I’m Going to War for Israel. Palestinians Are Not My Enemy.

[ImStillMags Mags]

By Nir Avishai Cohen

Mr. Cohen, a major in the reserves of the Israel Defense Forces, is the author of the book “Love Israel, Support Palestine.”

I was in Austin, Texas, for work on Saturday when I received a call from my commander in the Israel Defense Forces to return to Israel and head to the front line. I didn’t hesitate. I knew that the citizens of my country were in real danger. My duty first and foremost is to join the fight against those who unleashed a massacre on my people. I boarded the first flight I found out of Austin to head home to join the I.D.F. reserves, where I serve as a brigade operations command officer.

During my long flight to Israel, my mind couldn’t rest. I was trying to write down my feelings and thoughts about everything happening — and everything that’s about to happen — in my beloved country.

Little by little, the dimensions of the horrors of the most brutal attack that Israelis have experienced since the establishment of the state were being revealed. Hundreds of Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than 1,200 people, including women, children and older people. About 150 citizens and soldiers have been taken captive. There’s nothing in the world that can justify the murder of hundreds of innocent people.

But I’d like to say one thing clearly, before I go to battle: There’s no such thing as “unavoidable.” This war could have been avoided, and no one did enough to prevent it. Israel did not do enough to make peace; we just conquered the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, expanded the illegal settlements and imposed a long-term siege on the Gaza Strip.

For 56 years Israel has been subjecting Palestinians to oppressive military rule. In my book “Love Israel, Support Palestine,” I wrote: “Israeli society has to ask itself very important questions about where and why the blood of its sons and daughters was spilled. A Messianic religious minority has dragged us into a muddy swamp, and we are following them as if it were the piper from Hamelin.” When I wrote these words last year, I didn’t realize how deep in the mud we were, and how much more blood could be shed in so little time.

I am now going to defend my country against enemies who want to kill my people. Our enemies are the deadly terrorist organizations that are being controlled by Islamic extremists.

Palestinians aren’t the enemy. The millions of Palestinians who live right here next to us, between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan, are not our enemy. Just like the majority of Israelis want to live a calm, peaceful and dignified life, so do Palestinians. Israelis and Palestinians alike have been in the grip of a religious minority for decades. On both sides, the intractable positions of a small group have dragged us into violence. It doesn’t matter who is more cruel or more ruthless. The ideologies of both have fueled this conflict, leading to the deaths of too many innocent civilians.

As a major in the reserves, it is important to me to make it clear that in this already unstoppable new war, we cannot allow the massacre of innocent Israelis to result in the massacre of innocent Palestinians. Israel must remember that there are more than two million people living in the Gaza Strip. The vast majority of them are innocent. Israel must do everything in its power to avoid killing innocent people and to focus on destroying the militant army of Hamas.

This war, like others before it, will end sooner or later. I am not sure I will come back from it alive, but I do know that a minute after the war is over, both Israelis and Palestinians will have to reckon with the leaders who led them to this moment. We must wake up and not let the extremists rule. Palestinians and Israelis must denounce the extremists who are driven by religious fanaticism. The Israelis will have to oust National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and their far-right circle from power, and the Palestinians will have to oust the leadership of Hamas.

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I try to look for shreds of hope. The Yom Kippur War, the most difficult war that Israel had known until this week, started by surprise in 1973. After a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt was finally signed in 1979, the border with Egypt — one that was once the site of the dead and wounded — became a border of peace.

Israelis must realize that there is no greater security asset than peace. The strongest army cannot protect the country the way peace does. This current war proves it once again. Israel has followed the path of war for too long.

At the end, after all of the dead Israelis and Palestinians are buried, after we have finished washing away the rivers of blood, the people who share a home in this land will have to understand that there is no other choice but to follow the path of peace. That is where true victory lies.

[Thomas Argo]

Tear down the fences and enjoy diversity. Nice beaches. It is only 2 million. 

[Lobo]

It is about religion and extreme ideology on the part of Israel; a religious/political belief that Yahweh, their tribal deity, "gave" them both what is now Israel and Palestine, along with parts or all of modern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt -- "Eretz Yisrael"/"Greater Israel", the mythical 3000 year old "Kingdom of David".

But though Palestinians have also turned to the craziest, most extreme version of their religion, it is about far more than ideology and dictates from God. For them, it is about their very existence, as a people and as a nation. Since 2007, Gaza has been kept as a continuously bombarded concentration camp with 2 1/2 mostly child prisoners, who it now apparently intends to exterminate altogether. And Israel has been filling the West Bank and East Jerusalem with nearly a million Israeli "settlers" (so far), and a spiderweb of "Jewish Only" roads and highways that Arabs may neither use nor cross, to the point that a Palestinian state -- a "two-state solution" -- is now an impossibility.

