I think the fundamental assumption of the analysis that there are two mutually exclusive groups, 'pro-Israel' and 'pro-Palestine' is flawed. It is possible to simultaneously support the interests of Palestinian and Israeli civilians (and support a peaceful Israel within the 1967 boundaries), while condemning the massacre of civilians under the orders of Likud (and other far right parties) and Hamas.
I think it is currently about an order of magnitude more civilians deaths have resulted from the actions of Likud (Netanyahu etc..., who control the government and hence the IDF) than from the actions of Hamas. IDF is apparently disrupting civilian aid, destroying infrastructure including hospitals, and causing mass population movements into areas that cannot support them, so the risk of death from starvation and infectious disease at a massive scale as an indirect result is high. The Likud-controlled IDF are also apparently enforcing a 'lock down' of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank while allowing Israeli citizens to seize land by force and further expand the occupied territories.
So the scale of the atrocities seems to be much higher on the Likud side than the Hamas side, covers both the West Bank and Gaza, and it makes sense that the Palestinian victims of those atrocities would receive more support. That doesn't mean that all the people who care about the plight of the Palestinian population are anti-Israel (they are just not posting about it because they are likely prioritising issues).
I think that forcing this dichotomy is part of the deliberate pro-Israel media strategy - if you despise Hamas inhumane acts, then of course you need to be pro-Israel. They want you to focus on Hamas to steer away your attention from what Israel has been doing. (this is also one of the reasons why Hamas has historically been an asset for the Israeli right)
Hamas has been an assset for the Israeli right because it helps prevent a two state solution. The goal is really to weaken the Palestinian Authority. In recent years most of Hamas' crimes were against Palestinians and nobody cared. Forcing this dichotomy today is certainly a strategy but I don't think that was really a strategy pre-Oct 7th. I.e. I don't recall ever Israel trying to justify settler violence against Palestinians in the west bank as being a response to Hamas- wouldn't make any sense.
In some perverse way, the objection to the two state solution forces the one state solution, which is likely the only solution that would ever work. Jews and Arabs living side by side in the same country as equal citizens. Hamas isn't interested in that solution either.
Palestinians did not reject a one state solution. Most Israelis don't want that. I.e. annex the West Bank and Gaza and have a single country, let's call it "Israel-Palestine".
I think the Israeli Arabs are a model/proof that it can work. It might need a generation or two to get there.
If you want more radical ideas then if all Palestinian Arabs convert to Judaism we can also solve the problem pretty quickly...
I don't see how the minority of Israeli Arabs can so easily be used as proof. The Arab population of Israel is around 20% at 2 million. The population of the two Palestinian territories is at around 5 million Arabs and they have a strong Muslim majority. Israel's population is considered to be 3/4 Jewish. If Israel and the Palestinian territories were to become combined into a single state, it would no longer have a strong Jewish majority and would also cease to have its strong secular minority. It would cease to be Israel.
Even though the current Israeli government may be more conservative than the ones previous, I see few possibilities for a more socially liberal government if Israel were to combine with the more-conservative majority-Muslim Palestinian states, given that there is not a single majority Muslim country in the world that is close to as socially liberal as Israel is, even now. Especially given that Muslim majority countries have a tendency to start employing Sharia law, even in Malaysia, far separated from the Middle-Eastern Muslim world.
> If Israel and the Palestinian territories were to become combined into a single state, it would no longer have a strong Jewish majority and would also cease to have its strong secular minority. It would cease to be Israel.
> Even though the current Israeli government may be more conservative than the ones previous, I see few possibilities for a more socially liberal government if Israel were to combine with the more-conservative majority-Muslim Palestinian states
According to some forecasts, roughly 50% of all Israeli children born in 2065 will be Haredi. [0] If that's right, Israel could well end this century with a majority of the population being Haredi, and Haredi parties in control of the Knesset and Israeli government. I doubt a socially liberal Israeli government could be possible in that circumstance; whatever remains of the secular minority may not be "strong", it may be politically weakened, demoralised, and increasingly diminished by emigration and a low birth rate.
And all that's assuming there is no change to the relationship with the Palestinians. So maybe a change won't do as much as you think – it might just hasten the inevitable.
> And all that's assuming there is no change to the relationship with the Palestinians. So maybe a change won't do as much as you think – it might just hasten the inevitable.
So destruction now or destruction some time after 2065? I know what I'd pick ...
> So destruction now or destruction some time after 2065? I know what I'd pick ...
Well, realistically, no big change is likely to happen to the relationship with the Palestinians in the near future. Maybe in another 20-40 years. So the time gap between the two scenarios may be smaller than you suggest.
My of the situation is different: Hamas is a business model. Dead Palestinians (and a show of killing Jews/Israeli, the superiority of islam/repressed people) for a LOT of money. It worked for the PLO, but it seems Abu Mazen suddenly decided he cares about human beings (AFTER becoming a billionnaire this way)
I don’t think Hamas has a clear strategy going forward. October 7 only happened because Israel was caught off-guard, that isn’t going to happen again. So what does Hamas do next? They will try to get as much leverage as they can out of the hostages; but they only have so many hostages, so that strategy can only take them so far. Then what do they do?
October 7 was calculated to derail the peace negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and in the short-to-medium term it succeeded. But, I expect that (privately) MbS is really angry at Hamas for doing that, and I think most other Arab governments likely feel similarly. That doesn’t bode well for Hamas in the long-run.
I think it's telling that Putin visited Saudi Arabia ... landed ... and nothing. Clearly he came with an offer MbS couldn't refuse, and MbS refused it.
It also shows, of course, that Arab countries have not changed and have zero interest or respect for the ICC or the UN. But they do seem to respect that Iran wants to destroy them. And if stopping Iran requires war in Gaza, then they're perfectly ok with that. They have barely denounced Israel over it, in fact most haven't done that at all.
Because it would mean the end of a Jewish state. Combine Israel and Palestine and you get roughly 50% Jews, 50% Arabs. (5.3M Arabs in Palestine, 7.1M Jews in Israel and 2M Arabs in Israel).
> Combine Israel and Palestine and you get roughly 50% Jews, 50% Arabs
It it leads to a peaceful and stable state that would be a good thing.
Is there a need for a Jewish state? Lots of ethnic groups do not have their own state. Mine does not - a much smaller number of us, and we are disappearing through mixing.
Historically, wherever Islam is in majority or has political power, they have problems with non-muslims, unless the latter become muslims. In fact, Christians have had problems with Jews too. One core element of anti-semitism stems from Christianity as a religion: for more, read James Carroll's Constantine's Sword:The Church and the Jews, A History
You’re not just wrong but also racist. There are numerous historic examples of historic muslim majority countries and empires which had thriving non-muslim minorities. An easy example is the Ottoman Empire which had Jews, Christians and Muslims living under muslim rulers. Persia/Iran has always had non-muslim minorities for over a 1000 years, some thriving more than others.
But you don’t even need to look into history. Today Malaysia and Indonesia both have non-muslim minorities. Bosnia and Herzegovina has slight muslim majarity and is doing relatively fine.
Bosnia is a terrible example. It is not doing fine precisely because Muslims in Bosnia are 51% of the population and demand a centralized government so that they can overrule Christians any way they please.
When Turks left about 100 years ago Muslims were a minority but thanks to much higher birth rate they now want to set the rules in Bosnia. Serbs know that, that's why they resisted, and still resist, a unified Bosnia.
Ottoman Empire tolerated Christians, true, but to achieve anything in life you had to convert to Islam. Otherwise you could just remain a haraç-paying Christian peasant without any chance of education or growth. Haraç was a tax for being a non-Muslim.
It was super hard to be a thriving Christian under Turks. In fact the Turkish policy was to demographically and economically slowly bleed Christians and for those with ambition to convert to Islam.
I said relatively fine because under Serbia, Bosnian muslims were genocided. Yes there is ethnic tension now, but nothing anywhere close to what it was three decades ago.
I don’t really know, but I guess the argument is that historically Jewish minorities have not really been free from oppression in any country at any time until the end of the Second World War.
So maybe there’s no strict need for a Jewish state, but I can see how going back to a collective of (often oppressed) minorities is not appealing.
I think it's workable with a constitution that guarantees rights for Jews such that the 50% Arabs can't change that and with a long slow process of building that single state (30 years? 50 years?). There might need to be other safeguards, Arabs today don't really serve in the IDF so maybe that would need to continue.
What else is the long term trajectory here? Israel can't keep occupying Palestinians indefinitely (and I'm using the term "occupy" in the Israeli meaning, not in the Palestinian meaning, fwiw). Two states as we've seen is not going to work. Anyways, I know this is a hard time to talk about this.
Adding a larger population that doesn't serve in the army isn't going to help IMO — the non-religious Jews are already very mad about the carveouts for Haredim not serving in the army. An "equal state" where a Jewish minority are forced into the military or else imprisoned, and the non-Jews aren't, is not going to go well.
Two states are much better than one in my opinion, and the PA-led pseudo-state is much better than Hamas-controlled Gaza. Israel and Palestine need a manageable divorce, not a forced and unhappy marriage.
Regardless, the PA does not advocate for one state, Hamas does not advocate for one state, and the vast majority of Israelis do not want one state, so I think this is kind of a moot point.
They only stopped advocating for one state after the Arabs suffered humiliating losses against the Israelis in all those wars (where the Arabs were the aggressors). Given the choice between a one state Palestinian country where Jews are a repressed minority, and a two state solution with a trillion dollar aid package for Palestine, the Palestinians will still choose the first option.
The PA and Hamas never advocated for one state. If by "they" you mean "the Palestinians in 1948," the Palestinians in 1948 did not advocate for one state for both Jews and Arabs either. They explicitly advocated for genocide, and wanted one state with just them and with no Jews at all — their leader explicitly said he wanted a second Holocaust in the Middle East (and had formerly volunteered for the Nazis).
Sorry, that is exactly what I had meant (which I didn't stress upon further). Palestinians only want a "one state solution", as long as it is a Palestinian state where Jews are either repressed or genocided.
What I'm trying to describe here is a solution that Israel implements whether the Palestinians want it or not. Israel has control and it can chart a path towards one state where Jews are not repressed or killed. It is effectively already doing that anyways but without thinking things through. I'm also describing something that should happen over a period of perhaps 50 years.
I think if Israel stated that is the goal, to make Palestinians equal citizens in the larger single country, and had a plan as to how that goal could be accomplished, that would be more constructive than the current stall until things blow up plan. I'd like to think many/some Palestinians would buy in and the rest would get no choice anyways.
This plan naturally involves dismantling the PA and taking complete civilian control over the entire territory including formally annexing it to Israel. It should also include some clear continuous benefits to Palestinians from where they stand today (which is pretty bad, so shouldn't be a problem).
A variation of this plan could be some sort of federation, where the country is "Israel" and there are two states under that country. Not unlike Canada or the US. That could also address the population ratios vs. democracy (just like democracy in the US or Canada isn't a proportional system). So we can have a parliament some fixed representation for different parts. I think Lebanon also has something along those lines. I'm sure over time we'll see coalitions that cross those "state" boundaries.
As long as there's a constitution, and there are the right mechanisms, checks and balances, to maintain that, and enough time to get beyond the current tribal let's kill everyone mindsets, it can work.
I genuinely don’t believe that’s a goal for more than perhaps a small percentage of people in either Palestine or Israel, I think Israel will simply continue to occupy (but not absorb) and shrink through land grabs and attrition the Palestinian Territories until the demographic changes happening internally create an Orthodox majority - and beyond that I can’t predict.
I have the impression that Israel's government does want a one state solution, but only after expelling as many as possible of the Palestinians into neighbouring countries to join those already in exile; they certainly don't want to grant them Israeli citizenship.
Arabs rejected a two-state solution at the very inception of Israel. An Arab majority Israel-Palestine would drive out its Jews, just as every other Arab country has done.
Arabs rejected getting <50% of the land (and being evicted at gunpoint from the rest) when they were ~2/3rds of the population in 1948. 1948 was 75 years ago, things have changed since then.
The reason Arabs supported the British against the Ottomans was because they wanted to create a unified Arab nation: https://awayfromthewesternfront.org/campaigns/egypt-palestin.... And Arabs got the overwhelming majority of the territory they wanted (notwithstanding the many minority groups they had conquered in the Levant), with the exception of what became Israel. Put differently, you could say that Arabs got 0% of Israel, and that’s technically true. But it’s not an accurate description of what they got in comparison to what they actually wanted.
This argument completely ignores both the cultural distinctions between the different areas of the former Ottoman empire, and the fact that a person's home is not interchangeable with any other place. Nobody would expect a Polish person in 1939 to say "well, we Slavs have the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia so I guess it's fine that German settlers took my farm at gunpoint and forced me to leave".
The implicit assumption is that any place with a majority of "Arabs" would ethnically cleanse all the Jews or become an Islamic theocracy, so we must view everything through the lens of competing ethno-states. It's important to challenge this assumption. Ethno-states are inherently violent because every population is a mixture of different ethnicities, and an ethno-state needs to maintain a majority of a certain population. If the "wrong" group's population grows in an ethno-state, it becomes a "demographic problem" that the government needs to "solve". This is why carving up the world into such states is never a lasting solution for peace.
Aside: "Arab" and "Jew" are not mutually exclusive. You can be an Arab Jew in the same way you can be a Hispanic Jew - Arab is a distinction based on one's mother language not one's religion. This is why the Arab League includes countries in north Africa where most people aren't descended from ancestral Arabians. The history of and literature of Judeo-Arabic is an interesting rabbit hole:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Jews
Every nation in that area is an Islamic theocracy, monarchy, a failed state or a military dictatorship.
If we waived a magic wand and made Palestine and Israel one country we wouldn't have peace. We'd have a a bloody civil war that makes the current conflict look like childs play.
Exactly. Show me an Arab country where Jews live as equals and prosper. There isn’t one. There’s just a few thousand Jews in the Arab countries. Less than 100 in Syria and Lebanon, about 100 in Egypt. Five in Iraq. Officially, zero in Saudi.
Ethnostates are still highly relevant today, especially for Jews.
In my country, the US, many people once believed that slavery was morally wrong, but still argued against freeing the slaves because they might try to take revenge on the rest of the population. Those fears were, in fact, confirmed on several occasions. And even today, areas with a high population of descendants of slaves fare far worse by almost every economic and social measure.
Freeing the slaves (a task which required us to fight the deadliest war in our history) was still the right and necessary thing to do. "You broke it, you bought it."
The Israelis are not just going to dissolve Israel and give it to the Palestinians just like the US won't dissolve itself and give itself back to the Native Americans.
That's not what I'm asking for. In the US, Native Americans and descendants of slaves have full legal and political rights (in fact, Native Americans have extra political rights not granted to other citizens). Israel also can give Palestinians full legal and political rights, either in a separate state or as part of a one-state solution, without compromising its continued existence.
If native Americans made up 60% of the population and voted hamas into power the last time they had an election it would have been a much tougher choice for the us to give them voting rights.
A statement like that unfortunately muddies the waters, it takes two to tango.
Sadly things have deteriorated but at one stage there was a path to citizenship of Israel also there were offers of a state.
Most of the world is competing ethnostates, including most if not all Arab states. (I’m certainly glad my parent’s generation secured our ethnostate, at great cost.) Whether there is a better way is an open question. But anybody would be an idiot to sacrifice their ethnostate for that experiment. It’s never ended well.
> Anybody would be an idiot to sacrifice their ethnostate
I'm sure Hamas feels the same way! I'm not going to say whether one or two-state solution is best, that's for Palestinians and Israelis to decide, but something's gotta give.
The only workable solution is two states, and Arabs giving up the idea of retaking Jerusalem and rebuilding the caliphate. They got to keep nearly all their territorial gains from their conquest of the Levant, that should be good enough.
Countries like China and Japan are de facto ethnostates. There's also countries with religious majorities like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and India, many of which are associated with an ethnicity. Saudi Arabia is named after the Arabs. You could make the argument that many European states have dominant ethnic groups like the French, though they are nominally secular nations.
The biggest cosmopolitan countries are the United States and Brazil if I remember correctly. Maybe Canada too. Europe is moving in that direction. Countries that have a diverse citizenry are more of an exception though. Not that I disagree with your probable view that we should all live in diverse secular democracies, I just think your claim that almost none of the world is ethnostates is somewhat suspect.
I agree with the idea that Israel would ideally be a single secular state, but navigating that transition while preserving it as the safest place the Jews of the world can go would be an enormous challenge. The situation sucks and resists simple answers.
These are simply not normal things for a country to do in the 21st century. That doesn't mean I don't have massive problems with what these other countries are doing, or what the US is doing, but to say they're ethno-states like Israel in my view is a false equivalency.
> but navigating that transition while preserving it as the safest place the Jews of the world can go
Is it though? I know Jewish folks in the US with family in Israel, and it doesn't seem like they'd feel safer in Israel. These policies don't seem to be making Jews safer.
> Saudi Arabia is named after the Arabs.
nit: It's named after Arabia which is a geographic region that's been named after the Arabs for centuries. The disturbing part of the name Saudi Arabia is that it's named after a specific family of despots, not that it refers to Arabia. But even being named after an ethnic group doesn't make your country an ethno-state.
> These policies don't seem to be making Jews safer.
I agree.
And I'm not saying that any countries are better or worse at being an ethnostate than Israel, just that there are many countries where racial identity is prominent. China as an ethnostate is complicated (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Dream for some examples), but 91% of people in China are Han Chinese. That culture is predominant and the Chinese state has an official language associated with that identity. Likewise, foreigners make up just about 2% of the population in Japan (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Japan). Japan is known to be an insular country that has a reputation for xenophobia. That's what I meant by de facto. Both countries have a dominant culture in a more pronounced way than the United States, for example. China also practices ethnic clensing with things like the Uyghur cultural genocide, which could be compared to some of the policies you linked.
Right. Asian countries that aren’t technically ethnostates are effectively such, by way of something that functions like an ethnic identity. E.g. nearly everyone assimilating into Han ethnic identity in China. Similarly, Arab identity.
Most European countries historically functioned like ethnostates. They’re trying to change that, but not successfully.
I don’t believe diverse countries are sustainable in the long run. Look at what happened to Jews in Europe. They were living in peace with their neighbors for hundreds of years, and then their neighbors turned on them and massacred them.
"They were living in peace with their neighbors for hundreds of years, and then their neighbors turned on them and massacred them."
Progroms were not exactly a new thing in europe, but frequently happened over the centuries. The 19. and beginning of the 20. century was rather a quite peaceful episode, with jews getting equal citizen rights etc. but the hate did not go away, as can be seen, once the Nazis took over.
Wait what? China as an ethnic state? That would require a pretty large stretch. Europe is populated by Europeans, but saying it's an ethnic state is not very useful. China is a huge country with many ethnic groups with their own identities. The Han may dominate but the country functions more like a colonial empire.
Calling France an ethnic state is saying the Normans are the same group as the Provençal. It's like doing the same in Spain; a sure way to lose new friends. France and Spain are also old empires.
Japan is something else. The description makes sense there. Maybe also for the Nordic countries of Europe.
> The Han may dominate but the country functions more like a colonial empire.
At the level of spoken language, Han natively speak several mutually unintelligible languages; even at the written level, most of the mutually intelligibility only exists in the more formal registers. Are Han really one ethnic group then? Or more like a family of closely related ethnic groups?
> Japan is something else. The description makes sense there
Are Ryukyuans the same ethnic group as Yamato Japanese?
> You could make the argument that many European states have dominant ethnic groups like the French, though they are nominally secular nations.
France officially rejects the idea of French ethnic nationalism. France’s nationalism is civic and linguistic - the French nation is defined in terms of citizenship and language, not in terms of ethnic ancestry - in fact, the French government does not even know the ethnic/racial composition of their country, since they refuse to collect statistics on it. So I disagree with the suggestion that France is an “ethnostate”
> Saudi Arabia is named after the Arabs
Both the Saudi royal family and the Saudi religious establishment have always opposed Arab nationalism; the only significant Arab nationalist force in Saudi politics was the outlawed Arab Socialist Action Party opposition, which was mostly crushed by the Saudi regime in the 1980s, and by 1991 or so was extinct.
Not a fucking clue man. These people hate each other and they both have reason to. Maybe you need a solution administered by a third party like the UN but no solution is going to leave everyone happy, and the UN itself is pretty flawed. There's plenty of insane people on both sides including Hamas.
I don't really see what the UN can do. Even if you had a solution that no one likes how do you force it on both parties?
The UN doesn't have the firepower to force Israel to do anything it doesn't want to do, and doesn't have the desire to force Palestine to do anything it doesn't want to do.
