Israel's response to Oct 7th has been a major blackpill.
Their strategy was, I think, as bad as it could possibly be. In fact, it really seemed, and still seems, like no strategy at all -- they lashed out wildly and extremely destructively, without a clear picture of what the post-war Gaza Strip will look like.
Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response that killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, which played directly into the dynamics of guerrilla warfare where a strong state's extreme actions against a weak opponent undermine its legitimacy.
Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation.
Yet, rather than adapting, Israel's network doubled down with censorship campaigns, crackdowns on protests, and weaponizing "anti-semitism" accusations to silence critics -- actions that have all backfired. Now international support is collapsing, the EU is pushing sanctions, and the US is slowly distancing itself. Israel's best option right now is to end the war as quickly as possible, and devote all of its efforts to repairing damaged relationships and mitigating the war's effects, before isolation accelerates to the level of sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa.
I'll also note that it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost. Hamas lost the shooting war, the people of Gaza have lost lives and livelihoods which may take more than a decade to rebuild, and Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this.
Sadly I think you are mistaken to paint it as an irrational Israel lashing out - that's too generous.
I think it's quite the opposite - there has been a very clear, cold, calculated strategy - which is to use the conflict as an cover for doing what some in the government have always wanted to do ( and been quite open about it ) - which is to create a greater Israel - drive out all Palestinians from the river to the sea ( Gaza and West Bank ), as well as push to the river in the north into Lebanon and take more of Syria.
Those in government understand the potential reputation loss - but see that as temporary and something that can be managed under the protection of the US, while viewing the gain of territory as permanent.
This is spot on. This has been a recurring practice of the Israeli regime - to take advantage of a terrorist attack or some other pretext in order to take over additional territory and remove the local population. This modus operandi has been practiced since right after the partition resolution at the end of 1947 to conquer Palestinian villages, remove their inhabitants and rase the houses to the ground, and is still practiced today in the occupied territories and Gaza. Like you said, Israel's recent military campaigns in Lebanon and Syria are also examples of the same strategy.
I wouldn't call pouring over the borders and taking hostages and even publishing maps of the land that they conquered as a terrorist attack. Hamas was in Israel for 4 days, I believe the last known Hamas operative was captured in Rahat on the 10th of October - my birthday (and I'm in Rahat quite often). During this time they were publishing maps of the areas they had conquered.
But you are correct, every single time the Arabs have poured over our borders and tried to conquer us - 1948, 1967, 1973 (though we didn't keep it), depending on you look at things 1982 though I would forgive you if you don't see it the way I see it... we've taken land. One would think that if people don't want to lose land, they should not set out to make war.
> One would think that if people don't want to lose land, they should not set out to make war.
What a perverse, meaningless justification. This statement reflects your own insecurity - you would never let someone say this if it was Israeli territory being contested. You would never have to say this if Israel didn't possess illegally claim, genocide and then colonize annexed territory in violation of international law.
Exactly. Unlike the US, there are no large oceans or seas surrounding Israel and keeping our enemies away. Our enemies are right on our borders, we are extremely insecure.
What deterrent do we have? Attack us, loose land. That's it. That's our only deterrent.
As long as you continue to call your immediate neighbours "enemies" you will always feel insecure and threatened by them.
Perhaps Israel could take a radically different path and aim to call their neighbours "friends" instead, or at minimum a healthy but neutral relationship?
Only a small number of bordering countries worldwide are sworn enemies and the world would be a better place for everyone if this fell to zero.
This is one of the most disingenuous posts I've read in this entire thread. Are you suggesting that Israel's neighbors are not the ones who consider themselves enemies of Israel? Did not upon the founding of Israel seven of our neighbors, including all four nations who border us, invade us? Have they not done this on numerous other occasions as well? Did Gaza not invade Israel at the beginning of the current conflict two years ago?
You might also be interested in this excerpt from our declaration of independence:
> WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
your words betray black and white thinking that demonstrates obvious externalization of responsibility. look up "splitting". it's a psychological defense mechanism.
if you were on the spiritual and moral ground you represent yourself as being on, no one else's actions or stance would change your opinion on whether they deserve love and a psychologically/relationally secure response from you. when someone is psychologically insecure, they overreact, hold double standards, externalize responsibility, and project their own insecurity as a moral flaw onto others. the term "narcissistic defenses" appears in literature. this is why it's so hard to talk to you. you are perpetuating the conflict by using the "logic" you are using. in reality you are displaying entitlement and grandiosity. and that prevents you from admitting it.
an eye for an eye makes the world blind, big man.
realistically, it's your own people and your own children and parts of yourselves that you are attempting to destroy and alienate. You're being used and you're using people.
Just for some agenda that you don't even understand but are all too willing to deploy propaganda to argue for. You remind me of a cult member or someone my grandparents fought against in WW2. Those "Arabs" are just taking your living room, aren't they?
> Those "Arabs" are just taking your living room, aren't they?
Those Arabs were actually in the living rooms of my friends and co-workers two years ago, yes in fact. Two women I know had their babies burned to death. My daughter's classmate was murdered along with both his siblings and both his parents in their living room. My son's camp counselor was dragged off to Gaza and murdered - pulled out of his bedroom. I could go on and on and on, these are just examples of people whom the Arabs were in their living rooms recently. In fact, one man that I would occasionally have breakfast with, though he wasn't a close friend, is still in Gaza today. He was dragged out of his own living room or bedroom, yes.
None of that is unique to Israel. You need less generalizeable logic, if Syria started bulldozing the Golan Heights colonies then Netenyahu would go ballistic.
Correct, it's not unique to Israel. This is the way most nations in the Middle East treat each other, but the Americans and the Europeans don't seem to know this. They have no recollection of what constant threat from one's neighbors was like. Even though it's been less than a century since the Europeans had been in a similar situation.
Now go look at how every other Middle Eastern nation has dealt with the situation. Do I need to talk about Syrian brutality and gassing people in their own capital? Do I need to talk about Iraqi brutality and their gassing of the Kurds? Saudi Arabia, chopping people to bits in their embassies? Iran, Qatar, Egypt?
When one looks at Israel's neighbors, there is no way to not conclude that Israel has been the gentlest of the Middle Eastern Nations. But now we've taken the gloves off, after the 7th of October 2023. Welcome to the new Middle East.
Nothing excuses the slaughter of thousands of civilians - but if you really believed that like I do then you would direct your anger at Hamas and UNRWA, not Israel. Hamas and Gazan civilians poured over the border and slaughtered people. Burned babies to death, beheaded adults, left fetuses with knives in their heads. Phoned home to brag to parents "I just killed ten Jews with my bare hands". It's all recorded - by Hamas themselves!
Not to mention how many Gazans killed by IEDs and failed rocket attacks in the Gaza strip, and how Hamas stoots at people fleeing buildings and areas that the IDF warned they are targeting. Or shooting at people collecting humanitarian aid from distribution centres instead of paying Hamas for it in markets. Or their human shields. Every one of those dead is counted against Israel because in Muslim culture, a martyr dies for a cause no matter which side's hand killed them. And even with those deaths incorrectly attributed to Israel, the civilian:combatant death toll in the Gaza strip is lower than any conflict that NATO or UN forces have ever fought in - by NATO and UN numbers themselves.
> in a tiny strip of land that poses NO fucking existential threat at all to the overall security of Israel?
That tiny step of land was educated by UNRWA to believe that the highest honour in their society is to kill Jews. There is ample video evidence of children stating this as their life goal, and parents stating they want this for their children. That does not justify killing them, but it demonstrates that when they do start killing us there is no easy tactic to calm the situation. They used to infiltrate our communities, we built a wall. We tried moving out of the strip and living further away, they start shooting rockets at us. We build defensive interceptor rockets at extreme cost, they put over the border en mass to put babies in ovens, rape wowen and even in one case I know of an man, enter medical facilities and execute the entire staff and patients. All documented by Hamas themselves.
You need to decide if you feel as strongly about protecting civilians as you do about destroying Israel. Because if you really feel that your ambition is to protect civilians (or at least to defend their cause online) then you need to reevaluate your position on the current conflict. Not because Israel is perfect, but because Israel is fighting to save human life and the Gazans are fighting to destroy it.
I have yet to even mention the hostages, dozens of whom are still in Gaza including people I know personally, which itself is justification for contributing the war no matter the cost to the aggressors. And when the aggressors decide that the civilians of the Gaza strip have suffered too much - the civilians they as the governing body are charged to protect - they can release the hostages and the war will be over.
> I have yet to even mention the hostages .... which itself is justification for contributing the war no matter the cost to the aggressors.
I'm sorry, but from the outside events would suggest that Bibi has little interest in the return, indeed welfare, of all the hostages. `Indeed he seems to have actively sabotaged efforts that would have returned them, in order to continue the war and the wider aims.
Many ex-hostages and families of hostages seem to agree.
> If you sincerely believe the grotesquely distorted nonsense you've written above, you're as much a deluded, fanatical lunatic
You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to. The guidelines call on us us to make our points without using abusive terms like this. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
I actually fail to see how the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank violates international law (not that international law means anything), aside from the obvious fact that they weren’t outright annexed after 1967, when Israel was on rock-solid legal ground to just annex the entire place (nothing in the international law prohibits a country from annexing territory won in a _defensive_ war).
Where in the world have you found any indication that any international law makes any distinction between defensive and offensive war in terms of annexation of land?
That rule was brought about by the UN Security Council Resolution 242.
And funnily enough, nobody objected when Egypt annexed Gaza, and Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1948.
As far as the international law is concerned, Israel was completely in the clear to annex the entire place until 22nd of November, 1967. After that it gets a bit murky.
That still doesn't change the fact that the entire idea of an independent Palestinian state happened because Israel just didn't annex it all in 1967.
But going back to the UNSC Resolution 242.
> Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force
There are still no recognized boundaries of Palestine, and there sure as hell weren't in 1967. The original UN Partition Plan for Palestine was adopted, but the problem with its adoption is the fact that it was a General Assembly resolution, and the problem with General Assembly resolutions is that they are notoriously non-binding, and thus not worth the paper they are printed on.
Which brings me back to my initial point that the international law just doesn't matter, because technically speaking, the original Partition Plan was settled international law. Worked out great in practice.
> And funnily enough, nobody objected when Egypt annexed Gaza, and Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1948.
What many people don't realize is that, though no nation objected to the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank, no nation acknowledged it either. The Jordanian annexation of the West Bank was accepted by one nation in the entire planet: Iraq. Note worthy that Iraq's king and Jordan's king were brothers.
Noteworthy as well, that while the West Bank was in the hands of Arabs, there were no calls for establishing an independent Palestinian state there. Same in the Gaza strip.
And while I'm on this soapbox, I might as well mention that Jordan was part of the Mandate for Palestine. The Mandate for Palestine divided the land into two entities: Mandatory Palestine which was decided by the British to be the 23% of Palestine designated for the Jews, and Jordan which was the 77% of Palestine designated for the Arabs - the same idea of partition that the UN came up with 27 years later. Only difference being that the UN plan partitioned the 23% designated for the Jews further. And yet in both cases the Jews accepted and the Arabs violently ethnically cleansed the lands of Jews. And before anybody mentions the racist idea "it's Arab land" (is Great Britian white man's land?) it should be clear that Jerusalem was Jewish majority for a century before that time.