Unfortunately, Israel has not made clear what it intends to do with the 3 million West Bank Palestinians. They can't make them voting citizens of Israel without it becoming a Muslim country. So, are they expecting them to accept wholesale ethnic cleansing, to just pack up and leave their homes and homeland to the invader, without putting up a serious, deadly, long-term fight? Or expecting them to permanently accept being an apartheid citizenless people in their own country, with no political, social, or human rights of any sort?

The only two other alternatives left for Israel are:

1. A Holocaust. Do to Palestinians what the Third Reich did to Europe's Jews: a "Final Solution".

2. Live in peace, by abandoning its fantasy of "Greater Israel", pull out its illegal "settlements", free (and stop exterminating) the people of Gaza, honor the treaties it has signed, and return to its legal 1948 borders.

On Friday, October 13, 2023 at 4:52:41 PM UTC-4 ImStillMags Mags wrote:

[Susiejoe]

Israel patrols offshore.  Palestinians can only go so far out from the beach or they are shot at.  That includes their fishing boats.  Seems visitors get the same treatment of late.  

[Susiejoe]

Religion is just the scapegoat for the Zionists so they do not have to have a democracy.  For the US, Israel is a means to help control the ME.  Obviously the Palestinians fight for their land, homes, lives - not for their religion. The fact that they are a religious people does not mean they fight for their religion.  It is but a small sec of Judaism that holds the view of restoring Greater Israel and more importantly relevant to what is happening right now, the Temple Mount.  Orthodox Jews are strongly opposed to the state of Israel. They claim that scriptures forbid the Jews from owning land as a punishment from God and predict some curse to befall them as a result of what they are doing in Israel.  Many oppose what has been done to the Palestinians and the outright theft of their land.  And it seems few of late are happy with Bibi who will likely go to prison for other crimes when he is thrown out of office.  point being, you have a bad habit of branding groups of people with collective statements that would only be applicable to some.  

Putin has expressed criticism this week of past peace negotiations, saying the US has never been concerned about addressing the needs of the Palestinians and thus their failures. Russia is offering to mediate peace negotiations directed at establishing a two state solution.  China has endorsed the peace plan.  The other Arab nations are too quite but they are talking except for hezbollah who has joined in the fight in the north where Israeli soldiers are shooting demonstrators in the West Bank.  Israel has also been bombing Syria who has in turn reciprocated.  You know they stole Syrian land as well and are currently stealing oil from Syria.  

[Lobo]

<< point being, you have a bad habit of branding groups of people with collective statements that would only be applicable to some.  >>

Like branding all Ukrainians who oppose being invaded and forcibly annexed by Russia as "neo-nazis"...? When I say "it is about religion and extreme ideology on the part of Israel", I'm talking about those who currently control Israel and its government, not everyone in Israel.

<<It is but a small sec of Judaism that holds the view of restoring Greater Israel and more importantly relevant to what is happening right now, the Temple Mount.>>

It might be, but the Israelis expanding Israel and threatening to demolish the Al Aqsa Mosque are the Israelis currently in charge of Israel.

<<Orthodox Jews are strongly opposed to the state of Israel. They claim that scriptures forbid the Jews from owning land as a punishment from God and predict some curse to befall them as a result of what they are doing in Israel.>>

Some Orthodox Jewish sects do, but most don't. There are many sects within Judaism, just as there are in Christianity.

<<Putin has expressed criticism this week of past peace negotiations, saying the US has never been concerned about addressing the needs of the Palestinians and thus their failures.>>

When has Putin ever been concerned about it before? His only concern in the Levant is to prop up the mass-murderous Assad regime in Syria -- a Ba'athist/Fascist dictator who gasses his own people! -- in order to maintain a Russian port on the Mediterranean.

[plainolamerican]

https://therealnews.com/the-israeli-soldiers-exposing-the-idfs-war-crimes

[Susiejoe]

When has Putin ever been concerned about it before? His only concern in the Levant is to prop up the mass-murderous Assad regime in Syria -- a Ba'athist/Fascist dictator who gasses his own people! -- in order to maintain a Russian port on the Mediterranean.

How can you criticize Israel for what they are doing to Gaza and support what they are doing to Syria which is essentially the same thing for the same reasons?  Too much Shilliary and Joey has screwed your head up good.  

[Lobo]

Where did I say that I "support" Israel annexing part of Syria's Golan Heights? Other than that relatively small area, Israel is not and has not at all been doing to Syria what it's doing to Palestine.

I don't support any country invading, occupying, and forcibly annexing its weaker neighbors. Whether it's Israel doing it to Palestine and the Golan Heights, or Russia doing it to Ukraine.