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vm's avatar

"Since when does a militarily occupied people have the responsibility for a peace movement?"

Edward Said

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SW's avatar

Chris Hedges said right after October 7th “Hamas spoke to Israel in a language it understood — violence.”

No one will ever be able to convince me that a man shooting a child in the head is not personally responsible for murder. The first hysterical lie that went out was the one about Hamas beheading 40 babies which tells me they understand the horror of killing children. I understand propaganda and indoctrination from an early age has a profound effect but, ultimately, it’s no excuse.

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SLK's avatar

,💯🎯.

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Chuck Nasmith's avatar

I support Hamas. I support Yemen. I support Palestine Action. I support burning the American and Israeli flag at the same time. I support pitchforks . I support "This Is Not A Drill". Free Gaza

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The Revolution Continues's avatar

Let's do a big flag burning. We need to rid ourselves of a lot of repressive regimes and this is a great rallying point.

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Wren's avatar

No matter what the Palestinians do or don't do, Israel has plans to exterminate them. No matter who the authorities are, Israel wants the land. Anything Israel says is a lie and will not change its chosen course of action. Resistance is the only path. It is an innate human right to defend in the face of violent and deadly oppression.

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JennyStokes's avatar

Correct and whilst we are talking about Palestinians I urge every person to turn their eyes to Cyprus.

Eventually dear Caitlin we will be watching the same in Cyprus. Already the Greeks are being turned out of their homes/land is being bought/propaganda schools/entrenched. Please please take note.

Please watch Demitiri Lascaris on this. These demented Zionists are buying up land/villages (with the aid of.................the Great British Empire again. North and South Cyprus.

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Josh Appel's avatar

It’s pretty weird they gave the land back in 2005 then….

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dacoelec's avatar

Any sane human being with even a tiny shred of dignity, if treated in the way that the Palestinians have been treated by israhell for the past 80 years would react in the exact same way as Hamas has. Hamas are real men fighting for their rights and their families. If our government ever treats us in that manner we will all be Hamas.

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Just sayn's avatar

In the US perhaps 3 to 5 percent would actually physically act against tyranny. Most are just sheep who will do as they did during Covid psyop. Comply. The fighting spirit of 1775 has long been propagandized out. Most won't even write a letter to a 'repress'entative!

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dacoelec's avatar

In my neck of the woods, we are locked and loaded and ready for them to make the first move. We have been in a stage of cold anger for the past decade. Most people like me never make the first move, we just prepare and wait for them to be stupid enough to make that first move. They have no idea of the absolute hell that will fall on their heads and one advantage of this passage of time is they just get more stupid and cocky and we just become more prepared for them.

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Just sayn's avatar

So what you said is that you aren't part of the 3 percent. That is understandable as 97% are too tied to their income, their debt, too distracted and 1000 other excuses.

What we Americans and the entire population of Earth need is a real awakening to the fact that there will be no fullblown attack on America as individuals. It will be the continuation of Incremental creep that has brought us where we are today. A fascist oligarchy of Parasitic corporations, Zionist owned government, and media control that has not had Americans or anyone else's interest for over 200 years.

Total indoctrination that includes NEVER considering that the Enemy already has us surrounded, infiltrated, indoctrinated and under their totalitarian control. The only solution is dissolving present government which of course will bring instant genocidal violence to all who opposed their rule as shown through our World history. New Hampshire motto ' LIVE FREE or DIE'. That is the American Dream.

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dacoelec's avatar

I don't think that you understood a damn thing that I just wrote.

Try genociding me and like minded people and see where that gets you.

If you think that you can change a damn thing by voting or writing your representative then you are delusional beyond hope.

We are waiting for the total collapse of this effed up country then we pick up the pieces and continue on. We are survivalists in ways that you don't appear to understand.

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Just sayn's avatar

Thank you. I do indeed understand. I once believed that voting and writing were the correct choice. They are indeed pacifiers for fools. Being prepared and organized (quietly)as a 'form' of neighbor hood watch:) ( politically correct form of citizens Militia) is commendable . But again I don't believe a group once identified by a government will stand a chance. Waco TX, Montana freemen, and many others demonized in media and eliminated by overwhelming military force. Or destroyed by infiltrators. Even the Confederate states who never tried to take over the country only separate peacefully were demonized and destroyed, occupied territory to this day. But that's another story with much misinformation, and the US genocide of civilians by the invading unionists. Good luck keep your powder dry and your hatchet sharp. FREE PALESTINE! Trumpenstiein .

