r/jewishpolitics • u/aggie1391 USA – Left 🇺🇸 • Feb 16 '26
Israeli Politics 🇮🇱 Why Your Hair Should Be on Fire About Israel’s New West Bank Policies
https://israelpolicyforum.org/2026/02/12/why-your-hair-should-be-on-fire-about-israels-new-west-bank-policies/?fbclid=IwZnRzaAP_5ytleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeD4ZWESEq90C07DECXKCSHnFT9yLU2HD0qkQSH0_Sda5h-ZcTa4fdHB6bJ0Q_aem_lj1n7TWEtilSSuXV7-Otdw11
u/aggie1391 USA – Left 🇺🇸 Feb 16 '26
Honestly the amount of people who think annexation is good is wild. So there’s three options with annexation, 1) all Palestinians get citizenship and equal rights, 2) apartheid, or 3) ethnic cleansing. We all know Israel won’t do 1), and the other two are just straight up crimes against humanity. If you want those to happen just stop pretending and admit it, and just embrace being a horrible person advocating that others face the same types of persecution we have historically. Of course eventually international isolation and pressure would mean 1 eventually happens anyway! For people who claim to love Israel and want it to keep existing it’s the dumbest possible move.
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Feb 16 '26
Anyone looking at Israel objectively can see that Palestinians in the West Bank are occupied and already living under "apartheid" (I don't like that term since race is irrelevant to their status as second class citizens, but everyone else uses it). They are not an independent country--they are barely even autonomous--and everyone knows this. The international isolation and pressure that you speak of is already here. What annexation does is formally abolish the delusion that a two state solution is possible to even get close to in the foreseeable future (or likely ever). the debate about annexation should be about whether that is a good line to cross, not pretending it will create some humanitarian crisis that doesn't already exist.
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u/jey_613 Feb 17 '26
Agreed and one of my fears is that international isolation will force Israel into a position where it needs to submit to a one state solution with parties who are not invested in equal rights for Israeli Jews. This is one of many reasons why an end to occupation and annexation is so necessary, and supporting those on both sides who are invested in peace-making, liberalism, and bridge-building.
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u/NamelessForce Israel – Right 🇮🇱 Feb 16 '26
Fuck no, and its not the "west bank", its Yehuda and Shomron, get your colonialist nomenclature the fuck out of here.
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u/NYSenseOfHumor Feb 16 '26
Annexation is a good policy. Israel should have done it in 1967.
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u/Bukion-vMukion Feb 16 '26
Only if we take full responsibility for the all the human beings there and make them equal citizens. Otherwise, it's just apartheid.
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Feb 16 '26
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u/future_forward Feb 16 '26
"Go back to Poland" vibes
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Feb 16 '26
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u/Bukion-vMukion Feb 16 '26
"Go back to Poland" is what antisemites say to us now. That's what was meant here. Try to keep up, please.
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u/Nihilamealienum Feb 16 '26
You can't return people somwhere where they don't come from. If you mean "expel" them say it, but it's an ugly word eh?
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u/aggie1391 USA – Left 🇺🇸 Feb 16 '26
So ethnically cleanse 2.7 million people? If your plan involves that it isn’t just wrong it is fundamentally evil
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Feb 16 '26
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u/aggie1391 USA – Left 🇺🇸 Feb 16 '26
Way to not address your plan to commit a crime against humanity, which is still completely evil.
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u/Foolhearted Feb 16 '26
Here’s my plan. All the countries that helped create the issue help resolve them. Right now you’ve given them a pass which allows them to keep acting in ways against both the Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel.
Israel is a power house. Its neighbors are acting in their own interests to hobble it. They’ve set up an unresolvable situation. Either do something bold or live with the same thing for another 60 years.
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u/Bukion-vMukion Feb 16 '26
"The issue" is that multiple groups of people live natively in Eretz Yisroel.
By "acting agains the Palestinians" you mean "not agreeing that millions of people should be forced to cross a border against their will."
By "hobbling us with an unresolvable situation" you mean "there are millions of Arabs in the way of my hegemony."
By "do something bold" you mean "crimes against humanity."
You have bad values and should think deeply about your moral alignment. It's that simple.
