I think i'm losing a friendship because of the Israel-Palestine conflict

Israel has had claim to the territory for thousands of years? But until the 20th century it got complicated, as jews started to go back to their land of heritage, which many left due to conflicts, so tell me who has a better claim to this land? Israel is committing atrocities, yes, not denying, but whatever they do is in response to the terrorist group of Hamas. Did you not hear about the 1000s killed in Israel? Babies slaughtered, children abducted? After this Israel decided to retaliate, if they do not defend themselves they will be wiped out. However both sides are to blame in many areas, so this isn't as binary as you state.

It’s just a comparison. Of course not all black people share the same views same way not all arabs or Muslims would share the same views on Palestine but there is still a significant portion than do hold those views and would be sensitive to the topic. My point is that you can’t criticise someone for being passionate and sensitive to a topic you have no personal attachment to.

Well why is it illegal to take a DNA test in Israel? Its because they don't want people to see the truth and where their actual land of heritage is. Well they don't want you to know if they came from Ukraine, Belgium or whatever they are trying to spread false news and propaganda.

Why don’t you do your research first?? Where are the babies that died?? Also in an earlier post u claimed 1000s died in Israel. Umm hello if u had done your research u would have seen that around 1200 were killed. That doesn’t seem like 1000s. AND Israel lied about their death toll too.
And how can u compare the deaths of 1200 people to the deaths of 21000 Palestinians. Grow up and you stop spreading misinformation.

It's not illegal to take a DNA test. You have to run it by court. This is not only done by Israel, they have even stricter rules in France. It's because of these reasons: Once DNA data enters the system it is public record, and there is no way to control what is done with it. No other medical data is treated like this. There is concern that access to DNA data has the potential to lead to more private medical data being compromised. More and more, DNA analysis is being used to search for people connected to crimes, by fishing through random data. In justice systems that do not allow ‘fishing for evidence’ by other means, this is problematic. The potential to disrupt families exists. This is especially true in Jewish families, where matrilineal and patrilineal descent can be religiously significant.

Many Jews freely take DNA tests and share their results, even if their heritage does not originate mostly from Israel. I don't want to sound passive aggressive, but spreading false information like that, which is quite ironic, could just do more damage. Please research for the sake of everyone.

Okay yes you’re right, that post was during the crisis so there was a lot of mixed information. I was looking at multiple sources due to a lotttt of false information, E.g. CNN would exaggerate on Israel’s part, and Al Jazeera would exaggerate on Palestine’s side. But what I find ironic is that there were plenty of babies slaughtered in Israel TOO. And in very very immoral ways.

Well why is it illegal to take a DNA test in Israel? Its because they don't want people to see the truth and where their actual land of heritage is. Well they don't want you to know if they came from Ukraine, Belgium or whatever they are trying to spread false news and propaganda.

I think I am losing a 10-year friendship with my closest friend because of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Just some background, I am actually British-Filipino so I am not even part of this conflict, but as a Politics and Economics student, I am interested in current affairs so no doubt, the Israel-Palestine has got me reading and watching more videos about it.

I can write another post about my personal thoughts about this conflict in depth but for now I just want to focus on my current problem with my best friend. She is Arab and is very passionate about this conflict and I tried talking to her about my thoughts and how I analysed where I thought this situation was going. BTW, I refuse to even choose who to support (in short, my politics thinking is in the belief that the UK should only focus on their internal problems and European issues and by extension ex-colonies because Europe is our neighbour and we should not be sending billions of pounds to countries when we have our own problems to deal with). I say this to my friend alongside my political analysis on who had the upper-hand and came to the conclusion that Palestinians were truly going to suffer and I pray for the many innocents who are going to die from both sides as well as the failure of leadership, and completely against international aid from countries like the US who are nowhere NEAR these countries. I also mentioned the important factor of geopolitics and how although Israel was surrounded by enemies and such, they still had the upper hand of cargo drops for weaponry. All in all, I pretty much emphasized my lack of stance here, my empathy and hope that this conflict will soon come to an end.

