had been continually occupied by a foreign country for well over a half century all while bulldozing the homes of your people and building homes for it's own citizens on your people's land?
I'll answer that for you, they would violently rebel.
October 7th didnt happen in a vacuum, it happened in the context of decades of provocative acts by the Israelis.
Useful (Score:2)
Guernica... (Score:2, Insightful)
That was one single bombing campaign on one day, which killed between 126 - 1,654 people, the vast majority civilians. The number of vi
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Re:Guernica... (Score:4)
"campaign on one day, which killed between 126 - 1,654 people, the vast majority civilians" ... that doesn't sound like Oct. 7th to you? If you don't like what is happening in Gaza, how about asking Hamas to surrender? If Palestinian lives matter to you, the shortest path to saving them is for Hamas to surrender.
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Hear hear.
Legally speaking, people in illegally occupied lands are allowed to fight back against their oppressors. There are limits, they can't commit war crimes of course, but the basic principle that resistance is allowed is enshrined in law. What's more, the illegal occupier can't then claim self defence when retaliating.
Self selection (Score:2)
Isn't it handy the way people with low information level brains reveal themselves? It saves the companies a lot of wasted time and money when it is time to weed out the bottom dwellers in the company's intellectual barrel. Too bad the companies don't do that with DEI and the like. Or maybe they do want emotional thinkers rather than rational thinkers.
{o.o}
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Sigh (Score:2)
Don't like it, find a new job. (Score:2)
Protest is fine, but not on company time (Score:2)
Re:Get back to work! (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. While I find in incomprehensible that anyone could actively support Hamas, it doesn't matter. You are getting paid to do a job. You don't like it, quit, but if you disrupt the business for whatever reason, you need to be gone, ASAP.
Words matter (Score:2, Insightful)
Protesting Israel's response is NOT the same as "supporting Hamas". That's like saying those against US's Iraq invasion were "pro-Saddam". It's being anti-mess, not pro-Saddam.
As far as "getting fired", if enough protest, it's hard to fire them all without impacting the company. It typically takes replacements at least 6 months to know the ropes. And selective-firing is awkward in many ways.
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Of course, that's merely sophistry. I note the invasion of Iraq enjoyed wide bi-partisan support - until it appeared to be giving Bush 43 too much political currency, whereupon, presto-chango, the hard left flipped and then it became the worst thing ever.
Re:Words matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Your interpretation of the turn against the Iraq war as being a byproduct of the hard left is laughable. By the end of the Iraq war plenty of conservatives were realizing waltzing into a country full of people who don't trust us and don't want us there not to mention destabilizing regional politics (Sadam was a firm enemy of Iran after all) was never a good idea. Hence many of our conservatives turning to isolationism.
As for what the above is saying, pointing out that Israel is engaging in highly questionable practices that are resulting in massive numbers of civilian deaths isn't "sophistry". It's pointing out obvious truths that are supported even by Israel's questionable data.
Re: Words matter (Score:2)
"Useful idiots".
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Yeah, being anti Israel is not being pro Hamas. This is real life not a child's cartoon, not every conflict has "good guys" and "bad guys".
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Re:Get back to work! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup. Just fire them all. Give them something to REALLY bitch about.
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Re:Hamas Fanboys (Score:4, Informative)
There is no evidence the IDF targeted aid workers intentionally. Accidents happen in war. I'm horrified by many things Israelis are doing in this war, but calling the deaths of these aid workers terrorism is simply ridiculous.
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Israel admitted it targeted them, with the mistaken belief that they were Hamas based on the mistaken belief that they were brandishing weapons, all according to what Israel has said. They were not targeted because they were aid workers.
Meanwhile, if you go into this kind of war zone and think you are safe, you are truly a moron.
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The simple fact that Israel targeted 6 aid workers is not propaganda.
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Except reports are coming directly from the aid organizations
Re:Hamas Fanboys (Score:5, Interesting)
The BBC did a good job of fact-checking and talking to experts about the Hamas and Israel death statistics. The people who study and collect wartime casualty statistics thought that their numbers were pretty accurate, although probably understated.
BBC, Checking Israel's claim to have killed 10,000 Hamas fighters, 29 February 2024
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
Israel claimed to have killed 10,000 Hamas fighters, but has no way to distinguish between Hamas fighters and ordinary civilians. Also, according to Haaretz and +972, whose reporters are in regular contact with IDF soldiers and commanders, the IDF counts all male deaths as Hamas fighters. On the ground, the IDF has free-fire zones, or "Death Zones," in which they assume that everyone in the zone is a terrorist, and can kill them -- men, women, and children. That includes 6-year-olds like Hind Rajab.
BBC, How the dead are counted in Gaza.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
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Given how Hamas has declared that every Israeli is either a current, past or future Soldier and so they are fair targets, it seems wrong to complain about Israel counting all Palestinian men as Hamas Terrorists.
The fact that Hamas lies does not make it ok for Israel to lie.
The two sides are not symmetrical.
at least Israel doesn't count all women and children as Hamas and torture them
Yes, at least they don't do that. But perhaps they should aspire to do more than that.
