> Meanwhile the same UN issued more condemnations of the democratic state of Israel than of all other nations combined (2006-2015: 61 against Israel, 54 all others, none against China).
I don't see what democracy has to do with it. Plenty of democratic countries have and still do violate human rights, and Israel is particularly egregious. Maybe the UN considers they have more authority/clout over Israel than Myanmar? Maybe it's due to this usually happening via the General Assembly, where there are quite a lot of Muslim countries who have a bone to pick with Israel by default, so jump at any opportunity ( and there are plenty of them)?
> The data on this is that in 2020 the UN adopted 17 resolutions condemning Israel and 6 for the rest of the world.
> Now it’s possible that Israel is so much worse than the rest of the world
According to Israel itself, it launched 50 bombing raids in Syria in 2020. Many of the UN resolutions condemning Israel were due to those bombings and other actions Israel has taken vis-a-vis Syria. Including Israel's occupation and settlement of Syrian territory since 1967, which the UN condemned then, and upheld in 2020 along with the other resolutions.
The reason the UN condemned Israel in 2020 and not Bhutan, is Israel decided to bomb Syria many times in 2020, and Bhutan did not.
> Given the UN’s history towards Israel, why would it ever take anything to the UNSC or believe that its arbitrations and judgments are anything but massively biased against it?
I don't really understand that line of reasoning, doesn't Israel owe its existence to the UN security council resolution in 1948?
> there is some kind of exceptional treatment regarding israel at every un organizations that makes you wonder what is this state doing that is so repulsive that no other country in the world deserve such finger pointing
> You're seriously telling me that there's more convincing evidence that Israel broke international laws than that China, or Yemen, or Syria, or Russia, or the US, or the UK, broke international laws?
I never said that. We are talking about Israel here (and to a lesser extent Apartheid South Africa in sibling threads) not China, Yemen, Syria, nor Russia. Russia and China in particular have several trials at the ICJ and the ICC and have been accused of similar crimes against humanity. But we are not talking about those. Whataboutism gets you nowhere.
> show me how the UN is indeed treating everyone with no bias
Never claimed it was. There are indeed plenty of biases at the UN. Israel in particular gets a very lenient treatment by Western Countries (biased towards Israel) and bad treatment by many Arab countries (biased against). However taken as an aggregate most of the world (including Western countries) seems to have a problem with Israel’s human rights record. We should take that seriously and not discount it as blood libel.
> the question is whether the person on the street understands it as such and whether you have clarified it enough that they can understand what you're talking about.
You took issue with the fact that we used a particular term. I clarified—I hope—thoroughly what was meant by this term. If you have a problem with this particular usage of the term, I think you’ll find your self fighting a lot of windmills.
> Even Israelis don't understand "apartheid state" to mean what you think it means.
Ignorance of international humanitarian law does not excuse its practice, nor does it grant you freedom from scrutiny. Like I said earlier, if the world court can use this term, so can an internet forum.
> This Palestine you're referring to, is that a country?
I don’t approve of this question because I think you know and don’t need me to explain it to you. But I’ll do it anyway.
Palestine is an internationally recognized UN observer state with a population of about 5.5 million, with internationally recognized borders consisting of the West Bank and Gaza, formed on 15th of November 1988 and granted UN observer status on 29th of November 2012. 139 UN member states recognize Palestine as such.
This apparent confusion about the state of Palestine also touches on your nibling post where you claim stuff like “Before 1967 when Gaza was part of Egypt and the West Bank was part of Jordan”, “Israel completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005”, and “The Palestinians have no standing in there [Gaza] at all.”
None of this is true by the way. Gaza was never annexed by Egypt, merely occupied, Israel only withdrew settlers and ground forces, they still very much occupy the area, and the Palestinian Authority is an internationally recognized government of the state of Palestine that does have standing at the world stage (albeit with matters regarding Gaza they need cooperation with Hamas which controls the territory).
From what it looks like you refuse to believe that the state of Palestine has any recognition, or that you refuse to believe that such a state exists at all. However that is not true.
Regarding your EDIT3. I gave you the link to the definition of what constitutes inhuman acts. The segment is one paragraph long with 8 enumerated points and the text is highly legible (in general UN documents are meant for the general public to read and very seldomly contain legalese). This is HN and we assume a level of intellectual curiosity of each other. We also generally frown upon ideological battles and flamebates such as “the UN/ICJ processes are just a political circus with no fairness or justice”. These kinds of points are a dead end with nothing to expand upon with interesting points.