I suppose one approach is just sanction/isolate the entire region, until both sides reach their own solution. But… unlikely the entire world would unite in that, resulting in incomplete sanctions and messy alliance networks, with probably new enemies for each in the aftermath, and sadly perhaps new “scores to settle” against those who sanctioned them.
As an outsider to this feud, perhaps the best thing for me to do is not to judge either of them. I think it’s human to want to pick a side, but they’re not making it easy either way, by now. War is ugly, and I feel sad about and disappointed in that region for reminding me how bad people can be…
I wish they would stop fighting and dying but i got no power to change that. If that’s what they wanna do, it’s up to them.
I was really looking forward to a trip to Israel this year but now i guess that’s on hold…too dangerous
I would love to say I shouldn't have an opinion on this. Unfortunately my government is giving our tax dollars to one side so it can bomb the other. If they would prefer I didn't have an opinion, maybe they can stop taking our money to buy bombs.
Yeah, I like your thinking. It's tricky. Inextricable government-citizen stuff. I'm more of a global citizen right now, I don't really feel that. But I get it. Must be tough. Democracy...whaddayagonnado?
I'm assuming you're American and on this basis, it's safe to point out this expenditure is primarily defensive, funding the iron dome. You don't hear about the iron dome in the news much as it would get boring reading day in, day out of the same defences against "exploratory" missiles fired into Israel. These defensive missiles are really expensive.
One issue with that is we only provide a small portion of their military budget and use a lot of that influence to persuade them to treat the Palestinians better.
Mandatory Palestine was an artificial creation of the British, which existed less than 30 years. For the 400 years before that, it was part of a single Ottoman province along with what is now Syria and Jordan (except for Jerusalem which was split off into a separate distinct in 1872).
Talking about “how much of Mandatory Palestine the Arabs got” is contrived, when it was just a part of a much larger Arab territory under the Ottomans, and was planned to be part of a much larger Arab territory after the Ottomans.
Yes, what really mattered to the ordinary people on the ground wasn't the borders on a map; it was "my family has lived in this house and farmed this land for generations, but now men with guns say the house belongs to them and we have to leave."
Is it not though? The expulsion started immediately after UN partition recommendation of Nov 1947, the Arab-Israeli war started in May 1948, that is only 6 months later
The war started the day after the UN resolution, in November 20 1947. The war wasn’t caused by the expulsion of Arabs. The Arab states refusing to recognize the creation of a Jewish state caused the war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestine_war
> The war had two main phases, the first being the 1947–1948 civil war, which began on 30 November 1947,[19] a day after the United Nations voted to adopt the Partition Plan for Palestine, which divided the territory into Jewish and Arab sovereign states, and an international Jerusalem (UN Resolution 181). Partition was accepted by the Jewish leadership, but rejected by Palestinian Arab leaders and the Arab states.
My aunt lives in Tel Aviv from 1933 to 1952. She told me they actually started shelling the city that night, not the next day.
As well, there was fighting in the streets. They had to turn off the lights at night and hide in the basement to avoid raids. There was a sniper who was shooting at their apt from a nearby mosque and they would find shells on their balcony. They lived on Ben Yahuda St.
Just thought readers might appreciate a first hand account of what it was like to be a Jewish Israeli at the time.
I was discussing 1948 with a Palestinian and he insisted on downplaying the Arab attacks, saying they were weak, their attacks were not serious etc. I've found that in online discussions as well including people telling me that Arab countries didn't even exist at the time. The Egyptian Air Force bombed Tel Aviv that night.
We live in a post truth era and not sure what can be done about that. You'd think that with the Internet and access to information people can do research but research is hard. There are many, sometimes conflicting accounts of historical events. It's so easy to be sucked into echo chambers. Any thesis you have can be easily supported.
Thank you for sharing. Unfortunately, Israel lost the war on this decades ago. Not just Arabs, but the entire Muslim world has bought a particular narrative, and nothing will convince them otherwise. I’m from a non-Arab Muslim country, and they actually have a lot of conflict with Arabs (exporting Wahhabism, etc). But when it comes to Israel and Palestine, it’s a unified front.
Unfortunately, it’s part of a larger victimhood narrative that has become an important part of Muslim identity. “Our once proud civilization has been oppressed by the west, including ripping away our holy city of Jerusalem and giving it to the Jews.” And because the Muslim world was an important participant in the worldwide socialist movement, that narrative has taken hold among European leftists who otherwise wouldn’t have a horse in the race.
The partition plan wouldn’t have expelled anyone from their homes. Most of the land that became Israel belonged to the Ottoman Empire itself. Part of it was purchased by Jews over decades. Arabs weren’t to be expelled from the remainder, they would just become part of the new Jewish state. And, of course, it never would’ve affected Arabs in Syria, Jordan, etc.
Many of these purchases were from wealthy Ottoman landowners who had in many cases never seen the land they owned. The peasant families that actually lived on the land for generations had no say in the matter. I'm not faulting the purchasers for conducting legal business transactions, if anything the fault belongs to the feudal system of the Ottoman Empire—but none of that matters to someone who has suddenly lost their home and livelihood.
> Arabs weren’t to be expelled from the remainder
I don't think the historical record bears that out. Why did Israel not let the civilians it displaced return once the war ended, if the displacements were merely a temporary military necessity? And certainly massacres like Deir Yassin were not military necessities, though they did scare many Palestinians into fleeing.
The question we were talking about above is: What caused the Arabs to attack Israel the day after the UN Declaration? Note: it was not just Arabs in Mandatory Palestine, it was Arabs in Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, and Iraq. All of them attacked Israel. Why? It wasn’t Arabs in Palestine being forced to leave their land. That wasn’t part of the partition plan, and hadn’t happened yet. The Israeli Declaration of Independence specifically asks Arabs to stay and become equal citizens.
As to why Israel hasn’t allowed Arabs who fled to return, I suspect it’s because the Arab countries tried to kill Israel in its crib, and then expelled a million Jews from their own lands.
> That wasn’t part of the partition plan, and hadn’t happened yet.
I must admit I don't know as much as I would like about this, so please correct me if I say something stupid (and share reading recommendations), but: my understanding is, "Israel" at this point was composed of several factions who disagreed greatly about methods. Probably Ben-Gurion did not have ethnic cleansing in mind, but Irgun and Lehi did, which was enough—the most radical factions were also most willing to fight, which gave them outsize power. (Though even Ben-Gurion did not intend to stay only within the borders allotted by the UN, he intended to take control of even Jewish settlements outside the partition borders.)
As for the war: the invasion by the Arab countries upon Israel's declaration of independence was an expansion of a civil war within Palestine that had already been going on for more than 5 months, and that the Palestinians were decisively losing. The Arab states hoped mostly to save face and to stop the flood of Palestinian refugees that would result if the current trajectory continued.
I'd say your focus on what happened in other areas of Ottoman control is contrived. It seems obvious that what should have mattered to the Arabs of Mandatory Palestine is the disposition of Mandatory Palestine - it doesn't help them at all to say "well, these other guys over there got a whole country."
You’re projecting western individualism onto the situation. The correct analysis is to look at how the territory was partitioned between Arabs and Jews. Thats how Arabs themselves viewed it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War. Why did Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi, and Yemen all attack Israel the moment it was created, and several times after that?
Why do the Arab countries care so much about Palestine? It’s not like they go around spending their blood and treasure to protect other oppressed groups. Saudi just bombed the shit out of Yemen. The reason they want to get rid of Israel is because they view this as a matter of Arab territorial integrity.
My Bangladesh family is posting the paratrooper meme on my FB. Why? Because they view the existence of Israel as an affront to territorial integrity of the Islamic world. You cannot understand the situation Israel is in from a western secular point of view.
> Why did Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi, and Yemen all attack Israel the moment it was created, and several times after that?
Since after Israel's founding, the Arab states have initiated war against it exactly once: the 1973 Yom Kippur war. (Technically, I guess you could count Iraq's 1991 rocket attacks as a second time?) In all other cases, either Israel attacked first, or Israel's opponent was not a recognized state actor.
That report is based on policing the likes and shares in social media accounts of teachers, not on what they taught the children or what they themselves did or wrote.
Imagine that was done here (in the US), those teachers might get a talking to, but nobody would buy that they're teaching hate unless students or observers say something.
If someone were to scrub your social media accounts, would they find 0 likes or shares of 'hateful content'? Depending on who you follow, that could be anything from sharing videos of the IDF's attacks, Hamas' attacks, Likud's charter, or even some dude that edited their viral post to inject something positive about Mein Kampf
> Palestinians did not reject a one state solution. Most Israelis don't want that. I.e. annex the West Bank and Gaza and have a single country, let's call it "Israel-Palestine".
Hardliners in the current Israeli government (e.g Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, Amichai Eliyahu) want to "annex Judaea and Samaria". There seems to be a bit of ambiguity about whether they mean only Area C, or the whole of the West Bank (or even annex Area C now as a precursor to annexing A and B later.)
If they did that, what would happen to the Palestinians living in those areas – would they become Israeli Arabs? Would they first have to request Israeli citizenship? Would they be entitled to it, or would it be up to the Israeli government to decide whether to extend it to them?
"One state solution" is an idea primarily associated with Israel's peacenik far left, but maybe the best way to achieve it might (paradoxically) be to let the Israeli far right get a big chunk of what it wants?
> If you want more radical ideas then if all Palestinian Arabs convert to Judaism we can also solve the problem pretty quickly...
Speaking of radical ideas, I find the "cantonization" proposals [0] for the future of Israel rather fascinating. Basically convert it into a federation of different "cantons" representing the different sectors of Israeli society (secular, religious, Haredi, Arab). These cantons might be partially geographical and partially personal – i.e. every citizen belongs to a canton personally, the canton also controls the territory where its members are a majority, but has to protect the rights of minorities from other cantons in its territory; individuals will receive some government services from the canton of residence (e.g. public utilities), others might be provided by their personal canton (e.g. education, family law)
Possible outcome: they win the argument on annexing Judaea and Samaria, which is the first step of their plan, but then they fail to achieve the subsequent steps (denying Palestinians citizenship, mass deportation of Palestinians, etc) – which could produce an end result which is a long way from what they actually want – e.g. Israeli annexation could make all West Bank Palestinians eligible for Israeli citizenship, and then what if large numbers of them decide they want it, and end up getting it? Suddenly the "binational one-state solution" seems a lot closer to reality, as Arabs become an increasing percentage of Israeli citizens – even though what the hardliners actually wanted to achieve by annexation was the "mononational one-state solution" (Israel gets all the land while the Palestinians all leave and give up their Palestinian identity)
I don't know what the fix is but that's impossible. Israel has to stay a relatively united nation with a powerful military and nuclear power status or the Arab nations will immediately bulldoze it.
> I don't know what the fix is but that's impossible. Israel has to stay a relatively united nation with a powerful military and nuclear power status or the Arab nations will immediately bulldoze it.
Under the "canton" proposal, there would still be a national government in charge of the military, intelligence agencies, diplomacy, foreign trade, the currency, the banking system, etc. The "cantons" would primarily control local matters, schools, housing, family law, religious affairs, etc. So I don't think it would make much difference to military.
It would basically be transforming Israel from a unitary state (like New Zealand) to a federal state (like the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, Switzerland) - however, with the added factor that the top-level national subdivisions would be based on cultural factors rather than purely geographical ones – which would be a system more like that of Belgium.
You would wonder if there would be sufficient unifying factors for government to remain functional or it'll end in stalemate. At best leading to stagnation or at worst leading to near failed state. An example of how it could go wrong would be Lebanon. Also a certain faction could play the long game with end goal of constitutional change.
Something rather similar manages to work in Belgium. Sure, Belgian politics can be a crazy mess sometimes, but who would call a Belgium a “failed state”?
Regarding Lebanon-for all of Lebanon’s woes, it still survives, it hasn’t broken up into a new civil war; and for all the criticism of its political system, maybe its unique political system has been one of the factors preventing that outcome. And I think Lebanon’s biggest problem is that the national government lacks a monopoly on force, with sectarian political parties controlling their own militias beyond state control (of which Hezbollah’s is the most significant example.) I don’t think the “cantonalisation” proposal for Israel is going to lead to that, since all the versions of it I’ve seen have the military, intelligence, law enforcement, prisons, etc under the 100% control of the national government. Lebanon’s problem in that area is a leftover of its civil war; Israel is not going to have the same problem unless it has a civil war (which I still think is very unlikely)
I'd say in Belgium's case the country is sufficiently developed and it's institutions are also sufficiently developed to function without changes. The state can run itself (it's still in control) and there's little need for bold, perhaps controversial government decisions (long term versus short term). In the longer term it could be to their detriment if they are not able to act on changes needed in a future changed version of the world.
I'm not doubting it will be grounded in peace, a stalemate can be a form of that as nothing will happen. A state not only keep residents safe (ideally they should try do this). It becomes a failed state when a state is no longer in control. When other government services like utilities are no longer delivered, that's when the failed state question can also come into being. Lebanon isn't quite there thank goodness but it's not great either.
> I think the Israeli Arabs are a model/proof that it can work
Because they’re a minority. Look at what happens when Jews are a minority in a Muslim-majority country.
Even if Palestinian Arabs could get okay with Jews it would be a powder keg long term. Because the whole Muslim world hates the idea of Jews in the holy land, and uses Palestinians as a proxy against Jews. I’m from a “moderate” Muslim country. Out of thousands of Jews that used to live in the country, only a few families are left (openly). It’s really as bad as people think.
They don't take refugees, because they are already not well-off economy wise. Having millions of refugees would cause their economy to collapse, and they don't have the capacity to feed them all and shelter them. They also can't ensure that every refugee is not a militant that would try to attack Israel back, from their borders, causing the IDF to lob bombs onto Egyptian territories.
Why are your trying to blame all Palestinians, like as if they are a monolith and all of them are troublemakers?
They could certainly demand the US and Europeans, US and Gulf State to kick down some coin to pay for it. The problem is Hamas is an offshoot of the Islamic brotherhood and so everyone especially in the middle east sees them as radioactive.
Let's take a very clear, narrow lens on the issue. Let's also separate Palestinian civilians from those exerting power unto them in Gaza. I say this because any other way is a can of worms.
How did Hamas come into power? What are its goals? What have they promised to do to accomplish those objectives?
Their goals are of malicious intent, and they have demonstrated that they're willing to do anything to accomplish them.
About innocent Palestinians, I understand their fears (at least I hope I do). But, _as of this moment_, focusing the narrative on them and Israel is just a cunning way to further drive a wedge between them, and muddle the waters.
Re: "Let's also separate Palestinian civilians from those exerting power unto them in Gaza" - I do not think you can. A lot of Palestinians are radicalized. What do you think a father who lost his kids in an airstrike will do next? Or a brother who lost his sister / brother? Do you think these people will care about rule of law, or turn the other cheek, etc...?
Re: "any other way is a can of worms". I agree with this statement.
Putting these two statements together means there will never be peace in Palestine. It sucks....
> I do not think you can. A lot of Palestinians are radicalized.
Yes
> What do you think a father who lost his kids in an airstrike will do next?
That’s not how people get radicalised. Students are taught in Gaza that the Jews stole their land, that Jews are from Europe, that dying as a martyr is the best death and that when they grow up they should kill as many Jews as possible. Many of Hamas’ fighters are only 15 or 16 years old.
We learnt a lot since 9/11 about how radicalization works. It's not happening mainly through personal trauma, but through indoctrination, usually through schools and universities.
Sageman’s “bunch of guys” theory has really won out now that anybody can interact with terrorists on social media. You can’t run a big terrorist organization made up of people seeking revenge because they’re power-seeking and will replace you. Instead you take a bunch of guys out of college, give them a way to seek status that conveniently involves them dying before they can replace you, and then go out and fundraise.
I can tell you exactly how I would react if someone were to do something to my daughter, which is the biggest source of joy to me right now.
So what exactly is your solution then? To create 10-20 times the suffering that has led to the growth of Hamas to begin with?
But let's say, for the sake of the argument, that that line of reasoning is justified, which for the record, I don't think it is. How does that then justify the violence, and the killings happening in the West Bank? How does it justify shooting Palestinians in the US?
Nobody here wants to hear it, but the only country that has gotten a hold of its Islamist terrorism problem without mass bombing is China. And contrary to what people in the US like to hear the Organization of Islamic Cooperation which comprises dozens of Muslim countries, have praised Chinas efforts to build infrastructure and schools. The US shouts about Uyghur rights all the time and then bombs them the moment they hang out with the Taliban for training[1].
Even the guy who came up with the Uyghur genocide says that the people working in the factories are treated well, and yet that's somehow a bad thing[2].
I did not justify that line of reasoning. I am just saying is human nature.
The parents of Ethan Crumbley's victims asked for maximum penalty - sounds a lot like eye for an eye right and is right here in the US. A dad of one of Nasser's victims asked to be alone with Nassar for 5 minutes. When the judge (obviously) declined that request that guy jumped over the fence in the courtroom trying to get to Nassar.
What do you think regular people would do when their kids are killed? Or their brothers and sisters are killed?
Some people recover, others don’t. That is actually how humans are.
I remember reading about a psychology case of two sisters getting constantly raped by their father.
One of them finally grabbed the dad’s rifle and shot him. One of them recovered and went on to live a normal life and the other spent the rest of her life in treatment.
But what’s ultimately clear is that Israel in its current form is not sustainable. Either they change, meaning they stop calling and treating people they don’t like, like animals, or they launch an all out war with all their neighbors in which case all bets are off. The media is guilty in this. If they hadn’t perpetuated this myth that the USA is infinitely powerful and will defeat anyone standing in Israel’s way they would have had to find a way to arrange themselves with their neighbors.
For some people over time this becomes a will to make peace so others don't have to suffer like they did. The immediate reaction is revenge but eventually you come to terms. Otherwise conflicts would never end, but they do.
> Otherwise conflicts would never end, but they do.
For individuals, that is simply wrong. If my brother were to kill an innocent kid and that kid's father were to kill my brother, as much as I love my brother, I'd hate him for killing an innocent kid and I'd totally understand the father of the kid killing my brother.
Would I suffer? Sure. And I'd be ashamed of what my brother did. But I wouldn't go out and kill the kid's father.
It's totally ridiculous to consider killers doing mass shooting should be given a second chance to mass shoot again and it's totally normal parents of some of the dead kids want lifetime jail (or the death penalty).
And I don't think the parents of the mass shooter would, in turn, go on a killing spree. They know fully well what their kid got is well deserved.
These are good questions and I hope someone with more knowledge then me answers them more thoroughly. In short my answers are:
How did Hamas come to power? Via democratic elections and by winning a subsequent civil war.
What are their goals? Total Palestinian liberation and the restoration of the pre 1948 borders (a.k.a one state solution).
How do they promise to achieve these goals? Via armed struggle, a.k.a. intifada and revolution.
Hamas came into power after a fair democratic election in 2006. Outside observers monitored the elections and all agreed they were correct and fair. The only major interference actually came from Israel which backed the rival political group Fatah. Following the election the Palestinian civil war broke out in Gaza, which Hamas won. After which they took full control of the Gaza strip. There has not been an election since then, neither on Gaza nor on the West Bank. Aside: The legislative council in Gaza was demolished by the Israeli army last November.
Meanwhile on the West Bank Fatah took power, where they control the Palestinian Authority. It is interesting to see the fate of the territory each faction controls. While Gaza suffers a blockade and constant military interventions, the West Bank is suffering from constant incursion from settlers and military raids as well as further partitioning of their lands, illegal settlements, military checkpoints, etc.
In simple terms, Fatah supports the two state solution, among with most of the international community, which is why many Western nations view them as the legitimate government despite Hamas having won the election fair and square. Hamas on the other hand at first did not recognize Israel as a state, and wanted all of historic Palestine under Palestinian control. Since 2006 they have somewhat eased their stance against Israel, but are still calling for decolonization and one state.
The Palestinian Authority (and Fatah by extension) is not popular among Palestinians. The way I understand it is that people view them as a colonial government, pandering to the interest of their colonizers. It is my understanding that Hamas is viewed favorably, as pandering to the interests of the colonizers has not left the West Bank in a nice state for the indigenous population.
In short, in simple terms (as per my limited understanding), the two state solution is not seen as the right path inside Palestine, so people actually support Hamas’ one state solution, and see the fight for decolonization as legitimate. This may be a tough reality for westerners to accept as Hamas is only portrait by their very real and devastating atrocities, but seldomly seen as liberation fighters and never recognized for their decolonization efforts.
Instead of relying on western analysis of the situation, I actually like to take in some historic comparisons. The Mau Mau in Kenya were indeed very brutal, and conducted very severe crimes against, however their fight—with the hindsight of history—was indeed very just, and resulted in the liberation of Kenya from the oppressive British colonial rule. Another example is FLN in Algeria, which probably had even more popular support then the Mau Mau, and were even more brutal in their fight against their French colonial oppressors.
