Former President Barack Obama said a way forward for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only possible if people acknowledge the “complexity” of the situation.
“If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas that what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it. And … that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable,” Obama said in an interview on the podcast “Pod Save America.”
The former president’s comments come as the Israeli military focuses its offensive against Hamas in Gaza City and northern parts of the enclave.
If the entire holy land was nuked and radioactive, people would still try to occupy the wasteland so they could get back in first. Don’t think there is a solution
The radioactive halflife of a nuke explosion is quite short, if we want a long term solution we need…Chernobyl 2.
nuclear boogaloo
Honestly, this is nonsense.
They aren’t fighting over Jerusalem or Bethlehem or Jericho. This is a war over grazing lands and a beach town.
If you look away from Gaza for a moment to the other Palestinian territory – the occupied West Bank – you’ll see gangs of a hooligans in pickup trucks with ski masks smashing water wells and killing cattle in small desert towns like it’s high noon at the O.K. Corral.
The whole religious component is largely a distraction. There are people living on real estate that other people who have much bigger guns want. The solution is the same as it’s always been: give folks a fair deal.
It’s not a coincidence that this latest conflict is in Gaza. Gaza isn’t religiously significant. It’s just the densest, most brutal concentration camp in Israel. This is not over religion.
There is oil just off Gaza’s coast. But Israhell already controls that.
But it’s in the name of religion, so it draws in the Christo-fascist zionists alongside the Israeli ones. They don’t need educated support, just support. Religious nuance helps increase that.
That’s totally true. I only mean to say that the fundamental drivers are typical to those outside of the holy lands. But you’re right that the religious component is definitely leveraged. I’ll also credit @keardap@lemmy.selfhost.quest for pointing out that the American Evangelical Christian nationalist movement is a huge contributor to the conflict. They’re far more numerous than American Jews, and seem to be have greater influence on American policy in Israel than American Jews do.
That’s really what I was insinuating as well. The National Prayer Breakfast needs to be ignored wholly by our politicians, but members from both “sides” attend because it’s politically advantageous.
A documentary called The Family does a great job at explaining this.
Tiktok says this is all about the Ben Gurion Canal Project. I haven’t had the time to validate the potential veracity, but it seemed like an interesting rabbit hole.
Thanks. I’m interested.
There are people living on real estate that other people who have much bigger guns want.
What is the big distinction between the “people” and the “other people” that makes them different groups of people? Hint: the word starts with an “r” and ends with “eligion”.
Flood it. God.did; worked apparently.
*Albeit briefly. So, I reckon we can shift the gulf some.
disregarding that fucked-ass comment,
God.did
is this a DJ Khaled reference?
Genesis
so it’s racism then
I think the proposal to nuke it may also leave it flooded - depends on the yield and qty.
Mythology won’t help here. That’s partly the problem already.
how about an agnostic democracy that israelis and palestinians can both live in? like a european country or something…
It’s still a good idea.
Yeah, but the whole point of Israel, is that it’s a home for Jewish people. That this apparently means an ethno apartheid state, is revolting. I have yet to hear a zionist to provide a good solution.
On that front Obama is correct: how are you going to create a Jewish state surrounded by Muslim states that oppose your existence fundamentally?
But at this point you can argue that living as a Palestinian in Israel and the occupied territories is worse than living in many (but clearly not all) Muslim countries as a non-Muslim.
So religious states, democracies or not, do exist and kinda can make it work in some cases, even if I would prefer a secular democracy for myself any day.
why the fuck do we need a jewish state? do we have a christian state? a buddhist state? not really. religious states are an outdated way to do government.
And yet, Muslim states exist.
they shouldn’t. it’s an ultra conservative old way of doing government.
As someone living in muslim state: no, religious state shouldn’t exists.
Breaking my own rule here, but whatever.
There’s no need for a Jewish state per se. There’s a need for a state for Jews, so they can live without fear of being persecuted, like they have been for hundreds of years.
Same reason there’s a need for a Palestinian state.
so a european style democracy with a constitution that has “congress shall make no law” types of sentences in it
former drone striker in chief trying to remind us of his legacy of absolutely failing to acknowledge, let alone tackle, the role of US imperialism in the middle east.
