Personally I think that defensive technology like this is fantastic. It means that innocent citizens will be protected from constant bombardment or thread of bombardment by cheap mass produced rockets or drones. Israeli civilians have faced bombardment by tens of thousands of rockets from Gaza for the last 20 years [1].
Outside the Middle East there's many areas threatened by combatants with similar cheap missiles. Perhaps Ukraine is an obvious one. We're seeing rises in conflicts across parts of Africa, Cambodia/Thailand, Pakistan/India. Many governments are looking into buying these to protect their countries.
This technology hopefully can protect populations from destabilizing forces funded on the cheap by foreign powers. Machine guns changed warfare [2] and drones have been a similar massive change in warfare making it cheaper and easier to attack and destabalize regions. Though of course there's downsides as well [3].
Colombian narcos have been using drones against the state, they tally 58 dead, 400 injured. This is a big problem that is going to get a lot bigger quickly. Colombia likely can't afford many fancy defenses and anyway they are likely to be of limited effectiveness where there are no front line.
Country A attacks vastly more powerful neighbor. They have no defensive infrastructure (for civilians), no plans for minimizing civilian deaths, no hope of actually winning the war they started. There strategy is to fight in a dense urban environment among their own civilians while firing thousands of unguided rockets at their enemy, knowing the retaliation is going to be horrific with no way for them to stop it (other than surrendering, but they would rather all die).
Country B has possibly the best missile defense system in the world; mainly because their neighbors shoot unguided rockets into their city. They work to defend their citizens at all costs even with expensive missiles and a protracted military campaign. They design cutting edge laser missile defense to help them alleviate the burden of protecting their citizens. The only reason they do not have to completely annihilate their neighbor who's shooting rockets at them is because they are able to intercept most of them. If those rockets were actually landing and causing tens of thousands of civilian casualties their retaliation would have to be far more deadly.
People on the internet: "actually its the civilians from country A who need defenses"
Country A is resisting a 75 year violent occupation and apartheid (see stats posted earlier) and currently suffering genocide. Anyone denying that is no different than anyone denying the holocaust - equally vile and reprehensible. But everyone somehow seems to conveniently forget that part. Don't take my word for it, list of apartheid and genocide reports below.
The reason this doesn't make the discourse, even on communities like Hacker News which are supposed to be "smart", is because of decades of the West being brainwashed to the point where Islamophobia is normalized and ubiquitous.
> Country A is resisting a 75 year violent occupation and apartheid (see stats posted earlier) and currently suffering genocide.
Apartheid is race based discrimination, not citizenship based like what happens in Israel/Palestine. Making an accusation of genocide does not mean there actually is a genocide.
> Anyone denying that is no different than anyone denying the holocaust - equally vile and reprehensible.
Comparing the holocaust(an actual genocide) as something "equally vile and reprehensible" to the situation in Israel/Palestine is equivalent to a form of holocaust denial IMO.
Claims like these are a rather overt display of antisemitic propaganda.[0]
> Don't take my word for it, list of apartheid and genocide reports below.
There is a long list of organizations that have thrown away their credibility with dubious accusations for various reasons.
> The reason this doesn't make the discourse, even on communities like Hacker News which are supposed to be "smart", is because of decades of the West being brainwashed to the point where Islamophobia is normalized and ubiquitous.
It seems you're trying to downplay the very real threat from Islamic extremists that Israel faces.
How about you and I stay out of it and let international organizations whose job it is to monitor this have their say? Are you ok with that? You trust Amnesty and the UN?
The sign of a brainwashed person is to equate this occupation with Islamic terrorism. Unfortunately, you have fallen to propaganda by even bringing that up. Jews and Muslims have lived together peacefully for hundreds of years prior to 1948. There has been nothing but respect between those two religions going back for as long as one can remember. The change is Zionism. That’s what the problem is, not radical Islam or radical Judaism. Zionism != Judaism.
> How about you and I stay out of it and let international organizations whose job it is to monitor this have their say? Are you ok with that?
Why would I blindly trust the conclusions of "international organizations"? Especially ones that have shown themselves to have very little integrity?
> You trust Amnesty and the UN?
The same Amnesty international that has shown to have serious issues with bias across multiple conflicts?[0][1]
The same UN which has thrown away essentially all of their credibility when it comes to anything related to Israel?[2]
Obviously I would never blindly trust these organizations.
> The sign of a brainwashed person is to equate this occupation with Islamic terrorism.
There is an occupation because the Palestinians have refused to negotiate a final peace agreement, Israel clearly can not unilaterally end the occupation as they did in 2005 with Gaza and expect a positive outcome.
> Jews and Muslims have lived together peacefully for hundreds of years prior to 1948.
Where have they lived together peacefully as equals for hundreds of years prior to 1948?
> There has been nothing but respect between those two religions going back for as long as one can remember.
There's a long history of conflict between Jews and Muslims throughout the years, obviously in recent years it has been worse in a lot of ways.[3][4]
> The change is Zionism. That’s what the problem is, not radical Islam or radical Judaism. Zionism != Judaism.
So Jews wanting to have a state where they wouldn't have to live as second class citizens[5] and have a right to self determination was the problem? Why would it be so hard for Muslims to accept the existence of a Jewish majority state when there are plenty of Muslim majority states?
After the holocaust it's entirely reasonable that Jews would reject being forced to live as a minority in a Muslim majority state.
Alright, good luck with doing your own “research”. You’re in the same category of conspiracy theorists as MAGA. Nothing I can say will change your mind.
> Country A is resisting a 75 year violent occupation and apartheid (see stats posted earlier) and currently suffering genocide. Anyone denying that is no different than anyone denying the holocaust - equally vile and reprehensible.
You stated what Israel is doing is as "equally vile and reprehensible" as the holocaust, this is an absolutely insane comparison.
The Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews, they wiped out something like half the worldwide population of Jews...on the other hand during the Israeli occupation the Palestinian population over the years has increased drastically.
The holocaust has very little in common with the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and one certainly can't realistically claim Israel doesn't have the military means to exterminate the Palestinians if they wanted to either. Israel clearly doesn't have that sort of genocidal intent towards Palestinians. You can probably make an argument that some of the more extremist elements in Israel want to ethnically cleanse Palestinians but that's not remotely equivalent to the holocaust.
By making this comparison you're effectively denying the holocaust by downplaying it and saying it's somehow equivalent to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Making this comparison is a well known antisemitic trope.
Repeating it a hundred times doesn't make it true.
And the brainwashing is about normalizing antisemitism. The term "islamophobia" is the equivalent of playing the race card. We aren't afraid of Muslims, we are afraid of the radicals that will use their money to cause great trouble as a route to power.
Fundamentally, you are allowing them to use dead Palestinians as weapons against Israel. That which works is rewarded--by believing the propaganda you are encouraging the killing of Palestinians.
And if you actually care about genocide why blame Israel when the real genocides are going on in Africa? Is it perhaps because the initiators of all of the ongoing genocides are Iranian-backed Islamist forces?
You know, both sides can be bad. They're both led by bad people who do bad things and some good things. I've watched the Oct 10th attack videos. They're horrific. I've also watched the videos of civilian buildings in Palestine being have their roofs "knocked on" by a missile, followed shortly after by demolition by additional missiles.. And the Israeli solders dropping grenades on tents.. And the firsthand accounts of doctors talking of children and infants being shot through the head with sniper rounds.
Both country's governments are in the wrong and their civilians are suffering because of it.
And how do you know the building is actually civilian?
If Israel used a roof-knocker it's because they believed there was Hamas infrastructure or supplies in the building.
And there's something inherently wrong about a grenade on a tent? Do soldiers not use tents??
As for the firsthand accounts--all reporting from the ground in Gaza is highly suspect. But it doesn't matter anyway--yes, we have clear evidence of civilians killed by long range fire. We have *zero* evidence of the identity of the shooters.
Hits caught on conveniently rolling cameras. Not hidden cameras, anyone picking targets would have known they were there. What possible reason does Israel have for doing that? Absolutely none. What possible reason does Hamas have for doing that? Framing Israel. Those cases make far more sense as Hamas rather than as Israel.
In the video, it was clearly children and other civilians. I can't find it at the moment.
Here's an article from Reuters about the civilian deaths. You can also pull up satellite images and see for yourself that the country is being levelled. That's not something you do if you're seeking specific individuals. There's just no excuse for killing civilians.
It's insane to compare Hamas and how they treat their citizens with Israel. Can you name a single thing Hamas has done to mitigate its civilian casualties?
Comparing the holocaust to Gaza is insane. What the allies did to Axis citizens during the course of world war two is far worse than what Israel is doing to Gazans (let alone what the Nazis did to Jews or Japanese to Chinese citizens) and the Allies were fully justified.
Why would he be one of the New Historians? Norman Finkelstein isn't really even a historian, he's more of a activist/political scientist if anything AFAIU.
> watch their debate hosted by Lex Fridman.
I've seen it, it's pretty clear if you dig into the facts that the accusations of genocide against Israel are not supported by the evidence.
It's also quite clear that people like Norman Finkelstein like to cherry-pick facts(often from books written by Benny Morris) to support a particular narrative. Benny Morris tends to take a more balanced view of the history in general which has a lot of nuance.
The guy actually said "Israeli historians", not "New Historians", which means he's probably not reading the people the New Historians were responding to. He's just looking for legitimation propaganda for antizionist politics.
> The guy actually said "Israeli historians", not "New Historians"
The 3 historians he listed were 3 out of the 4 most well known "New Historians", but him leaving out Benny Morris(arguably the most well known of the New Historians and the one who coined the term itself) was a bit of a red flag to me that he's cherry-picking sources to support a particular narrative. Technically the "New Historians" are a subset of "Israeli historians".
> he's probably not reading the people the New Historians were responding to.
Yeah, I'm sure he isn't, although I'm probably also less familiar with those original historians myself as well since I was born after the point in which the "New Historians" had access to the declassified archives.
Even amongst the New Historians there's a lot of disagreements on things like which side has been more of an impediment to peace and a number of other key issues, with Benny Morris often being highly critical of say Ilan Pappé.
My own views of the history of the conflict and Zionism in general are probably broadly in line with those of Benny Morris. It's important to at least try and understand the history/perspectives of both sides of these conflict. At the same time it's worrying that even a lot of otherwise intelligent individuals would fall for rather overt antisemitic propaganda.
I've taken courses and read books on this subject and lived it in-person. Don't name-drop propagandists at me. Make a substantive point about what statute you're claiming makes it legal to invade Israel in an attempt to conquer it and wipe it out.
Nobody else comes close to Israel in protecting civilians in combat zones.
And let's take a critical eye to that data you linked. I'm having a hard time with the filters but we can see enough without: The fatalities are nearly 90% male. That implies that probably 80% are in some fashion combatants or combatant-adjacent.
And note that the death toll for the recent war includes all deaths. Natural causes, internal combat, rockets falling short (historically, ~25% of Gaza deaths, but probably not this time), combatants and civilians. As well as some that are fake.
And Hamas had the power to end the war at any time--return the hostages, the world would quickly have stopped Israel. Thus we can conclude that Hamas wanted the war despite what it did to their population.
Tell me, given all adult, non-ultra-orthodox, Jewish Israelis, regardless of gender, must mandatorily serve in the military and remain reservists for decades, does this mean most Jewish adults are “combatant adjacent”?
War has a huge logistics tail. That logistics tail is a completely valid target, often considered the primary target in western tactics. (Look at the original Russian attempt to seize Kyiv--Ukraine didn't attack the tanks, it cut them off. The guy driving the fuel truck for those tanks is combatant adjacent.)
Were all the dead women and children “combatant adjacent”? You implied most of those killed were. I’m challenging that assertion. If you keep shifting the definition of your own terms there’s no point having a conversation.
> "Israeli military’s own data indicates civilian death rate of 83% in Gaza war"
The way they came up with this 83% figure is insane, they are essentially claiming everyone killed that hasn't been identified as a named fighter in one specific Israeli military intelligence database is assumed to be a civilian, this logic is of course blatantly misleading as one would not expect Israel to have the capability to identify the name of each and every enemy combatant in a war zone. On top of that the total number killed is a figure published by the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry which is well known to have major accuracy issues.
That list was of those both identified to be terrorist and identified to be dead. Thus, not only does it not count the unidentified dead but it also does not count the identified but not established to be terrorist.
Defensive weapons technology is how you get less conflict though.
When some idiot in the ME decides to shoot something at Israel, the character of the response demanded by the population depends heavily on whether any Israelis die or property is destroyed.
Israel didn't aggressively bomb Gaza till October 7 killed a lot of Israelis, even though they were regularly shooting down Hamas launched rockets with Iron Dome.
There is a practical gulf in political and diplomatic options depending on if an attack lands or does not, so much so that whether or not someone can shoot down incoming weaponry is a factor in some diplomatic decisions (I.e. Iran firing missiles at US bases in Qatar).
> Defensive weapons technology is how you get less conflict though.
I'm not convinced. Responding purely defensively allows your attacker to systematically probe every weakness in your defenses without risk of harm to themselves (e.g. how Russia is playing cat&mouse with the EU).
Frankly where's the evidence of this? My country of Australia has no fear of being attacked, yet we haven't launched an endeavor of conquest of South East Asia.'
Real life doesn't break down into simple narratives. The facts in the Middle East are that post-October 7 Israel aggressively bombarded Gaza at a scale and intensity where it did not previously, and a substantial chunk of the population supported that. In particular, it felt compelled to significantly escalate kinetic action against Hamas and Iran where it had not previously.
Post 9/11 the US aggressively invaded 2 sovereign nations it otherwise had little interest in and occupied them for 20 years.
These are all scales and levels of military action which were precipitated by successful attacks that killed civilians. If 9/11 hijackers had been stopped in the planning stage, does the US still invade Afgahnistan? Probably not - it wasn't on anyone's cards. Iraq maybe but the conditions were set by that strike hitting the way it did.
> My country of Australia has no fear of being attacked
You should watch some Sky News Australia; at least once a week there is a special report on how to prepare for China's invasion - which is never more than two weeks away.
You encourage war and murder. What you just said is that while the Palestinians in Gaza aren't strong enough now to kill and enslave the Jews and Arabs in Israel they will be in the future. And once they are they will do that. And the thought of that makes you hopeful.
Israel invests in defending their civilians with technology like Iron Beam.
In contrast the Gazan government strategically uses humans shields [2, 3] and despite this the majority of Palestinians still support starting this war by attacking civilians on Oct 7th [1]. Defense technology doesn’t help if you don’t want it unfortunately.
Hamas also has hundreds of miles of tunnels which civilians aren’t allowed to use.
To say that israel invests in defense is at least 1/4 untrue, since the US sends billions every year. The US gave them about 7b cash last year, which is around 1/4 of their defense budget, and doesn’t include things like stationing carriers nearby, or doing airstrikes on houthi blockades.
That the US contributes doesn’t take away from the billions Israel did and does invest. The US defense contractors also get a big chunk of that aid.
The US also gives similar levels of military aid to Egypt as well. The EU and US give billions to Ukraine.
Gaza also receives billions in aid; substantial amounts of which has been hihacked and looted. For example this lady summer the UN reported that 88% of their aid trucks in Gaza were looted [1].
> That the US contributes doesn’t take away from the billions Israel did and does invest
Actually it does? It takes about 1/4 away.
> The US also gives similar levels of military aid to Egypt as well. The EU and US give billions to Ukraine.
Yes, the US uses defense aid to further their own agenda internationally, and funnel public dollars into private hands.
> Gaza also receives billions in aid
Food, medical, and infrastructure aid is not the same thing as weapons.
> 88% of their aid trucks in Gaza were looted
Ok? This tells me that both food and food aid are in short supply, if people are willing to take it by force. If myself and my family was starving, i would hyjack food trucks too. Wouldn’t you?
