You seriously believe Israel has conducted good-faith diplomatic endeavors for decades? A history of terrorattacks and extrajudicial killings in neighboring countries and even European[1] countries tell a different story.
So wait ... you're going to use terror attacks and extrajudicial killings in foreign countries as an argument to defend Iran? Iran is responsible for the civil war in Lebanon, and thus for at least hundred thousand dead in extrajudicial killings. So your argument, even if we accept everything as 100% true ... Iran is at least 1000x more guilty than Israel. Or just take [1] ...
So it seems strange to use this as an argument to defend Iran. Bad faith, even.
As for diplomacy: Iran signs treaties ... then just refuses to uphold them. For example, Iran signed, then pretty openly violated it's nuclear non-proliferation treaty obligations [2], same with the famous nuclear deal.
But, even where it comes to pretty basic things: Iran signed the human rights treaties, including the Geneva convention, and hangs gays and minors as a matter of course (according to amnesty #1 worldwide with hundreds of minors executed, and actually increasing the rate over time), attacks religious minorities, women, the government has a side business in kidnapping foreignors ...
Or other treaties. Iran signed freedom of navigation treaties, and has for decades violated them. Hell, Iran violates the international telecommunications union treaty.
The problem: Iran cannot be negotiated with, for the simple reason that they do not respect deals they make. There's no point in negotiating since their behavior does not change when they make deals. They make promises, and ignore them. They sign treaties, and boast openly about violating them.
Really? Oct 7 2023 Hamas murdered 1200 people for no reason. Hamas charter states their goal is to destroy Israel. Iran very clearly states it wants to destroy Israel.
For "no reason" - hah, this must be the most blatant ignoring of reality I've seen in this thread, and that's a very high bar to cross.
To be clear, I have nothing to do with neither Israel nor Iran, and am sympathetic to people of both separately - but pretending like Gaza - and what Israel has been doing for all this time there - doesn't exist is something else.
You DO realize how absurd this is. Iran isn't exactly subtle about its hatred for Israel and desire to destroy it and funding of the "Axis of Resistance".
Is continuing to apply extreme violence against these enemies likely to lead to a good result? What is the end state?
I think we are fast approaching an era where weapons of mass destruction, by way of cheap killbot swarms, are trivially accessible to any government. Without radical diplomacy, I fear the entire Middle East -- Israel included -- is on a path to annihilation.
That only works against nation states. After what Israel have done in Gaza there's thousands of people who have lost family in a gruesome way and now have an axe to grind against Israel. This way it'll never stop.
The best way to prevent terrorism is to not give people reasons to want you dead.
Look at all the ethnic conflicts in the world. Like the troubles in Ireland. Did that stop because one side threw more bombs? No, it stopped because both sides agreed to talk.
Really? Because there's extensive counterexamples in both directions ...
Europe attacked and even persecuted the Germans (with reason) for WW2. Tens of millions of victims. Neither side wants the other dead. US and Japan? Same. Most of these countries are allies.
Israel has never even had much business with Indonesia, and only little with India. Yet a large number of Indonesians want to kill all Jews (not just Israeli) and Indians largely support Israel, even in war. Or take Lebanese. Despite Israel attacking them many times and giving them plenty of "reasons to want them dead", if you talk to actual Lebanese, most population groups (in fact the ones that suffered the most) want normal relations with Israel. It seems they blame some other party, even for the deaths directly at the hands of Israel ...
So, none of these situations fit your theory. It's very obvious that the issues Israel has with a great many countries have nothing to do with "giving them reasons to want you dead". By contrast, there are countries who've given each other far better reasons to hate ... and yet don't want each other dead.
In fact, I have trouble finding an example of nations that want to attack each other because of such a historical situation. Hell, the history of China and Japan for the last millenium is one of each nation taking turns conquering and terrorizing the other and yet ... the only fear Japanese and Chinese have is the communist party suddenly deciding to conquer some country and attack, which every Japanese and Chinese person is secretly 100% certain will be a total disaster, for China as a whole AND for them personally.
And that gives the real reason behind conflicts: one party thinks they can just take what they want, and attacks, usually for ideological reasons. Sometimes they're right, mostly they're wrong.
Not OP, but: peace between Germany and the rest of the West required a) millions slaughtered in war, b) an obvious big bad who got killed, c) relatively lenient and merciful occupation for years, and ultimately d) waiting for the Nazi generation to die out. I'm sure sharing a common cultural background helped a lot, too. And maybe a collective sense of optimism about the post-war world.
I don't see many common elements with the situation in Gaza (and now Iran). A policy of "mowing the grass" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mowing_the_grass) will never lead to stability or warm and fuzzy feelings towards Israel.
My point was that Germans were killed by the millions too, by just about everyone ... and no attacks. Nobody is predicting any attacks by Germans either. And there's 100s of examples of such conflicts with every variable you could possibly want. We have the problem that nobody wants to face: terror attacks are a choice by the group that uses them, and the vast majority of groups just don't, including under far worse circumstances than this particular group.
EVEN where you do see terror attacks, there are large differences. The IRA, for example, went out of it's way to avoid hitting children and hospitals. By contrast, Palestinians really, really try to go after children and the sick. In fact the IRA made big efforts, sometimes outright stupid, to go after military bases or politicians involved in the situation they wanted to change, and to avoid everyone else. They have apologized, without being asked, to unintended victims. They have even given up some of their own members who "went too far". And, of course, given a way out, they choose to take it. The IRA was a lot closer to someone like Luigi Mangione than they are to the PLO. The explanation? We all know it but it's forbidden to say: ideology.
