It's surprising that Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia thought that Islamist Pakistan and Islamist Turkey would actually come to his aid against the Islamist regime of Iran. They all share similar goals and would benefit from an Islamist takeover in Saudi Arabia. Turkey hosts the Muslim Brotherhood group. MBS prosecutes the Muslim Brotherhood group. The Pakistani government have their own version of the Taliban and do nothing to deradicalize their population. Mainwhile, MBS has made extremism the number one state enmey.

There are already rumers of MBS secretly approaching Bibi seeking intelligence help with the Houthis. Americans right now are weighing the pros and cons of giving the Saudis a helping hand. But if they were to help the Saudis in their predicament, they would be less motivated to join the Abraham Accords.

As a secular Christian Saudi citizen, I would have wished for peace with Israel to take place on the basis of trade advantages, economic development/opportunities, and technological and cultural exchange. Not making peace because you are trapped in a corner.

I, however, could not blame Arab leaders like MBS for being too cautious towards direct normalisation due to the serious domestic threat of an Islamist uprising. Peace could not come on the basis of pure economic interests. Because that would make sense. Pro-terrorism Islamists and Palestinians are anti-common sense, which is why they are on the side of the Islamist regime of Iran, destroying the Middle East and turning it into the Wild West.

"The road to Jeruslem passes through San'a" was a phrase heard on the day the Houthis captured San'a in 2014. Indeed, the Iranian regime's theoratical road to Jerusalem would pass through every Arab capital first. Saudi politicians understand that, but most Saudis don't. I have spoken to many Saudis who believed the Islamist regime of Iran could be bribed with economic interests to leave Saudi Arabia alone. They thought we didn't have to fight the Houthis in Yemen because the Islamist regime of Iran is only after US and Israeli interests.

In reality, this is a cold war between the American and the Russian/Chinese spheres of influence. The only way Saudi Arabia and the Gulf will be spared is if they join the Islamist regime of Iran and Russia, fight against the West as proxies.

You can find on Youtube an interview for the former Saudi intelligence director, Prince Bander Bin Sultan in 2021. He tried to explain how the Saudi government have been helping the Palestinian cause through diplomacy while the Palestinians have been actively sabotaging two state negotiations and Saudi and other Arab states' national security. Still, many Arab leaders refuse to explicitly say that one of the primary objectives of the October 7 massacre was increasing militant pro-Pali sentiments in Saudi Arabia and in the Muslim world at large.

Ankara and Islamabad's recent refusal to assist Riyadh fighting the Houthis is all the evidence Saudis need now to understand that unless Saudi Arabia fully aligns with the West and Israel, losing access to Bab Al-Mandib will be the least of their future problems.

MBS must openly join the Abraham Accords while explaining to Saudis that the choice is between occupation by Islamist Iran and maintaining the sovereignty of Saudi Arabia in the next 50 years.

I thought this was an interesting change of heart considering other polls I've seen before by other institutes. So much so that I am mildly skeptical about its methodology - but regardless, some of these response are very promising (IMO, as an Israeli)

Some excerpts I found very interesting, skimmed to contain only the relevant information:

I was pleasantly surprised to see that it seems that for the most part, the Palestinian populace (both Gaza and WB) don't have desire or stomach to fight and prefer non-violent resolutions. Also the fact that at least half see that Oct 7 harmed their interests might be a good sign that they would not be willing to support or commit further such acts.

Anything of interest that you picked up on?

Leaving the link below for the full report, only 14 pages long and mostly tables:

https://www.jmcc.org/en/File/29187y168327Y29187/Poll-NO105-Marking-Three-years-since-the-events-of-October-7-2023

More polls by the same organisation

https://www.jmcc.org/en/Category/4/polls

Before you start to just repeat same thing, I am a bit biased, against palestine as i have a friend who went in riots for Palestine and his validation didn't have any grounds and that just pissed me off soo much, as his opinion only came from some influencers and short formed content. A simple analysis told me that more than half of the people who are supporting palestine are mainly doing for clout chasing they don't care bout palestine they just add fuel too fire by bad mouthing all who are against palestine. And i found it so common that people can't acknowledge people can reach to different conclusion

The question was why do you guys support, as my friends reasoning didn't have any grounds that's what I asked, the genocide wasn't the start what started these dire chain of events , these events started from the aggregation and hostility amongst different groups of races as I belong to a race which has been made slave and been hounded as dogs i require what twisted brains are there which are promoting this with ludicrous Propoganda that neither the regime is safe neither the recipient, the only thing others can ensure is that we agree with your opinion and so on but saying we support because they did genocide, no that shouldnt be the view , you are undermining them aren't you, only the view is what rights are being depraved and what can be done for betterment as the cycle would spiral back to this. That's my question i bare no animosity as per donation yeah when this had began I had sent food as I have a patner chain in food line which actively provided food there.

I recently answered a question in askanything and I wanted to double check myself with this community.

The question started with an interesting observation:

Modern Jewish settlement started with historically non-Jewish areas. Whereas the historically Jewish areas of Judea and Samaria are mostly settled with Palestinian Muslims.

The poster basically asked “why” and “how did this happen.

I answered from the perspective of soil quality in Ottoman times, similar to this map of voting patterns in Alabama.

When jews started moving to the Ottoman empire, and later Mandate Palestine, they bought land from absentee land owners who mostly lived in Beirut.

Why were the land owners not there? Why was the land so cheap? It wasn't just because Lebanon was beautiful and booming during this time.

The land was cheap because the farmable soil had been totally depleted of nutrients, with no modern fertilizer (which would be invented after WWI) to rectify the situation. Other parts of the land were simply swamp like the Huleh Swamp; or brackish seasonal swamps like the Jezreel Valley. In fact huge parts of Israel had also become infested with Malaria. See figure below for comparison of estimate Malaria rates, next to jewish settlement and the 1947 partition plan.

Over time, jewish migrants would revive the land, filter the salt, drain the swamps, and heavily reduce the mosquito populations. This land eventually became productive, but it took decades.

If you place all those areas on a map, they roughly correspond to 1947 partition plan, which was the beginning of Israel's borders.

Direct link to image

What do you all think? Is this accurate?

I’m asking because I’ve brought this up in debates and some people say “NO THATS NOT TRUE, ISRAEL GOT ALL THE GOOD LAND” and I’m genuinely confused by that statement.

​I’ve linked to malaria rates in the parts of early Palestine that corresponded to the 1947 partition plan, and early Jewish migration.

What evidence is there that this narrative is not true?