There is no way any group other than Hamas could be operating at that scale. It's Hams taking the aid to use it to control the population. It's not like they were actually starving--Hamas never managed to find a legitimately starving person to point a camera at. Every single person they paraded in front of the cameras had medical issues that were the cause of their problems. Just go look inside a hospice, should we conclude they are starving people?
IPC had to ignore their own definition to declare a famine though. An actual famine involves at least 2 starvations per 10,000 people per day, among other requirements. According to Hamas' own data, Gaza was always several orders of magnitude short of that.
They made up that claim. Hamas never even claimed anywhere near the number of deaths that would comprise famine. And Hamas never managed to point their cameras at anyone starving for non-medical reasons. We have a very clear case of a dog not barking.
Reminder the UN said it could feed the millions in Gaza more than the 1200+ calories per person Israel was letting in. The UN at the same time only fed the 400,000 Sudan refugees 400 calories per person per day.
>> That the US contributes doesn’t take away from the billions Israel did and does invest
> Actually it does? It takes about 1/4 away.
It literally does not. The way that every English speaker uses the word "invests" is exactly the opposite of this. If you're going to speak English, you use words as native speakers use them and you don't make up your own definitions.
> To say that israel invests in defense is at least 1/4 untrue, since the US sends billions every year.
This is factually incorrect. The amount of money that the US gives Israel is completely and totally irrelevant to whether or not Israel also invests their own money in defense.
The fact that the US has a problem with foreign influence literally does not matter for the statement above.
To be clear, I don't agree with the GP's implied suggestion that Israel is more defensive than offensive, but making objectively incorrect statements is not a valid way to refute that.
> To say that israel invests in defense is at least 1/4 untrue, since the US sends billions every year.
That statement is completely false, and is very different than what you said just now.
If you're going to walk back your words because you were proven wrong, that's fine, but don't claim you're "rephrasing" when you're actually changing your claim.
I’m not walking back anything. I said something, you misunderstood, i clarified. I stand by the original wording, as i believe most people are be able to understand my meaning. At some point I have to assume willful misunderstanding on your part
OK, now you're just lying. In the parent thread you said:
> To say that israel invests in defense is at least 1/4 untrue, since the US sends billions every year.
You are clearly claiming that because Israel's defense budget isn't entirely their own spending, that that claim is not entirely true.
Then someone else responded:
> That the US contributes doesn’t take away from the billions Israel did and does invest
If that hadn't been your claim, then you would have agreed with this. But you didn't - you responded and doubled down and made it extremely clear that that was what you were saying[1]:
> Actually it does? It takes about 1/4 away.
Given how incredibly clear you were about your claims, the "revised" statement:
> The defensive and offensive capabilities of Israel is about 1/4 larger because of american tax dollars not their own spending.
...is objectively and factually different.
It's not me who's misunderstanding - given not only the repeated statements that reinforced exactly the same point, and other commentators interpreting it actually the same (because they can read) - it's you who are lying about your original words.
usa aid is typically around $3b-$3.5b . 2024 higher aid is one off due to the war. also (unless i am wrong), good chunk of aid that Israel got from usa during war was in form of loans/guarantees for loans and such
> the Gazan government strategically uses humans shields
This just means Israel knows they're hitting women and children every time they send a bomb their way.
> the majority of Palestinians still support starting this war
Palestine isn't a democracy with well documented preferences. Israel is though, so why don't you say that a majority of Israelis are fine with the killing of women and children in Gaza?
elcritch, you're beating around the bush but strongly suggesting there's a reasonable justification (not just an explanation) for killing women and children if it suits someone's needs. Does this apply just to Israel killing people in Gaza or universally valid? Because I distinctly remember the US going to war over WMD that never existed. So elcritch, are you saying US women and children are fair game now?
1) The average death per bomb was less than 1. Strikes mostly hit things which had already been evacuated.
2) When human shields get hit we blame the side that put them in harm's way, not the side that harmed them. Just look at the criminal trials in police actions--a hostage dies when SWAT hits a place, the murder rap lands on the person who took the hostage even if it turns out to be a police bullet in the hostage.
And your note about WMD--said WMD existed. On paper. We read the paper, didn't realize it was underlings lying to Saddam.
> there's a reasonable justification (not just an explanation) for killing women and children if it suits someone's needs
The Law of Armed Conflict specifies exactly when it considers such a reasonable justification to exist, which is not "never". You don't get to plop down women and children in front of military installations and go "neener neener" like you're a child on the school playground.
Lasers need a straight path through clean air. Israel is a favorable location because Tel Aviv gets 200 or so sunny days a year, but if there are clouds this won’t work or will have to fire at the last moment.
As for drones, they’ll fly lower to the ground to reduce the line of sight.
>Israeli civilians have faced bombardment by tens of thousands of rockets from Gaza for the last 20 years [1].
There's a reason that's been happening, and it's not technical in nature. Technical solutions are thus unlikely to successfully address the root cause.
Technical solutions can lead to diplomatic solutions as it changes the power dynamics.
Will it solve the "root cause"? Probably not, but that's because there's no single "root cause", but it still might lead to some diplomatic resolution.
This does not change any power dynamics. The only time the iron dome has ever come close to failing on a systematic level was when they ran out of interceptors during their own unprovoked war against iran.
When Iran directly, materially, and openly, supports groups or organizations that have as an overt stated goal to destroy Israel, and actively work towards it (both with indiscriminate attacks against civilians, and building infrastructure for future invasions/attacks), I don't think the war is necessarily 'unprovoked'.
We may say that it was unproductive, badly conducted, or a lot of other things, but saying it was unprovoked is like saying that Ukraine has no reasons to attack Iran and/or Belarus. They do have those reasons, because both of those countries directly and materially support their attackers. It just might not be productive to do so (and indeed, Ukraine seems to believe it isn't).
And they didn't provoke a war with Iran. Israel struck those arming Hezbollah. They got somebody high up in the Iranian chain of command. Iran responded with major Geneva violations.
Imagine a scenario where israel doesn't need bomb shelters or sirens since rockets are destroyed almost instantly. Right now even if iron dome works it still greatly disrupts the day to day life in israel (not to mention the pure financial burden of interception)
Now I doubt the technology is anywhere close to that now, but in 10-20 years alongside other technological advancements? Who knows.
Their constant warmongering is why they constantly are being bombarded with rockets.
That you're primarily concerned with disruption to life and financial burden rather than casualties and infrastructure indicates that iron dome is already capable of preventing these rockets from being a serious threat.
The absolute asymmetry of every war they fight is proof enough that the only real solution is a commitment to negotiations and diplomacy. Palestine has under constant siege since long before I was born and they still haven't given up despite having the worst kdr of the last 80 years. They don't care about the laser dome, they will keep fighting.
Also I have doubts about this laser boondoggle, its far more susceptible to atmospheric disturbance and flack than a surface-to-air missile and it relies upon having access to a stable source of electricity during an air raid.
Israel desires to avoid a continuation of the Holocaust.
Iran desires stirring up trouble as a means of taking over countries, and uses the conflict with Israel as a justification. It's working fine for Iran, why would they agree to peace? They never have, just some stuff playing us for fools. I don't support The Felon but tearing up the Iran agreement was a stopped clock thing.
The left thinks everything can be solved with enough jaw, jaw. The right thinks everything can be solved with enough war, war. Both are wrong.
> Palestinian society is deeply propagandized and radicalized
What definition are you using that trips for Palestinians but not Israelis (or practically any other group in the Middle East outside e.g. cosmopolitan Gulf cities)?
It's normally easy to tell apart war and terrorism.
Look at the person who selects the target. What do they believe is at that point? Civilian--it's terrorism. Military/government, it's war or insurgency. Look at the pattern--taking out a guard post to get to the civilians behind does not make it legitimate.
Note that you need to look at the person who selects the target--a soldier in the field often knows little of what they're shooting at. And what do they *believe* is there? When we hit that Chinese embassy it was an intel failure, not terrorism--the bomb was dropped on what used to be in the building. Being wrong doesn't make it terrorism. Missing doesn't make it terrorism.
But when Iran drops a missile on an Israeli hospital and claims they were shooting at a "nearby" (no, there was nothing military within many CEPs of the impact point) military facility it's either terrorism, or since they are state actors, a Geneva violation. Especially as they did not apologize, nor even admit the hospital was hit.
> Look at the person who selects the target. What do they believe is at that point?
We rarely have access to or even knowledge of who this person is, let alone their mens rea.
Any metric based solely on intent is (a) impossible to objectively adjudicate and (b) corrupted by the crazy, who will legitimately believe in fantasies if it serves their ends.
I don’t think you’re wrong. Just that this metric is inadequate. (For what it’s worth, I don’t have a good alternative. My takeaways from the last couple years is that the civilian-military boundary has been irretrievably blurred by hybrid war and non-state actors; the term genocide irreversibly blurred by activists; and the term warm crime rendered irrelevant by the world’s great and regions powers—without exception— explicitly rejecting it as a constraint on themselves. All of this means that the vocabulary we once relied on to make sense of the moral aspect of geopolitics no longer works, which makes discussion a bit confusing.
While we don't have access to their minds we do generally have access to what they say. They think they are shooting at bad guys, the claim is innocents hit without military advantage--if they considered the target valid they'll generally either say what they were aiming at or that the ones hit aren't actually innocents. The Chinese embassy case illustrates what I'm talking about--we admitted we made a mistake and indicated what the intended target was. Nobody challenged the validity of the intended target. Or, multiple times, Israel hits some high profile "innocent", in response to the criticism they release pictures that show the person wasn't an innocent.
Were the Japanese Kamikaze pilots terrorists? No--their targets were clearly military in nature. Likewise, was the US pilot that kamikaed a terrorist? No. (His plane had no hope of making it back to the carrier, he could have bailed out but the only possible rescue would be from the very fleet he was attacking. No path with a meaningful chance of survival, as soldiers in hopeless situations often do he chose to take as many enemies with him as he could.)
The point was regarding how to ascertain a population had been deeply propagandized and radicalized and tell them apart from others. Terrorism is, as you point out, not necessarily relevant to that.
The example of kamikaze pilots also works like suicide bombers to distinguish different groups on those terms.
All in all, what you’ve written has the sense of a rebuttal but is acting as support for my point.
Using one's own children to suicide bomb is no less barbaric than firing a missile? That's not even true in a mathematical sense, let alone a moral one.
Stop using your thought-terminating clichés about terrorism and look at actual stats:
> As of 19 November 2025, over 72,500 people (70,525 Palestinians and 2,109 Israelis) have been reported killed in the Gaza war according to the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) and Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including 248 journalists and media workers, 120 academics, and over 224 humanitarian aid workers, a number that includes 179 employees of UNRWA.
How is killing tens of thousands of people less barbaric than killing thousands of people? What kind of twisted morality do you use to excuse mass murder by missiles but not through suicide bombing?
1) It's the total death toll from all causes, including natural causes.
2) The majority of those "journalists and media workers" were Hamas propaganda people.
3) UNRWA had a higher proportion of it's people identified as terrorists than the population at large.
4) It's what Hamas claimed, without any means of verification. Israel showed about 4k were unquestionably false. Hamas also claimed 10,000 buried in the rubble--which never changed. Then when they started digging after the war only some hundreds were found--and Israel caught them planting bodies to be found.
And, fundamentally, the death toll proves nothing. Blame war on the side that chooses to fight, not on the side that is successful at fighting. Typically they are one in the same as most countries will not launch a war they don't expect to win. But when a little guy goes and tries to beat up a big guy and gets pounded it's still the guy who started it that's in the wrong.
1) It's not. In fact, most scholars agree these numbers are way lower than the real one, as those are only the confirmed deaths.
2) Source? The only places where I can read about it are in far right Israeli or American communications.
3) Source? It seems like Israel was interested in labelling UNRWA as a terrorist organization at some point, but there is no evidence to back up their claim. After all, the IDF is known to shoot at journalists and humanitarian aid workers in their strategy to starve Gaza, so it makes sense they would try to discredit the org.
4) I can't find what you're talking about.
I think it would be more honest if you simply stated that you are fine with the ethnic cleansing in Gaza, rather that argue about who started what while ignoring the century that Israel's settler-colonial project has existed. This isn't country vs country, this is well-funded colonizer vs colonyzee. More akin to the American expansion over natives territory. Did native American attacks back then justify the US in killing them all? Of course not. Same thing here.
Hamas's existence is at least explainable (if not excusable) in the light of a Palestinian population that feared for its lives, and was vindicated in the last few years in thinking that Israel was out to kill them all. Because it is.
1) What scholars? Because everything I see is garbage. Prime example--they compared two different lists of the dead in Gaza. A capture/recapture model to estimate what percent was actually captured. But capture/recapture inherently requires your captures to be independent and the second list was specifically an attempt to catch those missed by the first. Thus the two lists were not remotely independent.
2) Unfortunately, most sources are not willing to report things Hamas does not want reported--reporting things Hamas doesn't like would interfere with their ability to report anything. Thus you're stuck with mostly Israeli sources. But Israel has published lists. And, notably, nobody comes along and shows any problems with the Israeli reporting. It's always dismissed without evidence--and that is pretty strong indication that it's true. In discerning the truth between competing sides look at how each side responds to the claims of the other.
3) Once again, Israel has published lists. And note that you are presuming your conclusion in your argument. You can't claim Israel shoots innocents because Israel shoots innocents. And you also are presenting without evidence the claim that Israel was trying to starve Gaza.
I will not deny that Israel shoots "journalists"--because the propaganda people pretend they are journalists. And, likewise, "humanitarian" aid workers--the aid system was basically controlled by Hamas and used to maintain control over the population. It's the unfortunate reality of almost all "aid" operations--the aid is controlled by the very people who cause the situation and is used to maintain control. Gaza is normal, not an outlier.
4) Israel put out some stuff showing "dead" that weren't. Things like a group of "dead" where the identity numbers were sequential, the names were different, the rest of the details were the same. Really, now, a bunch of people with sequential ID numbers die together???? Especially when sequential ID numbers aren't possible with their system. (The ID numbers have a check digit.)
I am decidedly not fine with ethnic cleansing in Gaza, I just do not think it's going on. Hamas engineered an atrocity to make you think Israel is evil.
Are you fine with the mass killings of civilian populations in Gaza, yes or no?
War is ugly, I'm not trying to make the Palestinians into saints, but the other guy is advocating the insane position that Israel can do no wrong, and that them using excessive force is completely justified.
I feel like I'm losing my mind, why is it so hard to say "killing tens of thousands of civilians is barbaric"??
> why is it so hard to say "killing tens of thousands of civilians is barbaric"??
Because it’s not true unless we’re just saying war is barbaric. Which I agree with. But it’s not useful when trying to delineate justified versus excessive force.
I agree Israel is using excessive force in Gaza. I also think Hamas is a terrorist organisation that seems committed to continuing to do terrorism. I genuinely haven’t figured out how to balance thsr equation, though I think discussing it without calling someone engaging in good faith a monster/genocider/anti-Semite is a good start.
At some point, you have to call out a genocide for what it is. Many are still quick to rationalize it away, or relay Israeli propaganda about the many killed journalists being Hamas terrorists, or humanitarian aid workers also being Hamas terrorists, or the UN orgs also being Hamas terrorists, etc. You get the gist.
This doesn't excuse any crime that Hamas has committed, but anyone still not calling for Israel to move out of Gaza, in light of the many exactions committed by the IDF, is not engaging in good faith, in my book.
The continued killings of civilian populations in Gaza is vindicating the Palestinians in their belief that Israel is legitimately out to kill them all. Because they are. This in turn will create a new generation of "terrorists" who see violence as the only escape. This is also how Hamas was created.
Israel is interested in cleansing the Gaza strip. Whatever the solution to this cycle of violence is (two states, one state...) it first involves stopping Israel immediately and getting the IDF out of Gaza. There is no equation to balance here.
