Have you seen Susan Abulhawa's speech given during the Oxford Union debate last week?

Yes, I saw several speeches given there. I found her to be delivering her perception of the events and the others giving theirs and both have truths. I reject calling all Israelis zionists. I also reject calling Jews unable to understand that land. She seems to want to rid the lands of all Jewish people, there will never be peace that way.

As I watched the audience, I felt like their expressions showed them barely listening when a speaker was delivering a POV that disagreed with their own. That’s how I read the expressions, but maybe they were just expressionless in general and just listening.

Here are two of the speeches that were pro-Israel that I had in my youtube history. There are of course more to see from the Union meeting. The first is an Arab-Israeli. Someone who actually lives in Israel.

https://youtu.be/QcATzU09Kiw?si=GsXvhJnyES7Qhynm

https://youtu.be/WBllM8M-sko?si=wdlnEFjKmdgJ5nBJ

No, I didn’t find it compelling. She had cherry picked some comments from people going back to more than 100 years ago and tried to make that the basis for her views on Israel. She ignores all the violence the Arabs have done to Jews in the area for centuries. She talks about comments people have made about “missed opportunities” to destroy the Arabs in the region, but fails to acknowledge in the same statement that nothing happened. She talks about how Israel took over the entire Palestinian region in 1967 but fails to mention this was after a bunch of Arab nations attacked Israel and Israel beat them, taking the affected areas after the war. And she continues to ignore that Israel gave all these areas back to the Arabs later as part of peace treaties that the Arabs later broke.

The entire situation is a mess. Arabs have instigated 99% of the violence against Israel and every time they do, Israel responds and the Arabs start pushing their victimhood to the world with speeches like this one.

There is no doubt in my mind that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and a land grab in the West Bank at this point. Nothing justifies that degree of slaughter. It horrifies me and shames me that the US is complicit in it and as a Jew, but no longer a Zionist, I am doubly ashamed.

This is the only statement I will make on this thread.

An anti-Israeli Palestinian? What a surprise.

I watched it.
I don’t agree with her.

@gorillapaws: “Did you find it compelling?”

Sure? I mean, it’s entirely factually accurate. But I’m not sure what purpose this type of speech serves. How many people that are currently pro-genocide monsters are going to be moved by something this obvious and go, “oh wait – Palestinians are human”?

It’s fucking heartbreaking that someone needs to beg to be seen as human. This is the kind of thing we all said couldn’t happen again. We all pretended that if we were around during Nazi Germany, that we would not stand for it. Yet he we all fucking are. Doing it all over again – a new atrocity daily, livestreamed for our viewing pleasure.

Whatever we think we deserve – bodily autonomy, “democracy”, healthcare, etc – we have made it clear that we absolutely do not. There is literally no coming back from this.

Did she denounce Hamas’ aim to annihilate Israel? If not I don’t think she’s worth listening to.

It was a very powerful, compelling and deeply sad speech.