Criticism of the Human Rights Abuses of the Israeli State and Anti-zionism are not antisemitism. You are choosing to be willfully ignorant. Israel does NOT represent all Jewish people, nor does their actions. There have been prominent Jewish people extremely critical of Zionism since it’s inception, are you seriously saying they are antisemitic too?

Israel is the one that intentionally conflates the two in order to deflect from criticizm. When Israel commits war crimes, or human rights abuses, or land grabbing, they are the ones that claim they do so for all Jewish people. When Zionist actions are criticized, they call it antisemitic. The conflation of the two is genuinely antisemitic, as the actions of Israel in no way represent all Jewish people.

If you don’t want to be naive, I suggest you read the reports by human rights organizations. They are not antisemitic, unless you think advocates for a Secular Bi-National State with equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians is also antisemitic, which is insane.

Year before Oct 7 - Jewish Voice for Peace

2023 is ‘deadliest year’ for Palestinian children say human rights groups (Oct 6th)

HRW Events of 2022 and HRW Events of 2023

The Apartheid is very much real, and, while to a much lesser extent than the Palestinian Occupied Territories, also applies to the Palestinian Citizens of Israel

Socio-economic gaps between Palestinian and Jewish Israeli citizens are the result of discriminatory policies pursued over decades. Historically, Israel prevented its Palestinian citizens from accessing livelihoods under its 18-year-long military rule, and used them, at different times, as a source of cheap labour in order to preserve the interests of the Jewish majority. In addition to cruel land seizures, other discriminatory policies have led to Palestinians’ social and economic deprivation: the exclusion of Palestinian localities from high priority areas for development, the discriminatory allocation of land and water for agriculture as well as discriminatory planning and zoning, and the failure to implement major infrastructure development projects in Palestinian communities.

The blockade and Israel’s repeated military offensives have had a heavy toll on Gaza’s essential infrastructure and further debilitated its health system and economy, leaving the area in a state of perpetual humanitarian crisis. Indeed, Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population, the majority of whom are children, has created conditions inimical to human life due to shortages of housing, potable water and electricity, and lack of access to essential medicines and medical care, food, educational equipment and building materials.

• Amnesty International Report pg 26-27

Other reports about how Israel is an Apartheid State:

Human Rights Watch Report

B’TSelem Report with quick Explainer

Maybe not explicitly a Dictatorship, but practically all parties of Israel, from Labor to Likud, have all been pro-apartheid since their origins as the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi. I certainly agree that Netanyahu is not the cause of Israel engaging in Ethnic Cleansing. Forced Transfer has been core to Zionism since the late 1800’s. Even Netanyahu’s only substantial opposition, Benny Gantz, is just as bloodthirsty. My point is that an Apartheid State is incompatible with Democracy.

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They really care about (terrorizing) civilians

This is not a normal temporary occupation. The West Bank and Gaza as occupied territories were created by the Ethnic Cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian people from the Zionist Campaign of Plan Dalet starting in 1947. The West Bank, Gaza, and the rest of Israel are all Historic Palestine. The permanent occupation / apartheid is a direct result of Settler Colonialism.

These are not ‘neighboring territories’ like France and Spain would be. Would you also ignore the bantustans of Apartheid South Africa when determining if that government was a dictatorship or not? Or the Native American reservations of America during Manifest Destiny?

It’s about Netanyahu. Are you going to pretend he is responsible for all of that?

Considering he’s part of the Likud party which was created out of the Lehi and Irgun, it’s certainly relevant.

Dictatorship is about having a power against the will of too many citizens, also silencing them, jailing them, killing them etc.

That is the reality for Palestinians, yes

Palestinian citizens are about 20% of Israeli population. Black people are about 14% of the US population. Both of them hold legal citizenships and rights but often face disparities. Does that make the US an apartheid by your logic?

Again, you are conveniently ignoring the Palestinians within the Occupied Territories. And yes, America during Chattel Slavery, where Black people did not have citizenship, was certainly a form of Apartheid.

Sure, if you ignore the discrimination and inequality of the millions of Palestinian citizens of Israel, on top of the millions within the Occupied Territories that have been under Israeli Military Control since 1967. If you ignore all of that, then your criteria of ‘how well government cares about its citizens’ could make sense.