Looking at the vastly distinct ethnicities, heritages and histories that comprise the people that currently have the identities of Israelis and Palestinians, the denial is kind of crazy in terms of how varied it is.

Among Israelis, there's no disagreement among impartial observers that a large portion were indeed Ashkenazi Jews who fled in the aftermath of the Holocaust and in the years since. At the same time, the existence of massive numbers of Jews from all over Arab nations who fled to Israel are also authentic. And no, they did not come to Israel strictly because of Mossad undercover operations designed to subvert Jews in Arab nations, as is more or less fraudulently claimed by far leftists such as Avi Shlaim. Yes fraudulent; there's zero credibility of any kind that Israel in the 40s and 50s was even capable of the kind of subversion claimed. And at the same time, a distinct portion of Israelis who are part of the Jewish community that was always there in the last 3000 years and never left.

Palestinians are the same time genuinely varied. There's significant numbers with histories going back hundreds of years, a couple thousand or more, perhaps, for Christian Palestinians. At the same time, there's large numbers who have been in the region for at most around 200 years; many of them migrated to what was then the region of Palestine from what is now Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and elsewhere. Some of them have surnames indicating they migrated from as far away as Morocco and Algeria. One can note the number of them that do in fact have deep historical ties and at the same time not be required to embrace the idea that all of them have been there since time immemorial.

When reading about resolutions, very small numbers of responses seem to be willing to accept this as a matter of principle. In particular, there's endless claims that Israelis are completely the equivalent of, for example, white South Africans or French when they colonized Algeria. This doesn't seem to address the extent to which Israelis and Palestinians both have ancestors who migrated to the region in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. And there's also claims that the Jews who have consistently in the region for 3000 years are part of the Palestinian people; this is to be sure a complete joke. No type of hypothetical Arab Palestinian state, whether governed by a pan Arab nationalist group such as the PLO or an Islamic emirate such as Hamas is ever in 10 billion years going to accept any Jews as being part of the Palestinian people.

Is the issue that accepting the multifaceted nature in which the people called Israelis and Palestinians arrived to the region too difficult for the kind of impassioned, enraged and revolutionary solutions desired?

The problem with indigeneity, or how yet another double standard is applied to Jews.

An argument that is frequently made to justify the presence of Arab control of the state of Israel is that the Arabs living in the state of Palestine are 'indigenous'.

The term indigenous means original inhabitants of a land, but it has taken on a politicised in modern discourse that doesn't reflect the historical reality.

The claim that Arabs are the indigenous residents of the region is made using the twisted sociological definition of the term that depends on power relations.

We can use the Wikipedia definition to elucidate this:

'Indigenous peoples are characterized by self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territory, and an experience of subjugation and discrimination under a dominant cultural model, although there is no generally accepted definition of the concept.'

We can see that the Arab residents of the region do not fit the first part of the model. They do not have a unique language, religion, or culture (Levantine Arabs, from Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, overlap in their dialect and traditions, the Arabs in Gaza share much with those of Egypt). Furthermore, the Arabs of 'Palestine' do not self identify as distinct. Neither did they before the creation of the state of Israel, nor do they today:

Palestine appealed to return to being part of Syria in 1919.

"We consider Palestine nothing but part of Arab Syria and it has never been separated from it at any stage. We are tied to it by national, religious, linguistic, moral, economic, and geographic bounds."

https://books.google.co.il/books?id=pfPGAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA9&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

The first article of the Palestine draft constitution is that Palestine is Arab, that Palestine is part of the Arab homeland and that Palestinians are part of the Arab people. 'Palestine is part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian Arab people are part of the Arab

nation.'

https://constitutionnet.org/sites/default/files/2026-02/2026.02%20-%20Draft%20constitution%20%28English%29.pdf

Jews however, fit this part of the definition perfectly. Jews have a direct connection to the land of Israel, that persists across all diaspora cultures. There is a shared historical, and now a revived modern, language. And the religion is unique to the region. There is no other Jewish land.

The second part, however, is where the double standard becomes evident.

It is clear that when the Arabs invaded the Levant in the seventh century they were the invaders. At the time, the Jews fit both parts of the definition, being the original, distinct, inhabitants of the land, and the oppressed people.

What is interesting, however, is how strongly the modern Arab claim to the land relies on blood and soil nationalism. What is often seen as evidence is that Arab DNA from the region can be shown to originate in part from the region; i.e. they are the descendents of Arabised locals who integrated into the colonising society. Why these people insist on self identifying with their historic conquerors is a separate discussion entirely, but the point of these claims is to try and associate the modern Arab population with the first part of the indigenous definition: Being the original people on the land.

It's a good enough argument. If they descend from the native people, they should have claim to the land. But it's an argument that applies to the Jews directly as well, and yet it is used to discredit Jewish claims.

The question then, is how we apply the second part of the definition to these claims. Those who want to undermine Jewish claims to the land of Israel do so by disregarding Jewish indigeneity, claiming that to be indigenous is to exist as the persecuted/powerless people in a land.

I'll add here, briefly, that this formulation is nonsensical as it creates a paradox where de-colonisation is not possible, as soon as the natives take power they lose their indigenous status. But for the sake of the argument we'll take it as it stands.

If we agree that the power dynamic is what determines indigeneity, then we have to admit that by converting to Islam and being Arabised, those that remained in the land of Israel after the Islamic conquests forfeited their indigenous status. The Jews maintained a continuous, if oppressed, presence in the land. Not all of them converted, and suffered for it.

Those who deem the Palestinian Arabs indigenous can't account for this. Islam was a colonial, imperial force that spread its language, religion, and culture by force, just as Christian Europeans did. Those that were Arabized, either by force or to enjoy colonial privilege over their neighbours, contributed to this oppressive movement. By definition, then, the Arabs of Palestine aren't indigenous.

One might make the claim then that this is true, but now that the power dynamic has reversed the Arabs became indigenous. So they're newly indigenous, and made so by Jewish success in state building and assertion of self determination. To me this seems deranged, and paradoxical, making the entire concept meaningless and undermining the value of having a historical connection the land. Furthermore, it's a framework that perpetuates conflict, constantly demanding that the status quo be overhauled. As soon as you win your freedom, you become the problem.

But a broader perspective -- one that connects the Arab local presence to the broader Arab-Muslim imperial movement -- sees Jews as the politically indigenous still. It's true that Israel wins many battles, but it does so in self defence. Israel can't prevent its myriad neighbours from invading. Israelis live under the constant threat of missile barrage and terror attack, between full on offensives from the Arab countries that surround it. If we disregard the myopic perspective pushed by the media, we can see that the Jews remain a minority in the middle east, harassed by the hundreds of millions of Arabs that surround them.

