Can you look at this map and say Israel does not systemically appropriate land?

It is true that the Bible talks of the West Bank area as being their homeland. But their claim is based on the actual fact that it is their homeland rather than the fact that this is mentioned in the Bible.

After WWII Europe ( who was obviously pro Christian ) dumped refugees ( Jews ) into Israel ( the six day war ). Even many "Russians" ( Eastern Europeans ) fled into Israel.

Thus began the mass genocide and extermination of Islamic and Arab people from the land known as Palestine.

Even during the six-day-war UN troops ( Israel backed by foreign powers ) attacked an allied US boat just for the fun of it.

Even took a chunk of Egypt and another nation in which Egypt had to reclaim it's boarders.

This crap continues even into today. They just keep finding more messed up ways to make "excuse" to kill innocent people, and make it seems like if "they are the victims".

Post COVID when IDF start evicting people, and pushing them into ghettos ( a place where nobody wants to be or belongs or is up for destruction ) then your being no different then Nazi's.

You must admit that none of them have been found up Oralloy's bottom, and that's his only source of information.

Yes they have.

What makes their claim factual, exactly?

InfraBlue wrote:

Yes they have.

I'm hearing a lot of talk. But I'm not seeing any actual evidence of these supposed concentration camps.

InfraBlue wrote:

What makes their claim factual, exactly?

The existence of the Israelite kingdoms. . .

The Omride dynasty. . .

There is archaeological evidence. . .

Egyptian records. . .

Showing where Palestinians are located does not mean that they are being held in concentration camps.

The security measures in Hebron that you illustrated are unfortunately necessary in order to prevent Palestinians from murdering local settlers.

Had the Palestinians ever made peace with Israel, the Hebron area would have gone to the Palestinians, and the local settlers would have been withdrawn.

DNA shows that Israeli Jews come from the same Canaanite ancestry that the Palestinians do. This is evidence that Israeli Jews are descended from the Israelites.

British Jews must speak out over the “complete disintegration of the political and social compact” that underpins the state of Israel, the historian Simon Schama has said.

His call comes amid mounting disquiet among Jews in the UK and the US at the threats to Israeli democracy, violent attacks on Palestinians and a police crackdown on Israeli protesters.

Next Sunday, Israelis living in the UK will take to the streets to voice their opposition to the actions of the most rightwing Israeli government in the country’s 75-year history.

Protests are also planned by expat Israelis and Jews in other countries in solidarity with huge demonstrations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem against the government.

In a sign of the changing mood, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, considered to be a conservative and staunchly pro-Israel body, issued a rare statement condemning a call by a senior Israeli minister that a Palestinian town in the West Bank should be “wiped out” in response to the murder of two Israelis.

“We utterly condemn Bezalel Smotrich’s comments calling for the Israeli government to ‘erase’ a village which days ago was attacked by Israeli settlers. We hope that this and similar comments will be publicly repudiated by responsible voices in the governing coalition,” the board said.

The board’s statement was a reflection that British Jews across the political spectrum are deeply troubled by “dangerous extremists” in the Israeli government, said one insider.

Speaking to the Observer, Schama said that Israel was at risk of becoming a “nationalist theocracy” with the inclusion of ultra-religious, far-right parties in the coalition government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu.

Key government posts have been handed to extreme hardliners Itamar Ben-Gvir and Smotrich – both ideological settlers committed to Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

The government has begun moves to undermine judicial independence and expand Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

The army has failed to contain a surge of settler violence, and the police last week fired stun grenades and water cannon at peaceful protesters in Tel Aviv.

“This is of concern to Jewry all over the world,” said Schama. “It’s absolutely, utterly horrifying.” Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence – “a noble document, which promised equal civil rights to all religious and ethnic groups” – had disintegrated, he said.

Jews must speak out, he added. To do so was “not a betrayal of Israel, it’s a passionate declaration of support for the enormous number of people [in Israel] who feel as anguished as we do. We should not be lily-livered about it”.

Margaret Hodge, the veteran Labour MP and parliamentary chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, said an “assault on democracy” combined with “vicious attacks on Palestinian rights” was creating a “dangerous moment” for Israel.

She had always been a “critical friend” of Israel, but said she and other British Jews must now be “more vocal. The voice of the Jewish diaspora must be stronger, we must exert what pressure we can to curtail the excesses of the Israeli government.”