This specific conflict is more related to early 20th Century Britain promising two different people the same land after the Ottoman Empire collapsed and then being dicks about it for another 20 years. So UK imperialism, not US for once.
The US certainly still arms Israel, but the US arms basically anyone they consider an ally. The US would arm Israel if Palestine were its own state, were part of Israel, or if the whole conflict never happened. But Israel wouldn’t have existed at all past '67 without Western equipment.
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It’s actually pretty easy if you stop requiring support for settler colonialism. The rest of the world left that behind 70 years ago. Israel doesn’t get to be special they can either give Palestinians voting rights (which would obliterate the idea of a Jewish state) or submit to a UN peacekeeping force between them and the Palestinians on the 1949 borders.
The only reason this is hard is because we keep bending over backwards to support their Apartheid. We know these answers. They’ve been done before.
Fuck Israel. They get a free pass every time.
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How about Hamas? You seem to be willing to give them a free pass while they still have 200 hostages somewhere in a bunker or tunnel?
Are you going to condem the terrorizing and slaughter of countless Palestinian children by Israel?
Hamas are rotten fucking scumbags. Yet, it’s crystal clear that Israel has been able to do whatever they want for as long as I remember. Which is decades. Fuck Israel.
I think that’s Israel’s problem, not the US’.
Did Israel send aid to the US after 9/11?
um, that’s the current issue
Yes, and in the past did Israel send the US aid when they were attacked?
No? Then why should the US send Israel aid when Israel is responsible for both conflicts and has the money to fund it themselves?
Obama, be trolling
he’ll do anything for Iran
What’s the complexity?
One country promised a second country a third country’s land
Not very complex.
It is when the vast majority of people alive in the two countries at hand were born there.
It’s more like one country took over parts of a falling apart country, people moved into these parts because it felt safer than were they were originally from and their relatives lived there already. So now when the time came to hand over the taken over parts to their residents now you can’t just hand it over because the bigger part of the population wants to suppress the smaller part of the population. So the country in charge tries to split the land according to population majority and trying to do everybody right. Majority isn’t happy with that, declines every deal, every attempt at a two state solution that would let the minority have a country of their own where they wouldn’t be suppressed. Date of handing over passes with no deal, minority declares new country, according to last proposed deal. Neighboring countries and former majority instantly declare war against new country, are should they win prepared to kill and suppress every single member of minority and are already carving up region. They lose, and now everything is “really complex”
people moved into these parts because it felt safer than were they were originally from and their relatives lived there already
They felt safer moving into a territory where they would have to kick the people already living there through violence, than in countries where the fascists who had used brutality against them had been defeated?
and their relatives lived there already
By “relatives” do you mean they had one kind of distant cousin, or that their family trees shared a few roots from centuries earlier?
can’t just hand it over because the bigger part of the population wants to suppress the smaller part of the population. So the country in charge tries to split the land according to population majority and trying to do everybody right
So, rather than imposing rule of law and punish criminal through the guarantees of civil rights, and allow people who had never lived in the land to immigrate, build their own homes and buy land if possible, you kick people who already lived there to make room for an incoming population group? This did get (rightfully) universally condemned when the Soviet Union did it, does this not deserve a clear condemnation because the victims were Arab Muslims, or because the beneficiaries were mostly Western Jews?
Majority isn’t happy with that, declines every deal
Ooh boy, I can’t wait to get into the negotiation table to discuss how I’m going to get ethnically cleansed because a dictator in another continent commited massive genocides that had nothing to do with me, my family or my country.
Date of handing over passes with no deal
I just remembered a completely unrelated fun fact for no reason. Did you know that the United States threatened or bribed several completely unrelated countries to get the UN vote to pass?
Don’t know why, but I have a tendency to distrust anyone claiming to want to portray nuance and a gray reality when they consistently omit key facts. Did you know that the situation in Ukraine is very complicated, that Russia feels very threatened in their tiny country with hundreds of nuclear weapons, that their poor paramilitaries that occupied Ukrainian regions weren’t allowed to go everything they wanted with no repercussions? Let’s obfuscate the discussion about the Russian invasion of Ukraine with endless over-complicated arguments that ultimately do not change the fact that the invasion should be opposed, perhaps that will buy time for
IsraelRussia to commit their war crimes without third parties getting involved.They felt safer moving into a territory where they would have to kick the people already living there through violence, than in countries where the fascists who had used brutality against them had been defeated?