> The only major interference actually came from Israel which backed the rival political group Fatah.
This is an oversimplification. A few months before the election, Israel pulled out all its forces/settlements/infrastructure from Hamas-dominated Gaza, while keeping them in place in the West Bank where Hamas was stronger. This was a huge victory handed on a silver platter to Hamas, by the administration of Israeli PM Ariel Sharon (who the Palestinians call the "Butcher of Beirut" [0]).
Let's use the right timeline. The pullout you describe was in 2005, and handed Gaza to _Fatah_. The Palestinian elections in 2006, and Hamas did not control Gaza prior to 2007.
> In the lead-up to the elections, on 26 September 2005 Israel launched a campaign of arrests against PLC members. 450 members of Hamas were detained, mostly those involved in the 2006 PLC elections. The majority of them were kept in administrative detention for different periods.[19] In the election period, 15 PLC members were captured and held as prisoners.[20]
> On 21 December 2005 Israeli officials stated their intention to prevent voting in East Jerusalem, which, unlike most of the Palestinian-inhabited areas that were planned to participate in the election, was under Israeli civil and military control.
> On the day of the election, the ballot boxes were held in Israeli Post Offices inside Jerusalem. Israeli police officers were present to monitor the proceedings of the election. At the end of the day the Israeli authorities transferred the ballot boxes to the Palestinian Authority.[19]
Question: How is withdrawing from Gaza interfering with the election while these actual examples of interference aren’t?
It seems to me if your narration of history were true (which I’m not sure it is) then withdrawing from Gaza but not the West Bank was merely a dumb move, not interference.
EDIT: To be clear, I don’t believe—as did observers at the time—that these interference efforts had a significant impact on the results. I believe these elections were fair and accurate despite some inference efforts by Israel. Whatever politics Israel conducted before the election was just that, politics. Every participant or stakeholder in election which holds any amount of power over the electorate does these politics before and during elections.
I made no argument, just an observation about coincidence between areas of removed settlements and higher Fatah support in the same area compared to Hamas.
The crazy thing is that the pro war machine talking heads keeps trying to make this about Iran, when it's really Qatar and Turkey financing Hamas, in part using illegal Oil sales from Syria. Nikki Haley was talking about "finishing them". It's also worth remembering that Hamas actively fought AGAINST Syria and it's allies(Iran) with the other Islamist rebels
The US has huge military presences in both countries, and if they really wanted to shut down funding to those institutions they could do it tomorrow.
We know that Netanyahu deliberated supported these groups to shut down opposition in Gaza by his own accord and that he has even recently asked to send more funding[1]. The talking heads also want you to believe that this is some sort of protection money out of goodwill for the poor civilians in Gaza.
I listened to some Palestinians on twitter spaces the other day and they told explained to people how the political landscape is actually a lot more complex than we are led to believe from media.
One person breaking down Hamas really well has been Brian Berletic from the new atlas[2]. Some people here might not like him, because he very much in favour of China, but I still urge everyone to take a look at his Palestine analysis.
> The US has huge military presences in both countries, and if they really wanted to shut down funding to those institutions they could do it tomorrow.
It's well-known in these areas that these sales are done through ships in the Mediterranean. The same US warship that captured the Somalis last week (initially they claimed to have caught Yemenis) could be focusing on those ships that take off from Turkish ports instead (or, really, in addition)
> It’s insane how normalized antisemitism is you people don’t even see it
breakdown
1. normalized antisemitism = there is antisemitism AND it is normalised. Neither claim backed up.
2. 'you people don’t even see it' = there is a flaw in your world perception, not the posters'. Totally subjective so impossible to dispute.
3. keep them [Hamas] in power - isn't that what the Israeli gov't has done?
(Hamas are appalling but the IDF response is also appalling, and counterproductive in being exactly what Hamas wants. Keep pushing and the local conflict may spread and pull in bigger anti-Israel actors)
"How do you honestly support people who elected Hamas"
Speaking against mass destruction of key societal institutions and infrastructure, mass murder and attrocities, and starvation of Gazans by Israel's government policy in its current military operation against Gaza, is not a high mental bar for giving "support". It's easy to support that.
I don't have anything against Jews. But I can see that people in Gaza, being under siege by Israel for almost two decades, and under direct occupation before that, and being displaced or having ancestors displaced from their original homes, by Israel before the occupation, may dislike Israel or Jews. (easy to conflate the two, given that that's the Isreal's media policy) And I'll not judge them for that.
On the flip side, Jewish populations have been expelled (or worse) throughout the middle east. Israel rationally fears an unlimited right to return or a single state solution that results in them being demographically swamped. Further, we're talking about radicalized populations that no other neighboring state wants to accept-- Egypt does not want Gaza back. States in the Arab world remembers Black September.
The situation in Gaza isn't stable. Hamas needs to be displaced for any chance at peace. And then, that peace is going to have to take the form of a two state solution where no one gets exactly what they want, and it may have to be a generation away.
> On the flip side, Jewish populations have been expelled (or worse) throughout the middle east. Israel rationally fears an unlimited right to return or a single state solution that results in them being demographically swamped. Further, we're talking about radicalized populations that no other neighboring state wants to accept-- Egypt does not want Gaza back. States in the Arab world remembers Black September.
Yes, everyone has legitimate fears. I just don't see how the current AI assisted military operation of killing all of "Hamas" members and their families, will help deradicalize the population. Or how making Gaza unlivable will help assuage the fears of surrounding Arab countries around uncontrolled mass immigration, or lead to two-state solution that Israel rejects outright, at the moment.
> I just don't see how the current AI assisted military operation of killing all of "Hamas" members and their families,
I don't think Israel has done perfectly, but I do think they have a pretty low amount of collateral damage for fighting in an urbanized area. Keep in mind the "civilian" casualties numbers for Palestine come from Hamas-controlled entities, and count all fatalities as civilians.
> will help deradicalize the population
I think the current situation with Hamas on top reaches pretty much peak radicalization possible. It doesn't serve Palestinians well, either, being a kleptocracy that is systematically stealing aid for personal enrichment and terrorism.
Leaving things as they were wasn't a great option; negotiating with Hamas wasn't an option; attempting to contain Hamas and wait them out has proven to be a really bad option.
> or lead to two-state solution that Israel rejects outright, at the moment.
There's no doubt that Netanyahu and Israel's right are terrible.
> pretty low amount of collateral damage for fighting in an urbanized area. Keep in mind the "civilian" casualties numbers for Palestine come from Hamas-controlled entities
I am not sure about what you mean by "pretty low" collateral damage when almost half of the infrastructure of Gaza has been damaged or destroyed, including historical and heritage sites. More than 17,000 Palestinians have been killed, around 70% being women and children. I guess those "civillian" casualties are militants to you.
It is also disingenuous to say that the casualty numbers cannot be trusted as they are from "Hamas-controlled" entities when historically the numbers the Gazan health ministry gave has tallied with Israeli numbers in every war prior. It is like conflating that the FDA cannot be trusted if Trump said not to get vaccines, because they are under the same government. Different agencies are not held to the same standard and they might not have the same goals, Hamas is mainly a military wing, while the Gazan health ministry cares for the health and survival of their people.
Also, Israel keeps track of every person born and dead in Gaza, they have state-wide surveillance there, they could have chosen to send in surgical strike forces and taken out the militants strategically, but instead chose to carry out one of the heaviest bombardments in the current decades. Netanyahu has also said their military won't leave Gaza, after the war. Seems like they plan to expand their West Bank Occupation operations to Gaza.
> 17,000 Palestinians have been killed, around 70% being women and children.
Unfortunately, 1) these numbers come from Hamas; 2) count militants; 3) a large fraction of "children" appear to be militants.
> while the Gazan health ministry cares for the health and survival of their people.
Every real government tracks civilian and military deaths separately. Here we're given one misleading lump of a number (that includes significant incentive to lie).
> Also, Israel keeps track of every person born and dead in Gaza, they have state-wide surveillance there, they could have chosen to send in surgical strike forces and taken out the militants strategically,
I think this is unrealistic and any effort to do so would be suicide.
> Netanyahu has also said their military won't leave Gaza, after the war.
Netanyahu has said just about every possible thing depending upon whom he's been talking to. There's no disagreement he and his government are trash.
Let me reiterate that the numbers have been accurate so far and for previous conflicts, you can't just brush it away by saying "Hamas said". I can also say "IDF said" and brush everything away, but when there is evidence time and time again that they are accurate, you can't erase them away. Moving on...
I am not sure why you don't consider infrastructure as collateral damage too. That would too shallow of an analysis to forgo. Without infrastructure, like hospitals, power plants, water desalination plants/water towers and even homes, that the IDF has been destroying, there would be no electricity, water, sanitation, healthcare and shelter for the civilians that are left alive after all the bombings. It is already a humanitarian crisis situation, but the loss of infrastructure is almost amounting to a genocide, because there is no support structure left for the people, who are already barricaded in and have no chance to flee. They will just die from dehydration, disease, malnutrition or the weather, if the bombs don't get to them first. I also don't mean the definition of "genocide" that has happened after the successful killing of thousands of people, I mean genocide that shouldn't and cannot happen, because we can't let it happen. "Never again" applies to all human beings. Also the "aid" that is going in, is not enough to sustain the civilians, hundreds of trucks need to go in daily but that many trucks may only go in, in a week.
> 3) a large fraction of "children" appear to be militants.
If you think it's justified to kill women and the "children", than you are no better than the supposed militia you are fighting. I am not sure what to say, further than that. Even B'Tselem would have a stroke hearing that.
> I think this is unrealistic and any effort to do so would be suicide.
I also don't think the carpet bombing is justified and more could have been done. A combined operation from ground and air would have been better, than full air bombardment.
I am not sure how Netanyahu is not in jail after his corruption charges from 2019, who in Israel keeps allowing him back in power if they hate him so much? Just a rhetorical question.
> If you think it's justified to kill women and the "children", than you are no better than the supposed militia you are fighting.
I'm just going to stick to one point, because I've been trying to say it and it hasn't been heard. When you define "children" in a way that it includes a big fraction-- perhaps a majority of those-- taking up arms, it stops being a useful measure.
Israel's current estimate is a lower bound of "over 7,000" militants killed. The algorithm they use to determine someone is a militant is:
- found dead with a weapon
- or over 14 years old and male at a rocket launch site, a Hamas tunnel, or in a position which was firing upon the IDF
- or if you're known to Shin Bet as a Hamas/PIJ/etc member
- or if you're over 14, male, and killed with a large group of people meeting criteria above.
It's obviously imperfect; it overcounts in some ways and undercounts in others.
This means a lot of 14..18 males are counted both as "children" and "Hamas militants"
We're talking about the demographic fractions. The official Israeli counts support that they're killing militants to civilians at a ratio of 2:1 --- which is horrible, but better than warfare in urban areas usually achieves
It is probably not as favorable of a ratio as Israel states), but not as terrible as the Gaza Health Ministry numbers that imply substantially all of the casualties are civilians.
Unfortunately, Israel's adversary has chosen a set of tactics that put civilians in greater danger.
> The official Israeli counts support that they're killing militants to civilians at a ratio of 2:1 --- which is horrible, but better than warfare in urban areas usually achieves
Official counts by a party to the conflict also are invariably better than what the actual war they are prosecuting achieves.
Of course-- this is a point already made in my comment-- "It is probably not as favorable of a ratio as Israel states". We obviously cannot simply take the numbers from either Israel or Hamas.
Israel has allowed civilian aid in, does "knocking" to reduce deaths from their bombing, supplied the water Palestine was using to begin with, etc. so when Hamas fighters have literally been robbing the civilians of the food aid, it rings a bit hollow.
It's weird that you want to ignore how we ended up with the current borders to begin with (let's just ignore the war that was started, then lost), ignore the peace deals they signed and reneged on, the intifadas, etc. in this analysis.
That's fair, I will try to do better, but this is a hard one to discuss neutrally. There's a huge mess, it has long been a huge mess, and a lot of people want to focus on only half of the story.
Yes, and everyone has a different half of the story that they want to focus on, and a lot of the time we struggle to include, or even acknowledge, the other "halves".
I know it's extremely difficult. But it's work that we all have to do together if we want our community to survive.
You can't post like this to HN, regardless of how right you are or feel you are, or how wrong others are or you feel they are. This is exactly the sort of comment that my pinned comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38573652) is asking users not to post to this thread (or indeed any thread).
We have to ban accounts that keep posting like this, so please don't do it again.
(Needless to say, this goes for both sides of the conflict, not just one.)
I'm never quite clear on what the word "sarcasm" means but I think the answer to your question is yes, you should just not use it - at least not in an aggressively-argumentative way. The guidelines try to cover this with rules like "Be kind. Don't be snarky." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
That's not a good line of argument to take here given that Israel has mandatory military service and given what its democratically-elected government has been doing to the Palestinians for generations.
Part of the reason why the conflict drags on and is making that little pocket of the world a festering sore of evil is because so many Palestinians and Israelis think like this.
Be part of the solution, not the problem. It is not as easy as simply believing that whatever your group is doing is right, some other group is less worthy of moral consideration than yours, and wallowing in the victim-mentality that anyone criticizing your actions or position is racist towards you. That's how you know it is right.
I suppose that these are people who do not understand Arab culture. Just recently (as in, I remember it was October 22 because I had an appointment in Beersheba that day) an Arab explained to me, more or less because the conversation was not in English, that "You Jews always argue and protest and fight with each other. We don't do that, we listen to our fathers. We have families". He was explaining to me how the different families fight between them, like they'll shoot at each others houses but the goal is to assert family honour, not to actually shoot somebody. But the point he was struggling to make, is that in Arab societies, everybody thinks the same. There is no room for division, no room for dissent, no room for contrary opinions. He specifically mentioned that he has family in Gaza (and yes, this was already two weeks into the current conflict) and everybody there is Hamas. He said "is Hamas", up to me (and you) to interpret that as being actual members of the organization or supporters.
I actually talk to Arabs often here, and I don't shy away from the hard questions. The Beduins specifically will happily tell you all you want to hear, with me (maybe naively) feeling that I'm in danger. Just yesterday I had a half hour conversation with a Beduin about such matters, in my house as my guest.
Then you tell me how the Arabs view themselves. Because Arabs that I've spoken with from Palestine, Lebanon, Tunis, and Iraq all mention that they see themselves as a common culture and brotherhood. Interestingly, Moroccans don't seem to share this view from what I've gathered.
My samples mostly come from people that I've met abroad or the HelloTalk app which is designed to connect people learning each others' languages. So my sample might be biased, but I don't see how that selection would bias this particular issue.
Interesting how they see themselves as a brotherhood yet not a single Arab country has ever taken in so called Palestinian refugees in the last 50 years. Jordan most recently just expelled them all! What a brotherhood
Or how about that Shiite and Sunni brotherhood going on?
They aren’t a monolith. Levant Arabs have a hard time understanding people from the Maghreb (North Africans). North Africans think differently than Iraqis, and everyone despises Gulf Arabs and their easy oil money and the Wahhabist tendencies of the Saudis.
The one thing they have in common is they don’t like the way Palestinians have been treated but have ceased viewing it as “their” fight long ago.
Yes, I agree with your first paragraph. The second paragraph I agree with less, as the Iraqis that I've talked to do in fact seem to see the Palestinian struggle as their own struggle as well. But I don't claim to really know Iraqi culture.
That’s because both Iraqis and Palestinians were occupied and brutalized by America and Israel respectively. so there is much to share. Just like South Africans commiserate with Palestinians or African-Americans about their experiences.
But that doesn’t mean Iraqis are going to fight a war for the Palestinians. They have their own problems to deal with.
I know you're just sharing your personal experiences, but I got to say that this not only does not match my personal experience, but it also sounds very much like something you hear Israeli settlers say to justify settlement expansions and violence.
I would like to hear your personal experience, then. I've heard similar things from many Arabs, I often ask questions to understand their culture better. Most of my contact is with Beduins, just because we live close to each other.
> Most of my contact is with Beduins, just because we live close to each other.
I think that's a pretty niche subset of Arabs, for one thing.
Why bother trying to generalize based on folky anecdotes like that? Like, I think you are smart enough to know that such a casual pronouncement isn't an articulation of a reliable rule for understanding the behavior of large groups of people.
When I'm specifically discussing their culture, and I find aspects pretty much uniform between the Sabuaia Beduins and the Arabs of Haifa (where I lived for a few years), then I generalize. I haven't been to Haifa for quite a while, which is why I mentioned the Beduins specifically.
The settled Arabs don't really know much about the Bedouins, and neither do the Jews. The settled Arabs of today really don't have much an opinion of the Bedouins, but I suppose that might have been different in generations past. Both populations have separate conflicts with the Jewish state.
Both the settled Arabs and the Bedouins tell that the settled Arabs came long after the Bedouins. The settled Arabs say that the Bedouins were here before they came, but the Bedouins were only in the بر (which is somehow different than صحراء but I don't know what the difference is, both seem to mean "desert" in my language). Now the Bedouins are found further north too. The settled Arabs came mostly from Egypt and some from Syria, and some from other places. They came looking for work and land, and married with the local populations. They consider themselves local since time immemorable because they married with the local populations, though they will tell of their forefathers in Egypt.
The Bedouins say that they came a few hundred years before, from Saudi Arabia. Some Bedouins also tell of great-great grandfathers from Egypt. They actually will be very frank about not liking the settled Arabs, and they will be just as frank when talking about their relationship with the Jews. I happen to know of injustices that the Jews did to the Bedouins that the anti-Jewish crowd would absolutely love to parade, if they only really cared about the welfare of the people and not just the establishment of an Arab state to displace the Jewish state.
I have nothing to add here, other than to thank you for expressing this so cogently.
It’s not always “right” to measure just action in terms of lives saved or lost, but it’s hard for me (and so many other American Jews) to see anything right or just about 10 dead Palestinians for every dead Israeli.
Take that logic further. Israel's enemies outnumber it by 10x or more and are more than ruthless enough to sacrifice as many as necessary*. There's no way ever that Israel could avoid having the other side having more casualties. The same would apply to every minority.
If your suggested law of war isn't 'majority or ruthless minority, get to do everything they want because they have more causalties', than you need an alternative. The alternative is the current laws of war, which allow for strikes with collateral damage (what Israel says it's doing), but not for terrorist attacks aimed at civilians.
* Suicide bombers, Iranian mullahs sending kids with 'plastic keys to heaven' to dismantle minefields, or current refusal of Hamas to allow civilians to use its tunnels as shelters. We could fill the page with examples really.
** Funny, I don't recall opposition to America's post 9/11 response based on counts. Almost as if the same rules don't apply.
I don’t think the majority of people killed so far in this conflict have been enemies of Israel per se, in the same way that most (nearly all?) of the people who died on October 7 were not enemies of Palestine. Even in the most hardened, cynical, irredentist view this wouldn’t be true.
“Collateral damage” is one of those bloodless wartime euphemisms for killing innocent men, women, and children. It’s a dirty, unavoidable reality. But I don’t believe for one second that Israel’s hands are so sufficiently constrained that the current degree of civilian death is necessary. I say that as a Jew, with family in Israel, who I worry about.
> “Collateral damage” is one of those bloodless wartime euphemisms for killing innocent men, women, and children.
It's not a just a euphemism, because there really is a difference. Justified or not, Dresden wasn't collateral damage - it was directly targeting and killing innocent civilians. Collateral damage really is something different.
> But I don’t believe for one second that Israel’s hands are so sufficiently constrained that the current degree of civilian death is necessary.
(For the record, I'm Israeli)
This is a hard question to answer. No one actually knows, because given fog of war and given the incentives of both sides, it's hard to get real numbers for what's going on. Not to mention that what even counts as "necessary"? Obviously zero civilian deaths is the only legitimate goal, but just as obviously this is impossible to achieve in practice. (I'd also add that zero deaths of militants is the goal, if possible - anyone that can be stopped by arresting them or causing them to surrender should be dealt with that way - though obviously this is even harder to achieve.)
Given all that, I think a few points I'll say, again speaking as an Israeli citizen with my own particular biases:
1. While I highly mistrust our current government (like many Israelis), I certainly don't think most of our government would condone killing civilians completely unnecessarily. At least not the ones in charge, mostly.
2. More importantly, I trust the IDF a lot (and this is probably a big difference between me and most non-Israelis). While I'm sure that not literally every civilian death is legitimate, I do trust that the IDF is only attacking valid targets given reasonable intelligence, and that it's not knowingly targeting civilians for the most part.
3. Most importantly - taking the outside view - the IDF estimates that it's killing roughly 2 civilians for 1 militant killed. If you believe that number - it's roughly in line with similar wars fought by Western countries.