> A lot of people share concerns regarding potential escalation in the region, although I hold a different perspective on Israel's vulnerability to annihilation.
I mean, I think it's unlikely Israel will be completely annihilated, but a larger conflict in which we are attacked from several different countries can be devastating. And it's definitely a real possibility that Israel could be conquered.
> It is not a matter of bias against Israel, but rather an attempt to hold all nations accountable for their actions.
Well, do you think the fact that there are more resolutions against Israel than against all other countries combined is reflective of Israel being worse than all other countries combined? If not, how do you explain it?
> Although there are many Arab nations, the resolutions are passed based on the consensus or majority vote of the member states, which includes a wide range of nations with different perspectives and interests.
There are many Arab nations. There are also a huge number of Arabs and Muslims, many of whom are ideologically opposed to Israel. Many of them live in various countries, including many countries in Europe. Just look at the vast anti-Israel protests that are happening across many countries.
This gives a lot of political pressure to many countries to oppose Israel in various ways. Voting against Israel in the UN is a cheap way to appease large blocs of voters.
I'm not saying this necessarily means the UN is biased against Israel, but for sure take that together with the fact that a majority of resolutions are against Israel, and it paints a picture in my mind. (Remember, big as the conflict with Palestine is, the number of dead is tiny compared to any other conflict, including some happening as we speak).
Btw, here's one example of why Israelis dislike the UN so much - it is fairly common knowledge that Palestinian children, taught in UN-run schools, get material which teaches them to hate Jews/Israel.
Here's one video on the subject I randomly found on YouTube, there are lots of others but I tried to find one that isn't from an Israeli channel (just in case you don't trust it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkOPVXiTqoI
> >> Israel withdrew from Gaza
> I believe statements like this is where you and I will strongly disagree.
> When I see snipers shooting children who are fenced up, shooting medical personnel, shooting journalists, all deliberate, done with intent by IDF snipers; I don't call that withdrawing from Gaza.
To be clear, by withdrawing from Gaza, I mean that Israel literally removed 7k of its own citizens, that were settlers in Gaza, removed them and forced them back into Israel. The existence of these settlers were one (very valid) complain the Palestinians and the international community had against Israel.
So Israel forcefully removed these settlers, withdrew all soldiers from Gaza, and said that Gaza can govern itself. Gazans then elected Hamas (or Hamas took over, not sure what's the correct way to put it), which caused Israel and Egypt to blockade Gaza fully in order to keep weapons out of their hands.
While I certainly condemn killing anyone unarmed and for no reason, this video doesn't give much context on what's happening. I don't believe there's large-scale targeting of medical personnel and journalists. But the border is the border, and soldiers do defend it.
As far as I can tell about that specific clip of a sniper, while it's a pretty horrible video, there does appear to be important context. For one, that person wasn't killed (which is unclear from the video). For another, it appears he was trying to plant a bomb on the border. (I don't know for sure that's true - I just tried to search for a bit of context online about it and that's what I found.)
But it's just not true that there is a large scale IDF campaign of shooting random civilians. Yes, the IDF gets things wrong, and yes, they do zealously protect the border. But that's a very different thing than what you're alleging, and despite the fairly horrible video, it's not evidence of what you claim. I can find thousands of videos of US soldiers doing horrible things, that doesn't mean the US is using its army to commit terrorism and war crimes.
> While I may not fully endorse Hamas, I hesitate to label it as a terrorist organization without further examination.
Ok let me disagree with you strongly here. In what sense is Hamas not a terrorist organization?
On October 7th, Hamas entered into Israel and killed 1400 people, and took 200 people hostages. Most of those were civilians. They raped and tortured people, did absolutely horrendous deeds. In what way does this not fit your definition of a terrorist organization?
Have you seen some of the stuff they did on October 7th? It is absolutely horrible, the worst crimes imaginable. If you have not, I urge you to look into it if you want to actually understand what Israelis feel they are up against. (Though don't watch if you don't want these kinds of horrible images burned into your brain forever).