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The fact that Hamas lies does not make it ok for Israel to lie.
Neither side is lying about this. I think you're using the wrong word.
India does this much better (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is India cares about Kashmiri civilians as they are Indian citizens. India is not trying to ethnically cleanse Kashmir via collateral damage.
Israel on the other hand sends in untrained , terrified 18 year old conscripts who are terrified and shoot at everything and call in air strikes and artillery for everything. Heck they even shoot Israeli hostages. This is by design. Israel wants to maximize collateral damage because they want the Palestinians to leave. Hamas is only the excuse.
Hamas kills fewer civilians (Score:4, Informative)
So IDF is killing 2 civilians for 1 fighter (even assuming every male Palestinian dead is a fighter) while Hamas , a "terrorist" group killed 1 civilian for 1 soldier. >br>
Says something.
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You should also subtract Israeli police from the number of civilians killed, because as an occupying force they are a legitimate target for the resistance. So the ratio is actually better than 1:1 for Hamas.
Israel classifies all Palestinian men as Hamas, and many children as well.
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...That's a ratio of about 1 enemy soldier for 2 civilians.
Those are significantly better numbers than what US got in Iraq and Afghanistan ...
Only if you assume (1) that every one of those 10.000 Palestininan males the IDF has killed was a Hamas fighter. (2) That the IDF has killed literally half of the fighters Hamas was estimated to have at the beginning of the conflict.
How to maximize the number of dead palestinians at the hands of israelis.
Then maybe Israel would be better off not playing into Hamas' hands by continuing the unrestrained killing of civilians and resort to a far more targeted approach than carpet bombing and 'free-fire zones'?
Re:Hamas Fanboys (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a bit hypocritical of the West to expect a ceasefire from Israel.
We bombed and shelled the Japanese and Germans relentlessly until they surrendered. We did not ask the Germans if they were Nazis.
Hopefully, Gaza will surrender soon, and unconditionally. Then we can press Israel to be as generous and forgiving as the US was after WW2.
( The Brits and French were in a less forgiving mood, Russians more so for obvious reasons. Fortunately clear heads prevailed. )
Re:Hamas Fanboys (Score:4, Insightful)
The comparison to Germany is pretty apt as well. Gaza did willingly elect Hamas as its government, and Hamas themselves are incredibly similar to (and as it turns out, directly inspired by [wikipedia.org]) the Nazi party. Far too many parallels here, including the fact that Hamas is without question the instigator of this conflict, without even getting into the fact that they've been lobbing artillery into Israel for decades, which all of the Palestine supporters seem to think was a good idea, and then wonder why nobody wants to take them seriously.
Hamas has it within their power to end this. All they have to do is the same thing Germany did: Surrender. But, just like the Nazis, they'd rather see the entire thing burn first.
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Initially, during WW2 we tried to avoid civilian casualties. Military targets only, precision bombing. Part of the problem was that bombing was not very accurate, and targets like factories were often in populated areas, so a lot of civilians were killed.
Later on things changed and there was deliberate targeting of non-military targets. Arguably those were war crimes and not necessary to win, but let's not go down that rabbit hole.
Israel has precision weapons. We know because we gave them to Israel ourselve
Re:Hamas Fanboys (Score:5, Informative)
You're just making thing up. Hamas has never made peace with Israel. Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist and has never and will never make anything resembling "peace" with it.
Re:Hamas Fanboys (Score:4, Informative)
According to this article this is what Hamas offered in 1988:
If Israel wanted peace, it had to withdraw from the Occupied Territories, release Palestinian detainees, restore Palestinian rights, and allow Palestinians to name their own representatives, [...] acknowledge the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and the right of return to their land.
Israel will not negotiate for peace with an entity that does not acknowledge the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. These terms are not a peace offer, they are a death threat.
Re:Hamas Fanboys (Score:4, Informative)
Nice try, but nope. The first Hamas attack on a civilian target occurred in April 1993 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ), nearly a year before the mosque massacre. Beforehand, their attacks on "military targets" were comprised mostly of kidnapping and butchering Israeli soldiers. A real peace partner.
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Not that any of this matters: international law isn't defined by religious books. Israel, like any other country, has internationally recognized borders.
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The October 7 attacks occurred within the 1948 UN recognized borders of Israel. The Hamas terrorists entered Israel and butchered and raped innocent civilians living on land internationally recognized as 100% Israeli. Enough with the lies!
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The Anglos also hadn't lived in Germany for millennia until being ethnically cleansed by invading people who turned into Germans.
Jews controlled Jerusalem for around 400 years [wikipedia.org]. You're off by an order of magnitude.
Re:Hamas Fanboys (Score:4, Insightful)
I hear the same "arguments" from Holocaust deniers all the time.
The rest of the post is Zionist "human shields" drivel that has been debunked over and over.
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Such ignorance on display. Bravo!
Re:Iraq 2.0 (Score:4, Informative)
The IDF kills in self defense, and does not target civilians.
No, you useless idiot. That's Israeli propaganda.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/0... [cnn.com]
https://apnews.com/article/isr... [apnews.com]
Many more if you bother to stick your head out from Israeli propaganda.