> At some point, you have to call out a genocide for what it is
Maybe. I’ll admit, on this first day of 2026 I am thoroughly confused as to the boundary between hybrid/guerilla warfare and genocide.
More pointedly, the debate becomes alienating when we’re calling each other genociders and anti-Semites.
> This in turn will create a new generation of "terrorists" who see violence as the only escape. This is also how Hamas was created
This is not a great argument for peace in Palestine. One, lots of oppressed populations don’t resort to terrorism. Two, it suggests an independent Palestine would continue to be a security threat to Israel.
> Israel is interested in cleansing the Gaza strip
Let’s be blunter since “cleansing” has similarly been semantically obliterated. Members of Israel’s leadership have expressed views that sound like they want to exterminate Palestinians. Others want to move them to away places, which is bad, but categorically different from the first. Plenty of others, however, just don’t want their kids kidnapped at raves or are angry and polarised in the face of violence.
We can do the same for Hamas. Exterminating Israelis and Jews is an explicit aim of Hamas. I don’t think that means everyone in Gaza who supports Hamas is bent on genocide. I do think that makes them—like Israelis pushing to keep bombing Gaza—relatively unsympathetic. (Them and them specifically. Not their whole group.)
> it first involves stopping Israel immediately and getting the IDF out of Gaza. There is no equation to balance here
Israel has a security imperative. If getting out of Gaza means Hamas reärms over a population that supports another October 7th attack, withdrawal is not in their interest. (If you aren’t using violence, which to be clear, means people continent away deciding—again—how borders in the Middle East should be drawn because they know better than the folks on the ground, you need a solution that’s in both parties’ interests. I don’t think Likud and Hamas are interested in negotiating. I do think Gazans and Israelis are.)
Firstly, I haven’t mentioned terrorism, nor Palestine or Israel in particular (though that was obviously mentioned by others). What I have given is a way - I maintain - that will separate any groups based on how far or deeply they have been propagandised. Using suicide attacks is clearly one way to do that.
It can be used with and without numbers, so referring to the volume of death or the means is not entirely relevant. Firstly, because if we accept that the suicide attacker has been deeply propagandised and radicalised, then there is an argument that they are innocent (at least in the sense that they are also a victim) which only increases they younger they are.
Secondly, it is possible to fire a missile at a group containing only people it would be straightforward to justify using force against (e.g. military targets). That is difficult with suicide attackers given the point about innocence made above, and also given the targets for attacks that suicide bombers often choose or have chosen for them (which is why they are associated with terrorism, to the point that you actually misread my comment to such an extent that you replied with a clumsy straw man).
So, take your time when responding in such situations, it will benefit your response and everyone involved.
Israeli society is no less radicalised, so this is irrelevant. What's relevant is that Israel illegally occupied Palestinian territories under international law and instituted a regime of apartheid on those territories.
You'd be amazed at the amount of radicalization Israeli society gets if you'd bother to look with unbiased eyes. Attacking aid trucks? Spitting at Christians, even tourists? Stealing houses of West Bank people? (Oh must be for that Lebensraum)
Maybe that's one goal you should add to your 2026 list...
>Don't even start with what they did with the Indians.
At least we paid for our own damn genocide. It takes a ot of nerve to complain about americans having a "blind spot" on a country whose military receives at least 15% of its revenue from American taxpayers who are compelled against their will.
No. Yes, there were a few attacks on aid trucks. People who saw aid going to those who were holding Israeli hostages. You realize Israel was under no legal obligation to permit the aid? Don't chant "Geneva", it only requires allowing aid to non-combatants. When there is even a reasonable threat of diversion to military purpose the obligation goes away--and there was not only a reasonable threat, but the vast majority was being diverted.
The only appreciable Geneva violation that Israel engaged in is not sending notice of suspected misuse of civilian things--but this is of no actual importance as the rule exists to avoid mistakes. It wasn't written with a situation where civilian cover was used to the greatest extent possible. For them to have simply said "everything is being misused" would have been a pretty good approximation of the truth.
Thanks for citing the laws that legally clears the starvation of civilian children and elderly, amongst others! Since it's legal, that means it's also morally ethical? Right?
Ok, case closed, let them rot to death! Next problem?
How about next we argue why it was perfectly acceptable to crash 2 planes into 2 civilian buildings. Seems to be in the same ballpark!
How about recognizing who is actually causing the "starvation" (hint: it's never actually been demonstrated)? Israel lets aid in, Hamas seizes it and then points to the people who didn't get it.
Does the "modern world" mean watching their children get deliberately sniped time and time again (confirmed by many 3rd party sources)? Let alone their homes destroyed, land usurped, and then treated as non-humans. Yet again, comments like this shows how they are being dehumanized.
History teaches that genocide, ethnocide or ethnic cleansing is the only way ethnic conflicts truly end.
For Israel/Hamas conflict, genocide of either party is the only way. So hopefully, there will never be a solution and they will just continue kicking the can indefinitely, because it means slaughtering millions.
Except it is...? Jews were living peacefully in Palestine long before the establishment of a judeo-supremacist apartheid state, to the point you had entire refugee boats of Ashkenazis seeking safe harbor from the holocaust, who ironically became the cornerstone founding population of the Jewish state after the Nakba in 1948 killed and forcefully expelled hundreds of thousands of people (it's the ultimate cautionary tale on unchecked immigration lol).
You start to have a problem when you try to forcibly alter the demographics of a region to become majority Jewish, in a region where the majority were not Jews. This is quite literally Zionism 101. If you don't think this is the root cause, what pray tell do you believe it is?
No. The attacks were normal, not news. Think Jim Crow.
And the "Nakba" is mostly illusion. Lots of Arabs left at Arab behest, getting out of the way of the intended destruction of Israel. Oops, didn't work. Israel didn't ethnically cleanse Israel, most of it's neighbors did ethnically cleanse their areas.
And where you go wrong is thinking it was forceful. They bought land and moved to it.
And the root cause is that the Jews threw off centuries of oppression and the Muslims can't stand that. They considered the land conquered. As normal, when a victim throws off the abuser the level of violence goes way up.
There was a lot of inter-community conflict in the years (decades) preceding the formation of Israel, so it wasn't exactly peaceful. That there were some groups (on both sides, though the Jewish ones were far more effective, well-trained, and well-funded) that exploited those conflicts for escalation does not deny that the conflict already existed.
I would also argue that imposing the jizya/dhimmi status, creating "second class citizen status" for non-Muslims was, in and of itself, a form of Muslim-supremacist society in Palestine before Israel existed. Either convert to being a Muslim, or be stuck as a second-class citizen.
> I would also argue that imposing the jizya/dhimmi status, creating "second class citizen status" for non-Muslims was, in and of itself, a form of Muslim-supremacist society in Palestine before Israel existed. Either convert to being a Muslim, or be stuck as a second-class citizen.
100 percent. I've gotten the impression that this not being the case anymore is extremely irritating to extremist Muslims. This issue alone will fuel the conflict forever.
Zionist settlement started in the 1870’s on legally purchased land. Most of that land was uninhabited. Tel Aviv was founded on literal sand dunes in 1908 and is Israel’s most populated area. Jaffa was the closest Arab city which is still predominately Arab. Northern Israel become majority Jewish without military force under the Ottomans and then British empires.
However even then there were regular pogroms and killing of Jews by the Arabs as there had been for centuries before.
The British Mandate also turned away ships full of Ashkenazi Jews Holocaust survivors as well.
Don’t forget the nearly 850,000 MENA Jews expelled from across every Arab country after Israel was created.
Perhaps not, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who was vaguely favourable towards Israel before the invasion, and now, having watched what's been done in the name of "safety" with horror, considers the country a rogue far-right state run by corrupt criminals guilty of a very long list of crimes, just one of which was the creation of one of the most organised sex trafficking and sex abuse networks in recent history.
Quite the record.
But I don't see this as a specifically Jewish thing. There is clearly a cabal of extremely wealthy people who consider themselves above the law. The cabal includes factions of different ethnicities, and they seem to enjoy - and profit from - promoting nationalism and race hate and getting the peasants to wage war on each other.
We seem to be in one of the regular cycles where these crazies get out of control.
I'm sure it's all very entertaining. But no doubt modern PR and astroturfing techniques will make sure no one's opinion becomes so unfavourable that personal accountability becomes a real risk for these criminals.
Even so. It's really not a very satisfactory situation.
Your version is plenty uncut and soggy as well. A significant amount of land buys involved evictions of peasants. There was plenty of violence in the arab revolts against British rule, when Jewish militia acted as British auxiliaries. Pogroms were very rare in pre-modern Arab lands, and usually related to factional politics, since jews often had significant political rights and power. The British suck. Most MENA Jews migrated voluntarily, and there's clear evidence that mossad had projects to heighten tensions in those countries, including even planning the bombing of synagogues.
This is silly... what mass migration happens "voluntarily" lol. MENA Jews weren't even Zionists until they force-became Zionists.
But yeah, good-faith debates should steer clear of the "legally purchased" bit, it's kind of absurd to ignore that buying land from absentee rich landlords and evicting the longstanding residents is not going to (rightfully, IMO) create a lot of animosity.
- Jewish flight/migration to Palestine, neglecting the reality to one extent or another that Palestinian Arabs were there and had aspirations to form a state
- Arab /Muslim nations forcibly ejecting their Jews to Israel in the 50s-70s (ashekenazi Jews are a minority in Israel, most are from Arab counties and Iran), thus fueling the Jewish population there. I can't think of a greater strategic failure from the Muslim perspective here, because Israelis from these countries ended up by proportion being the most extreme right-wing of Israelis (see crazy statements by the chief Sephardic rabbi of Israel as examples, his family is from Iraq I believe). These folks are not going to relocate to Berlin or Vienna any time soon.
- Muslim leaders using the conflict for their internal political purposes-- think Arab nationalist Egypt or Syria or Iraq, or Islamist Iran. I find it had to believe that the leaders of any of these countries care at all about the plight of the Palestinians, in fact, the more Palestinians suffer, the more these political entities gain. Up to a point though-- it wasn't enough for Asad, and Iran will fall too, because people want more than an enemy to focus on
- Muslim chauvinism. This one is underappreciated in my opinion! But in my opinion, a huge driver of the conflict. Muslims just don't want to let go of Jews, Christians and other minorities not being dhimmis in what used to be Muslim land. Muslims demand to be the top dogs in the levant. That's the reality they want to restore, as much as Jewish religious extremists have similar biases.
- ongoing cycle of violence since the 1920s
- organizations like Hamas that exist to resist peace initiatives and, for example, sabotaged the oslo accords by blowing up buses in Israel. Similar extremists exist on both sides, but Hamas was founded explicitly to resist peace and pursue maximalist goals. NGOs like UNRWA also have a stake in the conflict continuing, sadly.
No other conflict like Israel Palestine exists in the world for a reason. Even Ukraine is willing to cede land unjustly to Russia to end that war. Palestinians have been alternating between euphoria and great tragedy for 80 years now and refuse anything but the most maximalist vision, and suffer as a result because it drives away good faith actors that would otherwise support them (for example, liberal Israelis, many successive US administrations). Palestinians are really bad a picking their battles and strategic thinking. October 7th did not go as they envisioned, and only an irrational person would pretend the illusory gains there were worth it, which was pretty clear to me in real time on October 7th, while many Gazans were inexplicably celebrating in the streets.
> Jewish flight/migration to Palestine, neglecting the reality to one extent or another that Palestinian Arabs were there and had aspirations to form a state
I don't think there was any aspirations to form a state in 1880-1900 or at least I haven't seen it.
Yeah, "form a state" isn't relevant. It's the remains of the Ottoman Empire. People were reorganizing into new countries but the Palestinians were in no way a separate population.
After 1948 Egypt and Jordan stepped in and annexed Gaza and the West Bank specifically to avoid the formation of a Palestinian state.
PLO was established in 1964 with purpose to fight Israel. Not to liberate west bank/gaza which according to you were occupied to prevent establishment of palestinian state.
lovely quote on this topic from one of PLO commanders that shows actual state of mind of Palestinians
The Palestinian people does not exist … there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of one people, the Arab nation [...] Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons[...] Once we have acquired all our rights in all of Palestine, we must not delay for a moment the reunification of Jordan and Palestine
I have no idea how this hypothesis ("guns protect from oppressive governments") is still holding people's minds captive. The current regime in the US disproves this every day, constantly eroding civil rights and not even being subtle about it.
And the people with guns mostly either cheer it on or pretend it's not so bad (until they themselves feature in /r/leopardsatemyface).
In the fall of USSR, no one was "afraid to shoot". No one was motivated to do so. Or do anything for the completely failed system that no longer worked for anyone, inside or outside it. By 1991, no one cared for good ol' Union. That's the only reason it died so peacefully in its sleep with virtually no violence - it was so rotten, no one could care for its survival.
And indeed that is how the Shah fell in Iran - the regime was so rotten that even the military elite no longer saw it as worth defending. Will the current regime face the same eventually?
Just like in Soviet Union's case, trick isn't how to topple a regime, a sufficiently rotten one will fall by itself, but how to make sure the country that remains is sufficiently neutered to not become a menace again. It was simply overlooked by the West in 1991: they foolishly fell under the influence of their own propaganda and believed that Communism was the problem and with it gone, there was nothing left to worry about. As it turns out, Russia itself, was the problem. It was easy to solve in 1991 and extremely hard now.
Hopefully it won't be repeated with Iran.
Part of the issue is that it makes it more possible to launch a first strike attack without fear of suffering blows in retaliation, and gives one side of conflict the overmatch that enables leaders to start a conflict thinking they can win without repercussions
Missile defense doesn't really help much for mutually assured destruction scenarios, for Israel it makes more sense due most conflicts they are involved in being much more asymmetric.
1. Just to repeat myself from another comment on this thread, there is no such thing as a defensive weapon. Were it not for the various missile shields, the Israeli state wouldn't act with wanton abandon against its own citizens and its neighbours. All of the various war crimes and terror attacks are a direct consequence of the effectiveness of a "defensive" missile shield.
Let me pose this question to you: if these were purely defensive technologies, why don't we give them to everyone, including the Palestinians? and
2. Israel has already ruled out giving Ukraine the anti-missile (and assumedly anti-drone) defenses [1]; and
3. Many people, yourself included it seems, need to examine these conflicts around the world through the lens of historical materialism.
Take the genocide and conflict in Sudan. The SAF are arguably the ones with the "cheap rockets" here. Should we be giving the RSF anti-drone technology? The RSF are backed by the UAE using US weapons. Why? To loot Sudanese gold.
Why did Russia invade Ukraine? Territory, access to the Black Sea, resources and to create a land bridge to Crimea that had otherwise become extremely expensive to maintain as a colonial outpost. Like, just look at a map of controlled territory.
But why is it in a stalemate? In part because Russia is a nuclear power but also because the West is unwilling to let Ukraine do the one thing it could do to defend itself properly and that is to attack Russian energy infrastructure. Despite the sanctions, Russia is still allowed to sell oil and gas to places like Hungary, Slovakia, France, Belgium, India and China.
Back to the Middle East, we have Yemen, who was devastated by war and genocide at the hands of another US ally, Saudi Arabia.
The solution to these conflicts isn't more weapons, not even "defensive weapons". It's solving the underlying economic conditions that created that conflict in the first place.
> Were it not for the various missile shields, the Israeli state wouldn't act with wanton abandon against its own citizens and its neighbours. All of the various war crimes and terror attacks are a direct consequence of the effectiveness of a "defensive" missile shield.
I'm not sure that's true, before Iron Dome, Israel would respond to many rockets from Gaza by firing mortars back at where the rocket was launched from, often the roof of an apartment building or similar, causing civilian casualties.
After Iron Dome, a lot of rockets were simply intercepted and ignored, because there was no longer political pressure from Israelis seeing rockets land in their villages and wanting to hit back.