Btw, if we're already talking about international recognition, Hamas is designated as a terrorist group by the US, UK and Canada. (And iirc, not by the UN, which again leaves many Israelis questioning the UN.)
>(besides Israel, obviously)
Out of interest, why obviously? The unfaltering support given to Israel seems strange (to most outside of the US who I have spoken to).
Israel has it's religious fundamentalists (just like the rest of the region).
Is militarily aggressive, disregards civilian life, commits war crimes, disregards international law and opinion (with impunity due to the US and their veto - and forcing other countries to at least abstain from votes), has actual developed the nuclear bomb, is destabilising to the region, discusses attacking their neighbours (sorry not attacking - pre-emptive...
Yet this is never questioned, nor discussed from what I can tell. They are "the good guys" so the rules are different for them.
Of course you won't delight us with any facts that prove your anti-semitic statement, will you?
Does Israel put Palestinians into Gulags ("Re-Education Camps") like China does? Does it jail people for voicing their opinion like Cuba and Venezuela do, or kills them if they pray to the wrong god or love the wrong gender?
Surely you will back your statement up, with enough data, that explains how Israel is more evil than all the atrocities mentioned above combined (eg "2006-2015: 61 against Israel, 54 all others, none against China"). Surely.
> and Israel claims to be a democracy. So we expect higher standards of ethics
Just because a state is "democratic" does not mean it is ethical, and just because a state is not "democratic" does not mean that it is unethical. That being said, Israel is definitely a murderous regime and they're getting away with any atrocities they want.
> Israel uses the tactic of antisemitism quite often, even when you clearly criticize a government policy of Israel, not the people.
China has been doing this too. Any time someone brings up Chinese civil rights abuses, there's always one or two people crying racism, even though the victims are (mostly) also Chinese.
> Neither Uyghurs nor Tibetans run active campaigns of terrorism against the Chinese population. The Palestinians however do, with anything from unsteered shed-built Qassam proto-rockets to professionally made Iranian-origin missiles, bombings or shootings.
One could argue that Israel is running a system of apartheid against Palestinians and a campaign of ethnic cleansing and last I checked that's considered a crime against humanity.
>Israel is an active, healthy democracy, even Palestine is a democracy in theory (but not in practice, as neither Fatah nor Hamas have actually held elections in many years). China is not a democracy.
Israel can be considered an "active, healthy democracy" if you so happen to be Jewish, not so for anyone else.
> the (arguably) unequal focus only Israel's human rights record relative to other countries
Two thoughts on this:
Firstly, every time a country is getting criticized for it's human rights abuses it, like clockwork, raises the spectre of being "unjustly singled out" about it's human rights abuses. To be clear, I would very much like every country on earth that engages in human rights abuses prosecuted for it, including mine, and specifically every U.S. President that's still currently alive since they are ALL guilty of them in varying degrees. And that way, we can't be accused of biases.
Secondly, I believe it's fair, even if we are biased against Israel in this way, to be biased since it has the rather unique position of being a state that exists solely because of and by the authority of the West. It is a colonialist project and has been from it's inception and I don't think you can take this situation on fully without acknowledging that fact.
Debating whether it should or shouldn't exist is rather moot at this point because it does, and tons of people live there who have committed no crime and done no wrong. That said, it is at the end all, an ethno-nationalist state built on a foundation of war crimes too numerous to count, that is currently incrementing as they barrage an utterly impotent neighbor to death, and it is doing so with the enthusiastic encouragement of FAR, FAR too many colonial powers. Maybe that's enough to say, ethically, that all of it's citizens should be displaced, maybe not. I do not know the solution. My point is that Israel's existence, in entirety, is violence perpetrated against every country it borders with, it wars with, and who's land it sits upon. That cannot be ignored.
> Firstly, every time a country is getting criticized for it's human rights abuses it, like clockwork, raises the spectre of being "unjustly singled out" about it's human rights abuses.
I 100% agree that we should be incredibly suspicious when someone being accused of human rights abuses claims that they are being unfairly singled out. Although in this case, it is not just Israel, see for example former UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon's statements on this.
However i do think that when one country is criticized for specific conduct, but the world is silent when other countries do the same, or even worse forms of that type of conduct, it does undermine the human rights regime.