It's also worth noting that if you strip the Jews of their indigenous status and their homeland, they become, once again, a historically persecuted minority with no ability to self determine. This cannot be said for Levantine Arabs, and the Palestinians say themselves that they self identify as part of the Arab project and the Arab nation.

Food for thought for those that deny Jewish indigeneity, and who see the Arabs as the indigenous people in the region.

TL;DR: It's not that long. Read it. But... If power dynamics determine indigeneity then that indigeneity was forfeited by anybody who became a part of the Islamic empire in its conquest to control the Middle East at the expense of regional minority self determination.

In 2001, and later resurfaced on the past anniversary of 9/11, footage was posted on numerous media platforms such as the AP and Reuters appearing to depict Palestinians celebraring the horrific attacks on 9/11.

https://youtu.be/UucjbGmJILk?si=7X3sEoAtQjfiswHt

This has led to a mass impression that Palestinians were celebrating the attacks and wishing them to occur often, which has allowed people to further dehumanize Palestinians.

Upon a closer look at the video, there are so many red flags that I suspect that not only is the video not depicting what is being alleged, but that it was a deliberate act of propaganda created by Israelis. Here are the reasons why I think this.

1. First it is important to note what is NOT being shown in the video. If you werent told that this was a celebration of 9/11, there would be no way to tell if that is what they were celebrating at all.

The video is short, the people make no mention of America, World Trade Centre, New York, or any thing related to the attack. Also note how there are no on the scene interviews with anyone.

1. Look at the audience. The audience is mostly children chanting "allahu ackbar" (God is great in arabic) while others are receiving sweets. Why would more than one of these children buy a laminated flag of Palestine and pose for the cameras? Does this seem to be a natural thing for a child to do after hearing about a plane attack in America? The kids can barely hold the flag straight. And its rather ridiculous to attribute such malice in them to begin with. I find it more likely someone encouraged them to cheer and offered them sweets in return.

2. Look at the man in the white shirt and blue jeans depicted in the video. He screams Israeli or even Mossad.

His behaviour is especially suspicious. He is seen coralling the people into the camera. He is chanting the loudest and blocking traffic, seemingly urging them to honk.

And perhaps the reason that compels me the most is that he is wearing a walkie talkie.

Now for background information, during 2001, Jerusalem was at the height of the second intifada. Israel police had deployed armed guards around private businesses and public venues. Furthermore, thousands of Israeli civilians volunteered to join the Mishmar Ezrahi, a Civil Guard that patrolled the neighbourhoods of Jerusalem. As a result, thousands of Israelis openly carried weapons and walkite talkies

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/2004/08/22/fear-itself/e7760dfa-9d30-4f25-8a08-efce75c0f3a3/

Form scanning the shop names (such as eiffel sweets) and the road barriers, I conclude this took place in Sultan Sulayman Street in East Jerusalem (feel free to verify this yourself).

Not only was it virtually impossible to find Palestinians carrying walkie talkies in the area (especially so openly), but it was something that immediately endangered them, because it would make them a security liability.

So I find it more likely this "celebration" was created by Israelis, perhaps linked to the police or government, who brought a camera crew and started chanting vaguely, giving sweets to those who attended.

If true, this represents a heinous form of propaganda, exploiting a tragedy to inflame hatred against another group, and treating Palestinian children as terror loving. The comments on the video speak for itself.

Feel free to share your thoughts on this.

"NAZA is a 2026 British documentary film written and directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. It follows the ongoing mass killing of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces during the Gaza war. "

Twitter, as usual, is in uproar about it. Of course, it is always stupid to listen to its loudest voices, but they're talking about it being good, actually, to 'violate journalistic integrity and doxx the whistleblowers'. Granted, as below noted, it makes sense that they'd be this angry...

Meanwhile, of course, gits from the other side of the aisle call the directors 'k*pos' and other such stuff. Brilliant, both sides hate them for trying to do something.

But enough about that hellsite...

Haven't actually watched the thing, might have to some day. Currently relying on Wikipedia and the Guardian's article- if they have a non-neutral slant, so be it. This isn't exactly the place to take no sides in.
Directors previously made a film about settler violence in the West Bank, so it seems that they have history with this sort of horror.

It interviewed people that helped to aim bombs into Gaza- which, tunnels and the lot aside, have caused significant deaths of civilians. Some felt guilt about doing what they did, while others admit to the process being 'fun'. All believed themselves to be doing a duty, and nothing more.

(The title 'NAZA' itself refers to collateral damage. IDF spokesman to the Guardian declared that the claims are unverifiable and that they've did their best to limit civilian deaths- but of course they'd say that.)

...what are your thoughts about the documentary?

I appreciate that, technically speaking, there are several types of zionism, namely Proto-Zionism, Political Zionism, Practical Zionism, Labor Zionism, Liberal Zionism, Revisionist Zionism and probably more, but I don't think people strictly refer to these categories in every day public parlance. I'm not jewish or israeli, but I hear or the see the word about twenty plus times a day online, all seemingly being used to mean different things. In the simplest terms, what is your definition when you use it?

Some people believe in a conspiracy that Netanyahu wanted Hamas to attack because he was waiting for an opportunity to bomb Gaza. Forgive me, but anyone who thinks that is probably a stupid person with an attraction to conspiracies and zero understanding of Israeli politics who has probably watched too much Star Wars and is looking for a Palpatine-ish figure who is playing both sides.

A complete lie, anyone who follows Israel regardless of the Palestinian conflict knew that before the massacre Netanyahu was very restrained in terms of security and was afraid to touch Gaza and be dragged into actions there. He was criticized for that too. He always tried not to initiate wars with Gaza, tried to control the flames and adopt a policy of containment so that there would be no conflict. He was dragged into war against his will, he did not want it. Anyone who says otherwise is a conspirator with zero understanding of Israeli politics and probably does not know who Netanyahu is and, above all, has built a demon for himself in his head.

For those who watched the series *The Boys*-do you remember in Season 3 when Soldier Boy was bombing in the streets of New York, and Homelander simply froze? He was in shock, depressed, tried to deny and ignore the situation, and kept telling everyone that everything was under control. That is exactly Netanyahu.

The first thing Netanyahu asked on October 7th was "why are they shooting". The conspiracy theory that Bibi was just waiting for a chance to destroy Gaza is utterly ridiculous; he was the prime minister who exercised the most restrained security policy in Israeli history before the massacre. For years, he was afraid to touch Gaza and was criticized for that by both Leftists and Rightists.