I think you have it backwards. Israel tolerated something like ~30k rocket attacks from Gaza (between 2005-2023) before finally launching a major military campaign that sought to remove Hamas from power.
It would normally be absurd to expect a state with military superiority to tolerate ~30k rocket attacks from its weaker neighbor. That was only tenable because Israel's air defenses mitigated the bulk of the damage.
If Israel's air defenses and bunkers suddenly disappeared, Israel would be forced to respond far more aggressively to each terrorist attack.
> The solution to these conflicts isn't more weapons, not even "defensive weapons". It's solving the underlying economic conditions that created that conflict in the first place.
Collectivism will not save us. The day after we abolish markets, prices, and capitalism, there will be as many disagreements about resource allocation as there were the day before. Some of those disagreements will spiral into conflict.
you have the audacity to play the victim card for Israil after the whole world -including you- witnessed live and in HD for over two years what they have done to Gaza poeple?
Do you think Israeli civilians shouldn't be able to defend themselves from Hamas' rockets? If yes - why? If not - what exactly is it that you find so problematic with the parent post?
What you don't understand is the carnage in Gaza is self-inflicted. Hamas attacked knowing what would happen. And knowing that every dead Palestinian was a weapon to use against Israel in the propaganda war. Thus they did everything they could get away with to maximize dead Palestinians.
The only similarity between Golden Dome and Iron Beam is in their branding. An orbital conventional launch platform shares almost nothing with a land-based small-arms directed-energy one.
It's Trump's version of Reagan's Star Wars - it's all bluster that we will not see any result of, and it will be quietly shelved by future governments.
A lot of comments decrying new weapons tech, but I think drone defense tech is particularly critical right now and going to save a lot of lives. Put another way, I don't think we would be against new clothing that made bullets less effective, even if it remains terrible that such clothing is needed.
Especially as AI becomes better and cheaper and suicide drones become more nimble and autonomous. If you have seen any of the horrifying footage out of Ukraine you will understand how badly we need more effective and cheaper drone defense as soon as possible.
In Russia/Ukraine, drones have proven to be a very real threat to deal with (arguably also in Iraq).
What this means is wealthy nations will snatch up or recreate this and deploy it. That will stop smaller resistance forces from either defending or attacking. Depending on the nation in question this could both good or bad. Just like drones, guns, or tanks.
Effectively, this puts the status quo back to where it was before mass drone deployments.
Which, IMO, is better than having swarms of cheap bombs flying around.
Taken to the extreme, I also prefer the current status quo vs. everyone having a nuclear-tipped ICBM, and would welcome a countermeasure if cheap ICBMs became a thing.
this back and forth has been going on since the dawn of industrialized asymmetric warfare. There is no reason to think that this is the finish line in that race.
That laser station will not last in Ukraine an hour and will be destroyed either by missiles or drone swarm.
What Ukraine have found a net launcher is effective and cheap solution against drones and may allow more use of tanks and heavy armor vehicles again in 2026. Then shotguns with a special ammunition is effective. Then against fiber drones a fence with moving wire works surprisingly good to cut the fiber.
The real advantage of laser weapons in this role is a very low consumables cost per shot. A few cents of electricity as opposed to an interceptor missile that could be $50k-$1M. Even shooting down missiles with bullets as in
can cost about $10k a shot because that thing shoots $30 bullets. That kind of laser can even shoot down artillery shells!
The disadvantage is that the beam is disrupted by poor atmospheric conditions such as clouds and turbulence. If the enemy knows you are using it they will attack when conditions are unfavorable for it. It ought to be backed up by something like "Iron Dome".
that one was not so practical because it was powered by mixing two kinds of bleach, which is bad enough when you do it on the ground, worse in the air. The targeting system worked great and I think the assumption was that it would come back when fiber lasers got good enough that it could be electrically powered.
Israel saw over 16,000 rocket attacks last year from fundamentalist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Yemen. The Iron Dome intercepted ~90% of them, resulting in thousands of lives saved.
Iron Beam is the newer incarnation of this technology that uses lasers to intercept incoming rockets and drones with precision and much lower cost. Wonderful technology.
Each Iron Dome interception cost many times more than the cost of the rockets. This will make it cheaper for other poorer nations to afford and operate.
I was bored so I did the math and you are not correct. Even if you don't care about the people themselves, a normal citizen in an industrialized society like Israel has about 40 years of working life. Let's assume for simplicity that some rockets would hit children but others would hit retired people, on average hitting people when they're halfway through their career and would have 20 years of productive work left.
According to Wikipedia [1], Israel has an average GDP per capita of about 60 USD per hour worked, which at 40 hours per week, 50 weeks worked per year over 20 years comes to about 40000 hours of work and ~2.4 million USD of GDP generated. At an income tax of about 30% [2], that means an income for the state of about 800k USD equivalent. If the person dies due to rocket attack, the state would miss out on that. Iron dome interceptors are quite cheap compared to that and the laser intercepts should be an order of magnitude cheaper still.
This doesn't even take into account the sunk costs that industrialized nations incur by every citizen having to attend school for about the first two decades of their lives, mostly funded by the state. That represents a tremendous investment into human capital that would be lost if you let your citizens get shot up in preventable rocket attacks.
So no, human lives are not actually cheap when viewed through the lens of a country, even when completely excluding morals and only looking at it financially. They are in fact quite valuable.
One life can cost as much as you calculated. However, if the attack will kill an unproductive (elderly, disabled or other) person then it could be a net gain instead of loss for the economy.
Perhaps but you while you can maybe predict where the rocket will fall, you cannot reliably predict who it might kill if it hits. People move around and even if you can see it will hit a house for the elderly, you cannot see how many (grand)children are currently visiting. Also the opposite is true: a rocket hitting a child care facility would cause double the economic damage. That is why I used an average in my previous post.
In any case, elderly and disabled are not as useless to the economy as you might suppose. There are many disabled who are economically productive. One of the most capable colleagues I've ever had was a blind programmer. Grandparents often provide things like babysitter services that don't show up in formal GDP measurements but are very valuable nonetheless. Don't count out the contribution of people to society just because they don't have a normal job.
Both sides are right. Life is cheap in many developing nations. My hope is that this tech could help governments in those regions to protect their citizens even when their GDP returns are significantly lower.
And Putin gives a nuke to Iranians then it's game over since Iranians don't care about MAD doctrine. Anyways the risk of the tech falling into Russia's hands is too high. Ukrainians have the smarts to develop it themselves now that it is proven as a viable tech.
Why would Russia give nukes to Iran? The Russians themselves would be harmed by an open nuclear exchange.
No, Putin's threats to Biden and Trump were more along the lines of, 'See the Houthis shooting shipping, imagine that capability spread to rebels and terrorists worldwide'
Everyone cares about the MAD doctrine, although some people with power may pretend they do not, while others may pretend they believe that those people with power don't care.
Disagree--most rockets are determined to fall into unimportant locations and are not engaged. Israel only shoots at the ones that are going to fall on something.
(Although, notably, Israel destroyed one that was going to fall on The Dome, the very location that Islam is supposedly trying to protect from the Jews.)
Anytime somebody makes a claim about a drone operating a firearm, you should be extremely skeptical. There's a reason everyone uses explosive drones, not "drone with a machine gun". Small flying machines trying to fire off rounds doesn't work out.
> submarine launched drones throwing incendiary munitions at a flotilla
Per the Greek coastguard, someone left a lit joint by a fuel canister. Maybe the Greeks are in on the deep conspiracy.. or potheads are just forgetful.
whenever you see someone making the claim that a gun won't work on an aircraft, I urge you to look at our entire aviation history of vehicles with guns strapped on. Planes, helicopters, jet-packs, 'manned platforms', whatever your fancy.
we're not talking about glocks ductaped to DJIs here, and all of these mysterious engineer efforts that 'just doesn't work out' are hurdles that man has faced and conquered before.
What I would suggest is that if anyone trying to give you a technical reason that ends in "It just doesn't work" they are probably unprepared to accurately brief you on the topic.
> I urge you to look at our entire aviation history of vehicles with guns strapped on
Stabilizing moving firing platforms has a fascinating history going back to Bronze Age chariots.
As for planes and helicopters, there is a reason their big guns are mounted into the airframe, and why the biggest cannons in the air are on fixed-wing aircraft.
This is a good article. I disagree with its implications. I would agree that the average us citizen is much too far removed from the defense industrial complex and that creates these situations where a Google engineer (not necessarily this guy) is perfectly willing to help destroy American society with his advertising tech but balks at automating image tagging for the dod's big data lake because would rather have another 9/11 than be responsible for a false positive in the ME.
How is cell phone tracking going to prevent another 9/11? And looking at the historical track record, the DoD has done a lot of killing and very little 9/11 prevention in the past 24 years.
The heuristic is that DoD doesn’t do counterterrorism. I don’t expect DoD to prevent terror attacks just like I don’t expect the FBI to blow up bunkers in Iran. We don’t need numbers to be able to confidently estimate that the number of Iranian bunkers blown up by the FBI is approximately zero.
Sure, until someone says "hey can we stick this on a truck and use it against cars?" "Hey can we stick this on the belly of a plane and use it on a building?" "Hey what happens if we do a flash of this at protestors?"
It’s not going to do anything useful against cars, let alone buildings. It would blind people, and that would be bad, but it’s a very expensive way to hurt people. I think this one is for what it says it’s for.
The point is, why would they bother when there’s cheaper and easier ways to do it? A high tech laser system is great for shooting stuff down because it replaces missile systems that cost even more. If you want to cripple people, why would you use it instead of a cheap gun or baton?
“It could be used to hurt people” doesn’t mean much. You at least need “it could be used to hurt people, and it’s better at it in at least one way than what’s already available.”
Quit listening to the propaganda, listen to the actual claims.
We have one clear noncombatant child death--killed by the device aimed at her father (who was a valid target). We have a handful of people who are underage, but no details about them. Plenty about the one innocent, nothing about the rest. Are they truly that inept, or would looking into the rest reveal they weren't non-combatants?
The fact that they only managed to find one case to parade in front of the cameras says a lot. The beeper attack is probably the best special operations move pulled off in recent times.
Even if your goal is terror, cost effectiveness means you can commit more terror.
The pager attack was incredibly cost effective. It would have cost orders of magnitude more to achieve the same thing by dropping bombs.
Cost isn’t a number subtracted from a bank account. Cost is, how much of this can you actually do?
That’s the whole reason this system exists. Their other systems work fine for shooting stuff down. But they cost too much. That is to say, they can’t shoot enough stuff down. This system can shoot more stuff down.
Countries dont generally invest in shitty weapons when they already have good weapons. Bombs & missiles already exist and are much better than lasers if your goal is to destroy a stationary target.
In Batman Begins, the villian just makes the drinking water toxic. With todays AI and Biotech, one can create a new bacteria or virus and cripple water supply of cities. I am sure a suitable trained AI can get more creative with such low cost attack vectors.
Nah. You can't just engineer some sort of pathogen which will survive water purification treatments, or grow and reproduce in pure water without any nutrients. Real life isn't like the movies.
This just means, the addition of the pathogen has to happen after purification treatments. Viruses can stay dormant and activate only within human body, no need for food.
“Viruses” have a very broad feature set-beyond evoking Batman, it seems like a lot of details need to be hammered out here, even residually chlorinated water can be problematic in maintaining titers.
IMO, These days, public health policy (conspiracy?) seems to be a more efficient way to spread pathogens. Not precise targeting tho.
Won't work very well. Such things need great stability.
And it's not like there's any need of a fancy weapon to do that. This exists to engage high speed targets. Just because you can use a GBU-28 to kill a gopher doesn't mean anyone ever will.
You might be tempted to say "what about a missile shield?" but such a thing allows the owner to act with impunity with levels of violence we arguably haven't seen since 1945.
As a real example of this, the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield and Iran seriously depleted the various munitions used by those air defense systems (eg interceptors, THAAD) and those take a long time to replenish.
I agree if we reframe it as “purely defensive,” though there is a bit of tautology invoked with the “weapon” qualifier.
That said, there is legitimacy to developing defensive arms, even if one doesn’t like the ones doing it.
> the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield
This hypothesis is not sustained by Iran’s reduced firing rate throughout the conflict. All evidence suggests Iran lost its war with Israel and would lose it again if they go for round 2.
> You might be tempted to say "what about a missile shield?" but such a thing allows the owner to act with impunity with levels of violence we arguably haven't seen since 1945.
I would still say "what about a missile shield?".
If a missile shield is a weapon, because of its affordances, then any object is a weapon. And while that's marginally true I don't think we get anywhere by entertaining category errors.
If something enables aggression, because it makes counter attacks unreasonable, that seems like a fairly nice thing to have more of, in a world where destruction is far too easy and construction is fairly hard.
> If something enables aggression, because it makes counter attacks unreasonable, that seems like a fairly nice thing to have more of
You’re imagining a world where this kind of tech is equally distributed. It’s not. Israel spends something like $30b/year in defense (in part due to ~$7b/year from the US). Gaza has something like $0.3b to spend. The consequence of that asymmetry is one of them has a missile shield, the other has more than 80,000 dead citizens, famine, and virtually no infrastructure left standing.
Gaza's "air defense" is hundreds of miles of tunnels, civilians just aren't allowed to shelter in them. Hamas having better technology wouldn't change the fact that they're not interested in protecting civilians.
I’m not going to defend hamas’ choices, but i think it’s disingenuous to say that they have the ability to protect the people of gaza. A few thousand fighters in tunnels is possible, but millions of civilians? And wouldn’t that be more of this “using human shields” stuff people like to point out so often?
I am imagining a world, where cheaper access to defensive technology will make defense more viable. That's seems like it will simply be true directionally.
If you want society to be more vulnerable to military action, then the biggest innovation is health care. Improved health care is what allowed nations to create and maintain larger military forces. Through out history, disease and malnourished caused more death by a large margin than actually violence in combat, and many war campaign stopped suddenly because one or both sides became unable to continue.
I think they mean communicable diseases, not combat injuries. For example, around 2/3rds of the military deaths in the American civil war were from disease, not combat. I don’t think much of the medical advances that prevent that came from combat medicine.
Right, those are relatively minor improvements compared to soldiers no longer dying en masse from typhoid, smallpox, measles, etc. Good improvements to be sure, but not quite as significant.
That’s gross. You’re basically saying that hundreds of millions of people need to be held as hostages to ensure good behavior, and that trying to rescue those hostages is morally wrong.
> As a real example of this, the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield and Iran seriously depleted the various munitions used by those air defense systems (eg interceptors, THAAD) and those take a long time to replenish.
Lol no, Iran was utterly humiliated in this conflict, and outed as a paper tiger.
I didn't mean that Israel doesn't do any crimes, but still the main things that triggers all the rockets, terror attacks etc. is Israel existing. Better defence for Israel will make the region safer, including even for Palestinians
Could definitely be used in an offensive capacity. I don't think it'll be a red alert 2 style prism cannon, but I do think it can be used to gain air superiority. With a long enough runtime, this thing could definitely take out a plane.
That said, it's pretty tame. We can already take out planes with flak cannons. This is just more efficient.
I think the historical relationship between war and human societies is deeper than many like to admit. We often act as if advancing technology, and some societies well-being, have fundamentally changed human behavior, but in reality conflict and the use of force have been central to how groups have interacted for millennia. The peace utopia doesn't click.
This isn’t an endorsement of corruption or violence; it’s just a recognition that human social organization has long involved the use of force alongside diplomacy, negotiations, trade, and other political instruments. The modern/post-modern/meta-modern isms may change how we fight, but it doesn’t by itself make the underlying dynamics disappear.
The re-edited title frames this as an anti-drone system but this was foremost developed as an anti-rocket system.