Yet holding elections is not enough. Totalitarian regimes also engage in a process they refer to as “elections,” but this does not make them democracies. Democratic elections must reflect core principles such as equality, liberty and freedom of expression. These allow not only the act of voting itself, but also the free exchange of ideas and meaningful participation in shaping the future. Democratic elections must also ensure one vote for every citizen that is exactly equal to all others, and allow all citizens to run for office, present their platforms and work to further their agendas. Legal restrictions on voting and on running for office must be extremely limited, if at all permitted.

Roughly 5.5 million Palestinian subjects live in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967: about 3.5 million in the West Bank (including roughly 350,000 in East Jerusalem) and some 2 million in the Gaza Strip. None of them are allowed to vote or run for Knesset, and they have no representation in the political institutions that dictate their lives.

• B’TSelem

Your criteria doesn’t make sense, and ignores the reality of Apartheid. If you consider a democracy based on equality, liberty and freedom of expression, and also consider all aspects of the Apartheid Regime; Israel falls tremendously short of being a Democracy.

Based

The Israeli regime enacts in all the territory it contols (Israeli sovereign territory, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip) an apartheid regime. One organizing principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.

B’Tselem rejects the perception of Israel as a democracy (inside the Green Line) that simultaneously upholds a temporary military occupation (beyond it). B’Tselem reached the conclusion that the bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians.

• B’TSelem

President Joe Biden has said that there is “every reason” to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is continuing his assault on Gaza for political gain, appearing to acknowledge that Netanyahu is not interested in pulling out of the region despite the Biden administration’s insistence that the latest ceasefire deal is backed by Israel.

• Truthout

Protesters demanding new elections in Israel clashed with police near the Jerusalem house of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday after he dissolved the government’s War Cabinet, leaving him as the unquestioned decision-maker regarding the eight-month-old conflict in Gaza.

• USA Today

Thanks!

Tbf, I’m not good enough to not restart a mission whenever I lose a soldier. But I have learned it pays well to sell nearly everything (except for the things needed for buying weapons) early on to buy better weapons, as well as Vulture and Wet Works.

I have been holding off on Proving Ground stuff for now, waiting until a region is liberated so I can get an income. Not sure if that’ll pay off like I’m hoping tho lol

(LWOTC)

Do you have a link to the letter? I haven’t heard of it before

Have you seen what roof knocking is like?

Or that they stopped the roof knocking on Oct 9th 2023?

Or that the repeated evacuation orders, where somehow millions of people are supposed to evacuate in a mere 24 hours with no cell service, electricity, food, or water, is blatant ethnic cleansing

Or that Israel has repeatedly bombed evacuation routes, places outside the evacuation zones, and ‘safe’ zones?

Sorry, I mean ‘safer zones’ since a Safe Zone has an international definition that Israel fails to meet.

Or the deliberate targeting of civilian areas as Power Targets

Although it is unprecedented for the Israeli army to attack more than 1,000 power targets in five days, the idea of causing mass devastation to civilian areas for strategic purposes was formulated in previous military operations in Gaza, honed by the so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” from the Second Lebanon War of 2006.

• ‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza - 972mag

Or the use of Lavender and Where’s Daddy which intentionally bomb whole families and civilians

After the founding of Israel, the Two-State Solutions were utilized to further annex the Palestinian Occupied Territories and enact military control over Palestinians while denying them human and civil rights. This is apartheid. Despite this, both Fatah and Hamas have accepted a Two-State Solution on the 1967 borders, with the two most important factors being the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees and an end to the permanent occupation. Israel has had no intention on peace, as evidence of the constant land grabbing, dividing the West Bank into hundreds of isolated enclaves.

The Israeli imposed closure on Gaza began in 1991, temporarily, becoming permanent in 1993. The barrier began around Gaza around 1972. After the ‘disengagement’ in 2007, this turned into a full blockade; where Israel has had control over the airspace, borders, and sea. Under the guise of ‘dual-use’ Israel has restricted food, allocating a minimum supply leading to over half of Gaza being food insecure; construction materials, medical supplies, and other basic necessities have also been restricted. This has been a deliberate tactic of De-development, part of the systemic violence of the Apartheid Regime.

The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development - Third Edition by Sara M. Roy

Oslo Accord Sources: MEE, NYT, Haaretz, AJ

History of peace process - The Intercept

Israel has repeatedly refused any permanent ceasefire, here is a list that follows the ceasefire talks week by week

Hundreds of Genocide Scholars have described this ethnic cleansing campaign as genocide because of the deliberate targeting of children/civilians and expressed intent by Israeli officials.