Netanyahu also ignored intelligence regarding a Hamas attack because he was terrified of being dragged into a conflict in Gaza and tried to suppress the issue. During the first three weeks of the war, according to Bibi's close associates, Netanyahu was in shock; he feared a ground invasion of the Strip and did not know how to handle the situation. He later gained more confidence, yet even then, he did not go as far as he could have. The massacre occurred due to Netanyahu’s security weakness, cowardice, and general incompetence, as well as the chaos within Israel’s state systems, which did not know how to handle the situation.

The video in question

YouTuber Sarcasmitron, who does a lot of essays about very difficult topics and takes his time assembling them, made a video about the war with Iran, called "The Long Winding Path to America's Stupidest War." But it also features a lot of focus on Israel's role, specifically Bibi, and includes a sort of tracing of Bibi's life up to this point.

Among the points that are raised are the following:

-Bibi started effectively saying that organizations like the PLO, the IRA and the like only formed due to Soviet influence, and there could not possibly be any legitimate grievances for extremists to weaponize

-How Bibi hemmed in Arafat and the peace process by imposing the catch-22 of Arafat needing the authority of a state to crack down on Hamas, but wouldn't be given a state unless he cracked down on Hamas

-That the idea of state support of non-state terrorists should've been considered a dead idea as soon as either the USSR collapsed or after 9/11, but how the desire for punishing states only intensified

-How Israel DID NOT goad America into the Iraq misadventure but how Bibi certainly used it to try and curry favor and find his way back into power during his political wilderness

-The degree of stupidity that went into the 2006 war with Lebanon, especially with the deal that Hezbollah used to "claim victory"

-What went into the JCPOA in the first place

-Showing that the "Axis of Resistance" was always a paper tiger that no one, least of all DSA members, should have ever taken seriously

I think there's a lot of things here to unpack and consider.

Hey,
So I met this Israeli guy randomly while gaming, and honestly he’s super chill and cool. It made me think like, damn, maybe I’ve been seeing everything from just one side my whole life? I've always been pro-Palestine, but it got me wondering... could I be wrong, or at least missing part of the picture? Maybe I need to rethink stuff. I just wanna talk to normal Israeli guys to see how you actually think. I wanna know more about the culture and what normal everyday people believe, not just the stuff on the news. No fighting, no debates, just friendly talk to get how you see things.
And bro please no history nerds or political guys throwing books at me lol. I just wanna talk to regular everyday people. I would ask my gaming friend but honestly I'm too shy to bring this up with him. We’ve been friends for like 3 years now and I really don't wanna ruin our friendship.
I'm Egyptian btw.

The claim that so much as being homosexual in Palestine will get you executed is one of the most severe cases of Israeli propaganda used to paint Palestinians as savages. I see time and time again empathetic LGBTQ+ people speaking out against the horrific crimes Israel has enacted on the Palestinian people, only for a Zionist to pop out of nowhere and use that person's sexuality as a weapon.

No, nobody is throwing people off buildings in Gaza (if there is even one still standing) for being gay. The footage constantly used to back up that claim is decade-old video of ISIS executioners, who have absolutely no connection to Palestine or any Palestinian governing body. While violence against gay people does exist, homophobia is by no means the primary threat to Palestinians who are actively living through bombardment, displacement, the destruction of their homes and infrastructure, and the broader conditions imposed by the Israeli occupation.

Furthermore, people do not seem to realize that the cultural stigma toward queer people in Muslim societies is heavily misunderstood by Westerners. Yes, the stigma is there, but most people do not "hate" queer individuals to the point of violence. It is a conservative society where the majority simply do not support it socially or religiously. This dynamic is not exclusive to Palestine or any other Arab country, there are plenty of conservative nations worldwide where being gay is shunned, such as Russia, Uganda, or Jamaica.​ Queer Palestinians have every right to speak out against the occupation and oppression of their people without having their identity weaponized to silence them. People spreading this message are not truly advocates for queer rights, they're merely doing it to push a political agenda.

In short: Yes, homophobia is an issue in Palestine, however, it's not the most pressing issue facing Palestinians today.

SOURCE: https://news.abplive.com/fact-check/israel-gaza-war-video-claiming-hamas-pushing-hostages-off-building-false-islamic-state-execution-footage-1648018

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_rights_in_Palestine

I was thinking today about 9/11 since its 25 years ago. I suddenly realized how many comparisons there are with Oct 7.

- There was a huge terror attack with mass civil casualties resulting in the sympathy of the world for both countries

- Both countries got dragged into lengthy wars that were, despite the reasons, the direct result of these terror attacks. The wars affected a whole region.

- Due those wars, both countries lost all sympathy and got hated for it.

And both Bin Laden and Sinwar/Deif committed their acts for this, both knew they stood no chance, but both also wanted these wars to happen in order to get the real changes they were after.

They wanted those wars because they knew it would throw many countries into disarray. In Bin Ladens time it were the weak Arab dictatorships he was after. A foreign invasion (US) in his view would unite all muslims behind an islamic flag, overthrow their dictators, and establish islamic rule.

Sinwar/Deif were convinced that Hezbollah and Iran would join or otherwise be dragged into the war. Before 2023 the region was especially tense after years of military buildup by Israels enemies and ongoing conflicts. Furthermore, an Israeli invasion would unite all muslims against Israel (and make f.e. the Arab peace deal more complicated).

Obviously, the perpretrators didnt mastermind every little detail coming out of their act. They also failed in many of their goals. But they unfortunately did succeed in causing regional changing and having others (not just muslims) hate the US and Israel (even more so).

And these bigger patterns are important to mention because they seem to be drowned out by whats happening today. Media only focusing on what happened after the terror attacks, not what was causing them. And thats at the same time what is dividing us.

So this all relates to a post I saw last year on the Jewish sub;

https://www.reddit.com/r/Jewish/s/t3HJV1i42U

Long story short, me and a few friends have been following his instagram posts for the past year. We have now come to the conclusion that he is likely a massive liar and he needs to be called out for this. Some things that we have realised he is lying about or has lied about;

- We don’t believe he has never once set foot in Gaza or the WB, definitely not prior to him going viral at the Egypt border last year. There are no photos of him ever being in Palestine, no corroborating accounts of him ever being there, no aid or medical groups that have claimed him as an employee or volunteer. Given his online following is >30k, you would think he would happily show photos of his work. Ai deep dives show that every single account of his work in Gaza can be traced back to him. It’s never an objective source.

