Do you think one can say that the vast majority of Israeli citizens are complicit in what is happening in Gaza?

[noname223]

It is just a question. I won't have a definite answer. To be honest I am not sure whether I could be hold legally accountable if I said yes to this question. I live in Germany. Lol.
Many US Youtubers compare Israel to Nazi Germany which invoked this quesion.

People who say yes would be called antisemites in Germany. I don't know any news platform that holds this positon. You will say maybe because it is sort of antisemetic.

I don't think one should hold Jews in general for it accountable. For example, Jon Stewart interviewed Peter Beinart and they both had some unpopular truth bombs to drop. They are both Jewish and they have very reasonable positions on the war.
In my opinion it would be indeed antisemitic to blame all Jews and Israelis for what is happening. There are voices against Netanjahu but let's be honest the vast majority supports the Israeli government. And does not care much about the suffering in Gaza.

In Germany all public figures emphasize never should one equate the Netanjahu government with the Israeli people. I think the newwspaper Haaretz does good work. There are some reasonable people in Israel. And I hope more people will wake up. But isn't it frightening that there are not many more protests against what Netanjahu and his far-right extremist ministers are doing? Can you still make this argument that the Israeli people don't support it? And are thus free from responsibility?

I guess all people in all nations have a certain responsilbity when their government commits crimes. And it needs a lot of courage to speak up. Only a small minority of Russians do that. But in Russia there are legal reprehensions if you do it. In Israel you will probably lose friends, lose reputation (as Jon Stewart describes it in this internview - he lost friends for his position) but you won't be in legal trouble.

I think the whole development is not good for Israel and of course worse for the Palestinians. But this thread focuses on Israel. Israel might never recover from damage to their reputation. Violence incites violence - that's like a law of nature. People say the people in Gaza need a de-nazification. But isn't the lesson of world war 1 and 2 not that it needs a Marshall plan and collective punishsment, national humiliation leads to way worse crimes? Israel will end up isolated if it continues like that. It might even provoke the end of Israel. For now Israel seems to be way more powerful than its neighbors. But Netanjahu undermines and erodes democracy. Isn't it far more likely there will be a lot of hatred in Gaza and the Arab world if so many are traumatized, have lost loved ones? Maybe this is the reason why they want to kill so many Palestinians. It's a genocide according to most scholars. All the people also in Germany, all the public figures and news outlets probably hurt Israel paradoxically by wanting to protect them from international sanctions. Israel does a lot of damage to itself. If our politicians learned from the past it would have been a necessity to stop Israel eaerlier. And the US government would have had the means to do that. I think there needs an Israeli nation as a form of shelter for Jews. But Israel loses its legitimation for many people outside of Israel because of these war crimes.

 

[Dejected 55]

I am hesitant to judge any larger group of people based on what some or many of their members say or do. I am certainly not responsible for everything done by Americans or the American government in part or as a whole. I think if my country does something and I agree with it and you are harmed by it, then it's completely fair for you to judge me on that... but you ought to at least ask.

There are lots of Israeli jewish people who speak out against the actions of their government and military. Do most Jews in Israel or anywhere in the world support the Israeli government/military actions? I don't know. I really couldn't say. And I don't want to throw them under the bus any more than I would lump all Palestinians under a different bus for the actions of some of their leadership and military.

Look at the US for instance. Trump arguably won by a good margin via popular vote and electoral college in the most recent Presidential election. But roughly 50% of voting age Americans voted... so half the country, give or take, didn't like any of the options on the table... At best the winner got 25-30% support of voting-age Americans. That's nowhere near a majority of folks in the country... so I hope people outside the US take this into account whether they like or dislike the actions of our country.

I apply the same sentiment to elsewhere. I think it's easier to hate people at the top in a country and blame their leadership for decisions and actions. But the lower you get on the power chain, the harder time I have with blaming everyone.

 

[Pessimist]

I live in Israel and I believe it's complicated. More than 20% of Israelis are Arabs, and most of them are pro-Palestine, so they are not complicit. But most Jewish Israelis tend to be very right-wing and militaristic, and many of them believe that ethnic cleansing is a fair response to the October 7 terror attacks. I'm honestly ashamed to be part of them.

However, I do believe that the comparison to the Holocaust is a massive exaggeration. The Gaza Health Ministry says that 60k Palestinians were killed in nearly two years, without distinguishing between civilians and combatants. In some instances during the Holocaust, that's the number of Jews that were murdered in a single day (Babi Yar massacre, Operation Harvest Festival, etc.)