Nobody called for a Palestinian state in the West Bank during 1948 to 1967 because everyone in power at the time was aware that there already was a Palestinian state in the Land of Palestine: The Kingdom of Jordan.
This, for Israel it was a perfect pretext. Netanyahu financed Hamas through Qatar for years because he knew that Hamas is a destructive force for Palestinians and their struggle for nationhood. It was a cold, cynical decision. He exploited the anger and emotions of the people after October 7th to justify what he is doing now.
> Netanyahu financed Hamas through Qatar for years because he knew that Hamas is a destructive force for Palestinians and their struggle for nationhood
It's probably as simple as Netanyahu's branded himself as Israel's protector, and if Palestine were to become less threatening, his political prospects sink.
In an interview with Politico in 2023, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that "In the last 15 years, Israel did everything to downgrade the Palestinian Authority and to boost Hamas." He continued saying "Gaza was on the brink of collapse because they had no resources, they had no money, and the PA refused to give Hamas any money. Bibi saved them. Bibi made a deal with Qatar and they started to move millions and millions of dollars to Gaza." At a Likud party conference in 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu said:
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas ... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
Gershon Hacohen, former commander of the 7th Armored Brigade and an associate of Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 2019 in an interview:
“Netanyahu’s strategy is to prevent the option of two states, so he is turning Hamas into his closest partner. Openly Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, it’s an ally.”
I presume boosting Hamas over leftist/revolutionary groups meant less support for Palestinian liberation within the population of Europe and maybe in part the US. The reality of religious fundamentalism in Gaza is heavily exploited in Israeli propaganda, it's an effective deterrent still. If Gaza was held by an organization like the YPG/YPJ (Kurdish autonomy regions) Israel would have had far more, earlier resistance from western governments/populations, I think.
hamas started as islamic charity/community support organization. this is when Israel supported it. when it became political and moved to terrorism - israel stopped supporting it. we are talking early 80s here.
If you're willing to invest ten minutes and a tenth of a cent, you can spin up a virtual server in an American server farm and set up a SOCKS proxy with `ssh -D 8080 -nNT <user>@<host>`. Then in the Network Settings dialogue (at the bottom of General Settings), Firefox will let you proxy your traffic through it.
I've come around to the possibility that there is a lot more here under the surface than what we general public/plebs are aware of. Hamas is Muslim Brotherhood. MB itself is the poster child of a movement hijacked by Western spook agencies.
They want a heroic victory for MB because the West knows there are going to be numerous billions of Muslims and they can't kill them all so the best thing is to 'control' the religion as they own and run MB.
October 7 completely undermined the non-MB resistance. Hamas jumped the gun, Israel 'stood down', and the axis of resistance was caught like deers in a headlight. They have been 'reacting' ever since and have been losing every step of the way.
Now the question is: Is Qatar/MB upset about all this? ...
Here's a thought experiment to underline that, in case there's any confusion.
Q. How many times did any Countries hold islamic-only real-estate expos in Mosques for the former and future homes and territories of Jewish peoples either already dispossessed or planned to be dispossessed due to fundamentalist islamic occupation? _Zero_
Q. How many times did any Countries held jewish-only real-estate expos in Synagogues for the former homes and territories of Muslim peoples either already dispossessed or planned to be dispossessed due to zionist occupation? _Countless_
They're now at the point where they're paying their contractors $1,500 a house demolished, and constantly inciting violent engagement so as to get the IDF involved and sanitise the area - most notably near the supposed humanitarian relief distribution points they're so fond of double-tap bombing.
N.B. Israel is now concentrating on the remaining medical facilities, and has carried out at least 17 attacks on or in the vicinity of healthcare facilities in Gaza City since 16 September. (https://www.bmj.com/content/391/bmj.r2078)
Three healthcare facilities—Al Quds Hospital, Al Rantisi Children’s Hospital, and the Medical Relief Health Centre—have all been directly hit, while further strikes were recorded in the vicinity of two more, Al Shifa Medical Complex and Al Ahli Hospital.
Currently, across the Gaza Strip, only 2000 hospital beds remain available, for a population of over 2 million people.
There was no need to hold real estate expos because the ethnic cleansing was a bit more direct during the Armenian and Assyrian genocide.
It was atrocious then and it's atrocious now. There's almost something worse about zionst making it a business now. It's one thing to ethnically cleanse an area out of hatred, it's sick on a whole new level to try and turn a buck in the process.
1 Samuel 15 in the Old Testament describes this situation perfectly. According to the Bible God told Saul and the Israelites to destroy the Amalekites (a familiar term if you’ve listened to Israel refer to the Palestinians as “Amalek”) and all of their cattle as well.
“But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves[b] and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.”
Now this could be interpreted as a direct instruction not to profit from the conflict. Something Israel is planning on doing once the Palestinians have been removed from Gaza and they build luxury hotels on top of uncountable dead bodies of children. You could argue that even if you grant Israel religious justification for destruction of Gaza, they would not be granted religious justification for profiting from it.
It’s a pointless thing to bring up other than that I think it exposes this whole thing for the colonialist enterprise it really is, and calls into question how much religious belief is really driving the decision making over there.
That’s an odd synchronicity to say the least. I haven’t opened a Bible in years (unless you count googling verses online) but for whatever reason I’ve been thinking about this specific passage ever since I heard about Israeli govt officials referencing it. So it’s definitely swirling around in the collective unconsciousness of “the west”.
This is fantasy. Israel (or any country really) ability to expand is limited by its neighbors. Egypt, Jordan and the GCC are more powerful than the 60s and the recent UAE message of pulling of the Abraham accord is a clear signal that they have real weight in Washington. Israel cannot, in the current circumstances, expand.
So I agree with your parent. What Israel currently is doing is non-sense and plays in the hands of Hamas (who is not losing, as civilian lost lives do not count in Hamas counter).
Right now - the evidence on the ground is that Gaza is pretty much fully occupied and largely uninhabitable.
Despite agreeing to leave under the brokered peace deal, Israel are still in southern Lebanon and show no sign of leaving. The flagrant breach of the original cease fire agreement appears to have no consequences.
The effective seige and annexation of the West bank appears to be gathering pace.
Smotrich said back in April that their campaign in Syria will end 'when Syria is dismantled' - they show no sign of leaving, and are still running operations in and around Damascus, and appear to be running the classic divide and conquer strategy.
While the countries you mention may be stronger - Syria and Lebanon are both very weak and very dependent on US 'aid'.
And in terms of US support, which I agree is critical in all this, they appear to have carte blanc from the current US administration.
Also criticism from EU countries is much more muted than their populations would like - for example the UK government is spending more effort on trying to lock up it's own protesting citizens ( for 14 years under anti-terror laws for doing nothing more that holding up a sign ) than doing anything to stop Israel.
Long term - who knows - but right now the plan does appear to be working.
Also - in terms of Egypt - the current leader came to power in a 2013 coup, and there has not been any free and fair election since ( elections yes - free and fair no ).
Jordan and Egypt are 3 and 4 behind Ukraine and Israel in terms of being the recipient of US aid.
I doubt El-sisi could remain in power for long if that aid was withdrawn - if you are kept in power by the military but can no longer afford the wages....
Expansion is relative: consolidating the assimilation of Gaza and the West Bank is a project that has been progressing for decades, not a recent military development.
Ridiculous escalations like invading the Sinai peninsula would be considered "expansion"; the current ethnic cleansing is perceived as an internal Israeli matter.
Israel's main best option is to give Palestinians, at least those unambiguously born under Israel's control, the right to vote in Israeli federal elections.
A government that can kick down the door of the house you were born in has a duty to give you voting rights.
(And if your ethnic group is denied voting rights, you have a basic duty to your fellow man to raise hell until you get those rights, because arbitrary starvation is always on the table for your children until you get them.)
International law forbids the occupying power to give voting rights to occupied regions.
Its also a bit unclear what you mean by "unambiguously under Israeli control" since Palestinians in occupied palestinian territories aren't unambigiously under Israeli control, they had little control over the inside of Gaza until recently, and have some power in the west bank that is shared with the PA. Neither is "unambiguous control". The only group unambigiously under their control are the Palestinians inside Israel proper who as far as i understand do have full voting rights.
If you think military presence should equal voting rights, than i think that would imply that Iraq should be able to vote in US presedential elections.
I think "if their authorities can kick down the door of the house you were born in" is a good enough guide here to see the problem as distinct from other military interventions, not like the invasion of Iraq was a good idea.
The US was not established in Iraq long enough for generations of adults born in Iraq to have grown up under US control.
The border between US and Iraq is not like the border between two suburbs, and there were never Iraqis crossing that border daily to drive a taxi or clean someone's house or see a doctor.
They had enough control over Gaza before October 7th to deny Gaza a port, an airport, and even the right to do peaceful commercial fishing without getting their boats lit up.
And for whatever limited access their law enforcement institutions had to Gaza for kicking in doors, they just did missile attacks on cars or apartments instead of kicking in doors, because they had no reason to care how many bystanders they killed.
> I think "if their authorities can kick down the door of the house you were born in" is a good enough guide here to see the problem as distinct from other military interventions, not like the invasion of Iraq was a good idea.
The US had troops in iraq that were going around kicking in doors. I'm not trying to make any claim as to wether the invasion was a good or bad thing (actually i think it was a bad thing), but it clearly meets your definition of when people should get a vote.
At the same time i think most americans would view the proposition that iraqis should vote in us federal elections absurd.
> The US was not established in Iraq long enough for generations of adults born in Iraq to have grown up under US control.
This is a bit of a goal post move but what time frame do you think is relavent? America invaded iraq in 2003. They left briefly but then came back. They still have a small number of troops there right now. There is a generation of iraqis who have grown up never knowing a time where american troops werent in their country.
> The border between US and Iraq is not like the border between two suburbs, and there were never Iraqis crossing that border daily to drive a taxi or clean someone's house or see a doctor.
I'm not sure the relavence. Most borders in europe are like this, they dont vote in each others elections. I don't think at present this would describe the border situation in Israel/Palestine.
> They had enough control over Gaza before October 7th to deny Gaza a port, an airport, and even the right to do peaceful commercial fishing without getting their boats lit up.
Sure, and that's an argument people use to claim that the territory is under Israeli occupation (or sometimes they argue that would not be enough to start an occupation but its enouth to make the occupation not terminate). I think everyone agrees that Israel exerts significant military control over occupied Palestinian territories. That is why they are called "occupied".
International law forbids a lot of things Israel already does. If it respected international law it would withdraw to its internationally recognized borders.
The point of making voting from occupied territories illegal is that this discourages settlers from the occupying nation to move into the occupied territories before the conflict is over. Otherwise the occupying power could send settlers into another country and pretend that it is merely defending its own citizens, when in reality it is still engaged in offensive war.
Israel's internationally recognized borders are the borders of Mandatory Palestine. The 1948 borders were ceasefire lines - the fact that they were not internationally recognized borders was for decades the justification for cross-border attacks.