The Jewish migration to the area begann in the 1880s after pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. Not sure who you think was defeated at the time. The migration sped up after WW1 and before and during WW2.
By “relatives” do you mean they had one kind of distant cousin, or that their family trees shared a few roots from centuries earlier?
After the 1880s? Both.
So, rather than imposing rule of law and punish criminal through the guarantees of civil rights, and allow people who had never lived in the land to immigrate, build their own homes and buy land if possible, you kick people who already lived there to make room for an incoming population group? This did get (rightfully) universally condemned when the Soviet Union did it, does this not deserve a clear condemnation because the victims were Arab Muslims, or because the beneficiaries were mostly Western Jews?
Nobody kicked Arabs out before the Arab countries around the newly founded Israel declared war. You seem to be really off on your timeline. Yes there was a few hardliners in what was to become Israel that were arguing for a displacement of Arabs but generally there’s zero proof these people would’ve gained any serious power without the war declared on Israel.
I > just remembered a completely unrelated fun fact for no reason. Did you know that the United States threatened or bribed several completely unrelated countries to get the UN vote to pass?
Which UN vote? There’s at this point in time probably been hundreds.
Don’t know why, but I have a tendency to distrust anyone claiming to want to portray nuance and a gray reality when they consistently omit key facts.
Pot calling the kettle…
Did you know that the situation in Ukraine is very complicated, that Russia feels very threatened in their tiny country with hundreds of nuclear weapons, that their poor paramilitaries that occupied Ukrainian regions weren’t allowed to go everything they wanted with no repercussions? Let’s obfuscate the discussion about the Russian invasion of Ukraine with endless over-complicated arguments that ultimately do not change the fact that the invasion should be opposed, perhaps that will buy time for Israel Russia to commit their war crimes without third parties getting involved.
I don’t even know what to say to this. Of course it should be opposed? Have you forgotten what side the tankies are on? Slava Ukraini
Trying to explain the whole star wars series by only telling the story of episode 1
“see, it’s simple.”
If Israelis stop killing Palestinians, then American military contractors can’t take billions of dollars from the federal government laundered through Israel in the form of arms deals.
That would make the military industrial complex very sad.
That complexity.
You think that’s all there is to it, really? Or are you just being trite?
I think there is more to it, but if it weren’t for US military industrial complex corruption, a genocide wouldn’t be occurring.
For context, in 2023, the US has sent aid to Israel that equals roughly half their total GDP.
If The Party weren’t using Israel to enrich American war contractor billionaires, what is occurring in Gaza would be little more than a squabble. Both sides would be too broke to do anything of note.
The Party wants to keep their billionaire overlords happy, so genocide is occurring.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
That is not only one-sided, but highly reductive of one of the most byzantine and politically convoluted conflicts happening in the world today.
Hey, I just want to stop an active genocide.
Then we can wax philosophical about how complex this conflict is.
Fuck me, right?
If you ask about the complexity of this issue, you tend to get a lot of simplified answer because it’s impossible to summarise without cutting out the complexity. It’s a story of war and politics, there’s no clear cut good guy and bad guy. That’s how complex it is.
If not complex how can Israel grab all the land?
Dare I ask your simple solution?
Salt in distilled water. Simplest solution
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate
I can’t argue with it.
Ok, it’s get real time: the ONLY reason the US supports Israel is because it’s a staging area if shit kicks off in the middle east. That’s it. The “Jesus” stuff if just an excuse to appease the zealots. And my opinion isn’t anti-Semitism. It’s anti-genocide.
Seriously, you Americans had one great president. He also seems plenty young (when compared to other presidents) enough to be one again. Can’t you elect him again or something? He needs more time as boss to do his thing.
“Genocide is bad and we should halt donated weapons to countries committing genocide” - very easy policy most people will agree on.
The world needs to stsrting usiing proper words: what Israel is trying to achieve in Palestine is an Holocaust.