Even restricting to Israel itself. Israel has had to defend itself a lot, and the situation is not at all what the GP predicts. It's not the case that every group that got attacked wants to commit terror acts against Israel, in fact it's really just 1 group (or 2 if you consider them separately). And it's not even Palestinians! The overwhelming majority of Palestinians are in Jordan, and not attacking Israel at all. It's Palestinians living under state sponsored terror groups, it's very large amounts of Palestinians, a bunch of supposedly Lebanese but really Syrians, and Yemenites. The Palestinians paid originally by the Soviets, now the UN, the rest as well as Palestinians now paid by Iran. And paid A LOT, on a large scale. The terror attacks are a mercenary army, bought and paid for, and the only God they believe in is not allah but the true, undeniable almighty: Thomas Jefferson on a green background.
I am told it goes this far: a foot soldier for Hamas in Gaza makes more than a hospital director makes in Egypt. The unemployment benefits in Gaza are 3 times a normal wage in Egypt. And this in a part of the world that has >90% unemployment. THAT explains some things, doesn't it?
Hence the explanation that countries/groups/... attack because they want to steal something and think they can get it through brute force, not because of actual grievances, is the only explanation that I find even remotely fits.
Germany also lost about 25% of its land after WW2 to neighbors and yet they haven't built their entire society around getting it back the way Palestinians have
Defeating an enemy to the extent that they can't drive a truck full of AI killbots into a busy city center is an impossible task barring a scorched earth approach. And if that option is on the table -- killing millions to secure Israel's future -- then Israel seals its fate regardless.
Live by the sword, die by the sword. Old advice that continues to ring true.
Non-Israelis also have people that can afford truckfuls of slaughter bots that would kill them if they could, so since Israel is cooked, we are all cooked, right?
State-level groups in the same physical vicinity that have blood feuds and generational grievances against each other are quite possibly cooked, yes. I sincerely hope this can be preempted through diplomacy, but the prognosis is not good. The depopulated, fiber-laced front lines of Ukraine set the stage for all future war and terror.
> Iran and Israel have maintained no diplomatic relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and their relationship has been characterized by hostility ever since.
Iran severely persecutes Baha'is with bans on higher education, employment, and imprisonment. The Iranian government often labels unrecognized religious minorities as "heretics" or "apostates," subjecting them to harassment and violence.
My point was that Israel was also not an innocent player in the failure of diplomacy.
Neither country's participation in systematic unjust violence is excused by the other. Regardless of relative differences in scale or not, they both harm people who did not deserve it, promote and coerce complicity within their own populations, create international instability, and degrade the human condition for everyone else.
The Palestinians who have been killed by settlers might not find that helpful. Just as innocent Israeli’s who have been killed by Iranian proxies do not benefit from their own country’s crimes.
Victims are victims.
Any argument by a group that their crimes get a pass, because they commit fewer atrocities is broken.
The perpetrators of fewer atrocities, and those who give them cover, regardless of whataboutism, have still thrown away any moral standing.
Do you think that makes the killing, violence and harassment of Palestinians, individuals who are not provoking, by uninvited settlers on their land one iota less detestable?
It doesn’t help Israel to only point out the crimes of others, if they are not concerned about their own.
This is a problem that troubles many people who support Israel against Iran. Which, I do, whole heartedly.
I am not making any arguments of false equivalence. But concern about only one set of crimes is a deeply false and immoral dichotomy.
"Do you think that makes the killing, violence and harassment of Palestinians, individuals who are not provoking, by uninvited settlers on their land one iota less detestable?"
Most Gazans want to destroy Israel and that is the explicit goal of Hamas. They think they can get their land back by force but they can't and trying just makes their lives worse.
I see. You are claiming it is ok for “settlers” to kill specific Palestinian individuals, on there land, in situations where they are the ones being encroached on, and they are not provoking.
That’s called murder.
We are talking about families, men, women, children, brutalized. By uninvited invaders. Chased off their own property. Systematically. With complicity from authorities that are supposed to stop and rectify crimes.
Your (lack of) moral logic is this is ok because there are other Palestinians that are not innocent.
Unlike you, I won’t judge other people, or groups of people, based on you. Only you are responsible for inhumanity which you attest to.
Crimes are crimes. There are no good excuses for any of them.
How are you any different from the people you condemn?
How does your selective sense of justice not validate the people you condemn?
If you don’t stand for justice for everyone, including Palestinians, you are no different from those who approve of atrocities to innocent Israeli’s in response to the crimes of other Israelis.
Several times here I have clearly confirmed I stand with Israel against anyone harming its people. Iran, Hamas, any of them. But their crimes don’t absolve other crimes by other people.
I believe people with selective justice are doing great harm to Israel. Undermining its moral standing, and feeding its opposition, in these conflicts.
"You are claiming it is ok for “settlers” to kill specific Palestinian individuals, on there land, in situations where they are the ones being encroached on, and they are not provoking."
I did no such thing. The Israeli settlers are just as much crazed religious lunatics as the average Hamas member.
But over and over again the Palestinians have proven to be their own worse enemies.
The State of Israel asks for harassment. There are hundreds of Israeli colonies that are not recognized by any international coalition anywhere on Earth.