Hamas and Hezbollah MO since the 1990s was based on bombing Israeli towns with statistical rockets and this system is supposed to reverse the cost equation (cheaper than those cheap rockets)
The rockets are very imprecise, but a large number of them, hitting the territory of a town, will deal damage, bodily harm, and death at random, due to statistics. It's Monte Carlo bombing of sorts :(
They say it's first operational system in it's class, but it seems very similar to the Australian Apollo system, with Apollo being able to go up to 150kW
It's also similar to the British DragonFire and US HELIOS
I think the major difference here is that the Iron Beam is operational, as in finished trials, delivered to an armed force and actually was in active use in the previous war for more than a year
Good question, probably depends a lot on how much energy actually makes it to the target some distance away. And then how much is actually absorbed. Probably depends more on the power density then, rather than total power?
Can't imagine they get a very small spot at multiple km unless they use gigantic lenses or multiple independent laser focused on the same spot
I also wonder the extent to which the effectiveness is reduced by painting the projectile white or wrapping it in aluminum foil. Maybe 100kw is so large that it simply does not matter at that power level.
It'll get a lot of time to react at that energy as it's not going to "instantly" fry anything*. That's probably less energy/m2 than consumer heat guns, especially if consider that these drones are likely going to get sprayed in reflective paint. Easy defense for the drone would be just: get into a spin to get roasted evenly -> shut off -> fall for a few hundred meters, cooling using air that rushes by to counteract the laser further -> catch itself once it lost the laser.
That would force these laser systems to point each drone until it either visibly goes up in flames or impacts the ground (which means you also need to be able to track them all the way down), otherwise you can't be sure it won't just snap back to life once you started engaging the next drone.
I don't feel like 10kw/m2 would be anywhere near useful. It's gotta be more than that.
* Stadium floodlights aren't going to instantly grill any bird that flies in front of them either, and they reach that ballpark.
As the sibling comment notes, these days 400a residential service is available as an option in many places.
One home actually consuming close to 400a is pretty rare, but it's possible mainly in gas-free builds, if using things like electric tankless water heaters (a bit niche) in addition to multiple EV chargers, a range, dryer, etc.
Maybe a better way to convey that 100kW is “small” is to point out that industrial sites all around us, such as smaller datacenters, are well into the MW range.
There is 400 amp residential service you can get 80 amp 19.2 kw level 2 chargers.
You would need 5 80 amp charger to approach 100kw but with other loads in a large house, I have seen large HVAC systems and elaborate pools with lazy rivers etc that can add up very quickly which is why they had 400 amp service.
100kw isn't really that much, a modern EV can put out 3 times that from its battery pack into the motor for short bursts and easily sustain 100kw until drained.
480v 200 amp 3 phase commercial supply can provide 100kw continuous and would be some thing used in a medium sized office building.
Huh, to what degree is this technology gatekept by battery advances?
A few decades ago lasers were dismissed because they involved chemical reagents for high power and explosive capacitors for even low-power applications.
> Huh, to what degree is this technology gatekept by battery advances?
Not too much. The power delivery was doable even 15 years ago. It would have just been more expensive and heavier.
The bigger issue I believe would have been the lens and tracking capabilities. For the tracking to work you need some pretty good cameras, pretty fast computers, and pretty good object recognition. We are talking about using high speed cameras and doing object detection each frame
> The power delivery was doable even 15 years ago.
Not really. It took a long time for solid state lasers to make it to 100KW. That's the power level military people have wanted for two decades.
Megawatt chemical lasers are possible, and have been built. But the ground based one was three semitrailers, and the airborne one needed a 747. Plus you ran out of chemicals fairly fast.
I took 'power delivery' to mean the systems that facilitate driving the energy into the weapon, not the beam itself -- although now under consideration of the technology I think we should probably avoid the use of the phrase 'power delivery', without a projectile being involved that's essentially the entire concept.
A 100KW generator is no big deal. It's a truck Diesel engine coupled to a generator. Trailer-mounted, it can be towed with a pickup truck. It's a standard rental item for larger construction projects.
A 100KW laser is a big deal.
The big problem with this as an anti-drone weapon is that, unlike artillery shells or unguided missiles, drones can operate close to the ground, and the laser needs line of sight.
If these things are even 50% efficient, then power delivery is really not a problem these days. Most EVs have no problem delivering 200kW for quite a few seconds at a time, limited mostly by components getting warm. Higher-end EVs are generally rated for 300-500kW.
It would by amusing to see one of these lasers mounted on an EV, possibly with a small range extender to recharge it on the go.
It’s missing almost all technical details, which seems fishy to me. But I’m sure this defense company is honest and has a system that works great and so that’s why no technical details are needed. /s
When you're playing with nukes it actually is rather effective, not from a standpoint of chaff (you don't bring it) but the ionization of the nuke makes a radar blocked zone and the following missile is going very, very fast--makes a bunch of progress while the defenders are blind. It's also why we don't like nuclear anti-sub weapons--the dead zone lasts for hours, there's no way to know if you actually got the target.
But a drone is small and slow. You'll need an awful lot of drones to punch through defenses this way and the whole thing goes out the window when the laser pops drones farther back in line. And chaff only denies a small area and for a short time.
You’re right for ambush drones of the sort e.g. Hamas could launch. For the ones that would stream in from Iran, which Israel needed American help defending from last time, I’m not sure that’s the case.
The thing that worries me isn't the drone/anti-drone escalation. It is the fact that these weapons aren't actually limited to anti-drone use. Recently we have seen clear examples of countries, including Israel, that will use automatic id technology to mass tag a population. If you then have tools that can automatically track and mass kill, which this type of weapon represents, then we have reached a type of warfare that is new in the world and deeply scary. It isn't hard to imagine a scenario where person x is killed since they are marked as a 'bag guy' and as part of being marked every person they were next to for the last few days was also marked as likely enough to be bad guys to kill as well. All that has to be done is push a button. It is a scary, and unfortunately all to possible, future if not now.
For antipersonnel use, guns are perfectly adequate and guns on tracking turrets have been widely deployed (for example, CIWS). The underlying technology is a ballistic calculator and a fast panning turret. Modern ballistic calculators, weather stations (a small device about the size of a cellphone), and good quality ammunition allows for incredible precision with small arms -- hitting something 25cm in diameter at 1000m is something people can do with these tools.
A weapon like this can't really "mass kill" -- it is for point targets -- but we have long had tools that can automatically track and kill. Why don't we employ them to shoot at people? We have the tagging technology, &c, as you mention.
One reason is that positive identification really does matter a lot when designing and developing weapon systems that automatically attack something.
The anti-missile use case is one of the most widespread uses for automatically targeted weapons in part because a missile is easily distinguished from other things that should not be killed: it is small, extremely hot, moves extremely fast, generally up in the air and moves towards the defense system. It is not a bird, a person, or even a friendly aircraft. The worst mistake the targeting system can make is shooting down a friendly missile. If a friendly missile is coming at you, maybe you need to shoot it down anyways...
Drones have a different signature from a missile and recognizing them in a way that doesn't confuse them with a bird, a balloon, &c, is different from recognizing missiles -- but here again, the worse thing that happens is you shoot down a friendly drone.
And note an advantage to lasers--when you fire ordinary stuff it falls back. C-RAM is specifically designed that misses detonate while still in the air, but no munition has a 100% fusing rate, you get duds. Nothing falls back from the laser.
CWIS is pretty massive, not that this isn't still big, but I think this is taking a miniaturization turn, is upping the accuracy and number of engagements it can handle significantly and potentially upping the range especially in urban environments. CWIS in an urban environment would cause chaos and a lot of collateral damage to buildings but you can now be very sure that only your intended target is being hit so people could die without all the optics of buildings crashing down. It is much easier to have a war when the cameras don't see the destruction. Positive ID is huge, if you really care about it, but even with perfect positive ID if a government is ok with genocide then everyone is a valid target. Are you a male older than 13? You are a combatant and will be killed once you are in sight. Did someone help you in any way (like your mother of family giving you food?) They are also combatants. It is unfortunately not a stretch with modern tools to see this happening in real time. This weapon is, unfortunately, on an inevitable path.
CIWS is big but this has nothing to do with it -- it's actually easier to make a small turret, and small arms precision has been well understood for a long time. Put a 6.5mm Creedmoor on a computer controlled turret -- 6.5mm Creedmoor is generally accepted to be usable to 1km or more.
Range is limited in urban environments because of obstructions -- even the range of CIWS is far too great to be useful.
There hasn't been a real possibility for a long time, I don't think -- it's just not an easy use case.
Are you a male older than 13? You are a combatant and will be killed once you are in sight.
This is exactly the kind of thing that is unworkable.
(A) You don't want to shoot all those people. It's rare if ever the case that even 10% of those males are actually combatants. Even in Germany at the end of the WW2, I doubt it was that high.
(B) What if your own people make a breakthrough and take control of an area, and have all these machines with wildly nonspecific rules shooting at them?
Range due to obstacles is greatly overcome with altitude. My point about the 13yo is that -you- think it is unworkable, but a country that doesn't mind the word 'genocide' thinks it is a fine definition. Camera tech quickly went this route right? 'you could mount that camera but we haven't done it and therefor won't' turned into multiple cameras covering every square inch of a city from multiple angles once the tech was easy enough. The 'easy enough' trend is clear here. Miniaturization, precision, ease of maintenance, etc make the reasons this hasn't been done rapidly fall away and make it clear that it will be done. There is a clear argument that is isn't, yet, realistic to be done but this is a clear step in that direction.
I don't think there is a clear argument that it isn't realistic to be done from a technology standpoint -- in other words, I don't think this laser meaningfully changes things from a capabilities standpoint. The necessary miniaturization and precision are available.
Now, you may think I have the facts wrong, here -- that we haven't had the kind of precise turret before, or that we can't deliver small arms ammunition with great precision -- but you don't come out and say that: you haven't said I have bad facts.
If we accept that the technical capabilities have been there for a while, then we need another explanation for what the hold up is. I have offered an alternative, which is that it comes down to doctrine or operational issues -- it's not easy to see how to deploy a weapon system that automatically targets people without creating huge practical problems. I offered two concrete cases in my earlier comment. Here again, you haven't really spoken to them: you haven't said, for example, A is not a problem and here's why not. You have just ignored them.
It is really starting to look like you have a story and you are sticking to it.
My argument is that bullets move slow, can miss causing obvious damage to surrounding infra that shows up on cameras, that they are loud and that minaturization is important to making this a real trend. You started with CWIS which is massive and has a lot of maintenance. I don't have information on the small precise turrets you mentioned. Please provide it. Either way my arguments still stand. What may have not been done in the past because it was technically possible but not practical is now quickly becoming technically possible and practical and therefore will be built. We are seeing minaturization, simplification and movement towards a weapon system that minimizes camera unfriendly damage while also seeing a massive improvement in surveillance identification and tracking tech. The trend is there and it is pretty clear that it leads to a capability to track a city down to the individual and to be able, at any time, to hit a button to kill a bunch of people. This is a capability that will be developed and what is morally right never stops weapons development, just what is practical. We need to have the discussion sooner rather than later about how to handle these weapons on the battlefield and just as importantly how to keep them away as 'peacekeeping' use in civilian populations.
It seems incredibly hard to imagine what else you would do with a ground based laser other than shoot at incoming projectiles. What exactly are you expecting the Israelis to do? Change the laws of physics?
Truth is it's already happening, this is how "Lavender" and "Where's Daddy" were used to collectively punish entire families of what a poorly trained AI model thought may or may not be a Hamas fighter
Drone tech will adapt, as it has been in the russia/ukraine conflict.
A small, fast, autonomous drone flying between trees and buildings, avoiding obstacles and not flying in a straight line could destroy such an expensive system with very little explosive.
I think they're hoping this will be useful against long range cruise missile style drones, not hyper agile FPVs. Agile FPVs have not been a major threat from Iran vs Israel.
Does israel get a lot of fog and rain? Might this be part of a layered defense?
This system was originally built as a cheaper version of Iron Dome, useful against dumb, slow, predictable trajectory Hamas rockets. The new drone branding is a twist, but of course it's fully usable against things like the Iranian Shahed drones that are basically slow, prop driven cruise missiles.
If someone got close enough that a normal FPV drone like what is seen in Ukraine was in play, I don't think these laser stations would survive for long. Nape of the Earth followed by a barrage of very inexpensive exploding drones.
yeah no footage of the system in operation, no demo reel. seems like a feelgood measure. even if such footage existed and was real the things you mention would be cheap and easy.
Gaza (Hamas), the West Bank (Fatah), and Lebanon (Hezbollah) are the reason this technology is needed in the first place: violent religious fundamentalists firing cheap rockets at Jewish cities because of religious hatred. Over 16,000 rocket attacks on Israel last year alone.
Thanks to the Iron Dome technology, nearly 90% of such attacks were intercepted, saving thousands of lives.
This new Iron Beam technology is more precise and cheaper, and will likely save even more lives.
That's not how it looks like though with the way Israel acts like the judge, jury and executioner of the region. You get the feeling that only Israeli lives count in the Middle East.
Does a reference to "...the judge, jury and executioner..." really make sense in armed conflict? Is there really a judge or a jury? There isn't really even an executioner, in the sense of a lawful delegate tasked with carrying out the result of adjudication.
One of the reasons armed conflict is bad is there is really no justice in it and no time for justice. Justice starts to be possible when security is established, and security is established through armed conflict or a strong norm not to get into it -- as we see presently in Europe, where many countries with meaningful territorial losses and weird borders (exclaves, &c) have elected to just never settle those things.
Back when decent civilization was a thing, there were rules of engagement, conduct, the pursuit of security, and strategic goals which didn't include active genocide of civilians.
Now, granted, we've witnessed horrible things in wars that don't match up to order and clarity of my previous sentence. But there were end goals that made sense.
Sorry, genocide, apartheid and the establishment of a religious-fascist state at the behest of Israeli ring-wing fascists that wouldn't put a foot wrong in Hitlers RKF, isn't an end goal I'd say justifies the means, ends or anything in between.
The establishment of security to the denial of all else, isn't the only dish on the table.
Hamas chooses to fight in urban locations. And keeps the civilians in place at gunpoint.
Consider an attack for which Israel was blamed for a large number of civilian casualties. Israel had given warning they were going to hit the building, get out. Reality: Hamas ordered all the neighbors to rush to the roof of the building to keep Israel from hitting it. Too slow, they were still inside when the bomb landed.
Even if that were true - and it's likely true in some cases - the disregard Israel has shown has been appalling. You don't get out of this by blaming Hamas. You simply don't. If you believe you do - I'll be writing you off as a disgusting apologist.
I'm not going to rehash the war crimes Israel has committed during the last two years. It's likely a waste of time as you already appear to be said apologist. A useful tool to those I don't see as any different to Nazi expansionists ...
Always based on nonsense. The number that matters is civilians per combatant--and for urban combat where there hasn't been an evacuation Israel far outperforms every other country. Every other--they make us look bad.
> Back when decent civilization was a thing, there were rules of engagement, conduct, the pursuit of security, and strategic goals which didn't include active genocide of civilians.
What period of human history are you referring to exactly?
you could alternatively pount towards israeli expansionism, which is a bit more likely than religious extremism. demolish peoples homes and kidnap their families, and theyre gonna respond in whatever way they can.
i expect the iron beam is going to make a lot more deaths, just of people israelis dont consider human. wooo
Israeli expansionism would be easy to stop if there were some reason to. But Israel knows that it's just a pretext, the war exists because Israel exists. Thus it is not worth the effort and political capital to stop the settlers. And note that the problem is blown far out of proportion--most "settlers" live in Israeli cities. Most "settler attacks" look an awful lot like self defense.
This is hasbara. You need to learn more about Israeli history. Hamas was elected with the support of Netanyahu et al. And 50% of the people in Gaza weren’t even alive when Hamas was elected. (However many of them remain. The death toll after Oct 7 will probably be around 500,000 dead)
Israel has never been interested in a peace deal.