Former President Barack Obama said a way forward for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only possible if people acknowledge the “complexity” of the situation.
It’s a hOlOCaUsT !!!111
Because it is. Complexity doesn’t mean hiding reality. Write me when you need more help interpreting texts. You’re welcome.
It is not and what you actually doing by saying stupid things like that is relativizing the holocaust…which would be a crime here in Germany.
Germany has stupid laws, which stay in Germany naturally.
TIL a law to prevent relativism of the holocaust is stupid. lol.
Never too late to learn.
It’s a pretty shitty Holocaust attempt.
Not even nazi germany managed to kill everyone they decided to.
What percentage would satisfy you to make it successful?
Such a pathetic reply. The Nazis murdered millions of civilians. They rounded them up, put them in camps, and killed them with the intention of eradicating their entire race.
Israel has, for the most part, avoided intentionally targeting civilians while rooting out Hamas in Gaza. Yes, there have been unfortunate exceptions, but you’d have to be either incredibly dishonest or incredibly stupid to claim it’s a “holocaust”.
Everyone’s Hamas if you’re being shot at by Israel. Very convenient, ain’t it?
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No no, its only a Holocaust if it comes from the German Region.
This is just sparkling genocide.
There are complex issues to solve, sure, but there’s nothing complicated about the fact that we need to let humanitarian aid in and stop killing children, right this fucking minute. There are no excuses for what is happening right now.
Well there are 240 hostages that are held captive in an underground lair by some psychopaths. The PM of Israel may not want to keep those people there any longer than necessary.
Perhaps Hamas should release the hostages so there’s no longer a reason for Israel to deny calls for a ceasefire?
Odd that no one is calling on Hamas to do this, isn’t it? It’s almost like everyone knows Hamas is evil and will continue to keep those people imprisoned. But if we’re demanding Israel to do things we know they won’t do, why not also demand Hamas to do things we know they won’t do?
yes no one is calling for the return of hostages
that is a reasonable thing to say
Jesus man, open your eyes and ears. Nobody is saying Hamas should do that. Listen to what Obama is saying in the video, for the love of God.
Of course we all want civilian hostages released. Don’t be dumb.
Except apparently Israel because they are bombing the event living shit out of Gaza. Hostages aren’t bomb proof, so tell me, how does Israel know they’ve not killed some when they kill 30 civilians to kill a Hamas leader (whose name slips them at the moment)
They don’t and i’d characterize much of their bombing as a war crime.
“Stop killing children” should be enforced in both countries, though. It’s not like Hamas is protecting the children in Gaza. Quite the opposite really.
No argument there, and I did not intend for my comment to say anything else.
I’m not saying the details of it are not complicated.
History is always complicated
Present events are always complicated
But the way this is reported in the western media is as though one needs a PhD in Middle Eastern studies to understand the basic morality of holding a people in a situation in which they don’t have basic rights including the right that we treasure most the franchise the right to vote and then declaring that state a democracy
is actually not that hard to understand.
I’m actually not sure which country you are talking about now. I don’t know of anyone who calls Palestine a democracy. I think the reason people call Israel a democracy is that Israeli citizens have free elections and are not oppressed. I don’t think they factor in oppression of other countries when they call something a democracy. If they did, the US and UK wouldn’t count as democracies either.
holding a people in a situation in which they don’t have basic rights
I’m actually not sure which country you are talking about now.
If the options are Palestine and Israel, which country do you think it is?
Come on, use your brain.
No need to be condescending. With how polarizing this issue is, you are surely aware that there might be people on the Internet who would stand by these claims for either of the two countries. What I use my brain to conclude isn’t relevant, the question is what you used your brain to conclude.
Stella has been all over Lemmy with this BS. They aren’t really worth the effort. Speak to people who might be reading the thread, not to that troll.
Re-read my comment. It applies to you as well.
holding a people in a situation in which they don’t have basic rights
Hamas holding their own population as human shields and failing to provide basic infrastructure, or Israel blocking their own borders that stops Palestine civilians from access to necessity of life.
Im with the other poster, and if you didn’t see both there is already a bias in your head that no reasonable and open discussion of facts would ever overcome.