> The settlements were declare illegal by a UN resolution that did not specify what law was being broken.
I think this is a bit unfair. Whether you agree or disagree, opponents of Israel have been pretty clear that they think the settlements violate article 49 of the fourth geneva convention. Specificly "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
Sometimes people also argue that the pipelining of Israeli law into settlements violates the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. I think the argument is that you can only distinguish between citizens and non-citizens on your own territory and thus the way Israeli law is applied in settlements but not outside them is a violation. I'm not super familiar with the argument so i might be mis-stating it. I also think its a bit of a catch-22 since Israel isn't allowed to legislate for the Palestinians either. Regardless it is a rule that they point to.
So i don't think its fair to say opponents of Israeli settlements just claim illegality without pointing to which laws. They do point to laws and rules.
> opponents of Israel have been pretty clear that they think the settlements violate article 49 of the fourth geneva convention
The 49th article of the fourth Geneva convention is the usual answer to that question, but it is wrong. Israel does not "deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies", every single Jew in the West Bank got up and returned to or moved to the West Bank of their own accord.
The Geneva conventions apply to states, not people. Furthermore, they protect people, not land, political entities, or political ambitions.
> Sometimes people also argue that the pipelining of Israeli law into settlements violates the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. I think the argument is that you can only distinguish between citizens and non-citizens on your own territory and thus the way Israeli law is applied in settlements but not outside them is a violation.
Israeli law applies to both Arab and Jewish Israeli citizens in the towns and cities in Area C. Yes, Arabs live in the cities in Area C. Not many, but they do exist and they have the exact same laws applied to them as do Jews.
> They do point to laws and rules.
The UN doesn't, so the anti-Israel bodies try to see what they can shoehorn in. Sometimes (as in these cases you've presented) it's easy to show why they're wrong. Sometimes you need a lawyer. ))
But see, we are already past the "they don't ever say which rule" and on to, they do say which rule but their interpretation is incorrect (and hey i even agree with you on that part some of the time).
> The 49th article of the fourth Geneva convention is the usual answer to that question, but it is wrong. Israel does not "deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies", every single Jew in the West Bank got up and returned to or moved to the West Bank of their own accord.
While i agree it is not clear cut in the geneva convention, generally the argument is voluntary transfer is still a transfer. The prohibition is not just about preventing people from being moved against their will but also about preventing attempts to change the demographic composition of an area. See also what the red cross says about it
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule130
I'm not really here to argue these points, i don't necessarily even agree with all of them, i just think you're being a bit straw-many. Arguments are more powerful if you engage with the strongest form of the counter-argument, not the weakest.
> Arguments are more powerful if you engage with the strongest form of the counter-argument, not the weakest.
Your are correct, thank you. I'll emphasize that there was no international concern expressed when Jordan changed the demographic composition of Jerusalem and the West Bank by expelling the Jews. Only when Jews moved back to Jerusalem and the West Bank, after 19 years of absence, is there suddenly concern the demographic composition of of the city.
Who cares? My point is the international community regards the settlements as illegal and if Israel cared about that they would immediately and completely withdraw.
And my point is that the international community, which mostly comprise of Arab nations, Muslim nations, or nations that rely on Arab oil, has been shown to levy accusations and resolutions against the state that the Arab and Muslim nations are united to destroy.
If there was merit to the claim that Jews building houses in the West Bank is illegal, they would have stated which law is being transgressed.
Out of curiosity, do you think Israel could 'find a law being broken' if thousand of Palestinians started building houses, towns, farms, and exclusive roads inside Israel - all protected by Palestinian soldiers?
Or would it just be so obviously illegal to adults?
First, the easy one. The only exclusive roads are exclusive to Palestinians. There are no Jew-only roads, despite our enemies saying it again and again.
Second, the other easy one. Your question is predicated on the assumption that those building houses, towns, and farms are doing so against the will of the body which administrates the territory. Jews in the West Bank build in Area C - other than a tiny extremist minority whose structures are then wiped away by the Israeli authorities. I'm certain if you're partaking in this conversation then you are familiar enough with the administrative divisions of the West Bank to know that Area C was designated by agreement with the Palestinian Authority for Israeli civil development.
There's two ways you could counter my argument - I'm interested to see which one you choose! The Shabbat is coming in soon, so I'll answer you on Sunday or Monday. Shabbat Shalom.
What's wrong with that? Does the United States not have US-only roads (that Mexican citizens in Mexico) can't drive on.
Those roads link Areas C. Either you know what that means so I don't need to explain it, or you don't know enough about the agreements between the PA and the state of Israel to discuss this. Just in case you are in the later camp, as I stated, there are Palestinian-only roads in Areas A. Those are found throughout the West Bank, everywhere. Only in a single place exists the Israeli-only road. So the argument about "Jew-only roads" is not only a lie, it is an inversion of true state of affairs.
the comparison id imagine is the highway from Washington to alaska.
the americans paid to build it, but its a canadian road going through canadian territory and its canada who decides who drives on it, and thats not by citizenship but by licence. people with recognized licences can drive on it.
If I'm not mistaken, and please correct me if I am mistaken because I've not been to that area, the road in question connects Area C to Jerusalem. There is no utility for anybody to use that road who is not entering or leaving Area C.
Here's the third way - acknowledging that Israel’s settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission.
It demands that Israel stop such activity and fulfill its obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention. These settlements are in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and in breach of international declarations.
That the resolution did not include any sanction or coercive measure and was adopted under the non-binding Chapter VI of the United Nations Charter is simply a matter of real politik dealing with Genocide, and is irrelevant to the overall judgement.
* The International Court of Justice
Israel sleigh-of-hand in designating "occupied" territories as "disputed" by virtue of the fact that "there were no established sovereigns in the West Bank or Gaza Strip prior to the Six Day War" was roundly rejected in the International Court of Justice over 20 years ago
//The Court notes that, according to the first paragraph of Article 2 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, when two conditions are fulfilled, namely that there exists an armed conflict (whether or not a state of war has been recognized), and that the conflict has arisen between two contracting parties, then the Convention applies, in particular, in any territory occupied in the course of the conflict by one of the contracting parties.//
I'll address only the first page of that document, it should be enough.
> Guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations,
and reaffirming, inter alia, the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by
force,
This is the most nuanced line of the document, as Jordan attacked Israel. Up until about two years ago, even Arabs (Gazans and West Bankers) would clearly state that Egypt started the war - that narrative is now that Israel started the war with Egypt. Let's settle on it being in dispute - if you're familiar with the events then we could argue either way. If you're not familiar with the events, then I'll win that part based on causus belli. In either case, Jordan attempted to acquire territory by invading Israel. Israel won on the Jordanian front, but it was the Jordanians who were fighting to acquire territory.
If you consider that a weak argument, then consider also that the internationally recognized borders of the state of Israel were the borders of Mandatory Palestine by principal of Uti possidetis juris. This was justification for cross-border raids for decades - both before and after the 1967 war. The Israeli-Jordanian frontier was a cease-fire line, not an international border. Thus, the world did not recognize the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank as legal - only Iraq did (the kings of Jordan and Iraq were brothers). Thus, Israel did not "acquire territory" on the Jordanian front, rather they recovered the occupied West Bank (occupied by Jordan). OK, actually, Israel did actually acquire some territory on the east side of the river. We left that area in I think 1994 or so when we made peace with Jordan.
> Reaffirming the obligation of Israel, the occupying Power, to abide
scrupulously by its legal obligations and responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva
Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of
12 August 1949, and recalling the advisory opinion rendered on 9 July 2004 by the
International Court of Justice,
Here is where legitimate condemnation of Israel can begin. Israel did not annex the territory it recovered. The reasons is quite clear - despite repeated cries to the contrary, Israel does generally not expel populations. Yes, there were expulsions, I'm not blind to that. But you are aware that the Israeli side states that the Arabs who left Israel in 1948 did so at the beheast of Arab politicians requets - and there is ample evidence of this. Yet, many didn't leave and Israel became 20% Arab. Contrast with the West Bank, which Jordan ethnically cleansed of Jews after the 1948 war. Yet you hear no cries about that ethnic cleansing - only cries when Jews return to the farms they were evicted from by the Jordanians.
> Condemning all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition,
character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East
Jerusalem, including, inter alia, the construction and expansion of settlements,
transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and
displacement of Palestinian civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law
and relevant resolutions,
This is where people should start opening their eyes. Jerusalem had already been Jewish majority for decades even before the British Mandate for Palestine started. Jordan completely altered the demographic composition, character and status of Jerusalem when it ethnically cleansed the Jews after the 1948 war - so for 19 years out of 3000 years there were no Jews in that area. Yet, when the Jews return (after only 19 years) that is considered us altering the demographic composition,
character and status? Any objective observer sees the farce.
> Expressing grave concern that continuing Israeli settlement activities are
dangerously imperilling the viability of the two-State solution based on the 1967
lines,
This is true. Jews building houses on the West Bank does imperil the ability to form a racist, no-Jew-allowed ethnostate on the West Bank. Why progressive leftists think that such a state is the proper solution to the conflict is beyond me.
> Recalling the obligation under the Quartet Roadmap, endorsed by its
resolution 1515 (2003), for a freeze by Israel of all settlement activity, including
“natural growth”, and the dismantlement of all settlement outposts erected since
March 2001,
This document is from 2015, no? So because seventy years prior to the writing of the document there were 19 years of no Jews in the West Bank, all Jews who returned must stop building houses? And dismantle the prior 14 years' worth of building, even though those houses were built in areas that the Palestinian leadership and Israel agreed are set aside for Israeli civil development, and in return the Palestinians got areas for their own civil development (which there is no call to dismantle)? As an objective outsider, how does this even make sense to you?
> Recalling also the obligation under the Quartet roadmap for the Palestinian
Authority Security Forces to maintain effective operations aimed at confronting all
those engaged in terror and dismantling terrorist capabilities, including the
confiscation of illegal weapons
Did any member of the Quartet (UN, USA, EU, and Russia) begin, not to mention maintain, any operation aimed at confronting those engaged in terror? Or dismantling terrorist capabilities? Or confiscate illegal weapons? No, only two of those bodies were active in the holy land at the time. The UN "peacekeepers" in Lebanon abetted and filmed Hezbollah's cross-border raid in 2006, in which Israeli soldiers were killed and kidnapped. They didn't film to help, they actually refused to hand over the tapes to Israel. And the EU actually funded (and still funds) the movement of Arabs from Areas A and B to Areas C, in contradition to the agreements made between the PA and the state of Israel. I speak Arabic, I have been to West Bank Arab villages (I won't do it today, I'd be murdered, but I've done it in the past). Many of the hastily-built Arab encampments in Areas C have plaques describing how the EU and member nations have funded construction. The residents will tell you unabashedly from which Areas A and B villages they came from.
> But you are aware that the Israeli side states that the Arabs who left Israel in 1948 did so at the beheast of Arab politicians requets - and there is ample evidence of this. Yet, many didn't leave and Israel became 20% Arab.
Bro really said: "the Palestinians did the nakba to themselves"...
Well, don't take my word for it. Maybe these are people that you trust more than me.