It is a settler colonialist project in the finest traditions of such with the aim of conquering the entire region. And the US and friends support it for racist and capitalist reasons.
Hamas was not elected with the help of Nethanyahu, the Prime Minister at the time was Ariel Sharon.
Israel supported the PA who wanted to postpone the elections due to the obvious Hamas victory yet Bush pressured to have these in order to democratize the middle east.
The end result was a Hamas victory and subsequent blockade policy which was supported by the Quartet
> violent religious fundamentalists firing ... cities because of religious hatred
Some tend to be more introspective:
Shahak's Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel picked up on the theme in explaining its pervasive, destructive influence in Israeli politics, the military and society. He noted that substituting German or Aryan for Jewish and non-Jews for Jews makes it easy to see how a superiority doctrine made an earlier genocide possible and is letting another happen now. Shahak called all forms of bigotry morally reprehensible and said: "Any form of racism, discrimination and xenophobia becomes more potent and politically influential if it is taken for granted by the society which indulges in it." For Israeli Jews, he believed, "The support of democracy and human rights is... meaningless or even harmful and deceitful when it does not begin with self-critique and with support of human rights when they are violated by one's own group. Any support of human rights for non-Jews whose rights are being violated by the 'Jewish state' is as deceitful as the support of human rights by a Stalinist..."
Kook was Israel's first chief rabbi. In his honour, and to continue his teachings, the extremist Merkaz Harav (the Rabbi's Centre) was founded in 1924 as a yeshiva or fundamentalist religious college. It teaches that, "non-Jews living under Jewish law in Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) must either be enslaved as water carriers and wood hewers, or banished, or exterminated."
Chief military rabbi, Brigadier General Avichai Rontzki, called Operation Cast Lead a "religious war" in which it was "immoral" to show mercy to an enemy of "murderers". Many others feel the same way, prominently among them graduates of Hesder Yeshivat schools that combine extremist religious indoctrination with military service to defend the Jewish state.
Others in Israel teach the extremist notion that the 10 Commandments don't apply to non-Jews. So killing them in defending the homeland is acceptable, and according to Rabbi Dov Lior, chairman of the Jewish Rabbinic Council: "There is no such thing as enemy civilians in war time. The law of our Torah is to have mercy on our soldiers and to save them... A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail."
In June 2009, US Hasidic Rabbi Manis Friedman voiced a similar sentiment in calling on Israel to kill Palestinian "men, women and children". "I don't believe in Western morality, ie don't kill civilians or children, don't destroy holy sites, don't fight during the holiday seasons, don't bomb cemeteries, and don't shoot until they shoot first because it is immoral. The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle)."
...
Though a minority, Israel's religious community wields considerable influence politically, in the military and society overall.
...
How the future balance of power shifts from one side to the other will greatly influence the makeup of future Israeli governments and determine whether peaceful co- existence can replace over six decades of conflict and repression. So far it hasn't, and nothing suggests it will any time soon; not while extremist Zionists run the government, serve prominently in the Israeli army, and -- according to critics -- are gaining more power incrementally.
I mean... let's not throw stones from an equally spectacular glass house.
What a remarkably misleading copypasta you have there.
Rav Kook was not Israel's first rabbi. He died in 1935 - a full 18 years before Israel's rebirth.
Nor was Kook the founder of Zionism. The belief that Jews should be able to return to our historic homeland has been a belief and conviction for religious and secular Jews for at least two millenia.
That you can find individuals, such as a R. Friedman (not even an Israeli!) with extreme views should not surprise anyone. Nutpicking is easy. Jews, like any other group, have fools and extremists in their rank. Israel is a plural democracy with 2 million Arabs, 7 million Jews, thousands of Christians and Druze, all with representation in the multiparty Knesset.
Hamas's evil, however, is not nutpicking. Hamas' founding charter in its opening paragraphs calls for the destruction of Israel and its conquest of the land in the name of Islam. It is genuinely intrinsic to the organization.
The moral argument for a modern, rights-based society is cleanly on Israel’s side. I’m glad they’ve developed this technology, so they can continue defending themselves at a lower cost to their citizens. The engineers involved have done a very good thing.
Your snide tone can’t obscure that the moral issue is straightforward, if you’re aiming at a world where people can be free to live, grow, and flourish. If you want a society that enables builders and engineers to express themselves by creating new things, i.e., on in which people are permitted to think, then you are aligned with Israel’s basic cause.
The central difference is that Israel’s government is essentially secular and free, whereas its enemies — especially Hamas — are essentially theocratic and totalitarian. In Israel, the general trend is that people of all types, including Arab Muslims, have rights and live happy, free lives. If Hamas was to conquer Israel, as is their stated aim, those same Arab Muslims would have no rights - those individuals would be oppressed by exactly the type of vicious theocrats you falsely suggest Israel is composed of.
Last, to clarify the kernel of truth that your point relies on through distortion: while it is true that Israel contains a set of backwards theocratic tribesmen, their importance is marginal. Tel Aviv’s builders and entrepreneurs are the dominant cultural force in Israel, and they are proponents and practitioners of secular modernity.
Do not falsely conflate a marginal group with Hamas’ explicit cause, which is to destroy Israel’s free society and replace it with religious tyranny.
Unless, perhaps, that is what you really regard as moral?
The "backward tribesmen" are currently providing the Minister of Finance/special Minister for the West Bank (Smotrich), Minister of Police (Ben Gvir), Minister of Diaspora Affairs that happens to also manage access to aid orgs in gaza (Amichai Chikli), Minister for Cultural Heritage (Amihai Eliyahu), Minister of Settlements and National Missions (Orit "Time of Miracles" Stook) and probably others. So much for "marginal influence".
> In Israel, the general trend is that people of all types, including Arab Muslims, have rights and live happy, free lives. If Hamas was to conquer Israel, as is their stated aim, those same Arab Muslims would have no rights - those individuals would be oppressed by exactly the type of vicious theocrats you falsely suggest Israel is composed of.
The Arab Israelis have those same rights on paper but face discrimination in practice. But that's beside the point and you know it. What about the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank who are under Israeli rule but have no rights and no representation in Israel at all? But I guess all seven million of them are "Hamas" and therefore don't count as humans?
Also note that while the secular liberals from Tel Aviv and the deeply religious settlers from the West Bank disagree on lots of things, they have no fundamental disagreement on the occupation.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad shooting thousands of rockets before, during and after October 7 massacre is documented[1] by Wikipedia (that does have documented anti-israel bias[2])
When does this cease to justify any possible retribution? How many murdered palestinian children, or emergency workers, or aid workers balances this out? How much torture of prisoners?
Sorry but doesn't fly. Also Islam has nothing to do with Palestinian resistance. This theme of "Palestinians and Muslims are all Jihadists and all seek to kill Jews" is also getting really really old.
2026 will bring more enlightenment to the masses. Also, Israel loves messing with wikipedia as it has done for years.
Can you refute anything the article about thousands of rockets launched by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad says?
As another poster said the name of the terrorist group (that you call palestinian resistance) is Palestinian Islamic Jihad. You can take it up with them why they decided to associate Jihad with Islam and Palestine.
Hamas - an organization designated as terrorist by my country - another entity that you refer to as Palestinian resistance - is an offshoot of Muslim Brotherhood and is a fundamentalist Islamist organization that has documented history of targeting civilians since its inception, including killing hundreds of dancing kids/young adults at the Nova festival on October 7
Please dispute the facts with something more solid that this doesn’t fly
Indeed, Abu Zaydeh is well aware that for the past two years the
Hamas leadership had been talking about implementing "the
last promise" (alwaed al'akhir) – a divine promise regarding
the end of days, when all human beings will accept Islam.
Sinwar and his circle ascribed an extreme and literal meaning
to the notion of "the promise, " a belief that pervaded all their
messages: in speeches, sermons, lectures in schools and
universities. The cardinal theme was the implementation of the
last promise, which included the forced conversion of all
heretics to Islam, or their killing.
From where I'm seated, Israel needs to be de-Nazified - let alone given Iron Dome technology. Perhaps then they wouldn't need the technology to begin with.
So will we get drones coated in mirrors and temperature sensors that automatically move them away from these weapons quickly? Or is the laser just too powerful?
Its really hard to make near perfect mirrors that stay perfect in rough conditions. Mirrors arent a reasonable defense to laser weapons outside of scifi.
FYI that source is associated with Hamas presence in Europe, acts as a Hamas propaganda piece and previously invented news such as Palestinian organ theft by Israel.
There was a genocide committed against Bangladeshi Hindus by Pakistan and another being done right now by Bangladeshi govt in power now.
A genocide is being committed in Nigeria by boko haram. Another in Sudanese war committed and funded by uae and other Arab nations.
But let me guess, the only genocide worth committing your verbiage is the one where a certain people belonging to the favorite religion is facing issues after voting in a terrorist organization by the name of Hamas which went in and attacked a community which was persecuted and butchered for close to 2500 years. All provoked by a religious ideology and Arab theocratic pan nationalism.
This technology will only yield escalations and human violence. Israel continues to build more of these technologies bringing only more violence more than what we saw in Gaza for 2 years straight. Everywhere where these technologies are being developed are contributing to this human disaster.
Mirrors are not effective enough. Shielding drones from energy weapons seems like a similar problem to entering Earth’s atmosphere, you want to shield it in a way that will blast away safely and ideally diffuse the laser, so the energy is spread over a larger space.
I suspect larger lasers will likely aways win, since there is only so much shielding can do. At which point we could end up with transformers like drones that are built to be broken apart mid flight and yet still deliver damage.
I feel like defending drones could become possible with energy weapons but only under ideal weather conditions.
Likely cheaper to just coat the real drones in an aerogel or similar light weight, high thermal resistance material. It's an arms race still, but one with a reasonable amount of asymmetry in favour of an attacker.
No, but an AI drone like the one Turkey has can probably detect the source of the beam by hiding behind some sacrificial/decoy drones and watching them blow up then shooting a missile at the laser source. It's not like the laser is coming out of thin air.
actually it's for shooting anything that is close enough and can be intercepted.
during the war with hezbollah (drones were issue due to topography) lower power version of iron beam was deployed on trial bases and scored around 40 intercepts
Shaheds are heavy and big and I doubt that the new laser system can damage them. An interceptor drone is much cheaper and effective against them. This is more like defense against smaller FPV drones targeting bigger anti-missile systems.
Lots and lots of drones--it's just the drones were all picked off, the only things that got through were some of the ballistic missiles. Most of which were aimed at things that they shouldn't have been shooting at in the first place.
And Iron Dome scored on the ballistic missiles, I would assume Iron Beam also could. When it's coming down on it's target it's slowed by the atmosphere and it has no defense other than being fast.
There isnt much information here. What is the total power per m^2 and what is the frequency (range). As we know the sun alone is 1kW/m^2 over quite a range.
On the last day of the year, I am taking a few minutes to linger on this. At face value, most would agree with this, myself included. But I think we can dive one layer deeper. There are different schools of thoughts whether mankind is inherently good or evil. Over the years, I have become pretty firm believer that every person has the innate capacity for both good and evil, and the outcome is determined by both character and circumstances. Solzhenitsyn famously wrote (quote by Gemini):
"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil."
If you subscribe to this, then a weapons system can also be a force for good, if used by an entity for the purpose of "peace through strength". The strength keeps our innate capability for evil in check, as the consequences for evil would be guaranteed. A case in point is the MAD doctrine for nuclear weapons which has prevented a world war for the last 80 years.
I'd appreciate philosophical replies. Am I wrong, either in a detail or at the core of the argument? Are there additional layers? I would like to kindly ask to keep replies away from views on the specific players in this specific press release. We'd just be reiterating our positions without convincing anyone.
We are also lucky a miscalculation didn’t occur during the Cold War resulting in millions of nuked folks. But, not sure what the alternative is. Best idea I’ve heard is for everyone to stop reproducing.
I totally understand the need for weapons. It is just makes me sad.
And I think Solzhenitsyn is wrong. There are psychopathic people that have no good in their hearts. Sure, with the right upbringing that could be kind and good but at a given moment they are what they are... psychopaths.
More to the point, "technology is neither good, nor bad, nor neutral, it just exists". Ultimately all tools can be used for good or bad purposes and what matters is the people who wield them.
This is separate from the argument over whether MAD is philosophically good. MAD is not an argument about technology. "Peace through strength" does indeed require the occasional display of strength, to maintain deterrence. Good and bad (morals) are not the right frame to understand deterrence, rather emotions: fear, confidence, and security.
Solzhenitsyn can be read as either a humanist or an ethicist: either the bridgehead of good is sufficient to redeem everyone from war and morality demands pacifism, or all military doctrines must be submitted to independent review to check that we do not give the "unuprooted small corner of evil" oxygen. Crucially, these are both judgements about ourselves and not about the foes who seek to destroy us, who indeed consider themselves to have "the best of all hearts". In this sense, Solzhenitsyn contributes to the cycle of violence: if both sides are ethicists, and their ethical councils have different conclusions, the result is not just fundamentalism but a fundamentalism justified by ethical review.
Fear, anger, disgust are the ultimate drivers of conflict. Can we conquer them? Of course not, they are the base emotions, part of being human. But can there be a better way of handling them in geopolitics? Yes - if leaders are focused on helping not just themselves feel safe, but their enemies as well. This is the higher level beyond MAD - not mutual fear, but mutual security. This is why USAID was great foreign policy and cheap for its benefits. This is why weapons are sold to allies despite the fact that their interests may not be fully aligned with ours. Weapons are fundamental to security, which at the end of the day is a feeling and not a guarantee against attack or repercussions from an attack, and these feelings of security are what reduces the incidence and frequence of war.
downvotes are exclusivly against any pro palistinian voices, and the eternal zionovictim anti muslim chant goes on and on
and on, as the stage is set for the full resumption of the most violent public genocide in all of history.
I can both dislike the Israeli government and want for the Israeli population to be protected against missile and drone attacks.
I can both dislike Hamas and want for Palestine to be free.
Is it that hard for you to imagine that people just want to be safe? This is not a football match where you pick a side and then hate on the other side! Stop doing that! These are real people. If groups shoot stuff at Israel of course they're going to try to shoot that stuff out of the sky.
Everyone wants peace and safety on their own terms. It's not a virtue to remove all context from your analysis of the situation.
The overwhelming majority of Isealis want to maintain a system of violent apartheid that benefits them explicitly based on their ethnicity, and be insulated from any consequences. Some of them might be sad about the war crimes their army commits in a daily basis, but almost none are doing anything about it. Their victims have been successfully isolated by the world's largest superpower and its network of corrupt client states.
So yes, in that situation, "defensive" warfare technologies for Israel are clearly a bad thing.
Indeed, for any non-US citizen it is very hard to understand why USA has always paid each year a significant aid for Israel.
For anyone who has worked in Israel or who has just visited it, there is no doubt that Israel is one of the richest countries and it has more than enough of its own resources to ensure that it maintains its military superiority against any neighbors.
Israel certainly does not need a permanent aid for that, though of course they would be fools to refuse the many billions of $ they receive as a gift from USA.
Perhaps this aid might have been justified in the initial years after WWII, but it has been a long time since the initial reason cannot have remained true.
Now USA claims that it may have not obtained benefits commensurate to its expenses in the relations with many other countries, even if it is much less clear which were the benefits obtained by USA for paying this aid to Israel every year.
A part of the money paid to Israel is likely to return to some US companies that are friendly to the US government, so this is an indirect method for giving gifts to those companies too, but in other countries USA has been able to obtain such profitable contracts for well-connected US companies in a much cheaper way, just by bribing or blackmailing the local governments, instead of paying the contracts in full with US money.