Lol, what? You’re buying into Israeli propaganda talking points to justify bombing civilians. I’m not going to entertain your bias.
Hamas isn’t denying Gazans basic human rights. Israel is. This isn’t up for debate.
Hamas wasn’t stealing water pipes to make weapons?
(I’m not saying Israel hasn’t done bad things, and I’m not saying one is worse than the other. But Hamas HAS been denying “their people” access to basic human rights in the process of “fighting for their people”.)
If they did, the US and UK wouldn’t count as democracies either
Most political experts agree that they barely classify. The US has a rather unique electoral college system. The UK is most literally a constitutional monarchy. At best, they’re hybrid systems.
Christopher Hitchens made an argument regarding the religious undertones of the conflict and why peace cannot easily be found. https://piped.video/watch?v=rc90pcx6kNU
Of course, by this point there’s also hate passed on from one generation to the next.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Former President Barack Obama said a way forward for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only possible if people acknowledge the “complexity” of the situation.
“If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas that what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it.
And … that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable,” Obama said in an interview on the podcast “Pod Save America.”
The former president’s comments come as the Israeli military focuses its offensive against Hamas in Gaza City and northern parts of the enclave.
Behind the scenes, American officials also believe there is limited time for Israel to try to accomplish its stated objective of taking out Hamas in its current operation before uproar over the humanitarian suffering and civilian casualties reaches a tipping point.
If you genuinely want to change this … you’ve got to figure out how to speak to somebody on the other side and listen to them and understand what they are talking about and not dismiss it,” Obama said.
The original article contains 268 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 32%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
They’ve had 2500 years to work this shit out. The past is dead men’s baggage. Stop carrying it.
Said the completely out of touch retard
A bunch of you might not like it, but every heartwarming story about an Israeli and a Palestinian finding love and friendship is because they did exactly this. They clearly need more of it.
Palestine is an Anglicisation. In Arabic it’s pronounced Philistine. They have been at each other’s throats like this since the Bronze Age. They’ve had millennia to put the past behind them. This is an ancient, stupid quarrel. Through a continuous vengeance cycle, they made it get this bad. I’m fully aware that European colonialism and American interference (same bloody thing really) only made it worse. I’m sure volumes are written about all I don’t understand here.
I wasn’t suggesting that a simple policy change of “love your enemy” would fix this complex shitstorm. If I thought I had a solution, I’d write something much longer and still be rightly called stupid, because I’m nobody. I was expressing exasperation with this whole damned situation. I’ve got nothing else.
He also said:
If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth. And you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean
which is something I totally agree on. There is no “good or bad” team in the Middle East…all parties are involved in this conflict and it’s cause!
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look around
Of course. Those kids in refugee camps, hospitals and ambulances have their hands soaked in blood.
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“You take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bombard my country, starve us all, humiliate us all, but I am to blame: I shot a rocket back.”
Hey, don’t forget those of us who made this mess and walked away, and every country on Earth that continues to keep the whole Middle East area relevant through our continued oil addiction.
Hey, don’t forget those of us who made this mess and walked away,
The early 20th century British Empire?
through our continued oil addiction.
Israel, let alone Gaza, don’t exactly produce a lot of oil, and I certainly don’t know that they sell it.
This whole conflict in Israel is more about land, and the West supports Israel bEcAuSe DeMoCrAcY in an otherwise unfriendly region. The region as a whole might be messy “because oil,” but that’s rather tangential to this conflict.
Israel is adjacent to an incredibly strategic shipping location - the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal links the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean without having to go around Africa or around Siberia.
Israel isn’t strategically important because it has big oil reserves. It’s strategically important because it’s near a lot of important things. Oil and shipping play a bigger role than you’d think.
Great point.
You mean the canal that is entirely within Egypt? That argument seems like a stretch to me, and clearly wasn’t the argument the above was trying to make either.
They’re a democracy and have historically been opposed to many counties the West was already opposed to. Their strategic importance is military, not oil.
Israel, the UK and France invaded Egypt in 1956 after Egypt expropriated the Suez Canal from its French & British owners. Then they fought a war in 1967 to keep it open. The conveyance of European trade through the Suez Canal is a major part of Israel’s geopolitical importance.