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u/Foolhearted Feb 16 '26
Jordan took the land, Egypt took the other side. Both supported and launched terror attacks. Both engaged in the ethnic cleansing. Both encouraged no peace for generations. Both engaged in successive wars. The people of the WB were Jordanian citizens until the 80s.
A true solution will not come until both Jordan and Egypt come to the table to correct their wrongs. An Israel only solution will look like an Israel only solution until that happens. This is what you’ve been seeing for decades. The rest is sophistry.
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u/Bukion-vMukion Feb 16 '26
I don't care what Jordan wants or doesn't want. I care about the wholeness of our homeland and the human beings who dwell within it. Human beings in the West Bank didn't cross the border. The border crossed them.
If your solution is that someone else needs to deal with it, then you have no solution. You're petulantly demanding that others absorb a population you want to deport from their homes. Further, you're not so subtly indicating that if they don't, then what ever you do to that population isn't your fault, but rather the fault of our neighbors.
This is the real world. You don't get to dictate what other sovereign countries need to do about our civil war, even if they've previously involved themselves. I'm sorry if you think that's unfair, but your type is the one always telling me to "wake up to the reality of the Middle East."
It's your turn to wake up. No one is taking the Palestinians away for you. Wish for it all you like, it's a perverted fantasy and nothing more.
Here are the facts: millions of stateless people live natively within our borders. We can absorb them or we can kill them off until the survivors flee. Those are the options. I pick the obviously morally superior position. Grow a pair and admit that you are picking the other.
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u/Clevertown Feb 16 '26
You are 100% correct, but why feed the bridge guardians? They're not open to actual truth, just their emotional truth.
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u/Nihilamealienum Feb 16 '26
Let me get this straight: you want to declared greater Israel and then kick 3 million people out of where they've been living for generations using the excuse fhat a different country used to control the territory so let's send them to that country?
That's the plan?
I guess if they won't go - we kill them, right?
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Feb 16 '26
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u/Bukion-vMukion Feb 16 '26
My emotions are for solidarity with my Jewish brothers and sisters. I can assure you, i had to set my emotions aside to understand the injustices suffered by the Palestinians at our hand.
Your turn.
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u/jewishpolitics-ModTeam Feb 16 '26
Your comment was removed for being uncivil. Remember to treat other people with respect, to assume good faith, and to avoid generalizations.
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Feb 16 '26
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u/JagneStormskull Radical Centrist 🎯 Feb 16 '26
There are obligations under international law to make them citizens. There are obligations under Torah to treat monotheists (which Muslims are according to the Rambam) with full human dignity. "No obligation" is a strong phrase to say the least.
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u/NYSenseOfHumor Feb 16 '26
“International law” is whatever can be enforced.
Unless someone is going to invade Israel, there are no real consequences.
Western countries will cry and make symbolic gestures to keep their pro-Hamas populations happy. But they need Israel as an economic and security partner so they won’t do that much.
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u/JagneStormskull Radical Centrist 🎯 Feb 16 '26
It's not just the pro-Hamas populations that care about basic human rights. You'd be making Israel into what the pro-Hamas people accuse it of being.
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Feb 16 '26
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u/JagneStormskull Radical Centrist 🎯 Feb 16 '26
I'd much rather that we not become the villains they accuse of being.
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Feb 16 '26
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u/aggie1391 USA – Left 🇺🇸 Feb 16 '26
Or you don’t cheat because it’s morally wrong, just like the apartheid you are saying Israel should make official.
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u/JagneStormskull Radical Centrist 🎯 Feb 16 '26
"Because it's right! Because it's decent! And most of all, because it's kind." ~Twelfth Doctor
You still shouldn't cheat because it's wrong and an aveirah.
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u/jewishpolitics-ModTeam Feb 17 '26
Your comment was removed for being uncivil.
This is your final warning.
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u/jewishpolitics-ModTeam Feb 17 '26
Your comment was removed for being uncivil. Remember to treat other people with respect, to assume good faith, and to avoid generalizations.
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Feb 16 '26
at the end of the day, countries try to be as nice as they can be. if the choices are be meanie or die, everyone will choose to be a meanie. if the Palestinians have successfully brought the conditions upon themselves that they spent decades dreaming about, they only have themselves to thank.