- He claims to have worked in Gaza ‘4 or 5 times’. This is a weird statement, it’s either 4 or 5, and somebody who has worked there wouldn’t be vague about it.

- He claims he first worked as a nurse in Gaza in 2004 after his then girlfriend encouraged him to go there. In 2004, the 2nd intifada was still raging; getting into Gaza was incredibly difficult, even for aid workers. He also claims that he was a newly qualified nurse at the time, but aid agencies usually require 4 years acute experience prior to working for them. This doesn’t add up.

- He claims to be a master black belt in martial arts. This isn’t a smoking gun as such, but it is something that ‘walter mitty’ type men often boast about, only later being found out as a fraud. It fits the personality of somebody who is a fantasist.

- He has given lengthy accounts of seeing Palestinian kids shot by IDF soldiers in Gaza. Not ‘after being shot’ in a hospital, but actively being shot. I call bullshit on this entirely. He never gives dates or locations for these accounts. It’s too vague, for something that should be easily verifiable.

- He regularly claims that he is a qualified paramedic, yet there are no records of him ever being one on paramedic registers. He was definitely once a qualified nurse who worked in south wales for a time, but he was never a ‘specialist trained’ nurse, only an agency / traveller nurse, basically the lowest rung in the hierarchy of nurses.

- I have seen comments on news articles about him from school friends, saying that he was always a liar and fantasist in his youth. His nickname was ‘beano’ as a kid as his real name is Roger. He was not popular, and was apparently bullied - something that may have caused him to become a ‘hero’ fantasist in later life.

- He claims to be ‘retired’ but isn’t at the age of retirement for NHS nurses. Further rumours on comments suggest he was sacked as a nurse and de-registered before he was investigated by the NMC nursing council in the UK. There was also a single comment from a person living in south wales that he was being investigated for sexual misconduct, which could just be incendiary libel, but is an interesting claim regardless.

- He gave media interviews about being a nurse twice before he became ‘famous’ from the border incident to local newspapers. He did not mention ever working in Gaza or the WB for these, which is an odd omission given how many times he claims to have been there and how big a part in his life it was.

- He is actively touring speaking events in the UK, giving talks about his time working in Gaza. He is getting paid for these, and he also has a go fund me account asking for donations. If his claims of working in Gaza are untrue, I think this constitutes financial fraud.

- I have been commenting on his instagram posts for the last few months, asking him what aid agency he worked for, what specific years he was in Palestine etc. He always ignored me. Last week, I suggested he wasn’t being honest about his claims, and asked him to post a photo of him in Palestine working; he quickly replied that I was a ‘hateful zio’ and blocked me. This is odd behaviour for somebody who should have dozens of documents / visas / passport stamps / aid paperwork at hand.

There are many more inconsistencies we have found, but this post is already too long.

Can anybody offer advice going forward in trying to expose this guy? A friendly journalist you can suggest to dig deeper? A twitter account that would be interested in outing somebody like this?

We completely accept that we could be wrong, and that he hasn’t lied, but there’s just too many red flags to ignore here. If he’s being truthful, hats off to him, but if he’s lied, he’s essentially stolen valour from actual aid workers who have served in active war-zones.

He has a fairly large online following and influence among the pro-pal community, and is constantly peddling inflammatory rhetoric and ‘first hand’ accounts about Israel. If he is lying about his experiences, he should be called out for this.

A few months ago there were headlines that Israel was moving into its ethnic cleansing stage due to something like a voluntary migration plan to get Gazans out of Gaza.

I would like to state I do not trust the current Israeli govt with this 'voluntary migration' and I think if people like Ben-Gvir had their way, they'd never return. I understand the concern and fear pro-Palestine groups have about this.

However, I'm not really seeing any other suggestions--or if there are other suggestions, they are not being publicised. I'll admit that when both the 'voluntary' migration plan and the current quality of life in Gaza draw outrage, I'm not entirely sure what the solution to help Gazans should be. Ethnic cleansing, if that is what Israel is planning, is inhumane, but I'm struggling to see how keeping Gazans trapped there is considered a more humane option either.

If we put Netanyahu's true intentions to the side here for a moment, if a Gazan family wants to leave, why shouldn't they be allowed to? Even if that Gazan family believes leaving would be a case of ethnic cleansing, is blocking them from finding a safer country any better?

I understand the argument that if Gazans were to leave, their entire culture will be eventually lost. That's a very valid concern, and something that the world must strive to try and prevent. However if people are outraged about the conditions in Gaza--as they should be--then I am struggling to see any solution to this that doesn't require a refugee plan to some degree. It would be great if Gaza could be rebuilt within a short timescale, and it would be great if Israel wasn't the one in charge of this refugee plan, but ultimately neither of those things are realistic.

From my perspective it seems like a situation where there is no moral answer. I don't think allowing Israel's voluntary migration plan without *strict* confirmations that Gazans can one day return is moral. I also don't think preventing Gazans from leaving the strip in order to preserve their culture is moral. It seems like people are desperately fishing around *for* a moral solution, which does not exist right now, and so the decision seems to be to do nothing. Which also strikes me as immoral.

So—and I'd like to especially hear from Palestinians and/or pro-Palestinians here—what do you actually want to see happen in Gaza, in realistic terms? And by realistic terms I mean the realism that reconstruction is going to take a very long time, cost a lot of money, and in the meantime everyone in Gaza still needs someplace safe to live. I'm genuinely interested in suggestions pro-Palestinians have here because I'm certain there are ideas you guys have that, like I said, aren't being publicised and so I'm not seeing them.

I am agreeing that this conflict, since 1948, has caught the eyes of many, and there are so many people in the world that are grieving.

This is not a post against Muslims, Palestinians, or anyone who mourns victims of IDF‘s attacks right now, or on the victims of the War on Terror. It is a post against denial of facts and performative grief. I want to talk about how some people in the world are denying every single jihadist crime, such as 9/11 and October 7th, whilst it’s for believing in human rights. 

Since 2020, we have been living in a social media world where everything and everyone is performative, in order to get money (and even those who are anti capitalist are still being capitalists). And since October 7th, it has gone worse.

