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.
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.
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.
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?
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"