What was I met with? I was met with messages with hostility and sarcasm that pointed me to be a fool and that I was misinformed and suffered from propaganda for my empathy for Israel even though I did not once say that I supported them, I only empathised with the loses - I made it clear that I was just analysing this from a curious Politics student. I explained myself over and over but they kept on saying how my points were invalid apart from a few - but it made me feel stupid. I did watch hours of videos and read multiple articles online ranging from different sources so I could see this conflict from different perspectives - I tried my best to be educated in this conflict and even if I was misinformed, I would have loved it if my friend would have just approached it in a friendlier manner like I was just their friend and not a supporter and I would have loved to learn from her intellect and wise nature.

But I'm left distraught, stupid, and have felt like I have just lost a friend. And it wasn't even that we disagreed on the Israel-Palestine conflict - we analysed things similarly, but I think she really hated my British foreign policy of just not getting involved and also my empathy towards the people who lost their lives in the recent attacks. I don't want to lose this friendship but I dont know how to ever approach them again if all they see in me is a political disagreement and not the 10 years we spent talking about books, classes, teachers, e.t.c.

Hello, this is the person who originally posted this thread. After my fallout with my friend, I watched a few more videos online, particularly from Firepost on YT (I chose them over other channels because they are very unbiased, tell the facts and actually are doing a gr8 job at presenting balanced views). Though I still believe there are more things to learn, I absolutely still feel sad for ALL of the lives lost here. I disagree with Israel attacking Gaza with heavy military force (but I cannot deny the immense weight it must have on a collective of people who have just been violently attacked and the anger that must have ensued - Israel striking back was predictable). Interestingly, I found out that most Palestinians don't even want to be represented by Hamas. Still, at this point, Palestinians have no choice if they want to survive, which is to support them reluctantly. I pray for the Palestinians in Gaza because, from what I've heard and seen from Firepost, Hamas uses their own people, buildings and sacred religious sites to draw in their enemies and plant bombs, which is absolutely evil. All in all, both sides and their militaries and governments are committing horrible crimes - one side is doing it for revenge, the other is for freedom, but both are tragically stuck in a conflict with innocents both being killed as a consequence of horrible politics, military radicalism and ethnic clashes. People believe that this stemmed from just a hundred years ago after WW2 and Britain drafting that infamous 'settlement', but it really goes far...its always been between religion and different ethnic clashes. This conflict not only kills people but also friendships (I know because I experienced it) - and though I am grateful there are a few replies here giving me actual advice, there are still a few people here acting so heated and against one another that it makes me disappointed.

I think I am losing a 10-year friendship with my closest friend because of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Just some background, I am actually British-Filipino so I am not even part of this conflict, but as a Politics and Economics student, I am interested in current affairs so no doubt, the Israel-Palestine has got me reading and watching more videos about it.

I can write another post about my personal thoughts about this conflict in depth but for now I just want to focus on my current problem with my best friend. She is Arab and is very passionate about this conflict and I tried talking to her about my thoughts and how I analysed where I thought this situation was going. BTW, I refuse to even choose who to support (in short, my politics thinking is in the belief that the UK should only focus on their internal problems and European issues and by extension ex-colonies because Europe is our neighbour and we should not be sending billions of pounds to countries when we have our own problems to deal with). I say this to my friend alongside my political analysis on who had the upper-hand and came to the conclusion that Palestinians were truly going to suffer and I pray for the many innocents who are going to die from both sides as well as the failure of leadership, and completely against international aid from countries like the US who are nowhere NEAR these countries. I also mentioned the important factor of geopolitics and how although Israel was surrounded by enemies and such, they still had the upper hand of cargo drops for weaponry. All in all, I pretty much emphasized my lack of stance here, my empathy and hope that this conflict will soon come to an end.