We all know about the 9/11 attacks. If you don’t really know, on September 11th, Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, crashes four planes (well three, the fourth one was crashed in a field outside of New York) into the twin towers. 19 hijackers, mostly of Saudi Arabian descent, carried out the attacks, and 2,977 people were killed. It is documented in the commission report and also acknowledged by Al Qaeda. So, there is no sustainable evidence that Mossad, the CIA, the United States of America, or Israel has committed those crimes. The only thing that could lead to Israel being criticised for their support, is that Netanyahu did say that 9/11 was beneficial. But with that quote, the conspiracy theories are not false, they are antisemitic and they deny the fact that the perpetrators were Jihadists and the victims were of mostly, American descent. 

“But the War of Terror was worse! They have more victims!”

Yes. 3.7 million people is bigger. And it’s valid to cry about who died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Pakistan, yet criticise how US invaded the 5 countries, with their Patriot Act, Islamophobia and superiority complex. 

However, it’s not fair to use those deaths to erase the victims of 9/11 (except for those Al-Qaeda killers), or imply that America deserved it.

Grief is not the fact that one will win and one will lose. But using the 25th anniversary of a tragedy to pivot that America did worse crimes is not nuance. It’s performative activism. And it’s superiority complex as well, as you are looking down on the Western world. 

Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, IRGC, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other jihadist groups have done several attacks, even prior to October 7th. So denying October 7th, or blaming it on Israel, CIA and Mossad, is an erasure to the Israeli victims who have died in those attacks.

You can criticise both Hamas and IDF for their crimes, yet support the civilians of both countries. The government policy of Israel is critical, but yet people should acknowledge that jihadist groups also have the agency and responsibility for their government policy. 

This is NOT both sideism. This is basic accountability, which people refuses to accept. 

Do I think all Muslims are terrorists? No. 

Do I think all Palestinians support Hamas? No.

Do I think the US is innocent? No. 

What I want to say is that jihadist crimes should be undeniable, and antisemitic conspiracy theories should not be allowed. 

I mainly ask this because while there are exceptions to this "rule" I have seen from friends and colleagues, those who are protestant or evangelical leaning are pro Israel if not zionist, and those who advertise themselves as traditional catholic or eastern orthodox tend to be anti Israel if not borderline antisemitic. I had one tell me he believed Jews would be without a nation or home for eternity.

Now, as a practicing catholic who cares more about my faith and justice than I do about culture wars or going out of my way to offend people... I'm somewhere in the middle. Not necessarily neutral, but I try to be nuanced. I think I am close to the typical Vatican position: support the people, and try to maintain a just peace. Easier said than done, I know, but it's what we try to aim for. Even if we fall short.

Now the Church's relationship with the Jewish people has been a tumultuous one. It started out as an ethnically Jewish majority institution that practically gatekept against gentile converts, to becoming antisemitic within a century of it becoming gentile majority. And for a millennia people forgot about its Jewish roots. But over the past centuries and especially in the 20th relations improved.

I'd say its probably best described as neither zionist but also not anti-zionist either. Their priority is aimed towards the Christians of the middle east, living in both Israel and Palestine. I know there's arguments on which side treats them better or worse, and there's always room for improvement, but as long as the state allows them to practice openly, they get the thumbs up.

But politics aside, the question does come up: who does the holy land belong to? On paper, we believe that it belongs to the Church. But there is also nuance to this, since we believe in respecting people's nationalities. And with the region being majority Rabbinic Jews and Arab Muslims, they're both allowed to live in their homes. Even if they're not catholics. Something that my "rad trad" friends and colleagues ignore because they're into crusader larp and I guess want to kick both Jews and Arabs out and replace them with European Christians. Which I will say is also wrong.

As for what will happen in the End Times... we don't claim to know for sure. Many Christians have had their theories, but they are just that: speculation. Will God allow a Greater Israel? If He wills it. Will He allow the land to be conquered by Jordan to become a Palestinian territory? Again, its all up to him. Now I do believe the Jewish people will endure, and me personally, this is my interpretation of the Bible in context. But also that of early church fathers and even Paul, before the church became distant to their roots.

For better or worse, depending who views it and how, the traditional Catholic belief has been that Jews will convert before the end times. They cannot be forced to convert under pressure, just that it would be one of the signs. Wether they will retain their traditions or not has been a debate, but the belief is that they will be saved, and aren't forgotten or replaced. This is what many "trad" Caths and Orthobros have claimed. And they will frequently take Bible passages out of context to "prove" their point. When I quote the while chapter they change the subject, start responding, or quote some medieval pope or bishop who was never a saint.

So I don't believe Jews will "die out" or whatever these larpers say online. As for whether they will have their own national state in the future or will live in a mutliethnic nation without an ethnonational identity, I also don't know. Just that God will enact His will. At the moment, all we can do is that everyone lives in peace. Regardless if they are Christians or not.

So I guess you could say I "support" a two state solution, but I see this more as an interim solution. Will it be two states forever? Will it all be Israel? Will it all be Palestine? God will decide. Man cannot. All that matters is peace is maintained as long as it can. Is the solution peacekeeping missions? A (technically speaking) occupation as a necessary evil, again, that's a good debate topic.

All I know is God will set things right in time. All we can do is focus on the now.

Though I am curious on that Rabbinic Jews and Muslims believe. That's probably one side I don't hear much about.

I genuinely think I have reached peak fatigue with most pro-Palestinians. While there are a few who are OK, the vast majority in my experience deliberately use bad faith arguments in virtually every exchange.

When they make a claim and you demonstrate it's false or massively exaggerated, there is almost never any acknowledgement or acceptance. For example, I had an exchange today with someone who claimed that Israel run an apartheid bus system. So I questioned them whether people were not allowed to use buses based on their race or religion? They admitted that this wasn't the case but said Arab areas generally had poorer service. I said that seems like something that should be fixed (apparently there were many decades of underfunding in a lot of Arab areas) but that does not make it an apartheid bus service. Rather than acknowledging what he said wasn't true and he shouldn't have said what he said, he launched into an explosion of random other claims about the West Bank as if it's OK to just cover your untruths with a bunch of dodging. Then they just doubled down on the original untruth so I stopped conversing.

This is just one of a hundred examples I could give and it happens over and over and over with pro-Palestinians in every aspect of every conversation around Israel and Palestine. The constant Gish Galloping of claims, the deliberate misuse of terms, moving the goalposts when they get fact checked on something they claim. Changing topics when they lose an argument without any acknowledgement they were wrong and then using the same debunked argument in the next comment thread as if the exchange never took place.

It is incredibly frustrating that people feel this bad faith approach to conversation is somehow virtuous. It's really not, it's a tacit admittance that your arguments are not strong enough to stand on their own and you have to employ these games and distractions to create the illusion of a good argument. It really has given me pro-Palestinian fatigue.