Anthony Julius, one of the UK’s most prominent Jewish lawyers, said the Israeli government incorporated “the worst features of the populist, anti-liberal democratic parties that operate in Europe and in America as well, but with a special kind of antinomian Jewish intensity”.

Sweeping reforms to give the government total control over the appointment of judges and to allow parliament to override supreme court rulings were “destructive”, he said in Haaretz newspaper last month.

According to Rabbi Jonathan Romain, the “vast majority” of his congregation in Maidenhead, Berkshire, was “deeply worried” about what’s happening in Israel. “The extremist faction in the government is anti-gay, anti-women, anti-civil liberties, anti-pluralism, hostile to Palestinians,” Romain said.

“The mood is shifting from British Jews being out-and-out supporters [of Israel] to being critical friends – and voicing that criticism publicly.” His constituents were “more worried about the direction of Israel than at any time previously”, he said.

Next weekend’s protest, under the banner “Defend Israel’s democracy”, is open to all expat Israelis “and all supporters of Israel and democracy”, the organisers said.

Reuven Ziegler, a law professor at Reading University, who will be speaking at the protest, said: “The demonstrations are a very patriotic act because they are an attempt to save Israel from making substantive mistakes that would ultimately change its character. They are anything but hostile to the Israeli state.

“Since this government was formed, it has given many reasons for people in the diaspora to find themselves alienated from it.

“In the past, faced with certain expressions of antisemitism, many Jews have felt the need to defend Israel, right or wrong. That sentiment may be weakening, but ultimately the blame for that lies squarely with the current government.”

Hannah Weisfeld, the director of Yachad, a UK organisation that advocates for a political resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said: “There is real disquiet in the community over Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. The settler attack on Hawara was quite a gamechanger.”

People, she said, were starting to understand there was “a connection between the undoing of democracy and settlers running wild in the West Bank.

“It’s very painful for British Jews, particularly those from an old-school Zionist background. Many have family in Israel who are telling them that a dictatorship is coming. We’re not quite at a tipping point yet, but I think we’ll get there.”

Six European countries, including the UK, on Saturday condemned recent Palestinian militant attacks that killed Israeli citizens in the occupied West Bank and called on Israel to halt expansion of settlements there. “We urge the Israeli government to reverse its recent decision to advance the construction of more than 7,000 settlement building units across the occupied West Bank and to legalise settlement outposts,” said the countries in a joint statement.

A video of ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting on the ground beside a procession of foreign Christian worshippers carrying a wooden cross in the holy city of Jerusalem has ignited intense outrage and a flurry of condemnation in the Holy Land.

The spitting incident, which the city’s minority Christian community lamented as the latest in an alarming surge of religiously motivated attacks, drew rare outrage on Tuesday from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and other senior figures.

Since Israel’s most conservative government in history came to power late last year, concerns have mounted among religious leaders – including the influential Vatican-appointed Latin Patriarch – over the increasing harassment of the region’s 2,000-year-old Christian community.

Many say the government, with its powerful ultranationalist members, such as the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has emboldened Jewish extremists and created a sense of impunity.

“What happened with rightwing religious nationalism is that Jewish identity has been growing around anti-Christianity,” said Yisca Harani, a Christianity expert and founder of an Israeli hotline for anti-Christian assaults. “Even if the government doesn’t encourage it, they hint that there will be no sanctions.”

Those worries over rising intolerance seem to violate Israel’s stated commitment to freedom of worship and sacred trust over holy places, enshrined in the declaration that marked its founding 75 years ago. Israel captured East Jerusalem in a 1967 war and later annexed it in a move not internationally recognised.

There are roughly 15,000 Christians in Jerusalem today, the majority of them Palestinians who consider themselves living under occupation.

Netanyahu’s office insisted on Tuesday that Israel “is totally committed to safeguard the sacred right of worship and pilgrimage to the holy sites of all faiths”.

“I strongly condemn any attempt to intimidate worshippers, and I am committed to taking immediate and decisive action against it,” he said.

The spitting scene, captured on Monday by a reporter at Israel’s left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, shows a group of foreign pilgrims beginning their procession through the limestone labyrinth of the Old City, home to the holiest ground in Judaism, the third-holiest shrine in Islam and major Christian sites.

