The girls, aged 14 to 16, have come for settler training to learn how to occupy Palestinian land — breaking international law. “God promised us this land and told us if you don’t take it, bad people will try and take it and you will have a war,” says Emuna Billa, 19, one of the camp supervisors. “Why do we have a war in Gaza? Because we don’t take Gaza.”
Their guru is Daniella Weiss, a 79-year-old grandmother in a long skirt and patterned headscarf. Founder of the Nachala or Homeland movement, she has been setting up illegal settlements for 49 years and was recently put under international sanctions. “You will be the new emissaries,” she tells the 50 or so girls at the camp. “I call it redeeming, not settling and this is our duty.”
She unfurls a map of Israel and the Palestinian territories dotted with vivid pink house symbols to represent existing and proposed Jewish settlements. Not only are these all across the West Bank, but also in Gaza. Already 674 people have signed up for beachside plots there, she tells me, and “many more want to join”. When someone asks her about settling Lebanon she smiles and says, “Yes, there too”.
No, no! Israelis are nice people. The BBC told me and also I read it in a newspaper!
in a reasonable country this would trigger a red flag law.
The wild things is, they’re religious leaders know they are worshipping a co-opted war god, that exists only in their shadows.
“God promised us this land and told us if you don’t take it, bad people will try and take it
And that attitude right there is why there will most likely never be peace in the region.
There are hard-line factions on both sides of the conflict who are convinced that their religion grants them a god-given right to exclusive occupation of the same piece of dirt.
There are hard-line factions on both sides
:-/
You’re running into a degree of selection bias when you put “guy with gun seizing land” up against “group of residents who haven’t fled yet”.
What does a moderate faction look like in this set up? Either the IDF backed settler doesn’t show up or the Palestinian leaves. These are your non-escalatory solutions.
their religion grants them a god-given right to exclusive occupation
Waving a gun in your face after I’ve kicked down your door, but you’re no better than me because you’re also religious.
Welcome to religion and war, boys and girls…
Thanks American imperialists for enabling these invaders
All of the Abrahamic religions need to die
All of the religions need to die.
They have become what they swore to destroy
Nazis, more specifically.
Even Shin Bet calls these people terrorists.
Can we stop calling them “settlers”?
They’re settlers. What they do is violently expel people from their homes in order to claim it for themselves.
Settlers are people who do that.
There’s no need to stop calling them the word that correctly describes what they do.
Then are the people illegally coming to the US “settlers” or are they still refugees ?
Because I’m confused on the difference with that definition.
No. People coming to the us and integrating into American culture (even if it’s not recognized by the law) aren’t settlers.
A person wrote a book about this called “settlers”. You can read it.
How about the founding fathers who expelled Native Americans?
Settlers is an accurate descriptor, the problem is generations of Americans have been taught a white washed version of America’s colonial history, so the term doesn’t hold the negative connotation that it should.
To me it is more about messaging than accuracy. You can describe them accurately using different terms that average Americans immediately understand as negative.
Settlers. The frontier means ‘place we can kill and steal from “them” for land and resources’.
But that doesn’t undermine my question about refugees.
Does context matter or not ? Because if it does not matter than the Palestinians fleeing death and destruction could be called settlers, too.
How about: invader, encroacher, intruder, illegal immigrant, trespasser, violator, infringer or conqueror?
You don’t need to say any of that because they’re already settlers. They’re already all those things because that’s what a settler is.
There is no need for another word.
While you’re correct, the word is misunderstood by the general public. So it doesn’t properly convey its meaning
Words don’t properly convey their own meaning.
People do when they use them.
Rather than lament the way you perceive the present understanding in absolutes, why not start using the word settlers appropriately: preceded a cuss or followed by spitting.
If you think people don’t understand how the word settlers conveys historical meaning then do something about it instead of accepting your own transport to another grammatical space wherein you colonize the meaning and context of other words.
I understand. My point is that, for whatever reason (likely generations of white washed education regarding America’s colonial history), people in the US don’t view the word “settler” with the contempt it deserves.
That’s what they are, even according to themselves they’re settlers. Perhaps a more accurate term might be settler-colonial but I think just settler works (when you stop glorifying America settlers it especially works.)
Invaders would be more accurate.
I’m not surprised. That’s what Israeli settlers doing for decades, not just since October.
Tell me how people should not get radicalized, when your home and existence and that of your family is constantly threatened.
I’m not condining the actions of Hamas, they are brutal and wrong. But Israel created that beast themselves and left Palestinians with no other options.
If you want a more human focused instead of politics I would recommend to read Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation
Jewish author Michael Chabon and Israeli born author Ayelet Waldman asked writers, journalists, authors of both sides and not involved at all, to visit the occupied territories and write an essey about their expierience. It shows a heartbreakingly personal point of view of the situation before the current war.
Just a friendly reminder, that Israel is an Apartheid state - according to the ICJ.
When someone asks her about settling Lebanon she smiles and says, “Yes, there too”.
Great, more war crimes.
Why aren’t these terrorist training camps being bombed?
Israel is a terrorist state.
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