Note: While I talk about civilian deaths here as a "statistic", every death is a horrible tragedy. In a good world, no one would ever have to die of violence, and good people should mourn the deaths of any person on any side of this horrible situation.
I agree with your initial statement but I would ask of you to question you points 1 and 2.
1. I am not sure if you are saying that extremists like Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich are not in charge, but their rhetoric and speech has made it clear they do not care for Palestinian deaths, and rather would like to carry out more killings. If you didn't know about the people in charge of your government, I implore you to look into their history.
2. I would ask you to look more critically at the IDF, after all that B'Tselem has shown them to have committed. I would look to what the IDF did during the peaceful 2018 Great March to Return where they shot and killed hundreds of unarmed civilians, including women and children, and severely injured thousands of others. Only one Israeli soldier was slightly wounded in the whole conflict. They have also been killing children indiscriminately in the West Bank, what would justify that? There are dozens to hundreds of other cases where the IDF has been incriminated for unjustified violence but I am not able to collate them for you at the current time. If that is not enough evidence to change your stance on the IDF, that nobody can help to change your mind.
Yes, I was saying that Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are not the ones in charge now, luckily for everyone. They are horrible people, and I believe that if they were in charge, they would commit crimes as bad as any that Hamas has committed. It's shameful that they are part of our government and as far as I'm concerned they should be barred from office in any decent country.
But no, they are not currently in charge, the majority of the government is not in line with their extremist views, and neither is the majority of the country. (Though views have certainly gotten more extreme after October 7th, predictably.) Their power in the current government is inflated because all decent politicians (the entire center and left) refuse to form a coalition with Netanyahu. And the populace have been protesting this government, with the backdrop of the judicial reform, in the largest protests in Israel's history, for the last year.
2. I do look critically at the majority of things the IDF does. It's not all perfect, there are many moral failures, like in any army. I think B'Tselem and the world in general look far more critically and without context at Israel and the IDF, compared to other armies.
Note, like most secular Israeli men, I served in the army (though not in any kind of combat way - I was a programmer). I also know many, many reservists serving today, as does literally every Israeli. There are a lot of Israelis with views I vehemently disagree with, but very few that would target civilians for no reason. (Though obviously take this with a grain of salt - my view of the IDF is still, at the end, anecdotal to me - my circle of acquaintences don't represent a true random sample of the army.)
I can't speak to The Great March of Return, I don't have any inside info here, I'll just note that the situation with the border is very complicated. Look at what happened when the border wasn't defended strongly, thousands of militants were able to storm in and slaughter thousands of Israelis, and drag all of us (Israel and Gaza) into a terrible war. Does this mean everything that happened there was justified? Of course not. But life's complicated.
I'll take specific note of something you said:
> They have also been killing children indiscriminately in the West Bank, what would justify that?
Nothing would justify that, but I don't believe that's happening. I don't think there are real, verified cases of the IDF targeting children, only of children dying as collateral damage.
> There are dozens to hundreds of other cases where the IDF has been incriminated for unjustified violence but I am not able to collate them for you at the current time. If that is not enough evidence to change your stance on the IDF, that nobody can help to change your mind.
I'll reframe this as a question, because I think it's a very good one. What would make me change my mind? Let's be specific, what would make me change my mind that the majority of operations the IDF is currently undertaking are "unjustified"?
1. Firstly, if I get convinced that the current aim of getting back the hostages or destroying Hamas is itself an incorrect/immoral goal, I'd be convinced current actions are unjustified. This is almost impossible to change my mind on - Hamas has invaded Israel and slaughtered civilians, and claim they will do it again and again. I don't see a way for Israel to avoid trying to seek Hamas's destruction. That said:
2. If I am convinced that the current war isn't the best way (or one of the best ways) of achieving the goal of Hamas's destruction, or of retrieving the hostages, then I'll consider Israel's actions unjustified. If we could pause the fighting, go back to the previous status quo, and stop Hamas by targeted assassinations or whatever over the next year, then it's not justified to risk so many civilians. I don't think this (or other ways) are practical, but I could be convinced otherwise.
3. If I see evidence that the IDF systematically targeted civilians without any justified reasoning, I'll consider the way Israel's waging this war unjustified. Note that I say systematic - I'm sure many individual horrible cases have happened (and anyone doing this knowingly should be arrested, though I doubt they will be), but on the whole targeting is aimed at legitimate targets.
4. If I see evidence that the IDF is knocking down civilian infrastructure without any legitimate military reasoning, but rather only in order to cause damage in Gaza, I'll consider this illegitimate, though a lesser crime than other accusations. (It would probably be considered ethnic cleansing if the goal is to e.g. make Gaza uninhabitable.)
I think those are all situations where, were I to change my mind on what is actually happening in reality, would make me change my mind on the legitimacy of the current war.
I think it would be a good idea for you to do the same as me - what would make you change your mind about the current situation?
> Note, like most secular Israeli men, I served in the army (though not in any kind of combat way - I was a programmer). I also know many, many reservists serving today, as does literally every Israeli. There are a lot of Israelis with views I vehemently disagree with, but very few that would target civilians for no reason. (Though obviously take this with a grain of salt - my view of the IDF is still, at the end, anecdotal to me - my circle of acquaintences don't represent a true random sample of the army.)
Combat soldier here, both in mandatory service and in reserves. I've served with literally hundreds of other combat soldiers and officers over the course of decades. I've never seen anybody either target civilians nor suggest doing so. Even a joke such as "what if so and so..." by a soldier was severely punished in my mandatory service, and nobody would make such a joke in reserves.
I'm sure that there are bad eggs in the IDF, but by and large the IDF as an organization completely rejects the idea of deliberately hurting civilians. And every single cog in that machine that I've met has upheld that standard.
Well laid out, thank you! I think that if you allow for Hamas to be represented as two sectors, terrorist and governing, then most people I know would agree with your point 1, and disagree on whether point 2 is true or not - mostly driven by whether they believe 3 and 4 are already shown to be true. (I do know a smaller group who thinks 3 and 4 are true but not 2, and they are probably the set that I find most disturbing).
Note: 'killing children indiscriminately' usually means 'not taking adequate precautions to avoid killing children' - which means that children as collateral damage is part of the problem. On the extremes I believe it's easy to agree on this: nuking Hiroshima hit some military targets but also killed unconscionable numbers of children and civilians as collateral damage.
To continue: What counts as evidence? Do these stories from Amnesty International of bombed civilian residential buildings with no warnings to the inhabitants fit your section 3? Or do they not meet the bar of being systematic, because it's possible they are e.g. hitting the wrong target, or being targeted based on incorrect information?
I suggest separating 2 from 3&4. 3,4 are debates about facts and intentions. 2 is a counterfactual which is logically not dependent on 3,4 (any combination of T/F values would be consistent here if not necessarily moral). IMHO it is actually the clearest and easiest to discuss.
Hamas is an actual movement, not a cult around one leader. Moreover, it controls local media and education in Gaza. We can't cut off the radicalization pipeline when they control the local media. Dealing with that requires controlling the ground. Also, there's no amount of assassination which can dislodge a real movement, and it makes very little sense when the big leaders live underground in deep tunnels.
There are two ways to deal with the deep tunnels: Flood them with something, or lob 1t bombs from the air on every deep tunnel one can detect, when the deep tunnels are often under residential blocks. The first requires invasion and ground control. The second has a lot of collateral damage (There was a recent example in Jabalia where the houses above collapsed with a bad result after dealing the 1t bomb), to the point a serious assassination campaign may not even be ensuring less civilian deaths.
> Well laid out, thank you! I think that if you allow for Hamas to be represented as two sectors, terrorist and governing, then most people I know would agree with your point 1, and disagree on whether point 2 is true or not
Yes, I maybe should've phrased it as "Hamas militants" or the "Hamas organization", though I'm not sure to the extent everything is tied together. Is it possible to destroy Hamas militarily but keep the government part in charge? Idk enough to know the answer or what that means.
As for whether point 2 is true - whether the current war is the best way to destroy Hamas and prevent another October 7th from happening - my problem is that many people who think the answer to that is "no" also have no better idea.
Not that it's impossible to criticize something without having a better idea yourself, I think it's fair to do that. But if you're calling for a ceasefire, but offering no alternative to stop the people who say they will continue killing thousands of your citizens over and over - I don't really see how you can be sure that the current war is wrong in that circumstance. It really is a situation where, as many Israelis say, "Israel isn't allowed to defend itself".
> Note: 'killing children indiscriminately' usually means 'not taking adequate precautions to avoid killing children' - which means that children as collateral damage is part of the problem.
Ok, that's fair. Though note that, at least according to the IDF (and which I'm confident is true), we have another layer here - it's not just "kill civilians on purpose" vs "don't care about killing civilians" vs "try to avoid killing civilians". Here, we have an enemy that actively sends civilians into harm's way to use them as human shields. This is meant literally - Hamas will send rockets from within civilian buildings in order to either stop themselves from being killed, or to at least have civilian casualties on the way to make the strike look bad.
There's no country in the world that has figured out how to handle this situation, as far as I know. You can't just say "well, if they use human shields, we just won't attack", because all you are doing is making human shields be a thing that works, so that they'll use them more.
> To continue: What counts as evidence? Do these stories from Amnesty International of bombed civilian residential buildings with no warnings to the inhabitants fit your section 3?
That's a hard question. Evidence needs to come from a source that I trust, which is different for different people. It's hard for me to trust a source that is clearly starting with the conclusion in mind.
Also, while I only skimmed the article, the only actual documented "wrong thing" done there is that the people said they weren't warned beforehand. Which isn't by itself a war crime or even necessarily wrong, without knowing why that building was bombed.
Amnesty International says: "According to Amnesty International’s findings there were no military objectives in the house or its immediate vicinity, this indicates that this may be a direct attack on civilians or on a civilian object which is prohibited and a war crime."
While that's true, them not finding a military justification for that bombing doesn't mean that the IDF didn't have a justification. We have "no idea" which of these is true:
1. There was a real threat, valid military intelligence and justification, and the IDF did nothing wrong.
2. There was no real threat, wrong but valid military intelligence and justification, so while the IDF got the intelligence wrong, it didn't do anything wrong.
3. There was no real threat, there was some military intelligence, but the bar for whether or not that intelligence is enough is so low that it makes the action immoral/illegal. So the IDF is, while not bombing indiscrimanately, is not showing the appropriate care for civilian life.
4. There was no threat and no intelligence that there was a threat - the IDF targeted civilians on purpose.
Each of these levels has different moral and legal implications for what the IDF is doing. This single case doesn't prove anything, because it doesn't differntiate which of those happened, and doesn't prove whether whichever it is is systemic. Amnesty International has no access to the internal IDF decision-making here so also can't make the call (though the article right away leaps to assuming it's number 4 here - hence me calling it biased).
What would qualify as evidence to me? A bunch of things, like large scale external audits/reports by people in the know, like Israel itself conducting an inquiry of its actions (obviouisly most people wouldn't rely on this too much), and possibly most importantly - seeing casualty numbers that make it seem like the IDF is truly targeting civilians, and/or multiple confirmed non-biased cases of targeting civilians (and/or reports from soldiers within the IDF that say there were such orders/etc).
It seems you really are a critical thinking person (healthy skepticism). Whom accept as a basis that he has biais, but also that people bringing argument on table are equally biais, (if not more). And that is great for exchanging ideas and point of view. And you Present point in a logical sequence. Overall / Challenging your opinions based on facts.
About 1:
I don't know well enough the political landscape in Israel, but what is publicly visible, is there are many worrying statement made (some openly genocidal). I think this is factual.
I read that polled opinion overall to this day in Israel, is supporting the level of Violence ongoing in Gaza. even having a majority asking for more.
So from those 2 points (which I believe are true fact), i can understand the rational one would have to say, Neither Politician, nor Israeli Population is currently empathetic to Palestinian Civilians casualties.
About 2: Things I think we can agree on:
- IDF do mitigate collateral damage to Civilian. By several factual means.
- There is a lot of CODAM (Volume of it).
- IDF knows, on most strikes expectable CODAM level. (there has been 10.000 + Bombs, Guided or Not, those Bomb were aimed at a target. each Target had to be CODAM evaluated)
What I don't know. is What is consider acceptable CODAM policy. I don't think anyone serious says that IDF is exterminating Civilian. What many people are saying is that, mitigation of collateral damage is not effective, and that it doesn't seem that the force used is proportionate to the threat.
What I have a strong opinion about, is that, no, not everything possible is done to protect Palestinian Civilian to become CODAM.
About 3: If the ratio is 2:1, considering the level of firepower and engagement, it could be a lot worst, I agree. (=> doesn't mean it can't be critized and that if there are war crimes, they remain war crimes)
But here we have to trust the ratio of IDF, which are really on the "boarder" of credible data. For 2 Reasons in my opinion:
- R1/ If figures from IDF of 5000+ Hamas militants killed is true
===> that would means a hell lot of militants are disabled. In urban combat, we should expect a 1 to 5 Killed vs Wounded ratio. that means already the complete Expected Military force of Hamas is KIA or WIA.
- R2/ That the amount of overall casualties reported, and stated credible by US / UN of 16.000+.
===> I personally think, these is an absolute minimum: and even if Cease Fire Occurs Now, that full "Humanitarian" help is put in place to treat the injured Civilians. The civilian deathcount will keep going up for Weeks.
=> So i am really doubting on that ratio of 2:1. BUT, I would accept, that when this conflict End / Pause, deathtoll is properly documented and true. if 2:1 ratio in CODAM that would be "reasonable" in the overall context. (even if all agree, that best would be prison for all criminals and a free life for innocent)
But, if it is 3:1, or 4:1 (which i think where it currently sits). Then in order to accept 4:1. I would have to face that on OCT 7th, Hamas ratio of 4:1 was a barbaric civilian indiscriminated attack. But that IDF vs Hamas 4:1 is "state of the art; taking all measure necessary to protect Civilian". I mean, my brain can't process that contradiction.
To end, where you finished on a relatively factual point. Dresden wasn't collateral damage - it was directly targeting and killing innocent civilian. True
Fact: In Dresden : 60% of the city / building were destroyed.
how much of North Gaza / city is Destroyed already ? Satellite image reports already states 60%.
> I don’t think the majority of people killed so far in this conflict have been enemies of Israel per se
How do you know? hamas overstates death, has had ‘journalists’ with weapons, ‘children’ than are 15-16 year old fighters, lied about the hospital being destroyed, has videos of people crying over dolls, and MrFAFO, the Johnny Sins of Hamasniks.
I do recall opposition to America’s post 9-11 response based on the same arguments, oddly enough.
The current laws of war do not allow, for instance, strikes at medical facilities: Israel’s argument is that they don’t have to follow the laws because Hamas is breaking them.
> Very much on the margins if any. The overwhelming consensus ignored these considerations.
Not true.
I certainly wouldn’t refer to “the US did it” as a cite for “it’s not a war crime”, but that article appears to be saying they attacked a place not thought to be currently active as a civilian medical facility.
Make an argument, not just a contradiction. The fact is that public opinion on the Iraq war was far higher (47-60% in favor) initially than it is now (61% say we should have stayed out).
> The current laws of war do not allow, for instance, strikes at medical facilities: Israel’s argument is that they don’t have to follow the laws because Hamas is breaking them.
That is neither what the laws of war say, nor what the Israeli argument is (or at least, it's a misrepresentation).
The laws of war say that if a medical facility (or any other civilian infrastructure) is used by militants as part of the war effort, then it loses its protected status. Israel's argument, whether you agree or not, is that this occurred, thereby making those targets legal.
There was lots of criticism of disprortionality in the US' wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US also made a point not to conduct civilian death counts and they were little reported. But what numbers did exist were absolutely important for those opposed to the war.
Just do a web search restricted from 2001 to 2007 for discussions of the civilian death toll.
It should not be difficult to declare a tunnel a shelter with the UN. Also, any one who could dig so extensively could dig shelters. Hamas officials have a more parsimonious explanation:
There has never been a war in history where one side stops because they killed enough people. War ends when the enemy surrenders.
The Japanese killed a few dozen civilians in Pearl Harbor. America killed 10,000x as many during their bombings of Japan. Had they not surrendered, they likely would have killed an order of magnitude more. The only alternative would have been for the US to completely blockade Japan indefinitely to prevent them from rebuilding their military. Actually, they wouldn't be able to do that either because that would make Japan an "open air prison."
By most standards, what the US did to the civilian population of Japan was an atrocity.
I don’t have easy answers here. But I think we’ve lost an important piece of the plot here if we can’t look at one terrible human tragedy, and then another, and then ask ourselves whether the first had to beget the second.
For sure we should ask the question, and it's totally valid to criticize Israel's actions. It's also totally in line to be in favor of Israel conducting a war against Hamas, but to be against specific ways in which it is fought.
I think a thing that should give you pause is if the conclusion to a train of thought is "and therefore, no war is ever justified". Some people think that's true! Some people think it's better for them and all their friends and family to die than to risk killing civilians. Most people (including me) disagree with that statement.
Well, the Japanese military was so evil, that the nazis literally had to tell them to chill out. Every civilian death is a tragedy, but as with most wars, the longer it goes on, the more casualties it will take. Sometimes people simply have to make the least evil decision, as the alternative is just worse.
This has been a fairly common rhetorical move for defenders of disproportionate Israeli violence, inflicted primarily upon civilians, in recent months. I've seen it done with the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as the firebombing of Dresden.
On TV in English, which atrocity is used to justify the current and growing civilian death toll in Gaza seems to depend on who the audiences. US audiences are appealed to with comparison to Hiroshima and UK audiences, to Dresden.
It's easy to read it cynically when it's an Israeli official excusing one war crime with another on television. It's stranger and sadder to see it done by an ordinary stranger online.
You think it's cynical to change your argument to fit your audience? I don't understand this.
The basic argument is "If you think it was legitimate when X country did this, then what's different here?" I think it's very valid to find an X that the person you're speaking to will actually agree with.
I don't think it's using an historic atrocity, it's using an analogy. And btw, the analogy isn't to Dresden, because Israel is at the very least claiming it isn't targeting civilians in that manner. The comparison is to ISIS/Iraq/Afghanistan/etc.
You can legitimately think that those wars weren't justified, or that no war is ever justified. Some people think that way. I think most people don't think that way.
I certainly don't, and I think a war against Hamas is incredibly justified. That doesn't mean I automatically agree with everything Israel does btw, nor should it.
> And btw, the analogy isn't to Dresden, because Israel is at the very least claiming it isn't targeting civilians in that manner. The comparison is to ISIS/Iraq/Afghanistan/etc.
'The comparison' in fact varies according to what defenders of Israeli disproportionate violence against Gazan civilians actually say. That particular example is one I saw made on television: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewLx9XN8sLc
And indeed the comparison was made specifically to justify the measures that Israel has taken which indisputably affect primarily civilians (the siege, which there is very wide agreement constitutes a war crime). And the Israeli politician in the video does in fact react with opprobrium to the suggestion that the Allied bombing of civilians in WWII might not have been one of the just elements of the war.
There should be no real analogy to Dresden in any case; WWI night time bombing raids were carried from altitude above flak defenses over blacked out cities prior to GPS using dead reckoning and uncertain waypoint identification.
Dresden was defended as the justified bombing of a strategic target, a major rail transport and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers in support of the German war effort.
Had the technology of the time included GPS positioning and laser guided missiles there would not have been widespread bombing across the broader city area "just to be sure".
The issue here today is an incredibly high civilian to justified target ratio despite having centimeter precison targeting and high resolution overview of the region of interest.
Deeper issues go back into the history of strategies of minority groups with decision making powers on both sides that resulted in dragging a majority of civilians into this current situation.
> The issue here today is an incredibly high civilian to justified target ratio despite having centimeter precison targeting and high resolution overview of the region of interest.
You don't know what the civilian to justified target ratio is. I don't know it. No one in the world really knows, except the actual IDF. Their estimate, last I heard, is about 2 civilians killed for every militant killed. Which is awful, but is more-or-less in line with similar wars carried out by Western countries in the past, as far as I can tell.
> The issue here today is an incredibly high civilian to justified target ratio despite having centimeter precison targeting and high resolution overview of the region of interest.
You make it sound like a lot more precision is possible than I think reality warrants. According to Israel at least (and backed up by the US), Hamas militants are hiding in civilian clothes among civilians. No overview of the area and no GPS makes it easily possible to tell them apart.
We both know, unless you are operating with deliberate ignorance, what various authorities with a history of checking past claims have said about the reported M&M stats, eg:
No evidence of inflated mortality reporting from the Gaza Ministry of Health
Are you saying the IDF has had troops on the ground in Gaza verifying the M&M stats? Or are you simply stating that you believe the IDF?
