The girls, aged 14 to 16, have come for settler training to learn how to occupy Palestinian land — breaking international law. “God promised us this land and told us if you don’t take it, bad people will try and take it and you will have a war,” says Emuna Billa, 19, one of the camp supervisors. “Why do we have a war in Gaza? Because we don’t take Gaza.”
Their guru is Daniella Weiss, a 79-year-old grandmother in a long skirt and patterned headscarf. Founder of the Nachala or Homeland movement, she has been setting up illegal settlements for 49 years and was recently put under international sanctions. “You will be the new emissaries,” she tells the 50 or so girls at the camp. “I call it redeeming, not settling and this is our duty.”
She unfurls a map of Israel and the Palestinian territories dotted with vivid pink house symbols to represent existing and proposed Jewish settlements. Not only are these all across the West Bank, but also in Gaza. Already 674 people have signed up for beachside plots there, she tells me, and “many more want to join”. When someone asks her about settling Lebanon she smiles and says, “Yes, there too”.
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Yeah and so does Germany over vast areas of western Poland, yet you don’t see normal people claiming that Germany should invade, settle, and occupy those parts. Secondly, I’m part jewish and have no connection to Israel, and never will. The Zionist mission to look for Lebensraum in the West Bank will never have my support. Zionism doesn’t represent Judaism. If you think so, then you’re just another philosemitic antisemite, or someone delusional enough to think that supporting the mass slaughter of children will wash his family’s past crimes.
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And where Palestinians should go. Shall they magically disappear to leave more Lebensraum for Israel? Or what’s your solution?
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Last time I checked Israel was actively trying to annex parts of the land that was supposed to be part of the future Palestinian state, not to mention that they are building various checkpoints and restricting basic human rights of those people. How would you feel if you were treated like this? Shall we also start talking about the impunity with which those settlers are evicting Palestinians from their land, uprooting trees, etc?
Or the fact that Israel can arrest, kill Palestinians at will without any formal investigation or Palestinians having access to a proper legal defence? You know if you constantly kick a dog, no matter how good this dog is, it will finally bite you. So don’t act surprised when that happens.
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Then can you comment on the settlers’ terrorism? What did the state of Israel did or is doing to prevent this from happening again? How many settlers were convicted and got effective sentences?
Shall I also remind you about the Irgun who were also considered a terrorist organization? Resolution 181 assigned 55–56% of Mandatory Palestine to the Jews. At the time, the Jews were about a third of the population and owned around 6–7% of the land. Arabs constituted the majority and owned about 20% of the land, with the remainder held by the Mandate authorities or foreign landowners. And now ask yourself, if you are on the other side of history, how would you really feel? And then over 700,000 Palestinians were expelled by or fled by Zionist militias and the Israeli military—what would become known in Arabic as the Nakba (‘catastrophe’).[200] The events also led to the destruction of most of Palestine’s predominantly Arab population’s society, culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations. Some 156,000 remained and became Arab citizens of Israel.
And also to let you know that generalizing the whole Palestinian population is a sure sign of racism. Shall I also remind you that once Germany elected the NS party, how would you feel if I come to you and tell you all the Germans are Nazis because they were once voting for NS? So don’t fall into that trap of bigotry and racial hatred. You know terrorism is fueled by people’s hardships and struggles, with the lack of future and prosperity. And again to make a parallel with Nazi Germany, Germans back then voted for NS, because of their economic hardships after the Treaty of Versailles and the enormous reparations they were forced to pay, including the high unemployment rate. Simply people were desperate back then and looked to the NS as a possible savior of their hardships.
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“Obvious solution”
Says the guy that was literally trying to tell me earlier that Israel has a legitimate claim to the West Bank. Where would that second state be? I say we give a part of Germany so Palestinians can create their state and not stand in the way of the apartheid state with a biblical right to other people’s lands.
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“Palestinians” here is a useless generalization, because it lacks a quantifier. Certainly some do, and just as certainly not all do.
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Don’t waste my time with your bigotry and shortsighted dumb comments.