Realistically, I'd be angry and frightened at being taken hostage no matter what the circumstances, even if I had some understanding of why it was done, and even if I were generally treated well during the whole thing.
But if my kidnappers allowed me to take my dog with me and/or made sure he was fed and healthy the whole time, I would be grateful for that for the rest of my life, despite whatever trauma. I don't imagine my own country's cops or soldiers would ever do the same.
Thanks very much for fleshing out my half-thought and also for complicating the picture a bit. :)
I'm reading though Gerald Horne's book on US settler colonialism soon, so hopefully that will help me internalize some of these details!
I'd question the nature of that support. I'm sure nearly every Israeli wants the military to step up their game in protecting them, however support for the recent bombings and ground assaults is significantly lower.
Well, a large supermajority of Israelis support continuing the current campaign, which is inarguably characterized by indiscriminate carpet bombing of Gaza, 'until Hamas is completely eliminated'. This is a clear statement of support not just for the bombing which has so far taken place, but a claim that it must continue (indefinitely— until reaching a goal that is arguably impossible).
I'm sure nearly every Israeli wants the military to step up their game
Are you familiar with the concept of strategic depth? Given Israel's limited size and accessible terrain, its geography profoundly lacks this feature. This means Israel's defensive capabilities have a virtual ceiling, and the ability to make strategic retreats against an invasion is very limited.
For this reason, Israel has a long history of preferring offensive action over defensive action. And indeed, a large plurality of those polled by IVP, as reported on in the article cited above, have come out and said that Israel's biggest mistake leading up to October 7 was failing to carry out more offensive operations in Gaza prior to the attack.
Calls for Israel to 'step up its military game' are intimately tied to offensive action in Israel, and the pretense that they could conceivably relate only to defensive measures for 'protection' or 'safety' is unsustainable under any historical scrutiny.
there are many in Israeli leadership roles behaving that way. It's hard to say whether they genuinely feel that way themselves or if they're just encouraging it for their own benefit - Netanyahu is probably the latter, in my opinion
Why such interest in the rhetoric when there is a growing pile of civilian corpses behind it? Who cares what is in Netanyahu's heart when the evident fact is that his finger is pulling the trigger?
Most people in any nation just want peace and prosperity for themselves, rather than the destruction of others to expand political borders.
The demand for peace without justice is a demand to normalize violence. Are you familiar with the concept of 'normalization' in the fight against apartheid in South Africa, or in the BDS movement? If you aren't, regardless of the outcome of this discussion, I urge you to take the time to review and at least consider this recent lecture on the concept. Peace is indeed vital for all human beings, but how peace is demanded is equally vital.
rather than the destruction of others to expand political borders.
And yet Israel, a country in which conscription is mandatory for both sexes, military training typically begins at age 14, a large supermajority of the population serves in the military, and whose military and intelligence agencies are rooted in paramilitaries that antedate the formal state by decades, has been engaged continuously in exactly such a project of forceful expulsion for more than a hundred years, without pause.
If this history is unfamiliar to you, or Palestinian displacement has been presented to you primarily as very recent or unintentional, you may find some deeper engagement with the topic enlightening, if challenging (and you may not agree with all the analysis you read, of course).
There are a large number of books, including books by Jewish Israeli scholars, currently available for free on this topic.
If you're interested in diving deeper, outside the context of this argument, please let me know. If you have preferences for audiobooks, videos, or other formats, I can help you find something that works for you.
I'm also willing to do a 'reading exchange' with you if you're open to that— I'll read one related book of your choosing if, after you give me a sense of what texts most interest you, you agree to read one book I recommend, and we can discuss both books together.
I understand that the latter is a big time commitment, so no big deal if you can't do it.
This kind of functional role of 'bad settlers' is well-documented in settler-colonialism, and there are even instances of leaders and government officials in the United States case admitting the necessity of 'unofficial' settler violence, from paramilitaries to illegal settlements and more.
Can any comrades with more recent contact with this material than I've had help me out with a citation on this, ideally 'from the horse's mouth'?
Thanks for writing out your thinking on this explicitly, and for inviting discussion in that way.
Public support in Israel for Israeli military operations is typically very high (70% or more, often even above 80%). The only sense in which those supporting massively disproportionate violence and indiscriminate killing of civilians are a minority is in terms of rhetorical style— not the substance of supporting the actual operations that kill people.
Moreover, many of the Israelis on TV 'frothing at the mouth' are current or former government officials. To characterize them as a 'tiny minority' is extremely misleading about their role in effecting this violence.
Israel is in fact among the most dangerous places, if not the most dangerous place, in the world to be Jewish, precisely because of the violence inherent in settler colonialism.
The idea that Israel serves as a safe haven for Jews has always played a justificatory role in Zionism but it has never been true.
arm the moderate gays