Either way, as neither of us are an expert here I suggest you take this up with The Lancet and the UN, etc.
I have stated as a simple matter of verifiable fact that vastly more precision is both possible and achievable today in 2023 than was the case in WWII night time bombing.
The IDF are hitting the targets that they have chosen to hit.
If they have poor intelligence then perhaps they should not fire their weapons.
I didn't say the numbers from the Gaza MoH were wrong, I'm not sure where you got that idea (though see footnote). As far as I know, they simply don't report a breakdown of civilian vs militant, which makes it impossible to rely on their numbers for the purpose you talked about.
> Are you saying the IDF has had troops on the ground in Gaza verifying the M&M stats? Or are you simply stating that you believe the IDF?
I do trust the IDF, yes. And obviously it has troops on the ground in Gaza, it's a ground invasion.
Their numbers are largely in line with the MoH reported numbers, except they add that they've killed 1 militant for every 2 civilians.
You might not trust this number, but there is no other number to use as far as I know. Though if you trust the MoH number but not the IDF's number, I'm... not sure why.
>I have stated as a simple matter of verifiable fact that vastly more precision is both possible and achievable today in 2023 than was the case in WWII night time bombing.
> The IDF are hitting the targets that they have chosen to hit.
Yes, I agree with this.
Note 1: While the historical numbers given by the MoH were accurate, this doesn't necessarily mean that in the current war their numbers are sound. The current war is very, very different from previous conflicts in Gaza, making both the fog of war and incentive to lie very different.
Some things that give pause on their numbers is that they have been shown to give vastly inflated numbers already (e.g. the "Hospital bombing", which Hamas claimed was conducted by Israel but wasn't as verified by numerous third parties, was initially given a death toll of 500, though later third parties put it at much closer to 50, iirc).
I’d caution against using the word ‘deserve’ so loosely. While you may see it as meaning ‘imperial Japan had to be stopped by any means necessary’, it comes off more like retribution. It comes off like a bloodlust for revenge.
In general, ‘deserve’ should always be followed with ‘because…’. Just saying x deserves y assumes we agree on: what x did, an ethical/moral system, and that y is the best punishment/reward in that ethical/moral system.
Not that guy, but this mostly comes down to who you view as more just in a war. How many Germans died vs Americans in WW2? If we're going by ratio more than 100 German civilians were killed for every American civilian.
As a pragmatist, I see Israel as a relatively liberal democracy with Arab Muslims in their parliament, women and gays have civil rights, the society is open and innovative. Many Arab nations do not have these properties, and their ideologies often oppose them in principle.
That said, I do not think Israel should be defended to the inordinate degree it has, which is due to American imperial interests, the military industrial complex, and many elite Jews which have disproportionate influence in American society. Look at the major CEOs of corporations in tech, finance, media, etc.
It's also harsh and dark to imagine, but sometimes we benefit from being the inheritors of evil actions that finalized a blood feud or enforced homogeneity. China is unified in large part because of the repression of their totalitarian state. Roughly 92% of China is ethnically Han, which is mostly just a bunch of Chinese ethnicities that were culturally assimilated into being called Han after the Han dynasty. America doesn't have to deal with an insurgency of Comanches because they're utterly out numbered by American citizens and weaponry. Israelis do not have these advantages, and would be at major risk of being conquered by the many more numerous Arab Muslims, who too were the result of oppressive and evil military campaigns of Mohammad and subsequent Muslim warriors.
I don't support how civilians are being treated in Palestine whatsoever, but:
>while condemning the massacre of civilians under the orders of Likud (and other far right parties)
When has Likud ordered massacres of civilians? Or when has any modern Israeli party? I also don't believe Likud is considered far-right in Israel; just "right". There are parties far to the right of them. Not that that's necessarily a good thing, but it's a relative designation.
Considering that they killed 15K+ civilians in various ways in just a couple of weeks , and bombed two thirds of the buildings in north gaza including hospitals, refugee camps, they were certainly not trying very hard not to kill them. So practically, this doesn't make a big difference.
It seems the order were "bomb anything that may have a hamas member nearby, and don't bother about any civilian nearby (even israelis hostages).
I don't think you can possibly know that they killed 15k civilians. Those numbers are reported by Hamas and don't contain a breakdown of civilian vs. militant.
That doesn't change the tragedy of innocents being killed - that's still a horrible tragedy. But Israel is not going around just killing civilians for no reason, as that number makes it seem.
Also, since you mention civilian vs militant casualties, it might be worth mentioning that hundreds of the Israeli casualties on Oct 7 were Israeli soldiers.
The UN is just repeating the same gazan ministry of health numbers, as the link points it explicitly.
And yes, it's not a secret that in addition to the hundreds of civilians that Hamas targeted, it also attacked military bases. (Though also worth mentioning that it's illegal to kill soldiers too, if they've surrendered and/or don't have weapons on them.)
But yes, I think Hamas targeting bases is one reason I consider this to be an invasion into Israel. Since Hamas has promised to invade again and again, it's very clear that it cannot be lived with peacefully.
Considering that those very hospitals were used as military bases and that Hamas is hiding among the population, the numbers alone don’t say anything about how hard Israel is trying or not trying to kill civilians.
Besides, even if that were the order, that doesn’t make it illegal or immoral. Destroying military assets is an essential part of war. If you want civilian losses to be minimized, you’d do well to keep military assets clearly delineated from civilian zones. If you don’t and your people die as a result… well, that’s on you, not on the enemy you’re fighting.
I suspect you ignore the history of terrorism by Irgun and the bombing of the King David Hotel, which house the British military command. Menachem Begin was a key player in that attack & was extremely proud of it. Who are the modern day parties following in those footsteps? Why Likud, & Begin was a co-founder of that very party— now led by Netanyahu.
I think dang made a mistake by allowing this topic onto HN. Nothing good is going to come out of that.
Begin is rolling in his grave as we speak. There is nothing between today's Likud and any historic version of that party. That's one thing.
The Likud (under the leadership of Sharon, who is also rolling in his grave) is also the party that withdrew from Gaza and handed it to the Palestinian Authority, dismantling settlements (by force). The Likud (under Begin's leadership) was the party that made peace with Egypt and gave Sinai back, also dismantling Israeli settlements (by force).
I don't think the history of the Irgun is really relevant here. At any rate, the views of the Likud shifted substantially and current party called "Likud" has really zero connection to the Likud at the time of Begin/Shamir/Sharon etc.
Too loaded. Too complex. Too many strong emotions/feelings. Destruction, death, loss. Amplified. Weaponized. I know I feel very strongly and it's hard to put things in objective terms.
You need to zoom in, zoom out, the history is vast, there's the big picture, there are details. Most of what you'll encounter online and in the media, on both sides really, is propaganda.
How can you compare the war in Gaza to the systemic killing of Jews by the Germans is beyond me. The war in Gaza is devastating but on the scale of wars it pales compared to the war in Ukraine, or the war in Yemen, or the civil war in Syria, or the wars in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or any other major conflict in recent history. And none of these are comparable to WW-II or the Holocaust either.
How can you compare the world today that is demanding of Israel to stop the war to the world that stood by and didn't do enough during the holocaust.
If I draw graph where I plot all world conflicts in history, with one axis being the human toll (dead, injured) and the other axis being world response (not sure what metric we should use, I'll pick number of people marching in the streets), you'll see that Israel is being singled out in a negative way. And that's before we have the discussion of "right" vs. "wrong", "who started", or the other political and historical aspects.
I disagree with "Palestinians being genocided". I think the word genocide should be used to describe some very specific circumstances and should not be used for violent conflicts even when very large number of people die.
I think your statement would sound a lot hollower if we put in in more objective terms, let me rewrite that for you:
"I wonder if that's the world felt if it wasn't 18,000 Palestinian deaths in war between Gaza and Israel following the Oct 7th attack on Israel but 6 million Jews who were systemically murdered by Hitler's Germany with the stated goal of murdering all Jews in Europe. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps.".
> How can you compare the war in Gaza to the systemic killing of Jews by the Germans is beyond me.
One was due to a hatred for a people while the other is over land, but regardless of the motive, genocide is genocide. Leave or be killed is what Hitler said, and it's what Netanyahu and is IDF have been saying.
> The war in Gaza is devastating but on the scale of wars it pales compared to the war in Ukraine, or the war in Yemen, or the civil war in Syria, or the wars in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or any other major conflict in recent history.
You must have your head in the sand. More civilians (mostly children) have been killed in 2 months than in an entire year in Ukraine. Historians reckon the destruction in Gaza is worse than the carpet bombing of Germany in WW2.
> I disagree with "Palestinians being genocided". I think the word genocide should be used to describe some very specific circumstances and should not be used for violent conflicts even when very large number of people die.
You can disagree all you want but the word is very clearly defined in international law, and all experts on the matter agree that it fits the definition.
> I think your statement would sound a lot hollower if...
Refer my earlier paragraph. You don't get to define what genocide means to suit your purpose. Arguing that it isn't genocide because they haven't killed enough people for that is insane. It's not about the numbers, it's about intent. They've displaced millions and killed as fast as they can, indiscriminately. They've also destroyed all civilian infrastructure to ensure that any survivors have nothing to return to. They've made explict statements saying they want to wipe Palestinians off the land.
> I think dang made a mistake by allowing this topic onto HN. Nothing good is going to come out of that.
Actually I find the discussion on HN has brought up many useful insights on a complex conflict that provokes emotional responses. It's a model that many other communities could learn from.
I wasn't ignorant of it - that's why I said "any modern Israeli party". I'm aware past Israeli/Zionist groups have engaged in terrorism and in some cases deliberate civilian massacres. As far as I know Likud hasn't within the past 50 years.
What do you call what's going on right now, if not deliberate civilian massacres in order to get to relative handful of freedom-fighters/terrorists hiding amongst them?
Let us imagine a residential building with about 100 people living there, and let us imagine that there is information that some enemy combatants are living among them. A decision is made to strike at the building in order to eliminate the combatants. Consider two different approaches:
1) An air strike at the building, destroying it and killing most of its inhabitants, and leaving a minority of them wounded.
2) A squad of soldiers enters the building and executes most of the inhabitants at close range, and wounds and leaves alive a minority of them.
Most people would call scenario 2) a deliberate massacre that cannot be justified. Many people would, however, call scenario 1) a legitimate military strategy with unfortunate collateral damage that cannot be avoided. Question is, why? The outcome is the same, but for some reason the impersonality of striking from distance (air strikes, missiles, or artillery fire) seems to make it acceptable in many bystanders' eyes.
Nowhere in any civilised state in the world do the authorities just go in and kill everyone in a building to get to a few.
It's beyond insane.
The fiction you've created to rationilise this is that there is a "war", but there is no fucking war. It's an occupying force slaughtering its hostages to punish a relative handful among them.
Wow, hello hyperbole and loaded terms. If we can’t even agree on basic facts like the very existence of a war, then there’s simply no point in discussion.
I agree. So long as all you know is Israeli propaganda, you're blinded to the truth and there's no point in discussion.
If there's a war, where is the army that the IDF is fighting? How many losses have the IDF had? Where is the front-line of this war? Where is the footage of this so called "war"?
The Hamas military is embedded in the civilian population, as everyone knows. IDF has sustained minimal losses after getting their act together after Oct 7th, but if your definition of war precludes one sided casualties, then I guess operation Desert Storm wasn’t part of a war. If you need a very explicit front line, then I guess the Vietnam and Iraq wars weren’t wars either.
These answers are obvious. You would’ve been able to answer your questions yourself if you were earnestly looking to do so.
> Because in scenario 2, you’re presumably also shooting at unarmed civilians with their hands up who are posing no threat to you. There’s no reason to shoot them if you have the choice not to. In scenario 1, an air strike is coarse-grained enough that you don’t have such a choice to make.
But in scenario 1, one is bombing unarmed civilians residing inside their homes. The only reason they do not literally have their hands up is that they do not even see the strike coming before they and their families are killed; and they pose even less of a threat to the person sending the missile than they would pose to a soldier that is physically located next to them.
> The outcome is not the same, because scenario two involves a high likelihood of more casualties on your side. It is legitimate to care more about your own soldier casualties than about enemy civilian casualties.
My initial reply to the parent was in the context of "deliberate massacres of civilians", pointing out that people seem to find such massacres much more acceptable when done from a distance. The rest of your reply seems to provide motivations for such actions, and your last paragraph even provides justifications (unless I horribly misunderstood it). Regardless of whether one agrees with the motivations and justifications, the reality of the outcome is what it is — a deliberate massacre of civilians. Whether that is done by bullets at gunpoint or by a missile from a long distance makes little, if any, difference to the people being slaughtered by tens of thousands (and ongoing), and makes no difference at all to the death reports.
> But in scenario 1, one is bombing unarmed civilians residing inside their homes. The only reason they do not literally have their hands up is that they do not even see the strike coming before they and their families are killed; and they pose even less of a threat to the person sending the missile than they would pose to a soldier that is physically located next to them.
We must be talking past each other. I don’t see how any of this contradicts or lessens what I’ve said.
> pointing out that people seem to find such massacres much more acceptable when done from a distance.
You misunderstand. People such as myself find such “massacres” (loaded term, by the way) acceptable when they’re part of collateral damage rather than intentional killing of civilians.
> The rest of your reply seems to provide motivations for such actions, and your last paragraph even provides justifications
Of course. Like I’ve just explained, killing civilians is justified when it’s collateral damage. You understood me correctly.
> the reality of the outcome is what it is — a deliberate massacre of civilians.
That phrasing sounds like civilians were deliberately targeted. They were not. They were simply in the way of the military assets that were deliberately targeted.
> Whether that is done by bullets at gunpoint or by a missile from a long distance makes little, if any, difference to the people being slaughtered by tens of thousands (and ongoing), and makes no difference at all to the death reports.
I’ll grant you that. But intentions matter. Intention implies that if civilians and combatants were clearly separated, the IDF would not continue to kill civilians at the same rate they’re doing now. If the IDF does not have the intention to target civilians specifically, then the only other party that can make a difference is Hamas, and that is where the blame lies for all civilian deaths.
> That phrasing sounds like civilians were deliberately targeted. They were not.
> But intentions matter. Intention implies that if civilians and combatants were clearly separated, the IDF would not continue to kill civilians at the same rate they’re doing now.
Agreed, intentions do matter. While it is impossible to see inside any person's mind and determine precisely their thoughts, we can look into the trend that is visible in the rhetoric of Israel's leaders, and which influences opinions of the soldiers and signals to the them how much they can most likely get away with. Some examples that signal barely any concern for civilians follow below, and cast doubt on the assertion that IDF has no way to reduce civilian deaths. The statements suggest that they are pursuing revenge on the whole Gaza strip, and aiming to inflict as many casualties as they can get away with without losing the protection of USA in the UN security council. I argue that it is reasonable to use words "deliberate massacres of civilians" after listeaning to what Israeli leaders are publicly saying themselves.
- Prime Minister Netanyahu pledged to reduce parts of Gaza “to rubble” and invoked the people of Amalek, the foe that God ordered the ancient Israelites to genocide in the Bible, in a recent speech. [1]
- Defense minister Yoav Gallant called for a “complete siege” on Gaza and stated that “we are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” [1]
- Army spokesperson Daniel Hagari said forces would turn Gaza into a “city of tents” and admitted that Israel’s “emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy” in dropping hundreds of tons of bombs on Gaza. [1]
- Ariel Kallner, a member of parliament from Netanyahu’s Likud party, wrote on X after the Hamas attack: “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48. Nakba in Gaza and Nakba to anyone who dares to join!” [2]
- Giora Eiland, a reservist major general and former head of the Israeli National Security Council, wrote in a popular Hebrew-language newspaper, “The State of Israel has no choice but to turn Gaza into a place that is temporarily or permanently impossible to live in.” Elsewhere, he specified that “Israel needs to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, compelling tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in Egypt or the Gulf” and indeed that Israel must demand that “The entire population of Gaza will either move to Egypt or move to the Gulf.” Finally, he said that “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.” [2]
- “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”, IDF general Ghassan Aliyan [3]
- Revital Gotliv, a Parliament member from Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, called for Israel to use nuclear weapons in Gaza: “It’s time for a doomsday weapon. Shooting powerful missiles without limit. Not flattening a neighborhood. Crushing and flattening Gaza.” [1]
- Galit Distel Atbaryan, also of Likud, posted on X in Hebrew that Israelis should invest their energy in one thing: “Erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth” and forcing the “Gazan monsters” either to flee the strip to Egypt or to face their death. [1]
> The statements suggest that they are pursuing revenge on the whole Gaza strip, and aiming to inflict as many casualties as they can get away with without losing the protection of USA in the UN security council.
While I’m skeptical that this is actual formal policy, this is at least a position that I can take seriously, so thank you for elaborating. I would not be surprised if the IDF is currently conducting strikes with a lower threshold for confidence than usual, and if the protests were merely aimed at pressuring the IDF to take greater caution with civilian casualties, I would be a lot more sympathetic to them.
Well, what other way is there? Hamas is a terrorist organization, with in the picture, there will never be peace. The only option thus is the most targeted elimination of all terrorists. Unfortunately, 100% specificity is impossible to achieve. So the question is, is Israel doing their absolute best on minimizing casualties or not?
Do you have a reason to assume they don’t do so? The reported 2:1 ratio is absolutely in line with modern warfares, especially considering the very very densely populated urban environment.
> Well, what other way is there? Hamas is a terrorist organization, with in the picture, there will never be peace. The only option thus is the most targeted elimination of all terrorists.
And I'm sure you will accept Hamas strikes against Israel as justified as long as they deem the IDF as a terrorist organization? Or is it only your view of who is or is not a terrorist organization that matters?
We should never let labels like "terrorist" be used to justify using any means neccassary to ensure their removal. There is always the null option - do nothing. How much civilian casualties are there with that option vs. indescriminate eradication of anyone near Hamas?
With hamas in the picture, both Palestine and Israeli civilians will suffer indefinitely with no peace ever. With a hopefully short war that manages to cut out the cancer that is hamas, healing can begin for both nations.
I mean, fire the general in charge of security and put competent people on your walls to avoid any further incursions, and then work to remove the million settlers you've pushed onto stolen lands.
It's insane how Israel has managed to sell this fiction that they have a right to slaughter tens of thousands because a few terrorists must be hiding amongst them.
Here is a long list of Israeli politicians and military officers who have declared their intent to massacre civilians:
- Israeli Prime Minister (!!) Benjamin Netanyahu: "You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember." [1]
- IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari: "we're focused on what causes maximum damage" [2]
- Israeli defense Minister Yoav Gallant: "I have ordered a complete siege on Gaza: no electricity, no food, no fuel, no water. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly." [3]
- Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir: “As long as Hamas does not release the hostages in its hands - the only thing that needs to enter Gaza are hundreds of tons of explosives from the air force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid” [4]
- IDF Reservist Major General Giora Eiland: “The State of Israel has no choice but to turn Gaza into a place that is temporarily or permanently impossible to live in" and "Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal." [5]
- Israeli President Isaac Herzog: "It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true." and "Of course there are many, many innocent Palestinians who don’t agree to this — but unfortunately in their homes, there are missiles shooting at us, at my children." [6]
- IDF Reservist Ezra Yachin: "Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live." and "Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them. If you have an Arab neighbour, don’t wait, go to his home and shoot him." [7]
- IDF Reservist Major General Giora Eiland: "The international community is warning us against a severe humanitarian disaster and severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this. After all, severe epidemics in the south of Gaza will bring victory closer" and "there’s no reason why the Hamas generals in southern Gaza wouldn’t surrender when they have no fuel, no water, and when plagues will reach them and the danger to the lives of their family members will increase" [8]
- Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: "Hezbollah is close to making a grave mistake. The ones who will pay the price are first of all the citizens of Lebanon. What we do in Gaza we know how to do in Beirut" [9]
- Israeli Minister for Agriculture and former head of Shin Bet Avi Dichter: "We are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba" [10]
- Likud Knesset member Galit Distel-Atbaryan: "Invest this energy in one thing; Erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth." and "A vengeful and cruel IDF is needed here. Anything less is immoral." [11]
- Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz: "Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water pump will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home" [12]
- IDF Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, in response to Wolf Blitzer asking if the IDF knew there were civilians in Jabalya refugee camp before they bombed it: "This is the tragedy of war, Wolf — as you know, we've been saying for days, move south." [13]
Hagari was not speaking about massacring civilians. He was talking about damage to Hamas/military targets. He did say that Israel is biased towards more damage vs. accuracy.
This is very propaganda. I've been following the conflict pretty closely and I speak Hebrew. The parent is correct, there is and was no order to massacre civilians.
It's probably safe to say that protecting Palestinian civilians is not Israel's main priority, but there's a big difference between that and painting a picture of Israel trying to massacre as many civilians as possible.