> "We brought disaster upon the refugees, by calling on them to leave their homes. We promised them that their expulsion would be temporary, and that they would return within a few days. We had to admit that we were wrong."
- Syrian Prime Minister Khalid AlAzm
> "Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes, while it is we who made them leave."
- Same guy, Syrian PM Khalid AlAzm
> "The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies."
- Jordanian newspaper Falastin (Interesting fact, if I'm not mistaken the name of this very newspaper was the first Arab use of the word Falastin - way back in 1911!)
> "The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously, and they must share in the solution of the problem."
Obviously you can find quotes to support such a position. Just like I can run around quoting Israeli PMs about how Palestinians are rats and how they must all be killed. You have to look at the whole of the evidence, not individual quotes.
You're correct, of course. Let's look at the Israeli declaration of independence:
> WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.
> WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
AFAIK no but the person you responded to is dogwhistling by repeatedly referencing "arab" and "muslim". They're using it to imply that not only does the UN not matter, they're also positioning these words as the implicit enemy.
It's a bad faith way to approach this argument, so asking logical questions won't make a difference and will tire you out. That's the core strategy behind that behaviour.
I think a more charitable read would be they are claiming that Israel's geopolitical rivals have undue influence in certain UN organs and are using that influence to unfairly single out Israel.
Its not exactly a crazy claim. The UN is a political entity, its not above the influence of geopolitics. The former secretary general of the UN, Ban ki moon at one point (quite a while ago now) said that "Decades of political maneuvering have created a disproportionate number of resolutions, reports and committees against Israel".
If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.
Not that I know of. But it still remains a mystery as to what law is actually being broken. Just declaring something "illegal" does not make it so, even if everybody repeats it.
While that is true, it does not change the fact that the internationally-recognized borders are those of Mandatory Palestine. Those were the internationally-recognized borders even between 1948 and 1967, which is why the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank was not internationally recognized, and also why Egypt was able to squeeze all her refugees into the Gaza Strip before severing ties with the strip in 1956. Or did you not know why Egypt has no refugee camps and almost no refugees today?
I think you're confusing "internationally recognized" with something like "there is an interpretation of international law that supports ..." (and it was unwise of me to use the term "international law" in an earlier comment because it contributes to this blurring, although I didn't realize that at the time).
If the borders were internationally recognized, it would mean that other countries agree that those are the borders. But as far as I know no country recognizes the borders of Mandatory Palestine as the borders of Israel, nor officially recognizes Israel's occupation of the West Bank as legal. I'm not talking about citing chapter and verse of some treaty or some principle like "Uti Possidetis Juris". If the fact of the matter is that other countries do not recognize those borders as the borders of Israel, then those are not the internationally recognized borders of Israel.
Internationally recognized under Uti Possidetis Juris, the principal under which most of the world's international borders have been defined (I think slightly beating out war, but falling behind geography).
I think this argument is a little difficult to make given Israel right now does not overtly claim that mandatory palestine's borders are its borders. If Israel openly claimed this consistently starting from its war of independence to present day, there would probably be a stronger argument, but its probably a bit too late at this point.
I am not making the argument that those should be the final borders. I'm responding to this quote:
> If it respected international law it would withdraw to its internationally recognized borders.
I am demonstrating that the people who are calling for all types of solutions, are not familiar with the full situation and are calling for things that are the opposite of what they actually think should happen.
Bro, I get that you care about Israel, but posting sophistry to Hacker News is not going to change the fundamentals.
Israel is going to be "the country that committed genocide" unless Israelis find a way to stop it. There's no "but you need to understand the complexities of the situation" when it comes to killing hundreds of thousands of defenseless civilians.
Then we should both do everything that we can to end this war before the death toll get to the "hundreds of thousands of defenseless civilians" stage.
How about Israel stop fighting, right now? Right this minute. The magazines come out of the rifles and the fighter jets stay on the ground. As soon as the Gazans decide that this is what they want, they can return the hostages and this will happen.
I am Israeli and I completely oppose the war ending until the hostages are all returned. You said it yourself, hostages are returned and the war ceases. Return the remaining hostages and we will have no more need for war.
At the very least, acknowledge that war is expensive and one of the most common tropes thrown at the Jews is that we are cheap. We don't want this expensive war either.
> I am Israeli and I completely oppose the war ending until the hostages are all returned.
Then surely you are capable of empathizing with Palestinians. Israel holds thousands of their (civilians!) hostage, in violation of international law, with no fair or expedient trial planned.
Demanding the slaughter of captors does not set a safe precedent for the release of Israel's political prisoners.
> We don't want this expensive war either.
Israel is a nuclear nation. Your countrymen chose to invest in catastrophic war as a way of life, no different from America or Russia. Don't weep about the price of fighting until the IAEA inspects Dimona proper.
Much of the criticism of Israel is self-serving, one-sided, and predicated on definition twisting.
After 9/11 there was ample “glass parking lot” sentiment. If some enclave of Canadians or Mexicans tortured, murdered, raped thousands then kidnapped hundreds of Americans those parts of Canada/Mexico wouldn’t exist any more. And rightfully so. The hyperbole and constant double standards in the criticism undermine the credibility of all involved (I mean, Sudan… Congo… Afghanistans border…).
Every westerner involved in dogpiling needs fundamental clarity in the order of the “Death to ____” claims. Every, single, argument against The Jews applies immediately afterwards to The Brits, The French, The Spanish, and Great Satan itself: The US.
“500 thousand dead Iraqi children” is a “genocide” too, if we don’t care about facts or words. That specific strain of propaganda directly supports 9/11 style attacks and ongoing terrorism against the US.
I deeply disappointed in the mush brained cowardice we’re displaying. The best liberal democracy in the Middle East, and victim of constant horrific terrorism, deserves better.
>How about Israel stop fighting, right now? Right this minute. The magazines come out of the rifles and the fighter jets stay on the ground. As soon as the Gazans decide that this is what they want, they can return the hostages and this will happen.
The Israeli government can stop fighting in a way that's currently killing Gazan civilians and destroying Gazan civil infrastructure.
The Gazan civilians cannot release the hostages. Those hostages are held by Hamas, the Gazan government.
This broad-brush blaming leads to despicable crimes against humanity, and is why so many nations have agreed to rules of war. It is inhumane to intentionally punish civilians for what their government is doing. Collateral damage is inevitable, but there must be an effort to minimize it and to actively preserve the lives of civilians. If that means sending in convoys of food trucks after securing a city, then that's what a humane government should do.
The funny thing is, I agree with you about the contradictions in recognizing borders for the state of Israel, depending on what they're arguing at any particular time.
The borders of a potential Palestinian state and the state of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan is one of the most difficult conundrums to consider. I can think of a few "resolutions", none of them really "solutions". I make a huge effort to understand the Israeli side, the greater Arab side, the general Muslim side, and the side of the Palestinians who actually live there. Very few people - from any of those categories - make any effort to understand anybody else's side.
There are troops there, The troops are not present with the consent of the local governing powers, the area has not been annexed (has not been integrated into normal civil law of the country with the troops)*.
That is a textbook definition of what an occupation is.
* except for East Jerusalem, which would normally be considered annexed, but the UNSC has decided (with the binding force of international law) that it is de jure occupied. However Palestinians in east Juruselum can apply for citizenship and get voting rights.
> The troops are not present with the consent of the local governing powers
Are the governing powers legitimate? Hamas banned elections after they won the 2006 election. Why should they be considered any more of a governing powers than Israel? Especially when literally the entire broader region was historically Jewish, long before the modern state of Israel, long before Islamic Arabs (now calling themselves Palestinian) were in the area?
What I see is that the Islamic Arabs in Israel are living peacefully and are integrated into the “normal civil law”. But the residents of Gaza have been pro terrorism - which is why they voted for Hamas on a charter of committing genocide against all other beliefs.
Why is 'legitimate' local government the hurdle here? Surely the presence of foreign troops killing civillians and destroying infrastructure counts as an occupation.
Gaza was de facto administered by the civilian arm of Hamas on the eve of Oct 7, and throughout while there was still infrastructure to speak of, and this is the only sense I understand the term "de facto" to mean when used unqualified; what entity performs the day-to-day administration and security.
It probably doesn't matter much. I agree that both the PA and especially Hamas are despotic dictatorships. So are a lot of countries. That's tragic for Palestinian citizens but ultimately doesn't matter much for determining if a piece of land is independent, occupied or annexed.
Much of it just comes down to drawing a line in the sand at roughly the start of when the United Nations started, and saying this is what the borders are and no one is allowed to change them by force (one of the conditions of joining the UN is to give up the right to acquire territory by force). So from that view, it was egyptian and jordan territory who in turn, supported by the UN, gave it to the palestinian people as respresented by the PA. In a certain way that's pretty arbitrary but i guess its sort of an, it is what it is, sort of thing.
> But the residents of Gaza have been pro terrorism - which is why they voted for Hamas on a charter of committing genocide against all other beliefs
The last election was in January 2006 and to vote you had to be 18+. That means anyone now alive who voted for Hamas has to be over 37. That's less than 20% of of the Gaza population. Furthermore, Hamas got a plurality in the 40-45% range, not a majority.
That means it is very likely that under 10% of people who lived in Gaza at the start of the current war voted for Hamas. Probably closer to 7% because the turnout in 2006 was around 80%.
That’s not relevant. Polls tell us the Gaza population supports Hamas today, after October 7. Even without elections, we know what the population stands for - the principles and goals that Hamas practices.
Without some strong general protection isn't that just 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner? Seems at least some basic guaranteed rights and freedoms is needed.
> A government that can kick down the door of the house you were born in has a duty to give you voting rights.
100%
The most basic principle in democratic government is that those subject to the monopoly of violence should also have a voice in how that violence is managed.
> The most basic principle in democratic government is that those subject to the monopoly of violence should also have a voice in how that violence is managed.
I'm pretty sure most democracies also have a right to decide who can become a citizen. Forcing a country to give citizenship to enemy combatants would be kinda crazy, regardless of whether or not the territory those combatants operate from is under a military occupation.
The current USA regime is attempting all sorts of dumb nonsense, but birthright citizenship certainly isn't universal among countries either. I'm not a citizen of the country I was born in.
It's always bizarre to hear this sort of doomsaying about what would befall israelis if they treated Palestinians as the equal humans they are: 'it's suicide to treat Palestinians as people'; 'innocent folks will be expelled from their land if we treat Palestinians as people'; "or worse, killed!'
It's bizarre because all the horrible prophecies have already come true, or are coming true, only with the roles reversed: We see that it is actually israel genociding Palestinians, rather than vice versa.
Somehow these doomsaying prophets feel this dystopia is actually totally ok, as long as the victims have a particular religion or skin color. Or, to be charitable, maybe the prophets have been paying exactly zero attention to what israel has been doing to innocent Palestinian civilians over the years.
The last time Palestinians voted they quite literally elected Hamas terrorists[0], you're making it out as if making Jews a minority and Palestinians a majority in Israel wouldn't represent an existential threat to the Jewish population. There are zero Jews living under Palestinian rule(i.e Gaza and the West Bank Areas A/B), why do you think it would be any different if they were given majority voting rights in Israel?