What was I met with? I was met with messages with hostility and sarcasm that pointed me to be a fool and that I was misinformed and suffered from propaganda for my empathy for Israel even though I did not once say that I supported them, I only empathised with the loses - I made it clear that I was just analysing this from a curious Politics student. I explained myself over and over but they kept on saying how my points were invalid apart from a few - but it made me feel stupid. I did watch hours of videos and read multiple articles online ranging from different sources so I could see this conflict from different perspectives - I tried my best to be educated in this conflict and even if I was misinformed, I would have loved it if my friend would have just approached it in a friendlier manner like I was just their friend and not a supporter and I would have loved to learn from her intellect and wise nature.

But I'm left distraught, stupid, and have felt like I have just lost a friend. And it wasn't even that we disagreed on the Israel-Palestine conflict - we analysed things similarly, but I think she really hated my British foreign policy of just not getting involved and also my empathy towards the people who lost their lives in the recent attacks. I don't want to lose this friendship but I dont know how to ever approach them again if all they see in me is a political disagreement and not the 10 years we spent talking about books, classes, teachers, e.t.c.

people who get to emotionally involved around things that she thinks affect her are strange drop asap let me explain (she is in london this friend and maximum has been to a protest - if she really cared about the Palestinian lives instead of spreading hate and thinks she knows better than you she should spread love and raise awareness in a way that is less hostile this is a humanity war against good and evil this is not isreal vs palistine this is a war isreal vs Hamas and Hamas is using the citizens as a human sheild . moreover , i have seen no actual peaceful Palestinian protests if you look at all of them they YELL VANDALISE AND SCREA M horrible things just compare that to an isreal protest calming asking the hostages to come home -im not going to lie and say i know alot about the conflict but the violence for me is just shocking - i have a feeling these people are enjoying screaming and the hostility shown because i have never seen a protest so big before in london and there are horrific stuff going on in the middle east arabs to arabs that is barely mentioned in london ive never seen or heard protests really about the Taliban or anything -suddenly when it comes to Isreal and the Jews fireworks happen all im saying is your not wrong she is in the wrong you have standards that standard is to be kind do not lower your stnadard for any people that get to emotionally involved and cant see straight and act like a DECENT HUMAN BEING

oh and just by the way lets remember who initiated october ninth

The terrorist attacks upon Israeli civilians started on Oct 7.

Hello. You have just lost a friendship. I understand that you feel you weren’t in the wrong but you need to see things from her side too. She’s and many other Muslims are going through an incredibly emotional time right now with the death count rises every minute in Palestine. How much she feel seeing her “friend” post something to do with Israel. Of course you were just empathising with that israelis deaths but what about that Palestinian deaths she is sad over too. Understand? Try and see it from her perspective too! Yeah maybe you were just seeing it from a politic perspective or whatever but that’s why you be careful about what you are posting.

point is that your friend is witnessing an ethic genocide mate, try and have some empathy for her. Palestinians are being literally slaughtered. I’m not here to convince or change your mind coz what u support doesn’t bother me. But there’s a lesson to be learnt here, don’t post things that you don’t have 100% knowledge about, see how you’ve hurt your friend as a result.

The lack of empathy and wish to understand someone else's view point in your reply is sadly one of the main reasons why there is so much conflict in the world where religious and cultural views claim to have primacy.

Your post implies that @Anonymous is losing their friend because of a lack of empathy - 'Try and see it from her perspective too' - Your own tone of post is sadly unhelpful and quite oppressive in its tone.

"Yeah maybe you were just seeing it from a politic perspective or whatever but that’s why you be careful about what you are posting"

"Don't post things that you don't have 100% knowledge about, see how you've hurt your friend as a result"

This is the UK where freedom of speech should be upheld at all costs and is crucial to democratic debate.

This is why TST debates and discuss all opinions and viewpoints, and its members do not just parrot a polarised view on any subject. That is the pleasure of UK living. Some may not like that and claim theirs is the only valid viewpoint. Even if you don't like it. That is precisely why many conflicts continue because there is no tolerance and there is no trust.

This is an open forum where almost any subject can be discussed and everyone's level of knowledge will be different. You don't need 100% knowledge to talk about something here, and to make a thinly veiled threat about 'being careful about what is posted' is quite simply shameful.

The terrorist attacks upon Israeli civilians started on Oct 7.

Errr.. they have been going on a lot longer than that.