FWIW there's plenty of Hamas propaganda too, but there's plenty of evidence that the IDF has shot civilians even when it's not a self defense situation.
Re: Israeli Fanboys (Score:5, Interesting)
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The reason why "finding a peaceful resolution" has consistently failed is that the Palestinians have responded to every serious offer by starting a war [fathomjournal.org].
There have been several opportunities for a Palestinian state, but unfortunately each time it becomes a possibility, they prove that their only true national aspiration is to kill as many Jews as possible.
Re: Israeli Fanboys (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason why "finding a peaceful resolution" has consistently failed is that the Palestinians have responded to every serious offer by starting a war [fathomjournal.org].
There have been several opportunities for a Palestinian state, but unfortunately each time it becomes a possibility, they prove that their only true national aspiration is to kill as many Jews as possible.
From the other side Israeli Jews have been constantly taking Palestinian land for over a century, and the backdrop of those "serious offers" was the consistent expansion of Settlements on Palestinian land [wikipedia.org]. If you were the Palestinians, would you have trusted the Israeli's saying they were going to give back your land even as they built new houses on it?
I fully understand the historical aspirations (and need) for a Jewish homeland, even after the holocaust Jews spent years in refugee camps since they literally had nowhere to go [ushmm.org].
But from the Palestinian side, invaders/colonizers came and took their land, when they predictably fought back the invaders took more, and now the invaders have established a long term pattern whereby the invader is regularly kicking Palestinians off of their land to build new Settlements.
Recall, the reason that Israeli security was so light around Gaza during the attack was the soldiers were relocated to the West Bank to contain unrest over expanded Settlement construction.
That pattern is going to create a lot of animosity.
I can only see three resolutions to the conflict.
First, is the two state solution. But that requires not only halting the construction of new Settlements and restrict or even freeze the expansion of existing ones for good. And you're probably not seeing the Palestinians trust it until you've maintained this for at least 10 years. That sounds extreme, but in reality it's just "stop taking other people's stuff".
Second, is what seems to be the current plan, keep expanding Settlements and pushing the Palestinians into smaller and smaller areas until you're literally left with just a couple Gaza like enclaves with all the Palestinians and then you want a few generations for emotions to die down (if you don't think of a way to literally push them into another country).
Third, Israel miscalculates in some serious way. For instance, they turn the Arab Israeli minority hostile and alienate too many Western allies, and suddenly moderate Jewish Israelis start leaving. If that keeps up people start getting scared and more folks start leaving, and at some point enough leave to top the balance and Hamas gets its wish and Israel ceases to exist.
Personally, my money is on Scenario #2 and that certainly seems to be the Israeli government's plan, unfortunately the path to that contains a potential detour to #3. This is why Hamas and Netanyahu so often find themselves objective allies. It's in both of their interests to keep the rockets flying in order to prevent any peace.
Re: Israeli Fanboys (Score:4, Interesting)
Many in Israel consider Netanyahu to have actually supported Hamas for years. Here's a Times of Israel article where they blame him for doing it and it blowing up in his face, although I suspect he intended for this outcome all along:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/... [timesofisrael.com]
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"bulldozing Palestinian homes to build Israeli ones" occurs when they're built without planning permission, which happens in every country, including Israeli homes. It's just that when the country is Israel, and the illegal builder is Palestinian, it becomes an International incident.
By the way did you know that Jews aren't allowed to live in the Palestinian territories, and that under Palestinian law, selling land to a Jew is a capital offence [nytimes.com]?
Re: Israeli Fanboys (Score:4, Insightful)
And are you aware of the fact that the Israeli government just recently authorized the construction of thousands of new homes on Palestinian land https://apnews.com/article/isr... [apnews.com] . Israel doesnt buy the property, they just take it.
Re: Israeli Fanboys (Score:5, Informative)
"bulldozing Palestinian homes to build Israeli ones" occurs when they're built without planning permission, which happens in every country, including Israeli homes. It's just that when the country is Israel, and the illegal builder is Palestinian, it becomes an International incident.
By the way did you know that Jews aren't allowed to live in the Palestinian territories, and that under Palestinian law, selling land to a Jew is a capital offence [nytimes.com]?
Did you know that Israel has violated 28 UN Security Council resolutions (which are binding for UN members, which Israel is)? Or how about that Israel has been condemned in 45 resolutions by the United Nations Human Rights Council? Or that Israel has violated the Geneva convention multiple times, including by using weapons like white phosphorus on civilians and by allowing their civilian population to settle in territory they're occupying?
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The funniest part about what you said is "I think".
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I do have to wonder about the Hamas charter, I feel like Hamas itself hasn't read it. I mean, they seem to be doing everything to bring about a genocide .. of Palestinians.
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The same Hannibal Directive that the very article you link to says hasn't been used since 2016? Nice try at disinformation, but not a very effective try.
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Wtf? All you're doing is engaging in classic bigotry. "This small handful of people here have negative attributes so all people like them have these negative attributes". It's the exact same nonsense "logic" that has been used to put down countless ethnic and religious groups over the centuries.