After nearly a century of Israeli oppression and zero interest from the international community, them electing a terrorist organization is certainly understable, even if still not justified. The first step is to reassure Palestinians that their neighbors won't start mass-murdering them again, something Israel has currently no interest in doing.
> The first step is to reassure Palestinians that their neighbors won't start mass-murdering them again, something Israel has currently no interest in doing.
Israelis don't just start killing Palestinians for no reason historically however, that pretty much always happens in response to some form of Palestinian aggression. It's not like Israel can just ignore attacks either as that would just encourage further attacks.
Israel is a settler colonial project, as far as I'm concerned they cast the first stone. Or rather, the British sending them here did. Not that it matters much in the end, but today Israel plays the role of the oppressor and Palestine of the oppressed.
> "This sort of entirely one-sided narrative is a huge impediment to peaceful coexistence."
> "Israelis don't just start killing Palestinians for no reason historically however, that pretty much always happens in response to some form of Palestinian aggression"
Fascinating how these 2 posts came from the same person. You are so close to getting it, you just need to take your advice from the first quote there and apply it to the second quote there.
Notably, israel kills around a hundred innocent Palestinians in Gaza daily, unprovoked, while the Palestinians are queuing for food. israel also regularly stages settler terrorist attacks on innocent Palestinians in the west bank: killing Palestinians; burning Palestinian homes and cars and crops; often claiming Palestinian land as their own. When "the authorities" (the IDF) arrive, they often support the terrorists and join in the violence against Palestinians.
But of course, it was because those innocent Palestinians are "being aggressive" by living in the west bank, which israel says they want, right? (They call it "greater israel", just like how the kremlin calls Ukraine "greater russia"). Obviously israel's ethnic cleansing is justified, because they really want someone else's land and stuff, right?
> At a minimum you should go back to the 1800s
We really don't need to. We just need to go back to the point where international laws came into being, including israel agreeing not to expand their territory through violence (a prerequisite to joining the UN). It doesn't matter who used to own it, what matters is global, international consensus on who owns what now (and who should), and global, international consensus on the right way to behave (in accordance with international law, as judged by the designated international courts). This goes even if israel strongly feels it is biased or unfair: after all, pretty much every criminal thinks the justice system that criticizes them is unfair. Like, of course criminals would say that, wouldn't they?
> Fascinating how these 2 posts came from the same person. You are so close to getting it, you just need to take your advice from the first quote there and apply it to the second quote there.
My point is that this conflict can be characterized heavily by back and forth attacks and retaliation from both sides.
> Notably, israel kills around a hundred innocent Palestinians in Gaza daily, unprovoked, while the Palestinians are queuing for food.
This claim is just wildly inaccurate, it's completely divorced from reality, nobody, not even the UN or the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry claim that around a hundred Palestinians are killed a day while queuing for food(they claim around 20 on average per day are killed while queuing for food[0]). Keep in mind that these are claims made by the GHM without proving much evidence to validate the circumstances of the claimed deaths at aid distribution sites. These claims are especially suspect since the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry has strong incentives make statements that discourage aid distribution mechanisms which bypass Hamas.
> israel also regularly stages settler terrorist attacks on innocent Palestinians in the west bank: killing Palestinians; burning Palestinian homes and cars and crops; often claiming Palestinian land as their own. When "the authorities" (the IDF) arrive, they often support the terrorists and join in the violence against Palestinians.
Did I ever defend this sort of thing? I agree there are significant issues with West Bank settlers/settlements.
> But of course, it was because those innocent Palestinians are "being aggressive" by living in the west bank, which israel says they want, right? (They call it "greater israel", just like how the kremlin calls Ukraine "greater russia"). Obviously israel's ethnic cleansing is justified, because they really want someone else's land and stuff, right?
You seems to be downplaying Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank by calling it "being aggressive". The term "greater israel" is also problematic in general since there's a wide range of claims people make regarding what that term even means.
Part of the problem here is that there is very little clear delineation regarding who's land it is, you're talking about a region where many borders were essentially armistice lines as opposed to clearly recognized borders. Keep in mind that Palestinians themselves largely reject even the 1967 borders as they believe all of Israel to be their land. This is one of the reasons attempts at a two state solution have likely failed.
The situation with Russia and Ukraine is not very comparable since there were mutually recognized borders[1] that Russia unambiguously violated.
> We really don't need to. We just need to go back to the point where international laws came into being, including israel agreeing not to expand their territory through violence (a prerequisite to joining the UN). It doesn't matter who used to own it, what matters is global, international consensus on who owns what now (and who should), and global, international consensus on the right way to behave (in accordance with international law, as judged by the designated international courts).
The issue here is international law is not remotely clear either, a real problem is a lack of peace agreements establishing recognized borders between parties, parties(i.e. Lebanon, Syria) that have so far refused to even sign peace agreements that would recognize Israel as a legitimate state.
The situation with Palestine is even more convoluted, since prior to 1967 Gaza Was Egyptian controlled territory and the West Bank had been annexed by Jordan. When Israel signed peace agreements with Egypt all territorial claims over Gaza were renounced by Egypt(despite Israel attempting to negotiate the return Gaza to Egypt). Jordan did sign peace agreements with Israel in 1994 and had officially abandoned all claims to the West Bank in 1988 prior to the peace agreements. So essentially we have ended up with a situation where there is land without an established recognized UN state being in control(the state of Palestine is not recognized by the UN).
> This goes even if israel strongly feels it is biased or unfair: after all, pretty much every criminal thinks the justice system that criticizes them is unfair. Like, of course criminals would say that, wouldn't they?
The issue is a lack of peace agreements establishing recognized borders, the UN/international law can not force peace agreements onto warring parties. Once Israel makes peace agreements establishing recognized borders(i.e. with Egypt/Jordan) they have not historically violated those borders. There are also numerous issues in general when it comes to enforcement of international law as UN courts don't really have independent enforcement mechanisms, the Security Council members effectively have veto power over ICJ rulings(which is one reason the UN is going to be incapable of enforcing rulings against Security Council members or their allies). Then there is the fact that Israel(similar to most countries) would be unlikely to follow an international court ruling if in their view the ruling would create an existential threat to their countries existence.
So no, saying we should let international law is the solution here isn't likely to be all that productive when it comes to resolving these issues.
Of course its understandable. Its also understandable that the israelis are not willing to accept people who want to kill them into their state. Both sides want to kill each other.
I don't think most Israelis actually want to kill Palestinians, but at a minimum I do think the majority of Palestinians probably want to expel all Israeli Jews from Israel(at least based on Palestinian opinion polling).
> I don't think most Israelis actually want to kill Palestinians
Then why are they standing by while their democratically elected government enacts a starvation campaign? The reality is that most Israelis are now pro genocide, just like most Palestinians
Your post weirdly focuses on only the concerns of israelis, even though Palestinians are equal people with equal human rights, including an equal right to protection from israeli violence. Do you even realize that you're not treating Palestinians as humans?
> The last time Palestinians voted they quite literally elected Hamas terrorists
The last time israelis voted, they quite literally elected not only terrorists, but war criminals, criminals against humanity, and literal genociders. Obviously that's worse! Thus, israel has no moral high ground here to attack others, and should look inward and fix itself first.
> There are zero Jews living under Palestinian rule
"Palestinian rule" is not a thing at the moment: all Palestinians are currently ruled (dominated even) by a genocidal israeli military occupation that kills hundreds of innocent civilians daily.
> Your post weirdly focuses on only the concerns of israelis, even though Palestinians are equal people with equal human rights, including an equal right to protection from israeli violence. Do you even realize that you're not treating Palestinians as humans?
It's not clear what you're suggesting in practice, we can all say Palestinians should be given equal rights in an ideal world but that doesn't really bring us any closer to resolving the conflict.
> The last time israelis voted, they quite literally elected not only terrorists, but war criminals, criminals against humanity, and literal genociders. Obviously that's worse! Thus, israel has no moral high ground here to attack others, and should look inward and fix itself first.
I'm certainly not a fan of the current Israeli government but with how Israeli elections(proportional representation) work you tend to get more extremist parties than you would in systems like the United States where you usually just end up with a two party system.
> "Palestinian rule" is not a thing at the moment: all Palestinians are currently ruled (dominated even) by a genocidal israeli military occupation that kills hundreds of innocent civilians daily.
There is a form of Palestinian rule in which the Palestinian Authority exercises a certain level of control in the West Bank, in Gaza Hamas still retains some control as well. I would agree it's not the same thing as an independent state but I don't think characterizing it as no Palestinian rule at all is accurate either.
> It's not clear what you're suggesting in practice, we can all say Palestinians should be given equal rights in an ideal world but that doesn't really bring us any closer to resolving the conflict.
That is unnecessary, because Palestinians already have equal rights which are not legally alienable. israel is merely illegally violating them.
It's also not necessary for equal rights to bring us to any sort of resolution. Equal rights are more important than israel's unequal, unilateral safety, and a country whose existence depends on the violation of others' rights, must find a new, legal way to exist instead. Equal rights come first, and only then can we even begin to discuss a resolution. We tried the other way around, and it has failed to produce a resolution after decades of war.
> how Israeli elections(proportional representation) work you tend to get more extremist parties
This seems to be agreeing with me? Like yeah, israelis voted for terrorists, war criminals, criminals against humanity, and genociders. That is at least as bad as hamas. It's also kind of telling how you refer to a terrorist as an "extremist" when they're israeli. Why soften the language only for 1 ethnic group in the conflict while hardening it for another?
> There is a form of Palestinian rule in which the Palestinian Authority exercises a certain level of control in the West Bank
There is no Palestinian rule. They are ruled, dominated even, by israelis. They do not have freedom of choice, or freedom of trade, or freedom of speech, or freedom of press, or freedom of movement within their own land of Palestine, because israel denies them each and every one of those freedoms. Palestinians are frequently victims of israeli terrorist attacks in Palestine too. When the IDF shows up, they often participate in the terrorist attacks. israel does not even allow Palestinians to defend themselves from israeli terrorist attacks. That is not Palestinian rule.
> That is unnecessary, because Palestinians already have equal rights which are not legally alienable. israel is merely illegally violating them.
Which rights are you referring to? Do you think they all have a right to full Israeli citizenship?
> It's also not necessary for equal rights to bring us to any sort of resolution. Equal rights are more important than israel's unequal, unilateral safety, and a country whose existence depends on the violation of others' rights, must find a new, legal way to exist instead. Equal rights come first, and only then can we even begin to discuss a resolution. We tried the other way around, and it has failed to produce a resolution after decades of war.
If one knew with a high degree of certainty that giving full voting rights to all Palestinians would result in the elimination of the Jewish population from the land would you still be in favor of giving all Palestinians full voting rights? You seem to be advocating for giving full voting rights to a population which largely doesn't believe in equal rights.
> This seems to be agreeing with me? Like yeah, israelis voted for terrorists, war criminals, criminals against humanity, and genociders. That is at least as bad as hamas. It's also kind of telling how you refer to a terrorist as an "extremist" when they're israeli. Why soften the language only for 1 ethnic group in the conflict while hardening it for another?