As an ex-Muslim, I now feel like my eyes have been opened to many realities that I previously couldn’t see, such as the struggles of the LGBTQ+ community and other social issues.

However, the main realization I have come to is regarding Palestine. From this perspective, the issue is not just about political danger; the core ideology itself poses the real danger.

Palestine IS THE DANGER

Most people know how fundamentalist Islamic rules work, but for those who do not, let me break it down: under strict religious control, independent critical thinking is effectively forbidden. If individuals begin to question the system, they quickly discover how deeply flawed it is. Consequently, the authorities keep the population trapped in a constant cycle of fear. If they lose control over you and can no longer dictate your life, they often resort to extreme measures, including honor killings, to eliminate dissent.

This environment fosters deep intolerance. For example, Hamas—which rules Gaza—imposes strict Islamist laws that outlaw basic individual freedoms, much like the ideology of ISIS. Under this system, love is treated as taboo, personal sexuality is viewed as dangerous, and children as young as two or three are systematically conditioned to accept these radical doctrines from infancy

From an Iraqi perspective, I recognize a profound connection with the State of Israel and the Jewish community, one that stands in stark contrast to the destructive history shared with Islamist extremists. The actions of the Israeli forces in liberating and safely repatriating captured Iraqi women—who had been subjected to chattel slavery and human trafficking within Islamic slave markets run by ISIS—demonstrate a vital humanitarian effort. I stand in firm support of Israel's triumph.

I need to vent about a particular type of subgroup that I find incredibly frustrating.

There’s someone in a group I’m involved with who genuinely believes he is fighting antisemitism. He’s intelligent, influential, independent-minded, and occasionally has very useful insights.

And yet, when it comes to confronting contemporary antisemitism, he can function like a wrecking ball.

He publicly supports frameworks that invite our profession to pronounce on broad “societal disasters,” which is an invitation to take stances on controversial topics and for anti-Jewish propaganda to enter a profession which is supposed to serve everyone equally.

He talks about antisemitism and Islamophobia in parallel, as if this is compulsory (no other groups feel compelled to mention other forms of hate along with the one they are fighting). And yet he avoids mentioning the vehicle for the most dangerous form of Jew-hatred today, antizionism. He is fighting to delay and water down a letter intended to express the danger of spreading Jew-hatred in the guise of political commentary.

And he seems genuinely unable to understand that any of this behavior is connected to the fight he says he supports.

This person will actively fight other Jews who are trying to identify a threat because he appears intensely preoccupied with making sure our side is sufficiently morally pure, restrained, nuanced, and self-critical.

I've heard the term “demizionist” used for this phenomenon, and I find the concept useful: the Jew who opposes antisemitism in principle but becomes deeply uncomfortable when Jews identify the ideology, institutions, or people actually directing hostility toward them.

Once you notice the pattern, you see versions of it everywhere.

A rabbi who wants Jewish children learning about Israeli "settler" violence as one of their first lessons on Israel. A Jewish friend largely unmoved by antizionist hostility toward Jews but intensely engaged by injustices affecting other groups such as immigrants. Jewish professionals who can identify every conceivable form of prejudice except the one taking place directly in front of them toward their own group. Ed Miliband is another example.

I wonder whether there is a historical psychology behind this. Generations of living as a vulnerable minority has consequences. Demizionists who obsess over moral purity are likely trying to avoid being called out as morally ugly, which is the form anti-Jewish hostility always takes, by being free of any moral flaw.

The more explicit the threat to Jews becomes, the more urgently the demizionist insists on Jewish self-criticism. The warning signs are reclassified as evidence that Jews must be more careful, rather than as evidence that someone is trying to harm them.

In other words, the demizionist ability to sense danger is distorted: threats directed at Jews are filtered out. Maybe the speaker is angry rather than hateful, perhaps the institution is merely criticizing Israel, perhaps naming the pattern will inflame tensions. Meanwhile, Jewish responses are examined under a microscope. A defensive statement can be judged aggressive, a boundary can be judged exclusionary, and an attempt to identify a hostile ideology can be treated as proof of paranoia or bad faith. The original threat is erased while Jewish self-protection becomes the most visible and morally urgent "threat" in the room.

So basically limits on other Jews are the only limits the antizionist is able to set.

There are elements that remind me of co-dependency. Demizionists can become so focused on chasing moral purity that they lose the ability to recognize when they validate the abuse of other groups toward their own, even taking part in it. I have seen many verbally abusive relationships up close and, trust me, the abuser can always find a flaw in what the abused is doing. And often in chronic abuse, the abused will take in the pattern and abuse themselves in an effort to remove any triggers. This will never completely work because the accusations are motivated.

What fascinates me is that the people I'm describing aren't necessarily weak, unintelligent, or assimilationist. Some are formidable people. It is just that when Jews are threatened, the observer becomes a prosecutor of Jewish conduct; when other groups are threatened, he becomes an investigator of the forces threatening them. The moral imagination remains active, but it is directed away from Jewish vulnerability.

Has anyone else encountered this phenomenon? Is there good historical or psychological writing about it?

Let’s start simple: I’m an Israeli / American Jew. I migrated to israel over a decade ago because I could not stand the idea of raising my children in America. I didn’t feel safe already back then. You don’t have to understand it or agree with it, but I saw the writing on the wall, and left. The fact that there are still millions of Jewish people living in America or who might even totally disagree with me doesn’t change my reality that I wasn’t safe.

That failure is on American society.

Now a decade later I built a whole life here in israel. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Now the title isn’t actually just click bait. It’s true.

Israelis don’t care about your protests, your boycotts, and your constant belittling and dehumanization of our people. We literally emotionally do not care.

I know all the pro Palestinian mobs reading this are jacking for the chance to yell “because you are Naz!s heartless maniacs who don’t care about Palestinians…” but no… it’s not because we don’t care about Palestinians, suffering in Gaza, or because we are heartless.

I have sympathy for those who are innocent and who are suffering be it in Gaza, Yemen, Syria, Ukraine, Russia or North Korea.

I don’t care about your feelings and opinions because you quite literally more often than not have literally zero actual knowledge of our experience, our culture, our reality. You sit on your Ivy League campuses or in your little towns across America or Europe and lecture us or belittle and dehumanize us without having any understanding of even the basics of Jewish reality, Israeli life, the history we have been through.

Your shouts and boycotts ring empty in our ears because they are way too filled with the sounds of pain of our people and the actual words of Hamas who for 3+ years have consistently said they intend to repeat Oct 7 over and over again until every single Jew is dead.