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dacoelec's avatar

1000 up votes, brother!!

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Texas Strikes Back's avatar

The 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th moves have already been made. The surveillance state and AI almost has us in checkmate. I suggest the time to fight is now.

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Layla Al-Qudsi's avatar

React in the same way means killing children? I am Palestinian and I know many who don't support certain actions of Hamas like the chilling of children, even if they are Israeli. Sorry, you lose me there.

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dacoelec's avatar

I never said a word about killing children. I also didn't realize that Israeli children were operating their tanks either, but there is irrefutable proof that Israeli snipers target Palestinian children.

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Susan T's avatar

"it’s about the system. The unjust system upon which the Zionist state is based" And when that system is combined with the system of capitalism we have a super toxic mix. People who are brainwashed from birth with Zionist ideology to believe they are supreme beings and people who are also taught that having money is being successful. Those two systems seem to be feeding each other and growing right now. Maybe they will bloat each other up until they both explode.

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Chang Chokaski's avatar

>>"Those two systems seem to be feeding each other and growing right now. Maybe they will bloat each other up until they both explode."

💯👏🙏

Thank you for that Susan T. More people need to make the connection that it is the SYSTEM OF CAPITALISM that creates many of the incentives and behaviors (including settler-colonialism and imperialism in Palestine) that is responsible for much of this! Religion, etc. are convenient narratives that are hijacked to provide cover for the many evils of Capitalism.

One simple example: how is it that NONE of these arms-exporting countries ever talk about the BILLIONS they make in weapons sales?

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Chuck Nasmith's avatar

Ike was right!

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Davina's avatar

We may, at present, use the brainwashed from birth to see Palestinians as less than zionists, but who brainwashed the first killers that started the extermination and laughed about it on camera? Especially when you now know that zionists were shopping around for a country to takeover(a country that did not have a large standing army with tanks, planes, ships, bombs and bullets to fight back with)by brute force. Palestine was one of many they investigated, and lost, as they are doing now because there is resistance from other countries against the cruelty and starvation they are using on Palestinians.

They know they are running our of time to find a new place, Cyprus is one, they were stopped from landing in a part of Greece. We can be sure they are testing other places again, but this time the world has seen what they do and how they do it.

People must show them that wherever they try to occupy there will be fightback from everywhere.

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Susan T's avatar

The problem is that the US is on their side. the UK too. The UK gave them Palestine. Netanyahu, Trump, Starmer and all of their cronies need to be in jail. How to get them there?

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JennyStokes's avatar

Eyes toward Cyprus.

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Tracy Harrison's avatar

Having grown up in apartheid South Africa as a privileged white person, I wholeheartedly agree with your analysis Caitlin. Your article also nails on the head why the same woman appears with her 'Hamas are terrorists' sign at every free Palestine rally in Auckland, while telling me she understands 'Israel have also done bad things, but Hamas kills civilians'. Weirdly she is not religious at all, but seems to have supped at the Hasbara table and drunk the Zionist coolaid.

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Davina's avatar

She doesn't think Israel is killing civilians? Are Palestinian one day old babies killed by israeli bombs Hamas? That woman needs to sit down through hours of IOF snipers shooting children and making a game of "which part will be shoot at today?"

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Margaret Henderson's avatar

Thirty-eight Israeli children were killed on 7th Ocober 2023.

Israel has killed more than 17,000 identified Palestinian children and 11,000 are missing, most presumed dead under the rubble of their homes.

How many Israeli children has Hamas killed since 7th October 2023 ?

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Texas Strikes Back's avatar

There isn’t proof that the Palestinians were responsible for the deaths of any children on Oct 7th. Israelis killed their own.

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Layla Al-Qudsi's avatar

In 2014 during the Gaza conflict ("Operation Protective Edge"), Hamas rockets killed several Israeli civilians, including children. Also remember the three Israeli teens kidnapping and murder.