A tiny fraction of the US budget which is almost entirely earmarked to be spent buying from US suppliers but sure, the Jews are the reason you have a malfunctioning health system.
There's a huge difference between not supporting the current Israeli government and not supporting Israel whatsoever. Many Jews relate with the former, but from my experience it's very few that relate with the latter.
By this logic, if the CEO of a big company with a revenue of 100 billion $ per year steals every year from the company 100 million $ for gifts to some of his/her family members, that does not matter, because it is just 0.1% of the revenue, and perhaps those family members would use a part of the money to buy products of the same company.
Satan's Chosen Amalek and their Holocaust of babies is not to be criticised lest one risk being flagged and down voted by The World's Most Genocidal Contrarians.
Now that they've secured their famous space lasers, they will be able to continue their Holocaust of Gaza without any pushback.
"""
What happened to the Palestinians who were living there?
About 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled – about 85% of the Arab population of the territory captured by Israel – and were never allowed to return. Palestinians called the exodus and eradication of much of their society inside Israel the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, and it remains the traumatic event at the heart of their modern history.
Arabs who remained in Israel as citizens were subject to official discrimination. They were placed under military rule for nearly two decades, which deprived them of many basic civil rights. Much of their land was expropriated and Arab Israeli communities were deliberately kept poor and underfunded.
"""
Let's not pretend that the Jews just appeared there. 800k Jews were kicked out of middle eastern countries. If we rewind the clock shouldn't those Jews also get their Middle East land back? Or did they not terrorize enough people and hijack enough airplanes to qualify?
Source: I was born in Baghdad. Father and other relatives were tortured and murdered there.
Sorry that happened to your family. The Zionist project has killed a lot of innocents.
> 800k Jews were kicked out of middle eastern countries
As a result of the creation of Israel.
As for Jews killed or terrorized into leaving Baghdad: Israeli historian Avi Schliem (whose family fled Baghdad to Israel after the Baghdad bombings) says Iraqi Zionists were responsible for some of those bombings in his latest book.
Finally, should Jews who had their lands stolen in the name of Zionism have their lands back? In a just world, yes.
“How did the occupied Palestinian territories become occupied? In 1967 Israel launched what it said was a pre-emptive defensive war against Jordan, Egypt and Syria, as they appeared to be preparing to invaded.”
The problem with these summaries is everyone can always somewhat legitimately claim a prior offence. The 1967 offense resulted from the shitshow that was the 1948 war [1], which itself resulted from a history of French, British and Ottoman control.
They both suck and they both have legitimate grievances.
They’re also both proxies on like four major axes (Iran vs Saudi Arabia, America vs Russia, America vs China and whatever Turkey is up to) and more minor axes than I’ve seen anyone even bother keeping track of.
It’s a deep and deeply fucked conflict that doesn’t lend well to armchair border drawing from an ocean away from first principles.
You are thinking of Ashkenazi. Vast majority of Israeli jews are Mizrahi. This is in addition to 2 million Palestinians who are Israeli citizens and are doing just fine. Your hatred comes from ignorance.
Are they afforded the same rights as jewish israelis? What about Gazans and West Bank palestenians whose families came from elsewhere in the earlier Palestine and were driven out to these areas, now living in terrible conditions. For simplicity lets pretend it is Sep 2023 for this argument, as the conditions were terrible then, due to Israels policies.
> What about Gazans and West Bank palestenians whose families came from elsewhere
I’m sympathetic to the argument that there should be reparations—from Israel but also France, Britain and Turkey—for victims of the Nakbah.
But let’s be clear on a right of return: this logic applies to almost every human in Europe or Asia when it comes to the Middle East if we go back far enough. We’re talking about the closest coast to the cradle of civilisation.
You don't have to go 'back' to find Palestinians alive, today, who can point at their settler-occupied homes on a map, and tell you the day they were kicked out. I think that's a reasonable cutoff point for right of return.
> I think that's a reasonable cutoff point for right of return
I do too. The contours of how that works with their descendants, and when we draw the line for the living, has been debated in good faith (and bad, increasingly recently) for decades [1].
Thanks for the link. There are counterpoints in the linked article, including:
> Yousef Munayyer, an Israeli citizen and the executive director of The Jerusalem Fund, wrote that Palestinians only have varying degrees of limited rights in Israel. He states that although Palestinians make up about 20% of Israel's population, less than 7% of the budget is allocated to Palestinian citizens. He describes the 1.5 million Arab citizens of Israel as second-class citizens while four million more are not citizens at all. He states that a Jew from any country can move to Israel but a Palestinian refugee, with a valid claim to property in Israel, cannot. Munayyer also described the difficulties he and his wife faced when visiting the country.[301]
Hope over time this changes for the better. If they can start letting people expelled years ago to return too. Maybe not to their old address but work something out.
If all the money poured into conserving status quo was spent on creating better conditions for Palestinian refugees in any of the independent Arab states, Middle East would be a much quieter place
> If all the money poured into conserving status quo was spent on creating better conditions for Palestinian refugees in any of the independent Arab states
Easier said than done. The chaos the PLO caused in Jordan and Lebanon [1] raises legitimate security concerns for any country asked to accept large numbers of Palestinian refugees.
Can you give me some pointers on how to develop? I am currently farming years of professional experience, while simultaneously looking out for better job opportunities, and getting high school credits that are needed to attend a university. I'm not 100% sure if I actually need to go to university, but it's at least something if I can't find anything else.
How do you do that when dealing with nationalist governments waging nationalist wars? The most generous framing of either side’s ask in the Gaza war is for nationhood.
If nothing may be obtained by consenting to quiet our conscience and murder enemy civilians all should call it criminal but wherein we can purchase victory or save the lives of our civilians and soldiers there is an exchange rate between sin and gain that virtually all will agree to pay.
I do not hold that the firebombing of German cities was an acceptable trade but that there is a point for most people where they will pay the cost.
Extremists count the blood of the enemy as meaningless and see no sin in spilling it and will do any amount of harm without qualm for instance see the words of an extremist after the death of a terrorist
> Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, in paying homage to Goldstein, told mourners that even 1 million Arabs “are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” And angry voices in the congregation shouted, “We are all Goldsteins!” and “Arabs out of Israel!”
Whereas Perrin's doesn't speak for most Israelis the actions of his entire government and society suggest either agreement or willingness to look the other way whilst someone else pays the price in sin and indeed the attitude far from being historically abhorrent it is fairly normal for all societies to account the blood of the enemy civilian or not fairly cheap or valueless.
Looking at the modern genocide in Gaza and our half assed responses to it makes one wonder if the world has really made any progress whatsoever or if our morality is confined almost exclusively to historical analysis and hand wringing that has virtually no impact on current or future actions.
I think its a great example. If we understand that even folks that voted for and serve what amounts to our generations symbol representation of evil can't simply be murdered without moral cost we might apply that to folks who may have voted for Hamas who are being murdered right now by people who attach no value to their lives.
I hear you, and perhaps if you had included more of this substance in your GP comment, it would have been a little less inflammatory. Hard to say though. You can't bring that particular N-word into a thread like this (or really any internet thread) without having the effect of a gunshot in a chicken yard. It's the commenter's responsibility to mitigate those effects, not set them off uncontrollably.
I'll bite. Yes, I believe that even if you as a civilian personally voted for someone who ended up being a horrible genocidal dictator, that doesn't make it ethical for the other side to target bombs at you; warfare should be directed at combatants, or at least at the industrial base rather than indiscriminately at civilians.
I'm not familiar with any place where civilians vote whether their country will go to war. Who here on this thread voted for the US to go to war against Venezuela?
What are you implying? That the civilians of Germany too were involved in the Holocaust under Nazism? Sure, they hated the 'other' groups. But the Nazis had to suspend the earlier Aktion T4 after it attracted a severe revolt from the public. Learning from that experience, the Nazis took enormous efforts to keep the Holocaust out of public sight. If the German civilians had known well about it, would the allied armies have been so surprised and shocked when they discovered the concentration camps?
Don't get me wrong. The Nazis were evil to the core. What they did to the victims is unforgivable. But grouping the civilians with them is a convenient and nefarious justification for their massacre. How many of the thousands of kids among them were Nazis according to you?
Now talking about targeting the German civilians, check out the massive allied firebombings of largely undefended Hamburg (Operation Gomorrah) and Dresden. The attacks claimed the lives of 34K and 25K civilians respectively in a dreadful sequence of events. Horrific accounts and photos of the incidents exist to this day. The incidents were so controversial that even Churchill challenged it in the Parliament. See if you can stomach those accounts.
War is inherently immoral. You just don't fight one if you can. But if that's not an option, then both sides may end up committing horrible war atrocities. All you can hope for is the least bad outcome. And once it's over, you should be introspecting about what went wrong and how to avoid that in the future. For that, an honest acceptance of the barbarity of such atrocities is needed. If you glorify them instead, you aren't all that better than your enemies and you're just setting up the stage for a repeat of that horrible past. So yes, all civilians should be protected.
The evil of attacking civilians is not determined by their stance on genocide. Even disarmed combatants who pose no threat cannot be licitly attacked. Civilians cannot be legitimate direct and intentional targets, period.
> War is inherently immoral.
That’s not true. War as such is undesirable, but fighting one is not categorically immoral. Just war principles determine when it is morally acceptable or even a duty to wage war. Is it immoral to repel an invading army if you have a reasonable chance of success using licit means? No. Indeed, it might be immoral not to do so.
“The Israeli system is a slightly different approach technologically. So actually, it’s a nice complement because we’re kind of going down one path, they’ve gone down a slightly different one. So I think yes, there’s potential if theirs works well, it could be something we could think about leveraging for our needs in that space. So that’s really a benefit of that funding is … we can explore multiple paths here and see what works,” Bush said.
None. The US money Israel receives is purely used for buying from US defense contractors. This is developed by purely Israeli defense contractors. The US leverages significant discounts on these Israeli developed systems compared to other countries.
Also, the amount Israel gets is in the same ballpark as Egypt and Lebanon, but interesting that that is never mentioned?
This article is about an Israeli developed system, so no US tax payer money was used. It is an off topic discussion to discuss your hatred for Israel. Maybe submit a different article about that, but it is off topic for this one.
Tired of this kind of talk. Everybody is looking for a scapegoat. For some it's China, for others the billionaires, yet others suspect it's all the Jews' fault, or the European Union, or wokeness, or Donald Trump or or or.. sigh, it's not new, it's just boring, and it rarely leads to any good things.
I don't see how that's relevant, considering we could already provide healthcare to all Americans simply by disbanding the corrupt Medicare and Medicaid bureaucracies and recouping the administration fees. And then do the same with welfare so we can get UBI. Hell, we'd probably save money in both cases.
'the jews are stealing our healthcare' seems to be a huge bot posting theme on Reddit the last week or so. Might be working and bleeding over into the zeitgeist.
> we could already provide healthcare to all Americans simply by disbanding the corrupt Medicare and Medicaid bureaucracies and recouping the administration fees
Source for this estimate?
> then do the same with welfare so we can get UBI
This is nonsense. Federal welfare spending is about $20k per capita [1]. You could get that to $30k by co-opting all state spending [2]. (And only in Alaska, Oregon and Hawaii.)
Zyklon-B wasn’t much of a secret - it was used all over the place as a pesticide. Most soldiers would have been about as familiar with it as we would with Raid spray or bug traps.
Just recently, US has worked with Saudis and Ukrainians and others to supply heavy and novel weaponry to be deployed in eg Yemen, coordinating airstrikes, giving intel etc. to devastating effect and has done even more direct involvement in brutal wars, whether proxy wars of whatever. The PATRIOT act and subsequent militarization of police at home supports the GP’s statement about a boomerang. I don’t think GP meant to say it was only due to Israel or single out Israel as a source US of military cooperation and MIC job creation.
But yes, some people will only care if they can find Jewish connections, eg Zelensky being partly Jewish or MBS or Al Sisi allegedly being partly Jewish due to their stances in opposition to Islamic extremism.
There are people who blame influential Jews for everything, and they’ll go so far as to say that Ataturk was Jewish, in order to care about the Armenian genocide. But they won’t care about, say, the Hamidian massacres of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks that took place 20 years earlier because they can’t find any evidence that Sultan Hamid was Jewish.
They blame Israel for Iraqi expulsion of Jews, until they find out the Farhud was 10 years before Israel was formed as a state.
They even finally started to care about what’s happening in Sudan when they realized they can sort of draw a tenuous line between that and Israel through UAE.
As long as influential Jews are involved they will deeply care about a conflict, eg 9/11 dancing Israelis or clean break memo of PNAC. They will ignore that presidents like W Bush called the Iraq invasion a “crusade” to “rid the world of evildoers”. They also do not like to go back further to, say, bombing of Laos and all throughout southeast Asia because, again, it is hard to blame any Jews for that.
It’s almost as if they have an algorithm: 1) find Jews involved with thing they consider bad, 2) care about that issue but ONLY to the extent they can point out Jewish connections 3) cherrypick and compile lists of Jewish involvement to make it seem that all bad things done by states, corporations, or humanity, is due to Jews. Candace Owens for example recetly said that Stalin was Jewish and that the US slave trade was “not the white man but mostly Jewish”, and that Black lives now really matter to her after years of “White lives Matter” with Ye, now that she found out Jews were behind it.
There is a similar mentality among humans that many fall into, the “victimhood mentality”. And many Jews themselves also have the same thing. In a conflict, often both sides use the same tactics without realizing it.
The way BLM blamed “systemic racism”, various Jews might see “antisemitism“ behind every critique of Israel. It is not just individual but group psychology. The worst scorn is reserved for heaping on defectors, who Black BLM activists would call “uncle Toms” and Jewish Zionist activists would call “self-hating Jews”.
So what’s interesting is the common tactics. I don’t mean to imply it is one sided. Both sides of an ideological conflict (eg abortion, socialism, etc) want to take over a powerful state apparatus to use for their agenda. Both sides want to cynically and hyporcitically exploit millions of people to further their agenda.
For example, antizionists (and more generally revolutionaries / “axis of resistance” supporters who may be either leftist, Islamist or whatever) want to perpetuate statelessness of millions of people in Lebanon, Syria and all over the Middle East, so they can be labeled “Palestinian” because one of their grandfathers was in Palestine circa 1947, so that they can “keep their identity” by essentially forcing on them, and maintain large numbers for “the cause” of removing Jewish majority in any area of the Levant. They oppose giving them citizenship on a jus soli basis even if they and their parents were born in another country. This happens even with Palestinians who themselves got citizenship long ago in Chile, USA, UK, Sweden, Canada etc. It is a similar mentality to “fight to the last Ukrainian” by Ukrainians abroad who left Ukraine an settled in other countries.
Meanwhile, Zionists have a form of that, where many of them constantly play up and almost seem to welcome how badly Jews would be treated among other countries, and downplay the role of their right wing government waging wars in a far more reckless fashion than they could have. Instead of placing the blame on that government for making Jews less safe, they say “you see? This is why you should move to Israel. You’ll be safe here among Jews.”
In short both movements cynically use their own people, almost welcoming hardship for them until they are “forced” to embrace their identity and move back to where they same place both groups are competing to demographically dominate ..
This isn’t unique to Israel. Armenians vs Azerbaijanis for example seek foreign alliances for protection. Serbs vs Albanians. Tamils vs Sri Lanka. Rohingya vs Burma. Uyghurs vs China. And so on. There are horrific proxy wars happening in Sudan now, and Congo throughout. But people don’t tend to focus on any of that because Ashkenazi Jews are famous and successful in the West. And because Abrahamic religions are based on Judaism, so Israel is quite foundational to all their religions. Not so much Sri Lanka…
You can see in Eastern cultures which are not Abrahamic, not Muslim or Christian, the attitude is the same as to any other sectarian conflict. That is proportional. But it is extremely disproportionate in the West! For the reasons I listed above.
did you see rapid rise in violence against russians after russia started war in ukraine ? did you see rapid rise in violence against azeris after ethnic cleansing that they executed recently ? against chinese for their treatment of Uyghurs. etc.. etc.. etc.. ? I guess no.
but when there is a violence against random jews across the west, somehow israeli government is the guilty one and not antisemitism.