Is that meant to be exculpatory? If you say that you're attacking military targets that are (allegedly) embedded within civilian infrastructure and that you're focused on damage rather than accuracy, you are telling me that you intend to massacre civilians.
I think there's a difference in emphasis and intent. We're painting pictures here. So one picture we're painting is "kill as many civilians a possible with no other military objective" and the other picture we're painting is "go after military targets even at some cost to civilians (and the question of that cost)". The reality is that in every way, every military in the world, executes the second picture. The variable being what is a reasonable threshold for the given military objective. The accusations against Israel intentionally try to place it in the first picture.
If the critics were clear about their issue being how Israel measures proportionality with respect to every single target they go after, and they were able to support their case comparing to other similar military campaigns, and there was a very clear outcome of that comparison, I think that's very fair and I'd even be able to get behind it. But that's not what the critics are doing.
If you’re not going to be satisfied with anything short of Netanyahu on tape saying “our intent is to kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible”verbatim, then we can just end this conversation now. Even the US would probably be forced to meaningfully withdraw support if Israel fully took the mask off (though as I’ve shown, many high ranking ministers and IDF members have come shockingly close).
What you hear instead are thinly-veiled justifications. Oh, we had to bomb those hospitals because there were tunnels there. So sorry about the civilian deaths at a refugee camp, but we just wanted to get that one commander.
Let’s be real here. Israel shut off food, water, medicine and electricity to Gaza. They’ve damaged over 2/3 of the buildings there [1]. As of a month ago, they’d dropped almost 2x the amount of explosives the US delivered to Hiroshima [2].
These are not the actions of a country “going after military targets even at some cost to civilians”. Israel is doing exactly what Hagari said: inflicting maximum damage.
If they're planning to just kill everyone, why haven't they just leveled the place? Militarily speaking, they can do that right now and have been able to do that for a long time. So if that's their true goal, then what stops them from giving the order right now?
Meanwhile, Palestine has shown no restraint at all in their 10/7 massacre and no Jews live in Palestine, whereas many Arabs live peacefully in Israel.
Only if you want to claim that words are more revealing of intentions than actions, which would discredit you.
The hospital they bombed had the parking lot damaged by a failed Hamas rocket. The "refugee camp" has been there for many years, not as huddled fleeing masses, but permanent structures from people who fled there long ago, the tunnel network is well known and there's video evidence, the aid was being supplied by Israel to begin with (including the water) and they were using the pipes to make weapons, etc.
So I'm not surprised to find that none of your other points make sense either.
If anything - from a military perspective it is impressive if they have managed to drop twice as much explosives on as we did on Hiroshima on such a small piece of land and only a few thousand civilians got killed.
I won't engage much with your other points but I think they are a combination of leaving out critical facts (hospitals and ambulances were used by militants), misrepresentation ("Stripped civilians and paraded them through the streets" - they weren't paraded, quite on the contrary it was the people on Gaza who did this) and lies (at least last time sometime argued "Tortured Palestinian abductees" the only thing they showed for it was images of POWs with minor battle scars).
I would like to nitpick your list if that's ok. I think being very precise is really important here. If there are uncertainties then those should be spelled out as well. Once we know the facts we can have a better discussion (not just the facts related to this list but the complete picture).
- Israel did displace a lot of people. Partly for their own safety while Israel attacks the area they live in. I think your number are correct.
- We already covered the "cut off" in another thread so I (edit: didn't want to but I guess I did anyways) want revisit it. Water was off, and then on, food and medicine are allowed in but maybe not enough, Internet access is on most of the time in this war zone, electricity is mostly cut off (partly because the power station ran out of fuel I think, not strictly because Israel cut it off). This is a snarky comment but I'm pretty sure the tunnel vents still have power. Northern Gaza and Southern Gaza are also different (with more restrictions on Northern Gaza). I would call this statement misleading.
- Israel did drop a lot of bomb tonnage on Gaza but we can't really compare this to the atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima. There were 60-80 thousand dead in Hiroshima which was much less populated/dense than Gaza (total population was about 350,000). As a piece of trivia, between 241,000 and 900,000 people died in Japan in the bombing campaigns of WW2. I would fact check this statement as misleading.
- There is plenty of press access from the Palestinian side. I think we're getting more footage from the war zone compared to many other war zones. Israel does review footage of press that embeds with the IDF in Gaza for operational-security reasons. I think that's pretty normal. I don't recall large complaints from the media about this, but they do note it in their reports. So correct but misleading.
- Do you have a reference for "dozens of murders by settlers prior to Oct 7th"? Are you going all the way back to Baruch Goldstein? Even with that "dozens" seems incorrect to me. There's no room for any violence by settlers but let's get the facts right. My very quick research has failed to substantiate this claim.
- Reference for "paraded them through the streets"? Also do we know they're all civilians? Israel strips people they arrest (to their underwear) to make sure they're not suicide bombers. I have seen those photos/videos as well. I agree it's pretty humiliating (and) the pictures didn't look good. I hope the people that are uninvolved will be released quickly. I know you're going to take issue with what I say here, but this was in Northern Gaza where civilians have been asked to evacuate and Hamas combatants operate in civilian clothing. Hamas has a lot of history with suicide bombers so it's not unreasonable to expect this tactic. I would call this partly misleading.
- I also take issue with "kidnapped" and "tortured". I would say arrested Islamic Jihad and Hamas activists. Torture is illegal in Israel (maybe allowed if there's a "ticking bomb", I don't recall) and while it's possible there have been cases I don't think it's systemic, any evidence to the contrary?
- You're technically correct about the move south and bomb the south but I think it's important to note there was significantly less bombing in the south than the north and Israel has said specifically they will still bomb the south if they have clear targets. Israel never said it won't bomb the south. It just said it's safer. And if you check the statistics you'll see that's true. This is where "technically right" can be misleading.
- West bank settlers have had weapons forever pretty much. Most of the handing of weapons these days is to people in Israel proper.
- I think there was a single incident with an ambulance where Israel claimed it was being used for a military purpose. There is a long discussion about the status and usage of ambulances here: https://lieber.westpoint.edu/attacks-misuse-ambulances-durin...
- I'm pretty sure "bombed every hospital" is false. Reference? We had the possible Islamic Jihad rocket falling in a hospital parking lot, we had some bombings close to hospitals, we had fake news from other conflicts presented as Israel bombing hospitals, but "bombed every hospital" is new to me. I think "did not bomb any hospitals" is closer to the truth. How many people were killed by Israel's bombing of hospitals?
- I've seen different accounts for the percentage of buildings damaged. 2/3 seems on the high side. References?
If the discussion was about Gaza attacking Israel ambulances then this piece of information from 2002 would be relevant. Otherwise I'm not sure what's the point your trying to make? That because Israel used an ambulance (not during an active war, but in the occupied territories) then Hamas can use ambulances?
Israel should not use ambulances for military purposes. Israel is far far from perfect and you can find many examples of things we can agree on being "wrong". Perfection is not the right measure though, Israel doesn't do things like: https://www.bmj.com/content/380/bmj.p451 The question is compared to what its peers in the "free democratic west" would do in similar circumstances how does Israel measure. We know that most of the world doesn't even try to hold up the same standards.
- Re: Hiroshima, can we compare it to the amount of explosive the US dropped in the entire country of Afghanistan over a much longer period? The point is that this is an insanely high amount of bombing, even with respect to other wars. https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-dropped-as-many-bombs...
- Re: stripping prisoners, I imagine “paraded” is another word we’d disagree on like “targeted”, but Israel itself has said that it stripped “military aged men” and a number have been recognized by friends and family as noncombatants: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hamas-war-images-p...
- Re: abducted — yes, of course Israel will claim there’s a pretext for abducting people (although over 2,500 have been held without charges on “administrative detention”). This is kind of like someone in the antebellum US south saying “those runaway slaves were arrested in accordance with the law” — maybe true but not the point! Do you think the police are fair to Palestinians? The courts?
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/01/1216643555/thousands-of-pales...
- Re: attacking the ambulance, of course the IDF says that there was Hamas there — that’s what they say about everything! I’m not going to look up a source here. If there’s any evidence that corroborates the IDF’s claim from an independent source, feel free to post it.
- Re: “bombed every hospital”, you’re using quotation marks but not actually quoting me directly.
As of a month ago, Israel had issued evacuation orders for 22 hospitals in North Gaza and half of the 36 hospitals in Gaza had stopped operations. Unclear how many the IDF actually attacked but it’s a lot more than zero! https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/14/gaza-unlawful-israeli-ho...
The number that's been reported re: the detained Palestinians is that 30%-50% of them are suspected to be combatants and the others are uninvolved and were either released or are in the process of being released.
And yes, we agree to the facts of military aged men, in a combat zone where civilians have been asked to evacuate, stripped (EDIT: to their underwear) and arrested. That's what I also said in my reply. I explained why Israel strips potential Hamas combatants/activists ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_at... ). I took issue with the "paraded" part. It is most certainly not sexual violence.
Apparently there are new instructions to the IDF to provide them with clothing immediately.
Do I think the police and the courts are always fair to Palestinians... Nope. But at least they have some legal recourse. The Israeli Supreme court, which is independent (so far), can intervene and has intervened in the past. You can read one case here: https://casebook.icrc.org/case-study/israel-detention-unlawf...
By the way extreme right Jews have also been held under administrative arrest.
I still think "arrested Hamas and Islamic Jihad members" is closer to the truth than "abducted random Palestinians".
Sorry I did take a bit of liberty with quoting you, the correct quote is: "Bombed basically every hospital" ... "basically" is basically a filler word that does not change the meaning. But I apologize and promise not to do that again.
I don't think changing "settlers" to "security forces" or conflating "issued an evacuation order" with "bombing", or "torture" vs. "things that happen in prison" is having a discussion in good faith. Many of those killed by the security forces were killed while they were attacking Israelis or during combat or clashes. If you're willing to have a discussion in good faith I'm happy to engage but you'll have to stop doing that. This is not helping some of the valid points you're making. "But what about the west bank" is a common anti-Israeli propaganda tool on social media. There's a lot to unpack there but I think it should mostly be an orthogonal discussion to the war in Gaza.
I think specifically with ambulances there's a few ways to think about this:
- What is the benefit that Israel derives from attacking ambulances?
- What would be a reasonable standard of proof here? If forces come under attack from an ambulance, they bomb it, and it's destroyed, how do you expect Israel to prove that?
- Is the Hamas a signatory to the Geneva convention and are their methods typically in line with the laws of war? Are they generally honest? Moral?
- Did Israel order evacuation of those areas and give ample time for this evacuation to happen in accordance with the laws of war?
I think if you answer these honestly you'll say that Hamas would certainly use ambulances if they felt that was to their advantage and that Israel would not generally target ambulances intentionally. Is there a large gray area? Sure. Is it possible that Israeli forces would have a "light finger on the trigger". Sure. It's a war and it's their lives. Do I think that allowing Ambulances to operate within combat areas is a high priority for Israel? No. There's a big difference between actions that are within reason and actions that are intentionally evil. The goal of many people saying "Israel attacks ambulances" is to paint a picture of Israel being evil. They want to take a single ambulance that was attacked in a major scale conflict and use it as a propaganda weapon against Israel. That said Israel should be expected to follow the laws of war and we should demand that it does.
If our goal is to end the war and to make some sort of progress for the benefit of everyone involved I don't think inflammatory language or evoking anti-Israeli emotions is the way to get us there. I can get behind that goal if the methods are different.
> I think if you answer these honestly you'll say that Hamas would certainly use ambulances if they felt that was to their advantage and that Israel would not generally target ambulances intentionally.
So if I’m honest, I’ll say that Hamas doing something bad is normal but Israel doing something bad is exceptional. Why would I say that, exactly? Israel is one of the most powerful countries in the world, backed by one of the most vicious modern day empires, waging a one-sided war against people they have blockaded inside a literal ghetto. My allegiance is always with the victims of oppression; that is a core Jewish value to me.
This is not the pot calling the kettle black. The aforementioned empire is the US; we have truly horrendous skeletons in our closet and continue to add more. But goddamn, at least I’m not pretending they aren’t there.
I don’t think this is a productive conversation and I’m going to stop replying. Chag Hanukkah Sameach; may Palestine’s oil burn brightly forever.
It's your call on the conversation side. I'm happy you made it clear where you're coming from and how you look at things.
I'd like to think you just have the facts wrong. Facts and truth are key. For example the fact that when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 it did not blockade it. It blockaded it in 2007 when Hamas took power. It has not "waged a one-sided war against people they have blockaded in ghetto". That is just factually wrong. The one-sided waging of war was from the Gaza side. Applying core/moral values should start with a correct evaluation of the factual reality (and yes, it's a complex reality, life is hard).
The Hamas states they want to kill all the Jews in Israel. They act towards that goal. The Hamas engages in activities that are morally wrong beyond any doubt. There is no context in this world where Hamas is justified because they are oppressed. They are antisemites. They are Nazi. The atrocities they committed against Jews on Oct 7th are a new standard of evil.
The US has its problems. I don't think that's directly relevant. The US might be supporting Israel for the wrong reasons but I think basing your evaluation of Israel's moral position on that is incorrect. Russia, China and Iran, support the opposing side here. I don't think those are clearly beacons of good.
EDIT: I want to clarify my "Gaza waging a war on Israel" position. I am referring to the entire period since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Not to the current situation. It is true, and factual, that Israel is at war with Gaza right now. A war started by Gaza. Israel is fairly powerful but I don't think that is a moral argument. If Israel was weaker does that really change the moral viewpoint? Israel has tried to avoid as much as possible the war it is engaged in right now, and possibly if it hadn't done so (i.e. if it went to war sooner) there would be a lot less lives lost, so the moral argument against Israel re-occupying Gaza or not attacking Gaza because it is more powerful feels a bit hollow. It was obviously not powerful enough to protect its citizens and we are dealing with an asymmetric war. With all its power it has so far been unable to stop rockets being launched from Gaza into Israel. Its power has pretty big limits.
EDIT2: I have a problem with the "oppression" narrative. I think generally oppression is not a justification for violence and we have plenty of examples of oppressed peoples throughout history that have not resorted to the kind of violence we see in this conflict. It is also intellectually shallow. I have a similar problem with the term that comes with it in this conflict which is "occupation". Again, occupation is the de-facto status of most of the planet, and it does not justify the kind of violence we see in this conflict. I'm just talking about the Palestinians here. Israel does many questionable things as well which we can go into if we wish. The other problem I have which I already pointed out in this thread is the redefinition of words. I think using words like "ghetto" is problematic. My dictionary says ghetto is either "a jewish quarter in a city" or "a poor urban area occupied primarily by a minority group or groups.". The use of this term by pro-Palestinians is meant to either equate Israel to the Nazis. I.e. they intentionally want to say Israel in this story is the Nazi Germans and the Palestinians are the Jews. Or the other intent is to try and diminish the original meaning of the usage, i.e. to belittle the historical suffering of Jews. This usage is factually wrong and I would say is insidious (to put mildly). I'm surprised to see that Jewish people adopt this terminology (Ghetto) but I guess nothing can surprise me at this point. I think points can be made without redefining words and appealing to emotions and conversely redefining words means we can't actually have a discussion because we're talking past each other. I would almost call some of the tactics we're seeing "intellectual terrorism". It seeks to broadly disable the ability of the other side to engage in a discussion and to intimidate them. I also want to make it absolutely clear that all the above doesn't change the morality of the conflict. I.e. I'm not saying "it is justified to attack civilians because they engage in tactics that I can consider insidious.". If you have a self defense situation as a person, the threshold for using deadly force isn't a function of the personality of the other side, it should purely be a function of their actions and the situation.
> Meanwhile, Palestine has shown no restraint at all in their 10/7 massacre and no Jews live in Palestine, whereas many Arabs live peacefully in Israel.
Do you realize that isreal is the side who killed at least 10x the number that the other side kill. I can see that you describe hamas's action as horrible but there is no way of condition that justifies what isreal did and is still doing to Palestinian civilians (no
matter how you think you can)
Why are we playing this numbers game? If Hamas hypothetically had killed 30,000 Israels would you be saying that Israel still has 12,000 to go? Every person matters and in a war there are no targets for how many people are killed, in wars people get killed for achieving some other objectives. I would imagine that even if Hamas had only killed 150 people in Israel we'd be in exactly the same place and the ratio would be 100x because there's a point where Israel has to (well, at least they think) reoccupy Gaza at any cost. Israel was almost there in previous conflicts, but backed off.
There is no war in history, as far as I know, but willing to be corrected, where the measure or who is wrong and who is right, or when the war should end, was some threshold or ratio in the number of dead people. A war continues until both sides agree to stop it. Wars have a terrible human price. I think something like 400,000 people have died in the war in Yemen. I think there are hundreds of thousands of dead in the Russian-Ukraine war (mostly soldiers but they're people, and young people, too. Many civilians.). Sudan is pretty bad. 600,000 killed in the Syria civil war.
Because Israel cares about their civilians and defends them at huge costs (Iron Dome), while hamas is happier the more civilian death happens on their side, as it’s free propaganda/media outrage for them - see human shield, starting rockets from civilian buildings, etc.
Israel could kill literally everyone though, and has been able since long before this. So the idea that they're not restrained in their response ignores that capability.
As to the latter part, you're pulling a trick to imply that the 10x are all civilian non-combatants, which is just as bad as the other people pretending that all the teen-aged Hamas soldiers who have been killing people are non-combatant children.
If they “only” managed to kill this amount of people with that amount of (much more modern) explosives, isn’t that proof in itself that they don’t want to deal maximal casualties? Or otherwise they are very bad at it.
With that said, any amount of civilian death is tragic - and we should absolutely mandate Israel to be as specific in their attacks as possible. But 0 civilian casualty is impossible to achieve. What we can know, even according to the biased hamas numbers, they are roughly in the 2 civilian to 1 military personnel ratio, which is absolutely realistic given the circumstances/other modern warfares, etc. Feel free to refute this statement of mine, if you do believe that they “want to kill as many civilians as possible”.
I’ve said this multiple times in this thread — Israel is unable to truly inflict maximum casualties because they cannot afford to lose the US as their ally. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has admitted as much: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/gallant-we-cant...
> But 0 civilian casualty is impossible to achieve.
No it isn't. It might be impossible to achieve Israel's goals without any civilian casualties but those goals are not a given. Not doing anything would have caused less total suffering than Israel's current strategy.
I'm honestly not sure how to engage in this discussion. Rather than asking me for what proof I would accept, what proof would you accept that Israel is not trying to kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible?
If that was the goal, wouldn't you think more Palestinians be dead by now? How does this goal benefit Israel in any way?
But it's a fair question what would it take to convince me. I think you'd need to show me enough incidents of Israel intentionally targeting civilians with the clear goal of maximizing civilian deaths. e.g. carpet bombing of civilians in the south with casualties in the 10's of thousands from one bombing raid or indiscriminate artillery firing on the south like we see the Russians doing in Ukraine.
Just a by the way, do you know what exactly "refugee camp" means in the context of this conflict? Can you describe what that is and why it's called a refugee camp. I'm asking because it seems many do not know (and if you don't, it's not actually what you think it is).
Haven't you seen large numbers of civilians walking from the north part of Gaza to the south part of Gaza right by Israeli soldiers and tanks? I've seen IDF soldiers give them water as they're passing by. There were photos of civilians arrested yesterday (and treated poorly, doesn't look good) ... but alive.
Israel does provide water now to Gaza. It did temporarily shut down its water supply to Gaza which is part of how Gazans get water (but not the sole source). How many people have died from lack of water? Food is restricted but is getting in. Probably not enough. How many people have died from starvation?. Medicine is coming in. Israel is not providing electricity. It's a war! Many, one might say too many, have died.
Can you provide references to other major wars where one side was providing the other side with water, food, electricity, medicine? When siege was laid on Mosul did the US provide all those to the citizens of the city? Did the Russians to Mariupol? And sure, I understand Gaza's situations is a bit unique so it's hard to find parallels (and definitely don't want Israel to be compared to Russia).
There is definitely wide scale destruction to structures. I've seen the figure 1/3 today. It's all one big combat zones, when tanks fire inside cities and airplanes drop bombs, and artillery shells targets there is widespread damage. Very much like major scale war in other urban areas around the world, Bahkmut, Mariupol, are two examples from the other active conflict. I don't take it as proof of targeting civilians. It is a tactic to avoid urban warfare, booby traps, remove cover that the enemy can use etc. I agree it's a pretty brutal tactic but not one specifically disallowed in the rules of war.
Have you ever been to Israel? I'm just curious. Do you know many Israelis?
