Dear Yuyutsu

This is not Alon’s best piece, but I think you are being a bit harsh. Summarizing all aspects of such a longstanding and complex conflict in a few hundred words is impossible. It’s not a bad effort, and does at least reflect that there are deep and legitimate grievances across all parties. Too often commentary fails to recognise this.

Mostly, I agree with his concluding paragraph, especially “neither side will be able to uproot the other, not now and not ever”, and “both sides must come to their senses and begin a reconciliation process to mitigate these impediments and move toward peaceful coexistence”.

Hi diver dan,

Credibility.
That depends on who you're trying to be credible to, right?
Half the country put minorities and immigrants first;
The other half puts loyalty to Israel first; with their finger up to the ICC.
- And that's the platforms of the 2 main parties.
And the Greens, well...

You think I should seek credibility from these people - my fellow Australian voters?

As for your X tweet.
I think it's kind of curious, it feels like the 'script' is back to front now.
- Usually when the US conduct overthrows, and they cause civil unrest and protests, and then the governments goons crack down on the protesters and they violently harm the protesters, and then the pro-western media in that country films that violence and shows the government heavily handedly cracking down on protesters and they call them an 'illegitimate regime' and the leader a 'dictator' and then that leader goes after the media station, and then they say 'The leader of the illegitimate regime is a dictator and violently beating protesters and is attempting to shut down on free speech' yada yada yada...

And here you are boastng about taking down a media station,
- But I'm not even sure you know what you're saying.
Are they not attacking free speech?
I don't understand this world sometimes its so confusing.

Credibility.

UN General Assembly overwhelmingly calls for end of Israeli occupation
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/18/un-general-assembly-overwhelmingly-calls-for-end-of-israeli-occupation
[Oh no, Al Jazeera again]
'International body demands an end to Israel’s illegal presence in the Palestinian territories within 12 months.'
>>The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling on Israel to end its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories within a year, a move that Palestine hailed as “historic”.<<

The nonbinding measure passed a 124-14 vote on Wednesday, with 43 countries abstaining.

124 to 14.

You see what I mean now, 'depends on who you're trying to be credible to'?

I guess this will be what the 66th UN resolution Israel has ignored?
Or is it the 67th? I don't know.

"40k is not enough dead women and children!"
Armchair Critic,
Awful from that point of view. Looking at them as future terrorists puts a drastically different slant on things.
It is automatically assumed that everyone is born innocent & that may be so but children grow into adults & before they do indoctrination has destroyed all innocence ! As the saying goes about the sins of the fathers.

The problems go back to the Balfour Declaration after the end of the second world war. At that time only about three percent of the Palestine population were Jews. The Zionists moved in and took the land from the Arab inhabitants, who by the way, were not all Moslems. Since then, the Jewish population has steadily increased and the non Jews have been treated as second class citizens with their property still being stolen by Jewish settlers.

It is no wonder that organisations such as Hamas and Hizballah are rebelling.

VK3AUU

Let’s unpick this a bit.

The Balfour Declaration was in 1917, before the end of WW1.

The Jewish population at the time was about 10% of the total, not 3%. There has been a continuing Jewish presence in Palestine for at least 3,000 years.

Between WW1 and WW2, the Jewish population did rise steadily, but they did not “take the land from the Arabs.” Their private land and property was purchased. Until partition, most territory was state land. The rest was privately owned and split roughly equally between resident Jewish owners, resident Arab owners and absentee landowners. At partition, state land devolved to the control of the relevant governments.

The 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine proposed to split the former British Mandate of Palestine into two geopolitical entities – a Jewish State and an Arab State. The borders were drawn so that the Jewish State would have a majority Jewish population, and vice versa. This resulted in a dog’s breakfast as boundaries were drawn on the basis of whether towns and areas were majority Jewish or Arab areas, rather than geographical coherence. There was also to be an international zone containing Jerusalem and the surrounding area.

After the UN endorsed the partition plan in 1947, there was a period of civil war followed by all-out war when Israel was invaded by Egypt, Transjordan, Syria and Iraq. The extent to which Palestinians chose to leave Israel or were forced to leave at this time is fiercely debated, but about 750,000 did leave Israel in 1947-48 while about 150,000 remained.

Arab Israelis were subject to military rule until 1966, but since then they have had the same legal rights as Jewish Israelis, though they tend on average to be poorer, more disadvantaged and less well educated – perhaps as a result of structural racism.

Israeli settlers had no presence in the West Bank until after the six-day war in 1967. Most of the world – including the Australian Government – considers Israeli settlements there to be illegal, though Israel disputes this

The argument over land ownership could be taken back to the Stone Age for resolution, but still unhappiness festers.

No, in reality, this is a war of ideology little disguised overland ownership.

It’s unarguably a problem created by Iran, which is not Arab; so it’s not an argument about Arabs and their wish for land.

That leaves one cause, Islam and its conquest of the world!

Sounds dramatic, and surely it is!