If you're referring to people like Ben-Gvir, then I would agree(as did the Israeli courts and likely most Israelis) that he is a supporter of terrorism. At the same time there have been other Knesset members like Haneen Zoabi who have made statements effectively supporting Palestinian terrorism as well. I'm not sure if there have been war criminals and criminals against humanity elected, that's a much higher bar than merely supporting terrorism(which is something that unfortunately large percentages of Palestinian society supports). Since the claims of genocide against Israel are not supported by the evidence I probably would not agree there have been genociders elected. As I mentioned earlier the way Israeli elections work makes it much easier for extremists to get elected, and this plays out for both sides naturally.
> There is no Palestinian rule.
There is some level of Palestinian rule under the Oslo Accords, I agree it's not a full state but it's arguably not "no Palestinian rule" whatsoever. Hamas had effectively full control of Gaza's territory for many years as well.
> They are ruled, dominated even, by israelis. They do not have freedom of choice, or freedom of trade, or freedom of speech, or freedom of press, or freedom of movement within their own land of Palestine, because israel denies them each and every one of those freedoms. Palestinians are frequently victims of israeli terrorist attacks in Palestine too. When the IDF shows up, they often participate in the terrorist attacks. israel does not even allow Palestinians to defend themselves from israeli terrorist attacks. That is not Palestinian rule.
There is a military occupation with some level of rule delegated to Palestinian authorities. Palestinian leaders and society have in general not been very supportive of many of those freedoms you mention, especially freedom of speech and freedom of press in addition to other freedoms like freedom of religion(no Jews live in Gaza or West Bank areas A/B at all for example).
> Which rights are you referring to? Do you think they all have a right to full Israeli citizenship?
Whichever rights israelis have, Palestinians also have. Whichever rights israel has, Palestine also has. If israel claims a right to safety from Palestinian attacks, then Palestine has an exactly equal right to safety from israeli attacks. If israel has a right to control their borders, Palestine does too. If israel has a right to 100% control their own trade, then Palestine does, too. This isn't that complicated.
> If one knew with a high degree of certainty that giving full voting rights to all Palestinians would result in the elimination of the Jewish population from the land...
You have this backwards: Palestinians already have rights by virtue of human beings, just like israelis. Likewise, Palestine has rights by virtue of being a country, just like israel. What comes after those rights are respected may be complicated, but is not as important as equal rights. Equal rights is most important, and an oppressor like apartheid South Africa or apartheid israel doesn't get to deny anyone their rights out of fear, or for any other reason.
> There is some level of Palestinian rule under the Oslo Accords
There is no Palestinian rule. They are ruled, dominated even, by israelis. They do not have freedom of choice, or freedom of trade, or freedom of speech, or freedom of press, or freedom of movement within their own land of Palestine, because israel denies them each and every one of those freedoms. Palestinians are frequently victims of israeli terrorist attacks in Palestine too. When the IDF shows up, they often participate in the terrorist attacks. israel does not even allow Palestinians to defend themselves from israeli terrorist attacks. That is not Palestinian rule.
> Palestinian leaders and society have in general not been very supportive of many of those freedoms you mention
Surprise surprise, israel is even less supportive, and "they did it first" isn't an excuse to deny a person or country their rights.
> I'm not sure if there have been war criminals and criminals against humanity elected
>Since [I personally believe] the claims of genocide against Israel are not supported by the evidence...
While you are no doubt a good person, reality does not depend on what you think or perceive. Luckily, the relevant authorities (international courts, scholarly institutions) seem pretty confident that israeli electees are war criminals, criminals against humanity, and genociders, so you don't need to be.
> Whichever rights israelis have, Palestinians also have.
I mean Israelis have Israeli citizenship...not Palestinian citizenship, individuals that have different citizenship in general will have different rights.
> Whichever rights israel has, Palestine also has.
If they don't have the same citizenship then they wouldn't have the same rights because they would live under different governments.
> If israel claims a right to safety from Palestinian attacks, then Palestine has an exactly equal right to safety from israeli attacks. If israel has a right to control their borders, Palestine does too. If israel has a right to 100% control their own trade, then Palestine does, too. This isn't that complicated.
It's unclear what you mean by this in practice, I would agree that if there was a peace agreement in place then this would be ideal, but there may be practical issues. For countries bordering Israel like Jordan/Egypt which have made peace agreements this is effectively the case so I don't see any reasons Israel would reject this outright. Keep in mind that since there is no peace agreement with Palestine creating established borders something like this isn't currently feasible.
> There is no Palestinian rule. They are ruled, dominated even, by israelis.
You're making it as if it's all or nothing, when in reality there's a lot more nuance here.
> They do not have freedom of choice, or freedom of trade, or freedom of speech, or freedom of press, or freedom of movement within their own land of Palestine, because israel denies them each and every one of those freedoms.
Their own leaders often deny them those freedoms, both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. They also don't have clearly defined borders in general which is a big part of the problem(i.e. the lack of a peace agreement creating mutually recognized borders).
> Palestinians are frequently victims of israeli terrorist attacks in Palestine too. When the IDF shows up, they often participate in the terrorist attacks. israel does not even allow Palestinians to defend themselves from israeli terrorist attacks. That is not Palestinian rule.
There are levels of rule below that of having a fully independent state.
> Surprise surprise, israel is even less supportive, and "they did it first" isn't an excuse to deny a person or country their rights.
Palestinians that are Israeli citizens have effectively all those rights. Israel doesn't recognize Palestine as a state due to a lack of a peace agreement, an actual peace agreement establishing a Palestinian state must be negotiated, unilateral disengagement(like Israel tried with Gaza in the past) does not work, likewise unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state will also be unlikely to work, both sides must agree on terms to end the conflict.
> Luckily, the relevant authorities (international courts, scholarly institutions) seem pretty confident that israeli electees are war criminals, criminals against humanity, and genociders, so you don't need to be.
Unfortunately many of these groups(UN and UN affiliated organizations especially) have a major credibility problem, from their outright lies[0][1], to poorly supported reports which cherry-pick data to create a false narrative[2] one certainly can't blindly trust the UN to provide accurate information due to their well documented history of extreme bias against Israel[3].
> always bizarre to hear this sort of doomsaying about what would befall israelis if they treated Palestinians as the equal humans they are
Treating others as equals and co-inhabiting a space with them are quite different. Israel needs to treat Palestinians with dignity. But a lot of Palestinians (and Israelies) legitimately believe in exterminating the other. That's not a stable social base for building a state on.
Yes, things look pretty bright for Netanyahu, and the others in the Israeli state who want to do ethnic cleansing or worse. And settlers who want to do ethnic cleansing (not everyone! a minority I presume), are happy too.
Not many mistakes made here, just others who are mistaken about the goals
A big question for me continues to be how much of Israel's behavior isn't really about best options for Israel as a state, but power politics for particular political factions internally.
but that's how every polity operates, you can't influence it more than people already try to influence it.
you can ask the same of Hamas, is theirs the policy the populace wants?
Israel does have a robust free speech democracy and you can easily learn what many of the different factions think, and like elections anywhere, you don't know till afterward how it plays out, and voters are always disappointed by the way power is exercised.
Yes and no - arguably most would define "pursuing negative outcomes to reinforce a fraction's power" as misoperation within governance and even 200+ years ago understanding this lead to things like Washington's warnings about factions and political parties.
Some have described what we're seeing as an impassioned overreaction to Hamas' initial strike and kidnappings. However, Netanyahu's actions appear far more deliberate. Rhetoric from his own cabinet ministers is now impossible to ignore.
The IDF has taken a very slow and careful approach. There are typically under a hundred Palestinians killed at a time, but they are killed most days with a high degree of consistency. Headlines like "50 civilians killed in Gaza overnight" no longer make it to the front page. There has clearly been careful management to ensure that the numbers don't climb high enough in a single day to upset the new "normal". Israel has banned foreign journalists and the IDF has deliberately targeted those inside of Gaza to further minimize coverage. On top of that, the IDF has targeted healthcare infrastructure and workers while carefully controlling aid to bring about famine without provoking any significant foreign response.
The big concerns now should be how quickly an incipient famine in a region whose healthcare system has been largely eliminated could cause mass deaths, and how long the fog of war Netanyahu has carefully crafted over Gaza might hide it. The remaining window of time in which intervention might prevent tragedy is rapidly closing.
They're not losing the information war against Hamas, who they can easily kill if they can identify, they're losing it against those concerned with human rights in the free world. International law (in the absence of diplomatic enforcement) has nothing to do with it, and neither does the complex and detailed history that only serves as a way for people to avoid talking about the present...
> In fact, it really seemed, and still seems, like no strategy at all
Since 2005, Israel has maintained a strategy for managing Gaza called "mowing the grass"[0][1] in which every few years they attack and conduct short, sharp military operations. This is in contrast to their strategy of (illegal) settlements in the West Bank. In fact, they removed 8,000 settlers in 2005 when they began this strategy.
Besides the major hostilities of 2008/9,[2] 2012,[3] 2014,[4] and 2021[5], Israel infamously tests new weapons and technology on Gaza, allowing their weapons to be labelled "battlefield tested". One of their largest export is surveillance technology (guess who's the largest customer of that), but they also test drones, air force tech, and even guns. In October 2020 an IDF sniper boasted to Israeli newspaper Haaretz about breaking the "kneecap record" after shooting 42 Palestinian kneecaps in a single day. The snipers purposefully target kneecaps to permanently disable protestors, especially younger ones and increase the burden of care for Gazan society. This is "peacetime" between Gaza and Israel.
Gaza has been called an "open air prison" and "laboratory"[6] for Israel's military industry. The point I'm making is that Israel has never stopped keeping its eye on Gaza. I find it extremely hard to believe Israel didn't know, with extreme detail, what they were getting themselves into
Netanyahu's goal is endless war and conflict so that he'll never have to leave office and finally face criminal charges. I think Oct 7 is exactly what he wanted also.
Well Hamas did write they want to kill all Israel.
Hamas did slaughter , rape and torture 1200 civilians , children and babies. and take at least another 200? hostage Then paraded some of them thru Gaza. Exactly what response did Hamas expect. Also Trump has said 30,000 of the cira 60000 dead are Hamas fighters.
> Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this
Israel probably came out ahead if all they lost is prestige.
They've neutered Iran and become the de facto regional security power. Their weapons and military have been validated, which makes than a desirable trading partner in an increasingly-militarising world. And they're turning into a gas exporter.
Worst case, a generational shift occurs and Israel loses its military support from America. (I don't see us sanctioning Israel any time soon, so its economic primacy will remain intact. And we only pay for like 15% of their military budget, so not a disaster.) Do you really think China and India would even hesitate to partner with Tel Aviv on defense?
> They've neutered Iran and become the de facto regional security power
How did they "neuter" Iran? Iran responded quickly and managed to heavily damage TelAviv and is now rushing to accelerate rebuilding their nuclear capabilities.
If anything, the previous operation was a disaster, it allowed to regime to entrench itself even further in IRAN and regime change that they were hoping for didn't happen.
I'm sure both Iran and Israel are gearing up for another round of heavy conflict later this year or early next year.