I don't think there's proof you can provide me, because we seem to have fundamentally different ideas of what it means to target civilians. Like, I would use that for this description in your literal words:
> Israel does provide water now to Gaza. It did temporarily shut down its water supply to Gaza which is part of how Gazans get water (but not the sole source). How many people have died from lack of water? Food is restricted but is getting in. Probably not enough. How many people have died from starvation?. Medicine is coming in. Israel is not providing electricity. It's a war! Many, one might say too many, have died.
Shutting off these things is targeting civilians! You may think it's justified or that there's precedent, but that doesn't change the fact that the goal of the attack is to harm every human being there.
> Can you provide references to other major wars where one side was providing the other side with water, food, electricity, medicine? When siege was laid on Mosul did the US provide all those to the citizens of the city? Did the Russians to Mariupol? And sure, I understand Gaza's situations is a bit unique so it's hard to find parallels (and definitely don't want Israel to be compared to Russia).
I opposed the US conquering Iraq, I oppose Russia's invasion of Ukraine and I oppose Israel's bombing in Gaza (and, as you alluded to, Gaza's situation is unique among those examples in that they are more or less blockaded by and dependent on Israel). I don't really find "but what about other wars" a compelling argument — war is bad!
As to your last question, although I don't know why it's relevant: I'm a diaspora Jew who has not been to Israel from a fairly large Jewish community in the US. Not sure what counts as "many" but yes, I know some Israelis.
You know what's funny, if anything can be funny at these times, is that once some anti-Israelis explain what they mean by the terms they use I end up agreeing with them.
My problem is that the terms are not necessarily the common definition of those terms.
Clearly civilians are impacted by Israel's actions. Nobody can argue with that. And the impact is major. Someone used to live in a nice house and have their basic needs met, and now they're crammed in a tent somewhere with almost nothing. Their house could be destroyed. And yes, many civilians have died. This is not what I take to mean by "Israel is intentionally targeting civilians", what that means to me, and likely to many others, is that Israeli soldiers are looking for civilians and killing them wherever they can find them, intentionally, as many as they can. This matters. Words matter. By your definition every war targets civilians, and it's sort of maybe true, but again, not really how most people IMO think about it.
The reason I asked my "Israeli" questions is that I do think most Israelis are moral, decent, people. As a whole they would prefer not to be in this war at all. You can say maybe they're misguided but their goal is the security of their country, not inflicting pain on others. Intent does matter.
I think there's a minority of Israelis that are not that (e.g. we just had the case of an Israeli settler soldier killing an Israeli civilian who was no threat because he thought he was Arab and we had other similar cases).
I don’t know, man. There are reports from the ground that Israeli snipers have been attacking civilians, that the IDF has targeted reporters and their families. We know Israel has been abducting Palestinians in the West Bank and many who have been released have claimed that they were abused/tortured.
That doesn’t mean that “the highest ranking Knesset members are secretly ordering their soldiers to kill civilians!” I don’t think they have to, in the same way that high ranking police in the US don’t have to tell officers to target Black people. I think there is a culture of supremacy and racism, and the IDF is collectively taking advantage of this moment to act on their worst impulses. I think they are at best indiscriminately attacking and making only token efforts to avoid civilian harm. Insofar as they are showing restraint, I think it’s only from the vague threat of losing the support of the US — just tonight, the sole abstaining vote on a UN security council demand for ceasefire — and if they could get away with even more outright genocide or ethnic cleansing, they would.
And yes, if it’s not clear, I am talking about the state of Israel, its government and military, not its citizens (although if reports in the US are to be believed a lot of y’all are real bloodthirsty right now — not that many Americans aren’t just as bad). I certainly don’t equate a government with its civilians: 2/3 of all Americans and almost 80% of Democrats support a ceasefire even as our Democratic president continues to defend this war.
I can’t even understand what type of mind you must have to support even a single civilian leave alone 10k of them. Here you are discussing whether it could have been 1 million if they wanted.
> I can’t even understand what type of mind you must have to support even a single civilian leave alone 10k of them
I think you need to self reflect a bit harder. Unless you are the dali lama, i'm sure you can understand the need for revenge and looking for a sense of security. Not saying it's the right thing to do, but it sure is easy to grasp.
It looks more as a civilian massacre than a war. Yes, it's pretty obvious that they don't try to kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible. But they clearly show no consideration for civilian lives. What we're witnessing is extremely disturbing to say the least, and we should make Israel stop because nothing can justify what they do. They are entitled to live safely, not to kill thousands of innocents because it suits them.
> Have you ever been to Israel? I'm just curious. Do you know many Israelis?
How is that relevant to the discussion? having Israeli friends should make us accept these horrors? I don't think so.
As cold as it sounds what Israel should be optimizing for is minimizing the number of dead Israelis, now and in the future. Not "because it suits them". The number of Palestinian civilians killed and otherwise impacted is certainly a moral consideration.
If Israel stops now, and Hamas kills 2000 Israelis in 5 years, and then Israel kills 50,000 Palestinians because Hamas is much stronger and the war is much more complex and the population is denser, should we stop now? What is the probability of this outcome? What are the range of outcomes of stopping now, beyond the obvious of less people will die over the next week or 2 weeks, or month, until the next round flares up. We have had many rounds of violence.
How do we weigh the continuation of rocket fire into Israel from Gaza into the equation? What happens if Hamas figures out a technological solution to defeat the iron dome?
There are many many other factors.
How do we weigh the motivation/chances that Hezbollah would attack Israel from the north?
Clearly all the dead people are not coming back to live. All the damage that has been done is done. It's all extremely tragic. The question is where do we go from here. You're saying "we should make Israel stop". Assuming that's even an option (I don't think anyone can make Israel stop at this point) who is going to pay the price of that decision down the road? "we" or Israel?
I don't know. I don't have answers. My opinion is that stopping now will result in more deaths in the future. But I'm not sure. If I was convinced stopping now is the best option for peace I would certainly support it. I hope we are getting very close to the end of the war, at least the more intense phase of it.
I think knowing Israelis will give you some sense of what kind of people they are, and will let you relate to them as people. Something I think is missing from a lot of the discourse. I agree we're seeing horrors. By the way, you should also talk to some Palestinians and get to know them as well fwiw. I've had some pretty interesting discussions in the past with a Palestinian friend.
I do think the USA could make Israel stop on a dime, but has no interest in the politics of doing so. I think Israel is optimizing for getting rid of Palestine - a lot of careful decisions of making it unlivable in Gaza, and calling it Hamas’ fault, and pushing over and over until they can finally get international support for pushing all the surviving residents over a border, then setting up a DMZ like Korea.
I know we're all in the heat of the moment but there's no doubt in my mind the Palestinians are not going anywhere. There's nowhere for them to go. The population of the Gaza strip is going to remain in the Gaza strip. The population of the west bank is going to remain in the west bank. Israel's supporters, and the vast majority of Israelis, understand that. Gaza will be occupied by Israel. It will be under military control of Israel. When the war is over it will be rebuilt.
> As cold as it sounds what Israel should be optimizing for is minimizing the number of dead Israelis, now and in the future.
Yes, I get the logic.
But as someone who isn't either Israeli or Palestinian, I give the same value to any life and I'd like my government to 1. at the very least, not support the ongoing massacres 2. pressuring them to stop what they're doing 3. send help to gaza. I'm not american, but if I was, I'd be very pissed that my taxpayer's money is going to this.
Then one could argue that what is done isn't the best course of action of Israel's safety, regardless of any moral consideration.
> I think knowing Israelis will give you some sense of what kind of people they are,
I have no doubt that Israelis are no different than any other people on earth. But really, this isn't the question here.
> They are entitled to live safely, not to kill thousands of innocents because it suits them.
Them living safely means winning the war by destroying Hamas’ logistics, assets, and ability to launch attacks. Them destroying Hamas means air strikes that unfortunately will inevitably include civilian collateral damage due to how Hamas operates. In my view, this justifies all actions Israel has taken so far.
Additionally, if successfully done, killing Hamas now means fewer Palestinian deaths in the future.
There can be no clearer example of simply thinking Palestinian lives don't matter than this. It's pretty disgusting. You use the word "unfortunately", but the entire gist and underlying assumption of what you're saying is that the death and suffering of Palestinians is not as important as the death and suffering of Israeli civilians.
It’s war. Isn’t it a the case in any such conflict that your people worth more?
Also, the point you and many others fail to understand is that there is no other way for Israel, this is a least bad option. No one is happy about the situation, and both Israel and the Palestin civilians are victims here, all because of Hamas. If you know of any other realistic solution that gets rid of terrorists, I’m sure IDF is happy to hear about that.
> It’s war. Isn’t it a the case in any such conflict that your people worth more?
A lot of countries might act that way, but that position doesn't command anyone's deference or sympathy, whether in this conflict or others, and the rest of us are free to pile on in moral condemnation.
Moreover, given the conflict's history and a lot of the discourse many of us have witnessed from those who wish to suppress any acknowledgement of Palestinian death or suffering, we have plenty of reason to believe that there is something more sinister underlying a lot of this talk.
> Also, the point you and many others fail to understand is that there is no other way for Israel, this is a least bad option.
This is obvious bullshit. It's not up to anyone else to provide some specific plan of action; it is obviously the case there are a number options Israel can take short of murdering between 15k-20k civilians and displacing 2 million more.
To be clear, I do not begrudge Israel the right to take some military action here, especially because it has to rescue its hostages. But the onus of offering justification is on someone trying to justify the staggering death toll and the sheer cruelty the country is displaying right now, not on the ones who are looking at it for realistically what it is.
> I’m sure IDF is happy to hear about that.
Given what many of us have read and seen of the IDF's conduct, I think we have every reason to believe they are more than ok with what their current plan. The rest of us are not as naive or stupid as you seem to think.
Palestinian lives don’t morally matter in the context of military strikes on Hamas assets. Same as how Israeli lives don’t morally matter in the context of assaults on IDF military assets. The IDF soldiers who were caught off guard and died at their bases? That is unfortunately a part of war. Israeli civilians who might be visiting those military bases at the time they were attacked? Sucks to be them, but their deaths are not a moral wrong.
What would be your examples of wars where enemy civilians were placed at the same level of important as your own civilians? Or where belligerents would be willing to have more of their combatants die to reduce the number of deaths, civilian or otherwise on the other side?
In addition to what I told the other poster, I think it's important to note that someone on an internet forum trying to justify this isn't someone making a military decision. It's someone who genuinely just doesn't give a fuck about someone else's grandmother, cousins, etc. dying in horrid ways. There are Palestinian Americans over here who live normal lives, who are losing family members over there to Israeli bombs. Yet there are people here who, if those people try to speak out about that, would try to brand them as anti-Semites and "Hamas supporters".
I have not met anyone who supports Hamas, or even read that on this forum (though I have seen a couple eyebrow-raising comments here and there), yet there are so many people only justifying the actions of the IDF and try to convince the rest of us that what it has been doing to the Palestinians is ok. Think about that.
(Which is not to say that partisans on the Palestinian side of this are somehow angels or anything--if anything, I think it's disappointing there aren't more Muslim or Arab groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, etc.)
Anyways, if I continue arguing like this, I am part of the problem, even if I am right. I don't want to pass up the opportunity in another one of these threads to try to plug these guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGZlR_h96ek
The reality of humanity is that nobody cares equally about everything. We get riled up about some things but not others. We mostly care about what others try to get us to care about. We're tribal, we care more about our tribe than others. We care more about our group than other groups.
I get the viewpoint from the Palestinian-American side. My problem isn't with their natural response, which is to do whatever it takes to protect their families and friends. My problem is with the demonizing rhetoric they use and the real world consequences of that. They have mass protests with calls for genocide against Jews. As a Jew in North America this makes me feel less safe. In the real world, Jewish businesses are getting attacked, Jews feel threatened and are threatened. There is a connection between the demonizing and antisemitism. There is no other context or way to look at attacks against Jews everywhere other than antisemitism. "The Jews" and "Israel" are used interchangeably in online discourse and on the street. Another real world consequence is IMO more Palestinian suffering in the middle east, not less. I also want my family in Israel to be safe, I don't go marching in the streets calling for all Palestinians to be expelled from the region or killed.
There are many Palestinians that support Hamas. In previous surveys it's been somewhere around 50% or more. In more recent surveys it's 75% ( https://thehub.ca/2023-11-27/amal-attar-guzman-palestinian-s... ). We also need to separate the question of support for Hamas from the question of supporting the goals and methods of Hamas. Many Palestinians believe in violent struggle until Israel is dismantled. Basically either kill all the Jews or force them to leave. I don't have a survey handy but that view is prevalent. I would challenge your assertion of "not met anyone that supports Hamas". People don't come out and say "I support Hamas" (well some do, but it's not exactly politically correct) but they act in support of Hamas. In my view if you're chanting "from the river to the sea" you support Hamas because that is Hamas ideology. A recent survey found many of the chanters don't know what's the river and what's the sea and once told many changed their minds but ignorance does not absolve. People have a choice of calling for peace or calling for violence and we see too many people calling for violence. A call for peace should be a call for peace for everyone. I am convinced the root cause of violence in the region is the Palestinian pursuit of indiscriminate violence as a means of solving their historical injustices.
I have no problem saying that I support the IDF and Israel. I think the IDF's actions are as moral as any other military in war. Israel didn't choose this war. It was forced on it. At the same time I do feel for the Palestinians. There is no conflict. I wish Israel's security could be achieved without this massive price in lives. I am as sad as anyone by the scenes of destruction, children being pulled from rubble, etc. I just don't make my moral decisions based on appeals to my emotions and attempts of the media to manipulate me. Whenever I see the IDF acting in ways that I feel are wrong I do add that to my overall evaluation, there might be a point where I reconsider. I also lived in Israel during Hamas' suicide bombing campaign against Israeli civilians. There are many injustices from the Israeli side. You need to form a complete picture though.
I feel like most of your message is emotional. This is a normal response to many things we're seeing. I'm not sure it's a way to make progress. I think likely you're also being manipulated. There could be a different media and social media narrative that would make you feel different given the exact same facts on the ground. Think about that. There's plenty of evidence to support this thesis.
Almost everything you're saying about them is pretty visibly applicable to your attitude towards them. I don't see much of a difference between a Palestinian or Muslim who isn't sorry Israelis were killed on Oct 7th or who believes that's a valid form of nationalist insurgency or retaliation, and a Jew or an Israeli who supports the IDF's current campaign.
I think most of us without direct skin in the game have the basic moral sense to fail to find the kind of incredibly biased take you're offering here particularly convincing, and to greet with skepticism the notion that the side which has had the upper hand for longer than most of us have been alive is purely a victim.
If a Palestinian person came on trying to say "well the people in Gaza are so oppressed, they had no choice..." I would roll my eyes at that too. That they would lash out violently is understandable, but it's not their only choice, and it doesn't make it morally acceptable. You guys are more alike than you realize, and I don't mean that in a "kumbaya brotherhood" good kind of way.
> I also want my family in Israel to be safe, I don't go marching in the streets calling for all Palestinians to be expelled from the region or killed.
You don't have to. It's been happening, and has just been accelerated.
I'm sorry that you can't see the difference. What does "Muslim" have to do with this by the way? Why is it the the group of Muslims as a whole is taking a position here? According to you anyways.
Ofcourse I'm biased but so are you. I'm struggling to follow your logic. If the Allies had the upper hand against the Nazis does it make the Nazis the victim? If the west had the upper hand against the Soviet block is Russia the victim? What does that have to do with anything.
"That they would lash out violently is understandable," no it's not. You're just taking the "people in Gaza are oppressed" (by Israel) at face value. It's just a false statement. Even if it was true then Oct 7th is not justified. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and the course the Palestinians took from that point was mainly their own.
All Palestinians are not being killed or expelled from the region. That is an indisputable fact as of this time. But it's also got nothing to do with my argument. Supporters of Israel aren't marching in the streets calling for this but supporters of Palestinians are marching in the streets calling for the destruction of Israel. (EDIT: and this was true earlier in the war as well, as soon as Israel responded, when there were still many more Israeli dead and more damage than on the Palestinian side)
The only thing I will agree with you is that Israel does have choices. And their choices can be criticized. Israel acts to protect its citizens and that's an important context. If your starting point is that Israel should be destroyed and all its citizens be killed then naturally no choice Israel makes is going to be acceptable to you.
EDIT: I just want to add here that while I am biased about this conflict I think I am applying the same measures and principles that I apply when I look at other conflicts where I am not directly and emotionally involved. Ofcourse I have some biases for those as well. So when I look e.g. at the wars the US or NATO engaged at, or when I look at the Russia-Ukraine war, or I look at any other war that happened in my lifetime, I try to apply some objective measures. If we look at how countries wage wars we can look at their practices. For example, we can look at Russia's practices at Mariupol. Or we can look at practices in the battle of Mosul. and we can compare them to IDF practices. Or we can look at practices in the Syrian civil war. Or we can look at WW-I or WW-II. How do we know if Ukraine is right or Russia is right? How can we tell which side is fighting more "morally". We need a benchmark. What we have here is a war between Gaza and Israel. We don't say Ukraine's war with Putin. We say Ukraine's war with Russia. When the US went to war in Afghanistan it was likewise not the US vs. Al Qaeda, it was the US vs. Afghanistan. If we want to take the bias out we need to be able to benchmark things and make them comparable. Whenever I try to set some benchmark (for example what are protestors calling for) there's always some maneuver to try and get away from a benchmark to emotions and opinions. I'm open to figure out other ways of "discovering" the unbiased truths here as much as that exists. We have facts and we have the interpretation of these facts. In most discourse on this topic the facts/truth are distorted and benchmarking/interpreting this facts is not an interest.
> go after military targets even at some cost to civilians (and the question of that cost)
I feel the "question of that cost" is where the differences in opinion lie.
For example, if Israel considered the civilians of Gaza as Israel citizens of equal importance to all other Israeli citizens, you'd expect them to consider that cost to be much higher, and it would force them to maneuver much more carefully in their military operations in order to minimize it. Yes, it would make it a lot harder for them to fight and make headway against Hamas as well if they did.
Some people hold the belief that this is how Israel should treat civilians, no lesser than they'd treat their own.
I think another contentious issue, is around the outcome of the war, and what it means for those civilians as well. Is the idea to force the One-State solution, but not as a binational state with equal rights for all citizens, irrespective of ethnicity or religion, but instead as a state with dominant Jewish identity? The impression to this question can change your opinion of the civilian casualties, are they an unfortunate price to pay towards their liberation from Hamas, and their incorporation into a more just, equal, fair, democracy, where they can live a better life? Or is it actually towards their further oppression by Israel?
Or if it is to force a Two-State solution, again, what would it mean of those civilians, would the Palestinian state be forced to harsh conditions as part of treaties if they lose the war, which would hurt those civilians further, etc.
It's complicated, but I do think most of it is about this "cost of civilian casualties", and what worth you attribute to it, and what worth you attribute to the end in order to justify the means.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect Israel to consider Palestinians civilians in Gaza as of equal value to Israeli civilians in Israel during war time. Israel's duty as a country is to provide security for its people. I don't think this is a standard adhered to in any other war. That said, consider Israel is bombing tunnels and infrastructure where there is a real possibility that Israeli hostages would get killed.
The question of the outcome of the war is a reasonable one. That said the primary goal of the war is to ensure the security of Israel. The longer term outcome would depend on political processes in Israel and in the Palestinian side and likely all the other parties that are have been meddling in this conflict forever.
What's "reasonable" is not a trivial matter to answer, and different people will differ in their opinion here. What goes into someone's determination for what is reasonable I think is very complex and deep, including their own moral values, emotional attachment, repercussions to themselves, perceived righteousness, strategic analysis, etc.
I don't personally know what's reasonable or not here to be honest, but I do know the differing opinion on it is a major contributor to the discourse and the disagreements around it.
I wanted to point that out, because you and another commenter were not able to convince each other, and this is why in my opinion.
Things are much clearer, you are just cherry picking what to respond and defend. Then you build your case against isreal critics. One example of things you ignored replying to the GP comment is this. This is a plain war crime
> Israeli defense Minister Yoav Gallant: "I have ordered a complete siege on Gaza: no electricity, no food, no fuel, no water. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly."
But Israel does allow food and water to enter Gaza. Some fuel. And yes, it stopped providing a portion of Gaza's electricity.
I think this (new) Wikipedia article is somewhat iffy. And maybe I'm misusing terminology. I think Israel's actions in this context constitute a blockade that is legal in times of war. I don't want to nitpick siege vs. blockage etc. or the fact that Israel doesn't control all the borders. Israel's actions here are legal.
> But Israel does allow food and water to enter Gaza
You mean by not bombing rafah crossing in violation of international law as they did several times already?
> I think Israel's actions in this context constitute a blockade that is legal in times of war
> Israel's actions here are legal.