Justice, in order to be just, needs to apply to everyone. Otherwise it is very easy for perpretrators to just ignore the criticisms. They can tell themselves, oh they just hate us. If it wasn't this, it would be something else. Then they just ignore all the criticisms. Essentially, insert the story of the boy who cried wolf.
> biased since it has the rather unique position of being a state that exists solely because of and by the authority of the West.
I mean, i think this is just plain false from a historical perspective. Britian did have a role in allowing jewish immigrants into mandatory palestine, which i guess lead to this whole thing, but beyond that they didn't really do too much. The UN tried to partition it on demographic lines, but that plan was ignored. Like i'm not sure what you mean that the west created that state. There is a certain sense the winners of the world war 1 & 2 are responsible for a lot of the subsequent new states, but Israel is hardly unique in that regard.
> they barrage an utterly impotent neighbor to death
And yet, that neighbour seemed pretty eager to start the current escalation in the conflict. Gaza would be a lot easier to sympathize with if they leaned more towards non violent resistence and less into rape and kidnapping. [To be clear, i don't think israel is perfect by any means plenty of blood to go around]
> That said, it is at the end all, an ethno-nationalist state built on a foundation of war crimes too numerous to count
Couldn't you say the same about Palestine? If we are counting war crimes, Palestinians have commited a shit ton. Every single rocket attack targeted at an Israeli city is a war crime (since its illegal to target non military installations). As far as being ethno-nationalist, minority groups seem to have a much much easier time in Israel than in the Palestinian territories.
> My point is that Israel's existence, in entirety, is violence perpetrated against every country it borders with, it wars with, and who's land it sits upon. That cannot be ignored.
That would make more sense if Israel was the one starting all these wars. Most of these wars Israel shot second.
> and who's land it sits upon
And whose land is it?
That's the crux of it right. Whether you think Israel's claim to the land is legit or not probably informs the rest of your views.
> One could argue that Israel is running a system of apartheid against Palestinians and a campaign of ethnic cleansing and last I checked that's considered a crime against humanity.
I am aware of the long-running issues, especially regarding land ownership, and still there is a clear-cut distinction between I/P and China: in Israel/Palestine, both sides have legitimate historical claims won by conquest, colonialism, the breakup of colonialism and purchase over the last decades - and as the recent situation in Sheikh Jarrah showed, the respective parties have the right and ability to be heard in front of a legitimate court [1]. In Tibet and Xinjiang, the situation is different - China is exterminating the indigenous population and replacing it with ethnic Han chinese, with the affected having no way to appeal anything at a court, in fact even speaking publicly about their grievances has led to people being forcibly disappeared into gulags.
> Israel can be considered an "active, healthy democracy" if you so happen to be Jewish, not so for anyone else.
As said, the situation of the Palestinians in Palestinian territory is a democracy at least on paper - the Hamas and Fatah rulers refusing to hold votes is not the fault of Israel, and in fact Israel has attempted multiple times by withholding funding to pressure Hamas and Fatah to listen to the will of the people.
People of Palestine heritage with legitimate Israeli citizenship or residency enjoy the same set of rights that Jewish Israeli citizens do, with Arab-heritage people having served in the highest positions of justice [1] and in politics with Ra'am being a part of the government coalition.
> I'm amazed how much of a scandal it is when China does this kind of thing, but when Israel does it, it's business as usual.
And I'm amazed at how consistently, whenever China is in the spotlight, someone comes and de-rails the debate with Israel.
Besides, no matter how your individual position is regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict, the scales are completely different:
- in I/P, you have the various Palestine factions backed by complex alliances of other nations and stakeholders (most obviously Iran, but also under the table an allotment of oil sheiks and terrorist groups), whereas the Tibetans and Uyghurs are backed by no one else.
- in China, you have actual organized concentration camps, forced sterilizations, forced labor, outright attempts at erasing Tibetan and Uyghur culture. No matter what, these allegations can in no way be levied against Israel.
- Neither Uyghurs nor Tibetans run active campaigns of terrorism against the Chinese population. The Palestinians however do, with anything from unsteered shed-built Qassam proto-rockets to professionally made Iranian-origin missiles, bombings or shootings.
- Israel is an active, healthy democracy, even Palestine is a democracy in theory (but not in practice, as neither Fatah nor Hamas have actually held elections in many years). China is not a democracy.