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Davina's avatar

Who in fact lied the Israeli chidren at the rave by helicopter fire on orders from Israeli command?

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Tracy Harrison's avatar

That's why I say she's got the zionist kool-aid coursing through her veins. The reality she lives in is a post-truth reality. A Trumpian one, if you will.

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The Revolution Continues's avatar

"...It’s not about the individuals, it’s about the system. The unjust system upon which the Zionist state is based has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it can never exist without nonstop violence and abuse, so that system needs to be dismantled and replaced with something radically different..."

And the unjust system is worldwide. It thrives on violence and endless war, profits over people. It's time to dismantle capitalism and replace it with a people-first system, or else we'll see more genocides and man-made famines.

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Brianna Amore's avatar

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/

Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.

According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

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Jim Best's avatar

Citing Hamas is justifying the eradication of an entire population is a matter of ignorance. Netanyahu gave a wink and a nod and hands off to the preparation Hamas receiving suitcases full of cash from Qatar. The preparation of tunnels and heavy equipment was noticed more than a year before the attack and reported by Israeli soldiers. Their reports were intentionally ignored. On the well-known date all the security was removed from Gaza so that they entered Israel without resistance. None of this was accidental. It was orchestrated to demonstrate to the world that Israel lives in a threatening environment which justifies their “right to defend themselves.“ The truth is from before 1948. Israel has created all of its enemies. None of them had problems with the endemic Mizrahi Jews for generations until the fascist motivated and declared Ashkenazi terrorist arrived to steal plunder and eradicate the Arab population which included the native Arab Jews. That is the truth and admitted by Israeli officers.

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Davina's avatar

Many, many years ago tunnels went from Gaza to Egypt to smuggle guns in to give Hamas fighting arm something to fight back with. Israeli Occupying Forces stopped that by cutting off that route, so Hamas had to learn how to make it's own rockets to continue their resistance.

The one thing that has persisted is calling Hamas military arm terrorists by Israel and followed up by other good little politicians and media, who should have been telling the truth 80 years ago.

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martin's avatar

would you conclude from this that hamas can't be part of any future palestinian government?

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Davina's avatar

It is up to Palestinians who they have in government not other countries, any country who says recognition must also exclude Hamas from rule is a bully and should never be allowed a say in Palestine's future.

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KO0KO's avatar

Let's not forget that it was the Israeli Hannibal directive that killed most Israelis on October 7th as it continues to slowly kill the hostages —and their families in Israel. This cannot be stressed enough. It would be very useful if every debate on the urgency of the current conflict and how to end it started from this fact.

It serves as micro-model, as diagram, of the entire history-line, past-preset-future that expresses and deep deep-rooted zionist intent

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Diana van Eyk's avatar

I hope some outside forces will step in and stop Israel soon. This just can't continue.

And, I agree, empathy is needed more than ever right now.

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Rodolfo Marusi Guareschi's avatar

Yes, for 25 years I have argued that the most logical solution to the Jewish-Palestinian question is a single binational state with equal rights and duties for all its citizens. And, in truth, by the end of 2002, this idea had been embraced by all Palestinian political and religious authorities. But a phone call from abroad blocked this solution. Because there were those with other interests. It's a story that repeated itself with Ukraine, when in Istanbul, in April 2022, an agreement had already been signed, but a British politician went to Kiev and convinced Zelensky to blow it up. And so, weapons of all kinds have been sold and are being sold, both military and civilian casualties are inflicted, structures are destroyed with three objectives: profit from the military industry, profit from reconstruction, and keep the world in fear as the main instrument of domination. The only way to reverse this situation is to open the eyes of the populations involved. After all, if it is true that a lie repeated a thousand times can be considered a truth, a truth repeated a thousand times can conquer that lie.

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Chuck Nasmith's avatar

One State Palestine.

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Harry Ziboo's avatar

Israel was a stupid political act and abomination the first day it was thought of in a politician's brain. The "Jewish" problem " should have been dealt with by the countries that created it, Europe

As long as there is an Israel, it will be a monster, fascist, evil, blood thirsty entity that will always seek the destruction of anyone non Jewish, especially Palestinians.

If it is such a beautiful idea to the nations and corrupt politicians of the world, let it be done in Europe.

