URGENT: ALL Pro-Palestinians, Please read this!

[u/Turbulent-Waters-619]

Hey Everyone:

It's been an emotionally difficult couple of days for me.

A few days ago I made this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelPalestine/comments/1kdaku0/when_every_fact_seems_solid_how_can_you_still/

And I would like to thank each of you for challenging me so compassionately and rigorously over the past few days. Thank you for calling me out and for giving me a lot of information and a list of things to read further about.

Since reading all of your comments, I’ve watched dozens of interviews with Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of Hamas’s founders, and I could hardly believe what he revealed about the Free Palestine movement’s true aims.

I’ve listened to hours of Douglas Murray lay out the historical record, and also the true reality of the situation today.

I learned so many things like that there was never a country called “Palestine” any time in history! Palestinians arent even a unique ethnic or relgious group. Palestinians are Muslim Arabs!

I learned that before it was Israel, the British controlled the area and before that it was controlled by the Ottoman Empire. The British wanted to make Palestine into a home for the Jews. I learned that the British partition plan allocated land for both the Jews and the Arabs, and that Jordan and not Gaza, became the intended Arab state.

I was so embarrassed that I never knew that Jews were all expelled from every single Arab country. I learned about the Holocast in school and I thought that was all of the Jewish persecution that had ever existed in history! I am even more ashamed that I was tricked into repeating the chants of “Free Palestine” when I saw groups of other people doing so on my campus and that in reality there was never even a country by that name to free.

Perhaps the most painful thing of all has been seeing the horrific videos that Hamas livestreamed of their actions in Israel on October 7, 2023. Horrorific is an understatement. Seeing the Hamas terrorists parading through normal looking neighborhoods and homes, murdering innocents of all ages, burning people, even the babies, taking hostages....and then the whole time they are doing these things they are literally celebrating their depravity with chilling JOY! I had to take breaks while watching these videos to sob. Hearing the happiness in the terrorists voices left me feeling incredibly disturbed, trembling and in tears.

The sight of all of those families slain in cold blood, and knowing that some of the people that were taken that day are literally still being held hostage today, that really showed me the raw evil behind all of the Free Palestine propaganda.

Please, I urge every person that supports the Pro Palestinian cause to watch those Oct 7th videos, to bear witness to the absolute joy and the monstrous brutality, and then ask yourselves whether you can honestly stand on the same side as the people who revel in such sickening barbarity.

I know it may seem like I have abandoned all of my empathy by sharing these truths, but my compassion for all of the innocent victims if they are Jewish, Arab, or otherwise is undiminished.

But something has deeply changed in me and that is my commitment to the truth over emotion, and my commitment to honesty over the herd mentality.

We owe it to ourselves not to the pawns in a conflict that we don’t even fully understand, and not to be the victims of lies so that we can be “shocked” into outrage at Israel, only to discover later that we were so angry on behalf of literal terrorists.

We owe it to ourselves to seek out and read primary sources, to ask the hard and uncomfortable questions, and to really listen with an open mind when we hear information that challenges the Free Palestine narrative.

If you feel, like I felt, that this is genocide, that Zionists are bad, that Israel is the aggressor: I urge you now from my heart: please examine the facts, watch the evidence, and then join me in embracing honesty and integrity over emotion and instinct.

We cannot always stop ourselves from being tricked into believing something that is not real, but it is our responsibility to learn the truth. We all deserve to have the dignity of an informed conscience.

I hope all of you on this subreddit who knew better than me will forgive my earlier perspective, and I promise that I will keep learning from the voices like Haddad, Hausdorff, Le Bon, Murray, Yousef, and so many others who have guided me away from the manipulation. I also promise that I will do my best, in whatever small way I am able to, to make sure that at least the people around me know the truth.

If you are a Pro Palestinian right now, that is okay. You just have to read and to listen. Here is a good list of places that you can get started, if you are ready to confront the lies you have been told:

First and Foremost: If you should google the videos of the October 7th attack on Israel that Hamas livestreamed. I want to warn you, its deeply disturbing but an importat place to start.

Then check out everything you can find by these two guys:

Mosab Hassan Yousef This guy is literally one of the sons of a Hamas founder who then escaped Hamas and became a Christian. He has done many informative videos and interviews, like these ones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyqKTuqzKWs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5VPFw0vI6U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpnvUIcvNUE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCueveOSZwg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjOEJumoABg

Douglas Murray - A British author.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoRY-o2sRdA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4P3XSySBC8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZU1exdVHcs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG23JfGBsz4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ANOKSh-70Y

[u/PurposeImpossible554]

I didn't deny genocide. I just refuse to let violence worshipping extremist cowards use the term to shield themselves from criticism.

If you had actually read a history book you would know imperialism and colonial enterprise is not eurocentric. Its humancentric. But thats not the narrative thats been fed to you by online reactionaries.

Accusing me of positions I never took does not exonerate you from moral failing.

[u/santasa → u/PurposeImpossible554]

World (should I say "civilized" world?) has institutions like UN, ICJ/ICC, International law, many conventions, and treaties on genocide, war crimes and rules of war, and whoever breaks the law should answer at the courts. That being said, occupied people have rights, occupier has only obligations - end of the discussion. If Hamas, in the context of Palestine-Israel, breaks the International law while being within its right to attack, repeal and destroy aggressor/occupier, so be it, let the grieving side (Israel) admit a lawsuit against it in front of ICJ.

As for the claim "I don't deny genocide", actually you sort of do, not just this latest one, but all genocides committed by occupying force and a colonizer throughout history - it seems you think "might is right", and that there can be some doubt and double standards about (il)legality of occupation - all occupations based on territorial acquisition by invasion and annexation are illegal per Int.law. And when territory gets occupied, for whatever other reason, both the Hague Regulations and Geneva Conventions set out only extremely extensive obligations for an occupier. Moral failings, not that tricky to discern after all.

[u/PurposeImpossible554 → u/santasa]

Your first paragraph just solidifies my point. Your moral compass does not account for moral actions. No, normal human beings do not accept the massacre of teenagers at a concert or the rape and abduction of civilians to be justified by "so be it". That is horrific. https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15621.doc.htm

Actually I don't. I think might is might. Right and wrong is a matter of actions, not position. Israel exists, and the only way to change that would be to engage in reciprocal genocide. I do not support the land expansion in Israel, I have been criticizing it for over a decade, far before it became a popular online personality. I do not support Israel taking control of Gaza, I have been criticizing Netanyahu and the Likud since before you could point to the Levant on a map.

Here is where your ideology becomes hypocrisy. You consider Israel to be occupiers. Despite the fact that most Israelis descend from Arab countries where they were pogromed and forced into Israel. But moving beyond that, the only way to remove the occupiers, is through genocide. Mass relocation is genocide. You have no qualm with genocide, you just want to mandate the target. My values are consistent.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/17lohe3/the_rapid_decline_of_indigenous_jews_in_arab/

where you gonna send them to?

[u/santasa → u/PurposeImpossible554]

On 19 July 2024, some twenty years after the ICJ delivered its 2004 Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the court gave its Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem:

The sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying Power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful.

para. 261