Israel is perpetuating the status quo, and wishes to exercise sovereignty pver the territory. Doing things like disallowing other countries relief orgs to operate on the own. Given that, the UN is more than justified puting the onus on Israel.
>They’re fighting a war of self defense against terrorists who use the citizenry as human shields. Given those circumstances, I feel like they’ve done far more to avoid casualties and help the civilians than any other government/military would.
Fair enough. That is not a universally held view.
>What’s the UN’s responsibility in providing those conditions? What are the complaining countries doing to bring aid to Gazans or a viable ceasefire deal with release of all hostages?
Are you suggesting that the U.N. should unilaterally dismiss the sovereignty of a member state, and coordinate things themselves using the resources of other member states? As much as the prospect of an international intervention to the level of being the grandest and most expensive breaking up of a schoolyard brawl that would upset everyone involved in living memory; I'm fairly sure no one really wants to uncork that bottle of Pandora's distilled champagne.
>Many UN members like Egypt, Jordan, South Africa are all doing nothing to help but instead just complaining about Israel.
This is not a surprise. Israel is not very popular.
>Do they even care about the Gazan residents or is this just a political opportunity for them?
Sovereign. States. They can provide support, but they have to rely on the State undergoing internal strife to distribute things. Their experience dealing with Israel likely dissuades them from even making the effort.
>The article seems very vague - what specifically would cause the pier to fail? If distribution is a problem then isn’t it an existing problem that UNRWA has allegedly been handling this whole time? It’s hard to trust UNRWA and their claimed reasons. Some of their staff allegedly has ties to Hamas (which US intelligence confirmed), their buildings (like schools) have housed Hamas fighters, and aid funneled through them has ended up in Hamas’s hands.
Couldn't have anything to do with intentional bureaucratic delays, wholesale dismantling of normal infrastructure by the Israelis in their attempt to fight back against Hamas (an org Bibi is interested in keeping in power to keep himself in power).
Logistics is hard. Even when you aren't pointedly not trying to hard.
> It's mind blowing to me that Israel is targeted with this kind of rhetoric without relative comparison to surrounding nations
> Not to mention the PLA and Hamas literally want to genocide the Jews and have repeatedly rejected more than fair solutions.
This reads as whataboutism to me.
Israel is held to higher standards in the west and in particular the US because it is an extremely close ally and unquestionable support for Israel is treated at a litmus test for public life.
What is deemed as “fair” is dependent upon one’s point of view. And while I can sit here and defend hamas, I am not aware of the PLA advocating anything genocidal at any point in the past.
> Well, let's just put the tiger on the table and yell at it
Gladly. I feel like my basic human rights as a citizen of a first world county are being impinged by Israel and their far-right regime. And this is just one other example of that. At this point my real fear of Israel far surpasses any fear I have of any other geopolitical adversary nation.
I have nothing to do with Israel or the middle east and yet this country has this insane influence in my country as it does in every other western country.
How did this happen and how can we win our democracy back? Since when does Israel get to have a say in the public and private goings of other countries?
> No one is sanctioning Israel for ethnic cleansing, textbook settler colonialism and apartheid going on since 1948.
Bad example since Jews are generally the ones who were getting cleansed. They were evicted by extreme Christians, then murdered by Nazi Germans (remember when US and Canada did not accept a shipful of Jews fleeing gas chambers so they had to go back and die?) and 1948 is when Arab League attacked the new country the next day after it was created.
Meanwhile Muslim people in Israel lead far better lives than in many surrounding countries with access to good healthcare, education etc. There is certainly no cleansing and people choose different schools because they speak different languages. There were certain moves like demoting Arabic from its previous role as official language 5 years ago but then how many countries in Middle East even recognize Hebrew? I've visited it once, you should perhaps visit the country yourself some time and see if you find all that terrible cleansing and apartheid. Maybe compare to all the Muslim countries around while you're at it, too.
A better example would be Qatar with its exit visas, not only not sanctioned but football world cup was held there
I don't see what democracy has to do with it. Plenty of democratic countries have and still do violate human rights, and Israel is particularly egregious. Maybe the UN considers they have more authority/clout over Israel than Myanmar? Maybe it's due to this usually happening via the General Assembly, where there are quite a lot of Muslim countries who have a bone to pick with Israel by default, so jump at any opportunity ( and there are plenty of them)?
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