At least provide any sources during your quest to defend isreal actions. Even if it is straightout lies like that one [1]
Hint : the story is about Israeli military releases footage of a secret terrorist ‘roster’ that turns out to be a calendar (that was very obvious for any one with basic arabic knowledge) and that was their justification for bombing and taking out a children hospital bt force.
It's not my government. I don't live in Israel. If I was I'd certainly not vote for them. I can list dozens of things the Israeli government does that I am opposed to. I don't think I'm excusing anything but I will push back on the standard propaganda narrative like this "calendar" story. The Israeli government should resign. It's a disgrace. As far as re-taking Gaza after Oct 7th, knowing Israel, that was the only possible outcome. Likely the Hamas knew that too.
Right. So the Israeli government hands out weapons to settlers [1], the IDF is bombing as they do, treating people as they do [2], on Israeli TV they openly admit that the goal of destroying civilian infrastructure is to make Gaza "unlivable] [3], the IDF proudly poses for pictures as they do it [4] -- yet you split hairs and call it "very propaganda"? Wow.
That's like saying the Nazis just wanted Jews "gone", gassing them wasn't a priority.
People murder -- to not mince words, some people act and think like Nazis, as Yeshayahu Leibowitz so very correctly pointed out -- and they know they'll get away with it. There are rarely "explicit explicit" orders, the general atmosphere, the words and deeds you saw others get away with, is enough.
I can tell from your links which side of the fence they're coming from. If we take the Ukraine-Russia war I'm sure I can find 4 links from either side to tell whatever story I want to tell. But I'll engage anyways:
- [1] Weapons are distributed to civilians/cities/settlements all over Israel as a response to 3000 heavily armed Palestinians murdering (and worse) civilians. Clearly a matter of self defense against an enemy who have shown they have the means and the will to do what they've done. Itamar Ben Gvir is a right wing minister who is definitely leveraging the Oct 7th attack to his agenda. In the US everyone can get a weapon. Just the presence of these weapons, at least according to Americans, is not a problem. I'd rather Oct 7th didn't happen and we wouldn't see more weapons since inevitably these weapons are going to be used for bad things, just like in the US.
- [2] The video shows men, in fighting age, from the active combat area in North Gaza where civilians were ordered to evacuate a long time ago. They are in their underwear so they can not blow themselves up, a common Hamas tactic. They are loaded on trucks and they will be interrogated. Likely many or all of them are combatants. We've seen videos from Hamas of their combatants in civilian clothing who turn from a combatant to a civilian in a second. This is all there is to it. There is no support for the other claims made in the tweet. I'm sure they're treated much better than the way Hamas is treating the Israelis they're holding and much better than the US treated Al Qaeda or ISIS fighters. Because the combatants aren't fighting by the rules of law, e.g. they're not in uniform, they don't get the protection of the Geneva convention as war prisoners.
- [3] This is just a random panel on TV. The talking head there is saying maybe the intent is to prevent Hamas from ruling, maybe the intent is to saw chaos, or maybe the intent is for Palestinians not to go back to Northern Gaza at all. Not sure what "they openly admit on Israeli TV" means here. Who is "they" what is "Israeli TV". This is a random person on a random channel, not a policy maker. It's very common in a war to go after the symbols of the enemy's regime as part of trying to force them to surrender.
- [4] I am not familiar with this story. Israel is and has been blowing up tunnels with explosives. Israel also blows up buildings that can be used as enemy cover. I can't say anything about this specific incident, do you have more references? Do we know this isn't fake news? Not from Gaza? Not this conflict? Not the place the Tweet says it is?
There are tactical reasons for Israel to attack buildings. There are tunnel entrances in many buildings. There are booby traps. They're used as cover by the enemy. One thing that's interesting to note is that the footage from where the prisoners were taken seems to show buildings still standing. The camera pans around and gives us views up the streets where buildings are also still standing.
All that said I'm sure there's some element of retribution, deterrence, and trying to break the will of the enemy and get them to surrender, in the massive scale of destruction. It's also a show of force to others who might contemplate attacking Israel (like Hezbollah). Wars are ugly.
I reject any comparison to WW-II Germany. These is insulting and offensive to the victims. If you want to make comparisons look at the Hamas.
Your argument fundamentally boils down to, "oops". I think we can apply a little more critical thinking than that. Most military folk know better than to say the quiet part out loud.
- Amichai Eliyahu, Israel's heritage minister: "that "there are no non-combatants in Gaza," adding that providing humanitarian aid to the Strip would constitute 'a failure.'" [8]
In the same interview: "When asked by the interview whether a nuclear weapon could be used on Gaza, Eliyahu responded: 'That's one way.' " [9]
Look, I'm not going to go over that last one by one, but a bunch of those are taken out of context, e.g. speaking specifically about Hamas but being presented as being about civilians.
Some of those statements are also reprehnsible and are should be and are rightly condemned, within Israel as well.
But do you have a similar list of all the statements that Israeli officials have made that go against these? Because there are far more of those, they just don't make it into circulation like these. There are many, many on the record statements of Israeli officials specifically saying that the war will be conducted justly, morally, while trying to minimize civilian casualties.
You can choose to dismiss those as "well they have to say it to please the world", and insist that these statements you've linked are the only ones that matter, but then you're just choosing what to believe based on your own prior beliefs going into this.
> PS this is funny, instead of replying this guy just downvotes. Why? Because it's the truth.
I understand your karma doesn't allow you to down vote yet. But FYI you cannot down vote replies on your comments. So it is not funny, it is just not true.
States are social constructs, if enough people believe they exist then they exist. For 2000 years there was no State of Israel either, until enough people decided to believe in it and build it.
When Israeli army keeps warning about an incoming strike with an empty shell, waits for 3 weeks to respond, shows clear paths for safe civilian exits, it is called "war crimes"?
Why does the scale matter? In the
legal codes with which I am familiar mens rea matters.
Murder is not just worse than manslaughter it is on a different level.
Western criminal codes generally allow for no punishment, perhaps even no guilt, for a manslaughter. If Israel could remove Hamas without injuring any non-combatants I think they would. It makes a difference. Almost by definition suggesting that scale is a factor is implying that collective punishment is acceptable.
Scale is the most important factor when talking about the harm done. A dead person is dead, regardless of if it was murder or manslaughter.
Criminal punishments are more about the social consequences than about the crime itself. If someone gets X years in prison for crime A and another person gets 2X years for crime B, it doesn't mean that crime B was twice as bad. It only means that after taking a large number of factors into account, it made sense to give twice as long sentence for crime B.
Intent matters, and disregarding it disables your ability to determine right from wrong. If someone attacks you and you kill them by acting in self defense, you absolutely would hope that the people judging you for your actions would consider your intent. You would probably feel you don't deserve to spend a moment in handcuffs, let alone night in jail, let alone go through a criminal trial, let alone be sentenced, even if it is negligible in comparison to a murderer.
Right and wrong are kind of irrelevant in international politics. When there are no enforceable laws, no shared values, and no expectations of justice, justifications don't really matter. Consequences and reciprocity become more important. If you do something because you think it's justified, others will do similar things if they think their actions are justified. It doesn't matter what the others think about the justifications of your actions or what you think about the justifications of their actions.
Political power comes from what populations think. At first, the US thought there would be clear support for their position given Hamas’s actions, and acted accordingly. That has not really been the case, so they are moderating their position. Some of that is a result of large numbers of people thinking things like “Scale is the most important factor when talking about the harm done. A dead person is dead, regardless of if it was murder or manslaughter.”
> If Israel could remove Hamas without injuring any non-combatants I think they would.
Surely you jest. How is this attack supposed to remove Hamas? It seems designed to strengthen Hamas, just as Israel has been supporting Hamas since their formation.
The existence of Hamas prevents a united Palestinian people while simultaneously giving Israel the excuse to reject a 2-state solution. If Hamas didn't exist, Israel would have to create a Hamas from scratch.
> Surely you jest. How is this attack supposed to remove Hamas? It seems designed to strengthen Hamas, just as Israel has been supporting Hamas since their formation.
This attack is supposed to remove Hamas by killing them, or forcing them to surrender. There's a lot of legit criticism of what Israel is doing, but if you think it's designed to bolster Hamas, then you're really misunderstanding what's happening.
That's the most absurd thing I've ever heard. How do you kill a political movement? After all this slaughter, there'll be thousands more terrorists willing to fight the occupying force that's killed their parents and children.
Hamas isn't just a political movement. It's an organization with a group of members, with weapons caches, with plans, etc. They have people trained to invade Israel and kill civilians, have proven that they can do this, and have promised to do it again.
They can be stopped by arresting/killing the members. Why wouldn't it be possible? Similar groups have been stopped.
You seem to ignore the fact that hamas was elected in 2006 and has indefinitely postponed elections since then. Given the demographics most Palestinians weren't even alive when hamas was elected.
I think it's incorrect to frame every action in Israel as the actions of Likud. That's not at all how the Israeli government works. It's a coalition government in which, yes, Likud is the biggest party, but made up of many other parties as well, and for the purposes of this war includes a party that was previously an opposition party to this government.
For better or worse, the Likud-led coalition is the current government of Israel, and Hamas is the current government of Palestine.
> while condemning the massacre of civilians under the orders of Likud
This is a surprising statement as I haven’t heard of such an event happening and I’ve followed these events fairly closely.
When was the civilian massacre? Do you have a source? Or did you make it up?
> peaceful Israel within the 1967 boundaries
Israel was previously peaceful within the 1967 boundaries, in 1967. Arab states tried to destroy it in 1967 and again in 1973, resulting in Israel gaining land, something arab states now blame on Israel.
I've noticed quite a bit of propaganda which is intentionally conflating these two pairs. That is, those who are advocating for Gazans are referred to as Hamas supporters and those advocating on behalf of Israeli citizens are accused of supporting genocide, etc. This is done to polarize both groups, encourage strongly negative emotional reactions, and prevent anyone from taking a more reasonable perspective to address issues on both sides of this complex situation.
Try to argue and "make a peaceful treaty" with a ruling party of terrorists (greatly supported by the population btw), who want to completely obliterate Israel, launch rockets from their own houses near their own children, which has been factually proven countless amount of times. Same goes to Russia, DPRK, Iran, these are narrow minded non-negotiable despotic countries, they want only their way, regardless of casualties (including their own), international laws, etc.
Hamas supporters would say the same thing about Israel, that they could never "make a peaceful treaty" with the state that expelled their grandmother from her home at gunpoint, that launched the bomb that killed their sister, that supported the illegal settlers that shot their cousins in the West Bank…
The 1% most extreme on both sides want to drag you down to their level, don't let them.
It was newly formed Arab countries' unjustified joint decision to destroy Israel in the middle of the 20th century, which led to this point, people somehow forget who started it all.
That's a grossly inaccurate depiction of the events of 1948, but in any case Israel's founding was 75 years ago and the actors involved are all long dead. What matters is doing right by people alive today.
I don't like grinding the historical axe--I think it's a dumb thing people do in this conflict. And I favor the right of your country to exist, largely on the basis that no country has any "right" to exist and so the country's continued existence in itself establishes any such alleged right. That being said, it is not like Israel was sitting there minding its own business, and its not like its own establishment was bloodless, and its not like its creation was a peaceful event for many of the Arabs it displaced.
Again, none of that, to me, vitiates the right of an Israeli person to live peacefully in Israel, but I don't take kindly to anyone's nationalist fantasy, and I find it absurd that people continue to trade in the kind of simplistic tribal patriotism that just regurgitates their ethnic narrative.
They do! Israel is a thriving, prosperous society, world-leading in many ways. And the only way that society can persist long-term is by making peace with the Palestinians. (My own adopted home, the United States, is also a thriving and prosperous place that leads the world in many ways. And we also had to make peace with the people we wronged in the past.)
Neither Jordan, nor Syria, nor Egypt want Palestinians, but Israel should welcome them? Lol. I think if they were wise, they'd really focused on making a proper state.
What you call Israel is their land where their people lived until European Jews decided to emigrate en masse 100 years ago. There was only 25k Jews in modern day Israel before WW1, then Britain forcefully turned it a "jewish homeland" to get the Rothschilds on their side during the war. Basically typical western disregard for anyone who isn't white.
They shouldn't have to move in with their neighbors.
The past is the past. There are multiple generations of Israeli people that born on that land. Does a Palestinean child whose grand grandfather born there has any more rights to the land than those actually born there? Israel is there, for a fact. If an ultra-radical population that largely wants the eradication of Israel moves in, it’s over for Israel. This is just the way it is.
We can all see your failure to engage with what I actually said, and we also all know that the fact that we have successful and prominent Black people in American society, including a former president, does not mean that there isn't a lot of racism and discrimination against a lot of Black people in the US. You must think the rest of us are stupid.
For any side of conflict which is playing zero-sum, there can be no negotiations which are beneficial to both. Only one side has to commit to this strategy to condemn the other side to this path. Authoritarianism is an awful method of government which often ensures the minimum amount of people necessary will contribute to a solution for that nation which will benefit only the most privileged. All these countries mentioned are prime examples, and Israel is not exempt from criticism given Bibi's actions over the past few years.
The problem is, as we all discuss frequently around here, when it comes to this sort of issue social media is optimized to suppress nuance, boost controversial takes, and generate engagement through anger.
So there is a very real sense in which there _are_ two mutually exclusive groups. There is also a third group wishing for nuance and understanding and thoughtful discourse of the historical context, but that group gets coded as the “other” by both of the black-and-white groups.
I think this position is a small minority in the public opinion, and is virtually non-existent in Arab countries. It doesn't help that moderate supporters of two state solution make little effort to distance themselves from the "from the River to the Sea" Israel hating crowd.
"I think the fundamental assumption of the analysis that there are two mutually exclusive groups, 'pro-Israel' and 'pro-Palestine' is flawed." This is a fairly nail-on-head distillation, and that it exists exacerbates any attempts at substantive discourse that follows.
"massacre of civilians under the orders of Likud"
"scale of the atrocities"
* There really isn't any better deathrates when the other side is explicitly based on indifference to its own civillian casualties. Mosul had 40K civillian deaths in a 2.5x smaller city (by population)[0]. I fail to see why Israel can't use the same legal tactics** the US used to defend itself versus jihadists, except the Israeli death rate is lower and the US had far less justification.
* Focusing on the Likud is a mistake. Every Israeli political party would have counterattacked at Gaza, with about the same (legal) tactics, but probably much more aggressively. Leaving next door to a genocidal terrorist regime was unacceptable, actually moreso to the Israeli Left. After all, what's the point of two states if the other side can do _anything_ and get support afterwards?
And I mean anything - the attack was into 1967 lines, deathrates much higher than in Gaza. The irony is that many people that say they support 2ss are trying to enshrine impunity here, basically destroying any hope that either side will support 2ss. That's why Bibi was the pretend 'cautious' here, because of very cynical calculation - Hamas staying weakened but alive lets Bibi kill 2ss - WB Palestinians flock to 'victorious' Hamas, while Israeli Left approach is discredited - but his hand was forced.
* Focusing on Hamas is also somewhat of a mistake, given polls show widespread crosscutting Palestinian support to Hamas action[1].
** When we ignore scaremongering about 'starvation/disease at a massive scale' when it's not happening, the only thing the list has are actions into hospitals which even the US believes are used by Hamas.
So a bunch of terrorists murder 1400+ Jews and commit unspeakable acts against them, and then run and hide in pre-prepared positions behind the civilians that they have been forcibly governing and abusing since 2006, and they are on record as saying that they prepared all of this on purpose, and somehow the civilian casualties are the fault of Israel? Give me a break.
Britain killed a lot more German civilians than Germany killed British civilians in WWII. Does that make the British the bad guys?
I’m not sure how all this can be said with a straight face; that you are “pro-israel” you just think the borders should be set back over 50 years and that a democratically elected government’s actions is worse than those of a terrorist organization.
Not once did you mention what atrocities were committed on Hamas’s side and instead you spent all your effort justifying Hamas by arguing how you think Lukid is worse.
What actions in your opinion would be an appropriate response for people (& government) of Israel to respond to the targeted rape, murder, beheadings of the elderly, men, women, and children, which was filmed by Hamas and sometimes live-streamed on the social media accounts of their victims to show off what they have achieved?
I’m not sure you can claim to be in the middle or support ‘both sides / both peoples’ when you only have bad things to say about one of them.
They did in fact mention what Hamas did - when they said civilian deaths caused by Likud are an order of magnitude higher. Perhaps they think civilian deaths are intrinsically bad, and don’t feel the need to calculate that one beheading is worth 5 children dead for lack of medical care, or whatever the official rate is?
Also, a reminder that Putin and Hamas were also democratically elected, and I don’t see why that has any relevance to whether their actions should be condemned or not.
There have not been elections held in Gaza in 18 years and Putin’s elections are not considered free and fair - see the arrest of Navalny.
Democratic processes are good because it holds those in power accountable for their actions and should not just be hand waved away as if it doesn’t matter.
And no, what Hamas has done was not mentioned, all that was said was ‘the actions of Hamas’. What actions - did they hold a bake sale? It is unclear and minimized.
If you don’t know what Hamas did you are totally out of your depth.
Israel argues that Hamas are the elected leaders of Gaza and that’s why residents there are at fault. I completely agree that Hamas do not represent Palestinians and think Israel should also admit this.
You can argue whether or not Palestinians deserve the response, but what makes you think Hamas does not represent Palestinians? A recent poll by the Arab World for Research and Development shows that 75% of Palestinians support both the October 7th attacks and Hamas's vision of a single, Palestinian-only state. And Hamas's vision to achieve this state is actual, literal genocide.
I don't think any other government in Israel would respond materially differently to Oct 7th. The only response Israel has to this scale of event is to re-occupy Gaza and the only way it can be accomplished without larger casualties on both sides is more or less what is transpiring today. I'm sure there are details that would be different but I don't think the script would be materially different if Likud was not in power. The military plan for re-taking Gaza is from the IDF, not the government. Likud-controlled IDF isn't really a thing, the government gives a target (removing Hamas) and the IDF executes. Any other government would give the same target.
What I would and do blame the current government for is that Oct 7th even happened, the scale, and the immediate response.
EDIT: I also blame the current government for trying to eliminate any possibility of a two state solution and effectively supporting the Hamas rule in Gaza as means of accomplishing that. I can probably blame them for lots more. That said the actual Oct 7th attack is all on Hamas and the response is pretty much the only response you'd have seen from any Israeli government (or anyone else in that position for that matter). We're in a place today that is a different place and we can talk all we want about what other possible places we could be.
I'll agree with you on the west bank policy being a Likud/right-wing policy in general. We can also talk about why the Israeli public is more right wing leaning and the left has all but disappeared.
I think those two groups are really more mutually exclusive than what you're trying to portray. At least to most Israelis they are. Because for most Israelis, when you say "peaceful within 1967 borders", it reads as "kill all the Jews in Israel". Many (most?) Palestinians will also not accept this statement because they consider Israel in the 1967 border to be the Palestinian state. If there was an overlap we wouldn't really be where we are, we'd have peace. I have not met many people who are in this overlap, i.e. they're both "pro-Israel" and "pro-Palestine" in a meaningful way. Most people do not hold nuanced views at all, don't know that much about the conflict, don't really understand what's going on, hold on to simplistic narratives and "windows" they get from the media and social media. For me as an (ex-) Israeli your equating the response of Israel to the Hamas puts you squarely in the anti-Israeli camp. You blank statement "massacre of civilians under the orders of Likud (and other far right parties)" feels like a blood libel. This is just my emotional response to how you phrase things. So that doesn't seem to be an overlap of pro-israeli and pro-palestinian.
>I think the fundamental assumption of the analysis that there are two mutually exclusive groups, 'pro-Israel' and 'pro-Palestine' is flawed. It is possible to simultaneously support the interests of Palestinian and Israeli civilians
That would be a nuanced view. The reality is that most people and especially most people who post their views online are not capable of seeing things that way.
I think it is currently about an order of magnitude more civilians deaths have resulted from the actions of Likud (Netanyahu etc..., who control the government and hence the IDF) than from the actions of Hamas. IDF is apparently disrupting civilian aid, destroying infrastructure including hospitals, and causing mass population movements into areas that cannot support them, so the risk of death from starvation and infectious disease at a massive scale as an indirect result is high. The Likud-controlled IDF are also apparently enforcing a 'lock down' of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank while allowing Israeli citizens to seize land by force and further expand the occupied territories.
So the scale of the atrocities seems to be much higher on the Likud side than the Hamas side, covers both the West Bank and Gaza, and it makes sense that the Palestinian victims of those atrocities would receive more support. That doesn't mean that all the people who care about the plight of the Palestinian population are anti-Israel (they are just not posting about it because they are likely prioritising issues).