So, when we look at the actions taken, the dropping of thousands and thousands of bombs in a couple of days, including phosphorus bombs, as we heard, on one of the most densely populated areas around the world, together with these proclamations of intent, this indeed constitutes genocidal killing, which is the first act, according to the convention, of genocide. And Israel, I must say, is also perpetrating act number two and three — that is, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and creating condition designed to bring about the destruction of the group by cutting off water, food, supply of energy, bombing hospitals, ordering the fast evictions of hospitals, which the World Health Organization has declared to be, quote, “a death sentence.” So, we’re seeing the combination of genocidal acts with special intent. This is indeed a textbook case of genocide.

“A Textbook Case of Genocide”: Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal Decries Israel’s Assault on Gaza

Law for Palestine Releases Database with 500+ Instances of Israeli Incitement to Genocide – Continuously Updated

AP News, Time, Reuters, Vox, CBC

Don’t paint me as a Hamas support either, I’ve been critical of them too. I don’t think they should rule and they should also be tried for their war crimes. But that doesn’t change the reality of the Apartheid. And no free fair election for Palestinians can happen under an Apartheid, that must end first.

You just currently did it by justifying the Water Control of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and it’s not hard to find more apologia in your history

https://lemmy.world/comment/10200509

Deliberately ignoring all the hospitals Israel has bombed before and after the one instance where it was inconclusive

https://lemmy.world/comment/10204884

Falsely stating that Israel is trying to minimize civilian deaths while ignoring the over 500 incitements to genocide, the use of power targets, and the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure

Maybe I’m wrong, do you acknowledge that this is an ongoing genocide or that Israel is an Apartheid State?

In 1967, Israel seized control of all water resources in the newly occupied territories. To this day, it retains exclusive control over all the water resources that lie between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, with the exception of a short section of the coastal aquifer that runs under the Gaza Strip. Israel uses the water as it sees fit, ignoring the needs of Palestinians in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip to such an extent that both areas suffer from a severe water shortage. In each of them, residents are not supplied enough water; in Gaza, even the water that is supplied is substandard and unfit for drinking.

Israel has been holding the Gaza Strip under blockade for more than a decade, since June 2007. It does not allow any materials in that it considers “dual purpose”, i.e., that can be used for either civilian or military purposes. This includes construction materials, such as cement and iron, and other raw materials. All these are needed to repair Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure, which were heavily damaged by Israeli bombings, especially in Operation Cast Lead (which began in late 2008) and Operation Protective Edge (the summer of 2014). The estimated damage amounts to some 34 million dollars. As of the end of 2015, more than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza were still cut off from the public water network.

• B’TSelem

Will you ever stop with the Genocide and Apartheid apologia?

Absolutely true, the targeting of civilians and civilian architecture has been blatant and deliberate. 972 Magazine has a great article about it and the use of ‘Power Targets’

Compared to previous Israeli assaults on Gaza, the current war — which Israel has named “Operation Iron Swords,” and which began in the wake of the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on October 7 — has seen the army significantly expand its bombing of targets that are not distinctly military in nature. These include private residences as well as public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks, which sources say the army defines as “power targets” (“matarot otzem”).

Although it is unprecedented for the Israeli army to attack more than 1,000 power targets in five days, the idea of causing mass devastation to civilian areas for strategic purposes was formulated in previous military operations in Gaza, honed by the so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” from the Second Lebanon War of 2006.

• ‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza - 972mag

You can do what you want, pro-nazi sentiment is just too far over the line for me to separate the art from the artist. I do hope Kanye gets better, hanging out with Candace Owens really broke his brain

Biden is certainly better than trump on some things like with repealing the Muslim ban. He is also worse in some ways such as deporting millions, 3x more than trump, each year.

Illegal border crossings soared in the months after Biden took office and immediately rolled back many Trump-era restrictions. Biden warned that he’d still enforce immigration laws, and he temporarily kept in place a Trump pandemic policy known as Title 42 that allowed authorities to quickly expel border crossers.

Trump vs. Biden on immigration: 12 charts comparing U.S. border security - NYT archived

The vast majority of homelessness is due to people getting priced out of the housing market and evicted, as well as zoning laws. Housing First and nice Public Housing are the ways to address that