Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib refused to apologize Wednesday for saying on Tuesday that Israel is to blame for the hospital explosion that day in Gaza, an accusation that sparked political backlash against her from Republicans as Israel denies fault.
Tlaib joined thousands of protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza during a solidarity rally hosted by the left-leaning group Jewish Voice for Peace at the National Mall. She was visibly emotional, at times pausing her speech to openly weep and criticizing lawmakers who have not backed a ceasefire resolution.
How so?
I’m just saying that the calls for a ceasefire are absurd. Israel should be careful, Israel should follow international law, Israel should not start engaging in apartheid or ethnic cleansing (I’m quite happy it doesn’t). Settlements are bad, it should absolutely stop expanding settlements and offer land swaps (again) to try to resolve any existing disputes.
But Israel should not just lay down its arms and let Hamas keep the hostages, and try to use its words to negotiate with terrorists who openly and proudly want to wipe every Jew off the face of the earth, that is not a reasonable concept.
Apartheid occurred within the borders of South Africa. Israel enforces its borders, the same way the United States enforces its borders, and South Korea enforces its borders, and Egypt enforces its borders, and every other country enforces its borders. Again, enforcing your borders is not referred to as apartheid anywhere else in the world—only in Israel, because people want any opportunity they can get to accuse Jews of being evil racists.
Israel has a divided judicial system and Palestinian defenders are punished more severely than Israeli defenders. Here is an article about it by a group of Israeli human rights activists.
Have you heard of a country that didn’t have military court or military tribunals? Can you name such a country? Is the country in the room with us now?
It’s not a perfect system, and yes there are racist assholes in the system, but of course Israel doesn’t use its intranational civilian courts to try Palestinians in Palestine, that wouldn’t make any sense.
Every country has military courts, every country has some racist somewhere in the process, you’re going to have to try harder to explain what it is about Israel that makes it so singularly evil.
Whataboutism, but I’ll bite. No, I haven’t heard of a country that colonized inhabited land and unequally punished the people they oppressed and then didn’t need to concede that what they were doing was wrong. Weird how that epiphany always comes after the colonists get what they want tho. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.
Military courts are supposed to govern your armed forces, not any rando you don’t like.
A Palestine state does not exist unless you equate Palestine to the Gaza prison camp guarded by Israel and maybe parts of the West Bank that Israel occupies against international law since I-don’t-even-know-how-long. A convenient excuse for their racist system.
What it boils down to is that in a Zionist state, like the Likud strives for Israel to be, Jewish law only applies to Jews and not to the “gentile”.
I always laugh when people fall over themselves trying to claim Israel isn’t an apartheid state. It’s basically matches the textbook definition of an apartheid state at this point. Even the many Israelis with a conscience call it out as an apartheid state. There’s no legitimate uncertainty there, only propaganda, lies, and ignorance.
So Egypt is an apartheid state too, right?
And Jordan?
Oh yeah, I love whataboutisms! They’re absolutely a valid way to… deflect from the topic actually being discussed.
Somebody doesn’t know what whataboutism is. I do love how you couldn’t answer the question though, proved my point very effectively
What are Israel’s borders? It seems like it conveniently places its borders in one place when it wants to selectively disenfranchise 5 of the 7 millions Arabs, and another when it wants to place settlements.