> How did they "neuter" Iran? Iran responded quickly and managed to heavily damage TelAviv
Israel gained air superiority over Iran and successfully conducted military decapitation strikes. Iran sort of launched some half-assed rockets in Israel's direction.
The only damage Israel has suffered is to its intelligence faculties in Iran.
> the previous operation was a disaster, it allowed to regime to entrench itself even further in IRAN and regime change that they were hoping for didn't happen
It was a tactical failure and strategic success. Iran's proxies have been shown they're completely fucking on their own--Tehran can't defend itself.
As for regime change, Israel didn't prosecute its war in a way that suggests that was the aim. Separatism? Yes. Destabilisation? Sure. Incapacitation? Surely. But regime change? I really don't think so. Knocking out the regime would likely mean elements of the IRGC consolidating power. That isn't a win for Israel.
> I'm sure both Iran and Israel are gearing up for another round of heavy conflict later this year or early next year
Iran doesn't have the ranged capability.
> IRAN is still very much a threat to Israel
I haven't seen any credible, impartial analysis that suggests this is remotely the case.
The conflict was settling into a "war of the cities" scenario with both Israel and the US exhausting interceptors rapidly.
What happens when it turns into a contest of rocket production and absorption against a country with 10x the population and 20x the land area? Completely unwinnable for Israel. Iran doesn't need air superiority to fire rockets.
> conflict was settling into a "war of the cities" scenario with both Israel and the US exhausting interceptors rapidly
Iran was rapidly running out of launchers. Once Israel gained air supremacy, it severely reduced its launcher deployment to avoid losing them for nothing.
> What happens when it turns into a contest of rocket production and absorption against a country with 10x the population and 20x the land area? Completely unwinnable for Israel
Iranian rocket production rates aren't particularly amazing. Tehran's deterrence came from the size of their stockpile, and the fact that they could fire on Israel from four directions (Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis and Iran proper).
> Iran doesn't need air superiority to fire rockets
Where did you get this?
Iran's MRBMs are mostly liquid fuelled [1] and stored in fortified bunkers (like V2s were). This leaves them highly vulnerable during fuelling (same as V2s). With air supremacy one can take out the missiles on the pad. (Which, due to the aforementioned fortification requirements, are predictably placed.) This is one reason Iran's missile firing rate collapsed during the war [2]--Israeli intelligence combined with targeted (land-origin, it seems) strikes took out their launchers.
Iran also has a fleet of solid-fuelled missiles which can be launched on short notice, but these are also less accurate, have to carry smaller payloads and more cheaply intercepted.
Moreover, in a war of attrition (which we did not reach, both sides were burning stockpiles) production reigns supreme. You need at least air parity to fire missiles. You need a favourable air situation to run fixed factories.
Iranian solid-fueled MRBM production rates were estimated by Israel to be at 200 a month, and rapidly increasing. That is actually a pretty remarkable production rate - basically the yearly production rate of interceptors. And that's only the solid fueled (by now the most produced), and only in ranges that can reach Israel. There is no reason why they would be any easier to intercept - plenty of aeroballistic missiles and even HGVs are propelled by solid fueled boosters.
Iranian missiles launchers are pretty cheap, and reportedly quite plentiful - they are relatively simple modifications of domestically produced truck platforms.
The Iranian account for why the strikes slowed down, FWIW, is that it took a significant amount of time to dig out the exits of the missiles bases, not that they ran out of launchers. Given the recycling of footage from launcher destruction and the simplicity of the launchers I personally find that account significantly more plausible.
The Iranian missile arsenal and production is now focused on solid fueled missiles, so they were emerging from a predictable place, but with a fuelled rocket they could fire in minutes.
Since it took at least an hour for a cruise missile to make it's way and around 15 minutes for an ALBM to make it's way, that means that once Israeli drones started being shot down, they were able to dig out the entrances, exit and launch faster than it took for a munition to be delivered.
Of course if Israel had been able to fly manned aircraft deep into Iran and for prolonged periods of time, that would have been impossible, and they would actually have been unable to fire. But that wasn't the case and so they were able to fire, probably limited by the ability to dig out the entrances and synchronize launches between different sites.
That's all well argued, but I can't get over the asymmetries of country size and the asymmetry of missile defense vs shooting the missile.
Russia wasn't supposed to be economically capable of a war this long and yet here we are. And that's a war of choice. If Iran is being attacked, they have no choices. People will find a way to make missiles underground if they have to.
And that's all before we get into political and psychological factors. How long does Netanyahu stay in power if Tel Aviv is hit every day?
(I have to note, USA vs Iran and Israel vs Iran are very different economic comparisons. It would be impossible for Israel to sustain 24/7 suppression over a country Iran's size but maybe with enough American funding its more feasible.)
Iran has a choice - it could choose not to support Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis or any other group firing rockets on Israel. It could also choose not to enrich uranium.
> I can't get over the asymmetries of country size and the asymmetry of missile defense vs shooting the missile
You're referring to strategic depth. Iran has lots of it. Israel does not. Countering that, however, is power projection capability. Israel has a lot of this, through its air force and allies. Iran was thought to have a lot of it, through its proxies, but that failed.
Without its proxies, Iran's fire on Israel has to originate from its own territory. That means trading missile range against the protection offered by its strategic depth from Israeli counter-battery fire. Hence why Iran's launchers were somewhat distributed across its territory. But! If Israel has air supremacy, that strategic depth changes from a risk to a logistical cost. If Israeli jets can freely access Iranian air space, that extra distance Iran's central and eastern launchers have to fly don't trade against any defensive upside--they're still going to be blown up shortly after a pad is revealed. They just have to burn more fuel to get the same payload to the same place.
> Russia wasn't supposed to be economically capable of a war this long
There were a variety of estimates. Most of them assumed Russia's economy would crumble under sanctions and so Moscow would lose the will to fight. I don't believe any showed Russia would lose the ability.
> If Iran is being attacked, they have no choices. People will find a way to make missiles underground if they have to
Rockets, sure. Missiles? No. The Shahab-3 reaches altitudes of 400 km [1]. That's where the ISS orbits [2].
> How long does Netanyahu stay in power if Tel Aviv is hit every day?
How long does Putin stay in power if Ukraine keeps dismantling Russia's energy infrastructure? The sad truth is war-time leaders tend to be deposed after unpopular wars, not during them.
> It would be impossible for Israel to sustain 24/7 suppression over a country Iran's size
Again, they don't need to. They just need to destroy the launchers.
It's estimated Iran went from 350 to 100 launchers in the war. Once you've levelled the launchers, you're defending against unguided rockets (which everyone in between will try to pot) and drones (which are cheaper and easier to destroy and cause less damage).
> would be impossible for Israel to sustain 24/7 suppression over a country Iran's size but maybe with enough American funding its more feasible
Israel's economy is twice the size of Irans's [3][4]. Its smaller territory means it can concentrate air defences. And with 10x fewer mouths to feed, it can devote more of that economy to its war machine in a spurt.
Iran-Israel is super interesting because they don't share a border, and they sort of min-maxed their militaries and economies in very different ways. If Iran had maintained its proxies, I think your original analysis stands. Without them, when it can only fire from one direction and from far away, all while Israel can scoot up close and right on top of it, many of its advantages turn into liabilities.
Don't know why you're getting downvoted for a thoughtful comment.
I think you're overindexing on a prepared sneak attack with maximum ops velocity from Israel. They threw the best punch they had and it.. disrupted Iran. Didn't knock them out.
Longer term, Israel has 260 fighter-bombers and Iran is huge. Allied analysts after WW2 generally concluded that strategic bombing didn't really move the needle on German war production, and that was with 10s of thousands of bombers, although admittedly a lot less precision. Any long, flat building in Iran's gigantic, mountainous country could be building missiles. And new launcher locations won't be plotted out ahead of time for a high-tempo 72 hour operation, they'll be coming up continuously over the long haul. They don't need to be hypersonic once interceptors are exhausted.
How's Israel going to sustain that long term, especially if they take any amount of ongoing civilian losses at all? It stops being an abstract conversation about collateral damage to civilians pretty quickly once it's happening to them. 10/1 ratio is nowhere near good enough for the polity there.
> How's Israel going to sustain that long term, especially if they take any amount of ongoing civilian losses at all?
Long term, no clue. The best strategy would be a system of regional alliances, but they've screwed that pooch with Gaza. Second best is setting red lines for Iranian missile production and stockpiles and intervening when those thresholds are breached.
Being extremely hasty with setting red lines and enforcing them is what got Israel into this situation. The "mow the lawn" strategy means perpetual conflict and they have to win every single time.
What right does Israel have to govern Iran's self defense capabilities? Iran's been attacked unprovoked by USA/Israel several times in the last 6-7 years, they're not the ones starting shooting wars.
Iran's supply chain is already fully domestic thanks to sanctions. Repeated strikes on that supply chain will only serve to harden it.
A more relevant historical parallel was the Iran-Iraq war. Iraq, in the first 5 years of the war, had largely degraded Iranian air defenses and was able to carry out many thousands of airstrikes, at some points even using strategic bombers, many of them with precision weapons. That was enough to degrade Iranian industry, but not enough to destroy it, and by the late 80s Iran still won the war of attrition, and managed to develop their weapons industry.
By the end of the war Iran was using domestic surveillance drones to direct artillery, and was even experimenting with the first attack drones by fitting RPGs on their larger surveillance UAVs, had reverse engineered and started domestically producing TOW missiles, had started producing the Shahab-1 ballistic missile (a Scud clone), Silkworm-clone radar-guided antiship cruise missiles, etc..., all the while their air force was down to less than 100 hundred aircraft in various degrees of disrepair and with very few advanced munitions remaining.
The war ultimately ended in a stalemate, even after the US intervened in Praying Mantis.
The attacks on Iranian industry had zero land attack component. Iran is a very large country and Iraq was not able to hold much Iranian territory, the distances involved mean that Iraq was just like Israel reliant on airpower for these strikes.
Iran's GDP PPP is 1.75 trillion. The capacity for Iran to produce domestic designs is far higher than Israel's. Iran's nominal GDP has fallen drastically because of sanctions, but in terms of domestically produced and domestically designed military equipment, PPP is far more accurate.
> It's estimated Iran went from 350 to 100 launchers in the war. Once you've levelled the launchers, you're defending against unguided rockets (which everyone in between will try to pot) and drones (which are cheaper and easier to destroy and cause less damage).
That's possible, although no one actually knows how many TELs Iran has, and no one knows how many have been destroyed : Israeli evidence to that effect has been very very slim. Iran's TELs are essentially a pneumatic piston and a FCS (read: Beidou GNSS receiver) bolted onto a domestically-designed 8x8 or 10x10 platform. Iran has far, far more than 400 8x8/10x10 military trucks, so it's essentially impossible to know how many of those they can or have configured as a TEL at any given moment, especially since those conversions are easily done in undergound facilities.
So the "they just need to destroy the launchers" theory is very thin, on the edge of wishcasting. The launchers being domestically produced and similar/lesser in cost to the missiles they fire suggest that even if it does work once, it's not a viable long term strategy.