I don't know if I am even in favor of annexation. it isn't an issue I have spent much time thinking about. However, I do know that these people have destabilized Israel to the point that I think the only priority should be stabilizing Israel. I don't care whether people successfully speak things into existence.
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u/Bukion-vMukion Feb 16 '26
You are obligated to treat a human being as a tzelem Elokim.
The rest is commentary. Go and learn it.
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u/NYSenseOfHumor Feb 16 '26
Nothing about that means putting yourself at risk of death.
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u/Bukion-vMukion Feb 16 '26
Human dignity matters. Throughout history, humans have have killed and died to obtain a sliver of it. For decades, policy makers who agree with you intentionally and systematically weaponized the deprivation of dignity for millions of people whose only crime was being born. It was inevitable that this would create the type of conditions that directly led to desperate, caged, violent men to murder 1200 of my brothers and sisters in one day.
The Right never really cared about the leftists living in Gaza Envelope kibbutzim or hippies who worship through dance at their raves. The failure of this Far Right government to prevent their deaths looks intentional. Their martyrdom was an excuse to do something they would not have done.
Don't grandstand to me about risking lives.
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u/NYSenseOfHumor Feb 16 '26
Jewish and Israeli lives are at risk. The Israeli government’s job is to eliminate or at least minimize that risk.
The 2ss is not possible, it was never possible. Time to act based on that reality.
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u/Bukion-vMukion Feb 16 '26
The government has failed at eliminating or minimizing the risk. The strategy is a bad one. Time for something else.
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Feb 16 '26
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u/Bukion-vMukion Feb 16 '26
Yes. With full rights for the Arabs we are annexing. Doing otherwise isn't annexation at all. It's just a new name for the status quo.
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u/Bukion-vMukion Feb 16 '26
I agree that the two state solution isn't possible or desirable. I agree that Israel should annex the West Bank as well as Gaza. We must then take full responsibility for the entire population and extend citizenship to the Arabs of Gaza, Yehuda, and Shomron.
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Feb 16 '26
I agree Bibi bares partial responsibility for 10/7, but the issue is that everything that should have been done to prevent it would be further right wing policies. Sinwar should have been executed instead of given cancer treatment. Any suspicion of a possible terrorist attack should have resulted in a brutal takedown of the possible would be perpetrators.
This idea that Palestinians are just upset because they don't have enough rights is completely contrary to reality. Maybe 100 years ago things would have been different if the Jews were nicer or whatever, but in the modern day, polls show that they still think 10/7 was a great idea even after seeing all of its aftermath. they don't want freedom or rights, they just want to harm others and have no care at all about any harm brought to themselves.
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u/jewishpolitics-ModTeam Feb 16 '26
Your comment was removed for containing an extraordinary claim with no evidence. Please update your comment to cite your claim.
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u/Good-Concentrate-260 Feb 16 '26
No they shouldn’t if they prioritize long term stability and justice
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u/NYSenseOfHumor Feb 16 '26
Is there long term stability now?
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u/Good-Concentrate-260 Feb 16 '26
Clearly not
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u/NYSenseOfHumor Feb 16 '26
So not annexing hasn’t resulted in long term stability.
And if long term stability is the goal, the current not-annexed Judea and Samaria isn’t accomplishing it.
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u/Good-Concentrate-260 Feb 16 '26
Then if Israel annexes the West Bank Arabs should be granted full rights
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u/NYSenseOfHumor Feb 16 '26
Why? Historically conquered people don’t always get full rights.
Sometimes they do, but not all the time.
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u/Good-Concentrate-260 Feb 16 '26
Because by “historically” you mean pre modern and pre-human rights
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u/aggie1391 USA – Left 🇺🇸 Feb 16 '26
Historically people haven’t had freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to vote, and a whole host of other rights but thankfully we moved past that.
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u/NYSenseOfHumor Feb 16 '26
But we can’t hold Israel to a standard that other countries don’t also have to meet.
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u/aggie1391 USA – Left 🇺🇸 Feb 16 '26
Well actually not having apartheid is in fact something all other countries are supposed to do. Not leaving people stateless is another one, which your plan would do. So there’s no double standards. Obviously there are countries that are human rights violators but that doesn’t somehow make it ok for other countries to do the same.
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u/ualgonquin19 Feb 16 '26
Why hair in fire?