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Rodolfo Marusi Guareschi's avatar

Europe has nothing to teach because it has always and only colonized other countries.

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Morrigan Johnson's avatar

Forcing incompatible multi nationalism is actually a bit cruel when the populations are absolutely against each other. Their national histories consist of nothing except war crimes.

If you killed the two state solution pragmatism, I think the one state revolution is utopian fiction at this point.

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Rodolfo Marusi Guareschi's avatar

I went to Palestine and spoke with Jews and Muslims.

Palestinians' hatred of Jews stems from being invaded.

Jews' hatred of Palestinians stems from propaganda.

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Morrigan Johnson's avatar

That's good, I'm glad you could see it first hand.

There's a lot of propaganda on both sides, actually.

I would prefer to find people who are serious about solving it, rather than people who are going to let their emotions get more people killed. It doesn't matter if its propaganda, because people are still dying.

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Juliana's avatar

Do I condemn Hamas? Absolutely not. If I had been born in Palestine after 1948, I would be exactly where I am today — supporting the resistance.

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@realRodster's avatar

When you (insert Israel) treat people like shit, expect (insert Hamas and Hezbollah) shit to get thrown back at you.

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Chuck Nasmith's avatar

I hope Iran throwing shit at the Terrorists does not harm Palestinians and that peaceful Israeli's deport themselves from Palestine for safety..

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Feral Finster's avatar

Israel rejoices in this, as it provides a pretext to demand double standards and special pleading, not to mention an opportunity to run screaming to its American thug.

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Sean Bodhivajra Scanlan's avatar

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A very thoughtful and helpful essay. On the whole, I agree with Caitlyn's general contention that, if we were raised under the conditions of the occupied Palestinians or of the Israeli occupiers, any one of us might indeed have ended up, on the one hand, as an assailant of the Israelis on October 7th, or, on the other hand, as an oppressor and torturer of the Palestinians... as the Israelis have been, not just on that singular day alone, of October 7th 2023, but on pretty much every single day during the last half a century since Israel was founded on May 14th 1948.

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So, that is to say, all the torture, oppression, persecution, theft, murder and maiming carried out by the Israelis against the Palestinians during the 28,226 days that have passed since Israel's inception; and from the consequent launching of the Nakba, and the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians that had been written into the Zionists’ blueprint for taking possession of Palestine since the earliest days of their murderous enterprise was launched in the first early half of the Twentieth Century.

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The term Genocide was coined in 1943 by Raphael Lemkin. It was recognized as a crime under international law by a UN resolution in 1946. It was officially labeled a crime under international law by the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in December 1948. The Convention came into effect in 1951.

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Thus, the establishment of the State of Israel and the establishment of the Genocide as a punishable crime, in a very real sense, came into being at one and the same time. The two, it seems, were born together, and their fates are inextricably intertwined. If Israel’s crime of genocide against the Palestinian people cannot be interdicted, reversed, and corrected by the global community at this time, then neither will the establishment of genocide as a punishable crime retain any meaningful standing in the future that awaits us.

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They two, the formal establishment of the crime of genocide and the founding of a nation state dedicated to, and built on, the crime of genocide, may both have been born together, like two contrary peas in a pod. Both, however, cannot survive together. One must give way to the other.

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So, Caitlyn's point is well taken. As is said: to understand another person, walk a mile in their shoes. Having said that, however, the executors of genocide – as in the case of any harmful action – also bear their own personal responsibility for their own individual and collective actions; which cannot be attributed solely to upbringing alone. And a community can only turn away from collective evil based on individuals making the choice to reject their own individual evils, to turn away from those harmful actions, and to choose a better path. Some Israelis have done so. At this point, most have not.

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This principle of individual responsibility extends also to the global community as well. It is necessary that today, at this pivotal moment in time, all the world must individually and collectively heed John Donne's dictum, when he wrote: "Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved with mankind.” For Caitlyn is correct in saying that the systemic evil abroad in Israel is so great today that it will take outside intervention to halt the genocide. Their internal momentum is too great at this point for them to stop themselves.

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So that personal responsibility thing comes back to haunt us also. It will require all of the world's community, globally and locally, individually, and collectively, to intervene to stop the Israelis' campaign of murder, and all that goes with it.

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