Raising a giant wooden cross, the men and women retraced the Old City route that they believe Jesus Christ took before his crucifixion. Along the way, ultra-Orthodox Jews in dark suits and broad-brimmed black hats squeezed past the pilgrims through narrow alleyways, their ritual palm fronds for the weeklong Jewish holiday of Sukkot in hand. As they streamed by, at least seven ultra-Orthodox Jews spit on the ground beside the Christian tour group.

Further adding to the outrage, Elisha Yered, an ultranationalist settler leader and former adviser to a lawmaker in Netanyahu’s governing coalition, defended the spitters, arguing that spitting at Christian clergy and at churches was an “ancient Jewish custom”.

“Perhaps under the influence of western culture we have somewhat forgotten what Christianity is,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I think millions of Jews who suffered in exile from the Crusades … will never forget.”

Yered, suspected of involvement in the killing of a 19-year-old Palestinian, remains under house arrest.

While the video, and Yered’s comment, spread like wildfire on social media, the chorus of condemnation grew. Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, said spitting at Christians “does not represent Jewish values”.

The country’s minister of religious affairs, Michael Malkieli, a member of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, argued such spitting was “not the way of the Torah”. One of Israel’s chief rabbis insisted spitting had nothing to do with Jewish law.

Activists who have been documenting daily attacks against Christians in the Holy Land were taken aback by the sudden wave of government attention.

“Attacks against Christians have 100% increased this year, and not just spitting, but throwing stones and vandalising signs,” said Harani. “Excuse me,” she added, addressing Israeli authorities. “But where were you?”

The missing context for what's happening in Gaza is that Israel has been working night and day to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their homeland since even before Israel become a state – when it was known as the Zionist movement.

Israel didn't just cleanse Palestinians in 1948, when it was founded as a Western colonial project, and again under cover of a regional war in 1967.

It also worked to ethnically cleanse Palestinians every day between those dates and afterwards. The aim was to move them off their historic lands, and either expel them beyond Israel’s new, expanded borders or concentrate them into small ghettoes inside those borders – as a holding measure until they could be expelled outside the borders.

The 'settler' project, as we call it, is a misnomer. It's really Israel's ethnic cleansing programme. Israel even has a special word for it in Hebrew: 'Judaisation', or making the land Jewish. It is official government policy.

Gaza was the largest of the Palestinian reservations created by Israel's ethnic cleansing programme, and the most overcrowded. To stop the inhabitants spilling out, Israel built a fence-barrier in the early 1990s to pen them in. Then when policing became too hard from within the prison, Israel pulled back in 2005 to the outer perimeter barrier.

New technology allowed Israel to besiege Gaza remotely by land, sea and air in 2007, limiting the entry of food and vital items like medicine and cement for construction. Automated gun towers shot anyone who came near the fence. The navy patrolled the sea, stopping boats straying more than a kilometre or two off shore. And drones watched 24 hours a day from the sky.

The people of Gaza were sealed in and largely forgotten, except when they lobbed a few rockets over the fence – to international indignation. If they fired too many rockets, Israel bombed them mercilessly and occasionally launched a ground invasion. The rocket threat was increasingly neutralised by a rocket interception system, paid for by the US, called Iron Dome.

Palestinians tried to be more inventive in finding ways to break out of their prison. They built tunnels. But Israel found ways to identify those that ran close to the fence and destroyed them.

Palestinians tried to get attention by protesting en masse at the fence. Israeli snipers were ordered to shoot them in the legs, leading to thousands of amputees. The 'deterrence' seemed to work.

Israel could once again sit back and let the Palestinians rot in Gaza. 'Quiet' had been restored.

Until, that is, last weekend when Hamas broke out briefly and ran amok, killing civilians and soldiers alike.

So Israel now needs a new policy.

It looks like the ethnic cleansing programme is being applied to Gaza anew. The half of the population in the enclave's north is being herded south, where there are not the resources to cope with them. And even if there were, Israel has cut off food, water and power to everyone in Gaza.

The enclave is quickly becoming a pressure cooker. The pressure is meant to build on Egypt to allow the Palestinians entry into Sinai on 'humanitarian' grounds.

Whatever the media are telling you, the 'conflict' – that is, Israel's cleansing programme – started long before Hamas appeared on the scene. In fact, Hamas emerged very late, as the predictable response to Israel's violent colonisation project.

And no turning point was reached a week ago. This has all been playing out in slow motion for more than 100 years.

Ignore the fake news. Israel isn't defending itself. It's enforcing its right to continue ethnically cleansing Palestinians.