Yep, I did. My mom taught at a school where during the war Ukrainians would gang up on Russians, both being immigrants. A lot of Russian things were “canceled” to the point that Babylon Bee ran this story:
I have seen attacks on Asians ramp up during the start of COVID.
I say the same to both Jews and Black people (being Jewish myself): we live in the least racist, least antisemitic time in hundreds of years, maybe in history. Your grandfather had it much worse. These complaints are first-world problems. Yelling “racist” or “antisemite” on a hair trigger only serves to cheapen the actual words, same as yelling “genocide” while ignoring every other more horrific war, even 200 km to Israel’s north in Syria.
The “magarshak ratio” is the amount of outrage about something vs how many people are actually suffering. To be sure, the disproportionate navel gazing at Israel is due to Jews and Judaism. But similarly, the disproportionate navel gazing at attacks on Jews in USA or other countries, where they have been mostly protected and highly respected by eg the entire Evangelical community, is seen by some as “first world problems” while bombs are raining down in Gaza for example.
Som of the biggest hyporites criticizing Jews for “dual citizenship” and “ethnic cleansing and building an ethnostate” are Armenians like Dan Bilzerian who flew to Armenia with his family to accept citizenship and serve in the Armenian armed forces. People probably just don’t see the symmetries. Or maybe they’re just hypocrite grifters.
AND THERE IS THE INTITUTIONAL LEVEL.
On that level, of governments and corporations, Israel does enjoy an immense amount of support and immunity. Name me another country where every presidential candidate has to go affirm their support at an AIPAC for, say, Italy. As a Jewish person myself, I am uneasy at Jewish participation in PNAC or the military industrial complex and neocon war machine in general. I don’t want Jews to be blamed later for the wars. Alex Karp and Palmer Luckey are of course quite supportive of Israel, but I am not thrilled at the endorsements. And so on.
I am a libertarian, I try to criticize Russia, USA, Iran other countries, and yes Israel, proportionally to what they actually have done. The wars are fought by plebs who die, the politicians stay in their ivory towers and bunkers and give speeches even as they get international arrest warrants for them.
But even just from the point of view of an Israeli citizen, or Ukrainian citizen, or Iraqi citizen etc. these politicians are horrible. Netanyahu was actively against the 2 state solution, Rabin’s wife blames him for inciting the PM’s assassination, and he literally released 1000 terrorists for 1 guy, Gilad Shalit who fell asleep and allowed himself to be captured. It included the masterminds of October 7th. Who does that? He personally allowed Qatari money to go to Hamas, ignored Egyptians’ warnings, ignored warnings from Shin Bet, oversaw a drawdown of security, and his army for hours ignored even the female spotters whose only job it was to report the threats, and who were killed while reporting it for hours! Such extreme negligence goes completely unpunished, nevermind the corruption and investigations that have been put off because of the war. You don’t have to be a leftist or a libertarian to appreciate the level of corruption and immunity from consequences and misaligned incentives of these politicians.
And the excuses the government intitutions give for the negligence or the wars are so laughable that it is hard to think they aren’t deliberately trolling us and rubbin their unaccountability in our face:
The current war vs Venzuela is a great example. They aren’t even trying to explain it anymore. (“hasbara” means explanation in Hebrew, but the same is done by other governments to their people - Russian govt when asked what if Russians wont support the invasion said “we will explain it to them”). The US administration now claims Venezuela is the biggest source of drugs (false) and even weren’t afraid to label drugs WMDs, not even concerned that WMDs were famously not actually found in Iraq during our invasion. They don’t even care about your consent - they know they’ll have your support later! Trump openly said we want to take their oil and land. He says the quiet parts out loud.
You’re seeing it happen in real-time. Again. But when it’s us, whether Iraq or Venezuela, most people heavily tone down their criticism that you would have had for the 73% of Russian public supporting THEIR invasion. But it’s all very similar. The symmetries are striking. 73% of US Americans also supported the invasion of Iraq.
so you have a couple example of anecdotal evidence from past . no example similar violence as it been ongoing against jews . attacks on places of worships, schools, kindergartens, holidays celebrations or just any assembly. attacks that end up with dead people. antisemitism went up on oct 7th even before cult of genocide witnesses was established
what you are doing in many paragraphs (laden with historical errors or misinformation) is whitewashing antisemitism and shifting blame back to jews.
Imagine you’re Black and we’re having this same conversation about systemic racism as if everyone is inherently a racist in society. Anyone who disagrees is called an uncle tom, is that reasonable?
Are there people who don’t like Jews? Of course. The most despicable were the people who came out to protest Israel in the days after October 7th, after the largest attack on Jews in Israel probably ever. And among them were rabid antisemites chanting vile things. Yes.
But look around. Are there a lot of mass shootings in USA? Yes. Many of them are not against Jews. You have to look at statistics. And this is miniscule compared to the violence in the world, eg in Mexico with the drug cartels. We have law and order. We also have a lot of homeless druggies and crazies.
But try to see others facing an entire systematic apparatus. The USA has spent decades trying to get people to hate Russians, for example, at an institutional level. First, it was that they’re commies. Then it was that they love Putin. Also Muslims by and large got similar treatment as Communists during McCarthyism and Cointelpro, after the CIA themselves funded the mujahideen and empowered jihadists (mujahideen is Arabic for jihadists, literally).
Once again, they brazenly admit they were responsible, but they are proud of it anyway. Both Democrats and Republicans:
It always goes through the same stages with these governments. First they gaslight you. Then they engage in “special military operations”. Then they draft you. Then they invade. Then they occupy, lose a lot of money and get people killed. Then the next generation of politicians says it was “a big mistake”. Russians can’t explain to their kids why they fought in Afghanistan in the 80s, and Americans can’t explain why they fought in Iraq.
So yeah I blame the politicians. And even if you were an Israeli, even if you were a radical right wing Kahanist, you could admit that Netanyahu and his government were negligent and call for an investigation of his handling of Hamas and the threats it posed, leading up of Octobed 7th. Agree?
This is an astonishing revisionist take on the reality on the ground.
Israel unilaterally disengaged from GAZA in 2005 and pulling out generations of Jewish settlement in the process. By 2006 GAZA has zero Jews, and 2007 Gazans elected HAMAS who fired rockets at Israel because they want to free Palestine from the river to the sea, AKA eliminate Israel. October 7 attack is a culmination of that, and between then and now, HAMAS didn't forget to build their military base in the mix of civilians and using civilian targets as shield. So that they can blame Israel for every single Palestinians death, including the death cause by their own firing.
The situation in west Bank is qualitatively the same.
No, protecting your people from terrorist is not apartheid, and Israel has no interest to build iron beam and/or build wall--which the west misinterprete as apartheid-- if the neighbors had no intention to eliminate them.
The issue with that type of reasoning is that if you swapped the parties the sentences would be the same. "Palestine removed generations of settlements from Israel, but was forced to attack because Israel wanted to wipe them out." You need to think in terms of principles that can apply equally to everybody.
The millions being starved purposely are for all practical purposes (and by the territorial recognition of several countries if that means anything...) also living in Israel. More to the point, I am not sure what that means for the discussion: I am sure I'd have evacuated my own citizens too before doing this.
The least important point is technical, which is that I said Palestine lost many homes to Israel over the years, not that every (just many) Palestinian lost their home. For what it's worth to the symmetry argument there were Jews happily living in Palestine before 1900, but let's not get distracted by the question of how good my opinion is when there's an obvious wrong anyone can agree with staring straight at everybody.
Not to mention what some backward, cruel warlord did to much of the Middle Eastern population starting in 622:
"Alongside his campaign against the Quraysh, Muhammad led campaigns against several other tribes of Arabia, most notably the three Arabian Jewish tribes of Medina and the Jewish fortress at Khaybar."
> as captured by their slogan, "from the river to the sea Palestinians will be free"
The mental gymnastics required to make a call for freedom into a call for war are astounding. If i say “free tibet” does that mean i want war with china? What part of “free” is a threat to the people of israel?
> despite that they launched the war first every single time
This is such weird playground-like defense - “They started it!!!”. The actions and stated intentions of israel leading up to the 1948 war are pretty easy to see as a declaration of war - claiming other people’s land as part of your state. And then later Oct 7th is often portrayed as hamas “starting it”. But there were over a thousand gazans held by israel without charges on oct 6th. If israel is justified in murdering 80,000 for the hostages taken in oct 7th - is hamas’ attack not justified by their people held by israel?
To be clear, i’d say in both cases the murder of civilians was unjustified, but i don’t see how one can be justified while the other isn’t.
I assume that you are engaging in good faith, therefore I will respond.
On the meaning of Palestine will be free, don't westplain the Palestinians by reading your interpretation into their mind. Instead, listen to what they actually said.
A lot of misunderstanding about Israel stems from people not reading the situation as it is, ie: listening to what both sides actually say, instead, they are listening to their own projections of the Jews and the Palestinians.
And your take that on Oct 6 Israel held thousands of Gaza doesn't explain why Israel would unilaterally pull out from GAZA in 2005, which is just another way of saying that it's likely to be false.
I’ve encountered online MANY israelis calling for gaza and the west bank to be destroyed and every palestinian to be killed or kicked out. Does that mean every israeli believes that? Knowing what everyone believes takes more than cherry picking the worst beliefs.
> In April 2022, there were 4,450 Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli prisons – including 160 children, 32 women, and over 1,000 "administrative detainees" (indefinitely incarcerated without charge)
Its pretty well established in international law and the UN charter that all countries have a right to self-defense. Given this is a purely defensive weapon, i can't imagine what reasonable objection anyone could have to it.
Israel is an occupier. This isn't symmetrical warfare.
Israel won't let food into Gaza in reasonable quantities. It has restricted basic things like tent poles and just about any commodity which humans anywhere else in the world would have the luxury of being able to take for granted.
All in violation of international law - that which has lost all meaning in the last three or so years.
Not really relavent. Occupying powers still have the right to self-defense. Certainly they have the right to take defensive measures to prevent attacks on the civilian population of their primary territory, which is what is being discussed here.
> Israel won't let food into Gaza in reasonable quantities
As far as i understand the food situation in Gaza has now stabilized. However even if Israel was illegally restricting food into gaza, that wouldn't have any bearing on the legality of them setting up air defense systems on their own territory.
> All in violation of international law
Being an occupying power is not in and of itself a violation of international law. (The food thing might be. Israel is allowed to put certain restrictions on aid, but groups like the ICC have argued that the restrictions were beyond what was permissible under international law. Personally, even though it is incredibly unlikeky to happen, i hope the issue goes to trial at the ICC so we get a firm answer. However even if true, it does not mean Israel loses every right it has under international law)
I think Israel has a right to defense qua state and Palestinians have a right to resist qua subjects of unjust rule. These aren’t really contradictory positions, and both are pretty standard from a “this is what the UN says” ground truth[1][2].
(This is distinct from a state’s “right to exist,” which is nonsense. But once a state does exist, it has the right to defend itself by definition.)
If they both have a right to kill each other, does the other really have a right to defense? Making it complicated introduces legalistic flaws and distracts everyone from actually fixing it by doing something simple, like tying sanctions to murders of civillians.
They don’t both have a right to kill each other! Both “defense” and “resistance” (w/r/t the goal of self determination) have precise bounds; not all forms of warfare or violence are considered justifiable under either. Much of what Israel has done in the current conflict goes well beyond a charitable read of its right to defense, but this doesn’t imply that all defense adaptations are illegitimate.
> can the right to kill coexist with the victim's right to defense?
Yes it can, and it's ludicrous to suggest otherwise. Russia believes it has the natural right to reclaim what it considers to be Russian territory. Ukraine believes it has the right to be free. So everyone should just put down their weapons and come to an agreement based on these rights?
The fallacy at the heart of your argument is that there is somehow some greater single truth, and that each side agrees that it is the greater single truth, and that everyone will just peaceably agree to follow the single greater truth because it is the single greater truth. Nothing could be less human. What are we, the Borg? We're supposed to follow some hive mind?
> something simple, like tying sanctions to murders of civilians
Not even remotely simple. Define sanctions, murders, civilians. The US bombing "drug" boats in the Caribbean, are those civilians? International law recognizes that collateral damage can legitimately happen during legitimate military operations. Is the collateral damage "murder"? How far should sanctions go? Sanction enemy banks (layer 1)? Sanction citizens of neutral countries who do business with the enemy country (layer 2)? Sanction citizens of neutral countries who do business with other citizens who do business with the enemy country (layer 3)?
>The US bombing "drug" boats in the Caribbean, are those civilians?
Yes.
>How far should sanctions go? Sanction enemy banks (layer 1)? Sanction citizens of neutral countries who do business with the enemy country (layer 2)? Sanction citizens of neutral countries who do business with other citizens who do business with the enemy country (layer 3)?
You're doing a great job of writing my policy! To be fair and to show commitment without doing too much harm it should be gradually phased in. The reason it's simple is that Israel does not really need to murder all of those individuals, and there is even an internal political option to not do it, so a firm "no" from everyone else would be sufficient. I doubt the sanctions would ever be implemented. I'm sorry if this sounds glib but there is no honest way to hedge it.
I think most people would disagree with you that armed members of an outlaw paramilitary count as civilians.
And I also think that most people would disagree with you that the correct first sanction is on a country's banks, the consequences of which fall disproportionately on the innocent civilians of your disfavored country; the disproportionality of which is contrary to international law.
I think everyone (myself included) has a right to actual self-defense, just not the false version we've been seeing.
Here's my peace plan:
Blow up or starve kids on the other side +1 sanctions.
Intercept a drone or rocket +0 sanctions.
Say you're sorry and reduce arms by 10% -1 sanctions.
If the US alone did this they'd stop with all the murders in days to weeks.
Of course the state of affairs where random online commenters can think of better answers than the individuals in charge is only due to a lack of a desire for peace at high levels! There is nothing complicated about it at all.
Someone will find a reflexive material to put on the drone. Then you have a multi kw laser that hits randomly anywhere when intercepting drones.
Also I wonder why it is not common to run interception drones that automatically fly towards incoming drones and captures them mid air. Like a wasp is capturing other insects.
So pretty much like the iron dome but not with single use rockets but reusable drones instead.
Laser weapons appear to be advancing rapidly. Once we get to the single digit MW power range, MAD will deteriorate as the ICBM becomes a non-viable nuclear delivery mechanism.
What effect would that have? Will nukes start getting used in wars? Will we see deployment of multi ton NEFP[1] warheads that can strike targets with nuclear-propelled kinetics?
there was interview with guy from rafael who was head of iron beam project. it looks like they have some plans for dealing with icbm. airborne if I understood correctly
I guess airborne would be easier to intercept in their earlier phase before they go super fast, but then you have to have air assets in the right place at the right time.
At their terminal phase icbms go at mach 25, which is pretty hard to shine a laser on for an extended period of time.
Outside the Middle East there's many areas threatened by combatants with similar cheap missiles. Perhaps Ukraine is an obvious one. We're seeing rises in conflicts across parts of Africa, Cambodia/Thailand, Pakistan/India. Many governments are looking into buying these to protect their countries.
This technology hopefully can protect populations from destabilizing forces funded on the cheap by foreign powers. Machine guns changed warfare [2] and drones have been a similar massive change in warfare making it cheaper and easier to attack and destabalize regions. Though of course there's downsides as well [3].
1: https://www.mideastjournal.org/post/how-many-rockets-fired-a... 2: https://online.norwich.edu/online/about/resource-library/how... 3: https://claritywithmichaeloren.substack.com/p/iron-dome-part...
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