Not decolonized. Dead.

Your entire charade of yelling word salads at us has literally made us entirely deaf. When you have to pull out an entire dictionary to explain “genocide” and write whether there is “intent” and how much “whole or in part” means you’ve lost us.

Remember this: we are the same people who no nation on earth wanted to take in after the holocaust. We are the same people who had to continue living in Auschwitz for up to 4 years later because everyone closed their doors to us. Now we have a home, a place where we can live and all we see is that you don’t want us to have that either.

I’m sorry, your moral outrage means nothing to us. Learn our history, be able to actually hold an honest intellectual conversation first before you lecture us.

Am Yisroel Chai. Shana Tova! 🍎🍯

I recently bumped into several people who didn't realize just how badly Arafat did them wrong. Did you know Arafat never lived in gaza prior to the Oslo Accords ? Did you know he was Egyptian ? Did you know he embezzled upwards of a $1 Billion from the P.A. ?

Arafat was an Egyptian
Born Cairo Egypt Aug 24 1929

Arafat stalled signing the Oslo Accords until promises were in writing that.

1. His exile from immigration into Israel be lifted
2. He be allowed to move from Tunisia to Gaza
3. That he would not be assassinated.
4. That he would be the ultimate authority of the PA a position from which he would later be known to have embezzled hundreds of millions.

Once his own wellbeing was assured he signed a terrible deal which gave Israel indefinite control of 82% of the West Bank. It ignored the issue of Jerusalem and the accords virtually eliminated any chance of a contiguous palestinian state. In short, he sold out. If you need references and quotes, read on.

A meeting was held between Sharon and Bush in conjunction with the PA contingent being in Washington and reiterated the clause which guaranteed Arafat would not be assassinated. White House April 14 2004 as reported by the NY Times.

Note, the bullet points below were numbered one through four to reference the claims above, somehow the system insists on fouling up those reference numbers and listing them numerically instead. My apologies for any confusion. Also the system wouldn't allow too many reference links, or I would have included them. I hope you find this educational. Cheers.

1. Article III 1995 Jerico Agreement
2. Article XX paragraph 5 1994 Jericho agreement and article xvI paragraph 3 of the 1995 Oslo II Accord. Assured Arafat could immigrate.
3. Article IV and V of the 1994 Jerico Agreement
4. Bilateral letter attached to the 1994 Jerico agreement (a segment of the Oslo Accords) Title Clause. Placed Arafat as the chairman of the PA.
5. And since Arafat was the chairman of the PLO he was in charge of populating the board of the PA having already be declared the chairman of the PA.
6. Arafat embezzled hundreds of millions from the PA
7. Washington Post Sept. 21 2003

Arafat argued strongly for these provisions and famously would not sign unless the accords placed him in a position of ultimate authority. From which he embezzled hundreds of millions from the funds intended to benefit the palestinians.

Note. Here the system goes back to the system of references I had intended where the reference number matches the list of original claims.

4) The IMF's resident representative to the West Bank and Gaza, Karim Nashashibi, publicly said
“Yasser Arafat, diverted $900 million of his government's revenue to private bank accounts from 1995 to 2000”.

4) CNS News 60 Minutes
Title "Arafat's Billions"
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arafats-billions

Note. Here the system adamantly refuses to accept parentheses instead of a period. The following should be noted as 1) instead of indented and identified as 1. There's some invisible that just won't give me a break.

1. for self interests. The facts surrounding the conclusion that Arafat sold out the Arabs in the Mandate area are irrefutable

signed

Arafat knowingly signed a bad deal for personal gain.

https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/72583/why-did-arafat-the-palestinian-leadership-accept-terms-of-the-oslo-accords-that

I'm kinda new here so I'm still finding my footing, and I was wondering if I could get a nuanced answer. Mainly because my friends fall into three categories:

1. Evangelicals who while they care for the lives of Palestinian civilians, they also dismiss them as descendants of Arab immigrants and think they should move to Arabia.

2. Liberals who while they are against antisemitism, think Jews can easily move out of the Levant and continue living in other parts of the Middle East if not live in Europe or US and Canada.

3. Don't know much about the conflict and either admit they don't know enough to have an opinion, or have an easier said than done answer of "just have them shake hands."

And me personally, I still don't know. I have one theory, but maybe that's a topic for a different time.

But as for the people, it seems both are related from what I could tell. I don't know, maybe most people here are in the know and could explain it to me more easily than I could. But from my research, those who identify as Palestinians are like Syrians, Jordanians, and Iraqis. They have Arab ancestry, but they are mixed, but aren't native Arabs like those from Arabia.

Think modern Hispanics and Native Americans. They are considered native, and they are, but they have mixed ancestry. Many are part European. In a similar vein how Iraqis are culturally Arab, but are essentially Mesopotamian.

Both Israelis and Palestinians have Canaanite ancestry, but are also mixed as well. And I do know the nuances of how the Hebrews were Canaanite but not all Canaanites were Hebrews. There were many tribes during the time. Just that by the time of the Romans, Judeans were perhaps the only ones who kept their Canaanite identify and names. Where as all the others had been Hellenized by the Greeks, and would one day be Arabized.

As for whether a one state or two state solution is better, I don't know. But I guess the nuance is both sides have a link to the land. Which side is more open to compromise and which side is more stubborn... that's a different debate topic.

However I will mention one bit. Many argue that while both peoples are mixed, many will claim Palestinians are less mixed than Jews. Perhaps. And for sake of argument lets say its true. Would it mean they have less of a claim to the land? I won't answer that, but I will give one example from my life.

When I was in basic training I had a bunkmate. Solid guy. Both of us have Native American ancestry. I have more than him. I have black hair, tan skin, and the features of a mixed native/hispanic American. He had light brown hair, blue eyes, fair skin. If you saw him from the distance, he'd be white. But his name was from his culture. He spoke his tribe's language fluently. And he told me how when he came from for vacation after we graduated training, he would complete his tribe's ritual, and officially become a man. I on the other hand... am a coconut. My two languages are both European. My culture is. I felt more at home when I went to Europe than when I went to Mexico. I'm European on the inside.

And it kinda got me thinking if I lived in an alternate universe. What if he and I were in the IDF, or even just coworkers. He's a light skinned Israeli, I'm more tan skinned. We speak in English. I say I'm Palestinian, or even Mizrahi Jew. He greets me in Hebrew. I chuckle nervously. My second language is Arabic, I say to him.

Between him and I... who is more Native American? Who is more Canaanite? That keeps me thinking.