Iran has a very large automotive industry - they produce over 1 million cars per year. If the main strategic hit was to destroy 200 trucks made in a country that cranks out 1 000 000 cars, I'm going to very skeptical about claims of neutering them.
You may be confusing the guidance mechanisms of early ballistic missiles, which relied entirely on on-board inertial guidance. These missiles therefore needed quite precise initial guidance and an expensive TEL with a myriad of expensive sensors in order to calibrate themselves. Modern ballistic missiles don't work like that : they have non-inertial GNSS guidance (and for the most sophisticated, some kind of active or optical guidance system in the mid course and terminal phase) to complement inertial guidance. That means that the TEL just needs to communicate an initial position, so nothing much more complicated than a GNSS receiver is needed, and to the extent that this is incorrect, the missile can correct itself.
> Rockets, sure. Missiles? No. The Shahab-3 reaches altitudes of 400 km [1]. That's where the ISS orbits [2].
What does that have to do with anything? The Shahab-3 missile has a small fraction of the dV necessary to reach orbit, and is therefore much smaller than the kind of rocket you need for that. We already know that they are stored in large numbers underground, so what's the bottleneck that prevents underground production?
In fact, in Masyaf, Syria, Iran placed the planetary mixers which are the most sensitive and expensive component underground. There is no clear reason why they wouldn't have done so at home.
The rest of the production of solid-fueled missiles is bottlenecked by casting pits. Iran has placed mant of these above ground - obviously we can't know if or how many they have placed underground, but they seem to have largely resisted Israeli airstrikes - they are not a sensitive target. See : https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1220847/guest-post-a... for an independent account of Iranian MRBM-scale solid fueled rocket motor production. The only easy target are the planetary mixers - Israel has claimed to have targeted them, but in Masyaf, Syria, they failed to destroy them using airstrikes and had to resort to a commando attack on the underground facility, so that theory is thin as well.
> Its smaller territory means it can concentrate air defences.
That's right, which is why Israel uses weapons designed to evade air defenses and exploit gaps, while Iran uses weapons that simply exhaust interceptors. The former is easier to exploit from the get go, but the latter fails catastrophically once the breaking point arrives.
> And with 10x fewer mouths to feed, it can devote more of that economy to its war machine in a spurt.
Yes, but Iran doesn't feed it's citizens in US dollars (at least not anymore), it feeds them using a PPP-adjusted basket of goods. And similarly while Israel's interceptors are in large part manufactured in the USA and paid for in USD, Iran's missiles are almost entirely manufactured domestically, with workers paid in a much cheaper basket of goods. In terms of exchaning interceptors and ballistic missiles, Iran is ahead.
The main issue Iran has is that their missiles are mostly not accurate enough to degrade Israeli force projection, and that while missile production is very high, it hasn't been for a long time and thus stockpiles are not great. That's a problem that has an expiration date, and that's why Israel attacked Iran, because the window is closing. Iran only very recently demonstrated the kind of technology that is needed to execute precision strikes using MRBMs: the first missile design they claim is able to do so is the Qassem Basir, which only entered service this year. If that works and if they can scale production, the advantage Israel has in being very concentrated and densely protected turns into a liability - Iran then has the ability to directly attack Israeli BMD radars, and then directly attack airbases. It's a serious threat, and that's exactly why the Israelis decided that they needed to attack.
Granted. We're still talking about a 3x difference, advantage to Iran, in the face of a lot more territory to defend, population to manage and a technical deficit.
> if the main strategic hit was to destroy 200 trucks
MRBM launchers are not trucks.
> You may be confusing the guidance mechanisms of early ballistic missiles
Guided vs unguided refers to the ability to course correct en route. An unguided missile is a lobber rocket. A guided missile has reaction controls onboard.
> What does that have to do with anything?
That it's a complicated machine you can't whip up in a garagd.
> while Iran uses weapons that simply exhaust interceptors
A strategy undermined by collapsing launch rates.
> If that works and if they can scale production, the advantage Israel has in being very concentrated and densely protected turns into a liability
Absolutely. I'm not saying Israel is indefinitely invulnerable to Iran. Just that in the last war, it neutered Iran's capacity to hurt it.
It's a piston mounted on top of a utility truck. It's a truck! If a semi-truck with a refrigerated trailer is a truck, then an 8x8 utility truck with a hydraulic piston is also a truck.
> Guided vs unguided refers to the ability to course correct en route. An unguided missile is a lobber rocket. A guided missile has reaction controls onboard.
That's not what I'm referring to. Early ballistic missiles only had inertial guidance, and therefore needed an accurate positional and attitude fix provided by the launcher, which made it expensive and complex. Modern ballistic missiles have absolute guidance mechanisms, so the launcher is now much simpler.
> That it's a complicated machine you can't whip up in a garagd.
Iranian UGFs aren't garages. They are called missile cities for a reason.
> A strategy undermined by collapsing launch rates.
25-35% of ballistic missile impacts on Israel occured on June 22nd. The Iranian capacity to actually hit targets in Israel did not collapse through the 12 day war.
> Absolutely. I'm not saying Israel is indefinitely invulnerable to Iran. Just that in the last war, it neutered Iran's capacity to hurt it.
Iran's ballistic missile strikes were most successful on June 22nd. In the last week of the war, there is plenty of evidence pointing towards Israeli BMD degrading faster than Iran's ability to launch ballistic missiles.
The only way to conclude that Iran's ability to launch was neutered is if you believe that, were the war to continue, Iran's ability to launch missiles would have continued to degrade. The only argument to that effect is that they'd run out of launchers - I find that implausible on the basis of the launchers being simple modifications of extremely plentiful military truck platforms.
after first week or so iran could launch only from bases that were much further away from Israel (way east), because Israeli air control was weaker there
Iran does need actual rockets and launchers, which they were rapidly running out at a faster rate than interceptors. Whatever the response was, it certainly wasn't the "apocalyptic" attack like some doves were previously predicting.
Iran being neutered is propaganda that is necessary for the (failed, for now) Israeli plan of regime change.
Iran maintains the ability to build ballistic missiles in large numbers, greatly depleted Israel-US BMD reserves, continues to build even more reinforced nuclear sites. Neutering those capabilities was the main goal of the 12 day war and by most accounts, that didn't work.
Israel did not manage air superiority over the large majority of Iran, instead the majority of strikes over Iran were done using standoff weapons and drones, many flown from within Iran as an act of sabotage.
If Israel truly managed to get air superiority over Iran, the Iranian regime would have suffered the same fate as Nasrallah. But that didn't happen, because while Israel was able to execute a number of deep strikes, the capability to do so was much closer to Russia's ability over Ukraine than, say, the way the US operated over Iraq. And Iran at the same time was able to execute dozens of deep strikes within Israel, but with much less precision - without a much deeper cut to the Iranian MIC it's only a matter of time before the newer, much more precise missiles are built in sufficient numbers to become a similar threat to the Israeli airforce.
There is no reason why China would ever want to partner with Israel on defense anymore. They tried do in the 2000s, and they found that Israel was so deeply and inextricably dependent on US technology and manufacturing for it's military technology that there was almost nothing worthwhile they could get that wasn't so dependent on the US that the US would veto it. Israel's military sophistication is not endogenous to the extent it would be competitive without the US - it's entirely dependent on an extremely privileged relationship with the MIC that allows Israel to stand on the shoulder of giants and produce weapons that are far more sophisticated than would be possible for any economy of its' size otherwise.
An article came out only today on Haaretz detailing how much of the footage and imagery from Israeli strikes were deepfakes or recycled footage. That's not something you do when you've managed to neuter your opponent.
> Iran being neutered is propaganda that is necessary for the (failed, for now) Israeli plan of regime change.
Iran maintains the ability to build ballistic missiles in large numbers
Iran hasn't been neutralised. It was just reduced to a non-threat during the war. Of course it maintains future capabilities that could be threatening.
> That's not something you do when you've managed to neuter your opponent
> Iran hasn't been neutralised. It was just reduced to a non-threat during the war. Of course it maintains future capabilities that could be threatening.
I wouldn't call 10 ballistic missiles hits in a day a non-threat. If they were accurate that's a significant threat: enough to disable all BMD radars in a day, and over a week to disable airbases.
The most important factor that made them less threatening is the lack of pinpoint accuracy, and that is not something that changed over the course of the war.
> Why not? It's an information war.
Getting caught using fabricated imagery is inevitable within a couple days, so that's not something you'd want to do in an information war if you are looking for long term effect, unless you have to.
> Israel an the US are a single entity when it comes to security matters in the middle east. It was already the de facto regional power
Not independently. At this point, Israel is independently a de facto regional power. The strike in Doha drove that home. (As did the attacks on Iran, which delivered a geostrategic win to Riyadh that Washington was never able to.)
You may not realize it but Israel is slowly becoming Rhodesia/Apartheid South Africa. And i don't mean the word 'apartheid' as a cudgel.
During the Rhodesian Bush War, their forces ran circles around the ZIPRA and ZANLA with multiple battles and encounters where they'd routinely record 500:1 KD ratios like Operation Dingo, etc. They had complete freedom of action to bomb any infrastructure obstructing them, reach deep into neighboring countries and slaughter guerillas copiously.
Hell, South Africa had a dozen nukes.
Once the sanctions came on, it unraveled everything they had.
Israel is in such a precarious situation right now. Their economy depends on technology exports to an extreme degree. Cutting off that source of FX would literally half the economy overnight because cash would stop sloshing around internally from its main sources.
If that happens, all the smart kids propping up the economy will move out while you're left with extremists who want war but won't fight in the army. In fact, it's ongoing right now with people leaving the country in the midst of a war they're 'winning.'
You might think sanctions are a far-off notion, but key Western powers are breaking with America on recognizing Palestine. That's a red line designed to signal to Israel that it's losing ground. People across the world are calling for sanctions and it won't be long before they materialize.
And America? Israel's main power base are American boomer evangelicals who're going the way of the dinosaur. Like I said in another comment, their kids are either not religious, don't like bombing kids, have been radicalized by the atrocities they've witnessed, or are aligned with people like Fuentes.
I hope they can smell the coffee; if anyone had told South Africa that a nuclear power could be disarmed without a gunshot, they'd never have believed it. But, look what eventually happened.
Thanks to the ongoing genocide, America's voting demographic for the next 40 years has begun to see Israel as a genocidal terrorist state. They will be voting for the next 50 years, while the boomer evangelicals die off.
> Cutting off that source of FX would literally half the economy overnight because cash would stop sloshing around internally from its main sources
My point is this isn't a realistic threat for Israel. Its exports are highly desirable to too many parties. Technology. Weapons. Energy. There is too much money to be made, too much advantage to be had.
Yes, if the war in Gaza continues for another decade, Israel will run out of goodwill. But if it wraps up within a year or two? I don't see anything happening quickly enough that they can't adapt. Apartheid was a permanent state. The war need not be.
> America's voting demographic for the next 40 years has begun to see Israel as a genocidal terrorist state. They will be voting for the next 50 years
I'd say a strategic prerogative for Israel at this point is to diversify away from America. It's unfortunate. But they screwed a golden goose.
For the aforementioned reasons, however, that isn't existential. Particularly given India and China have what they consider to be problematic Muslim populations within and around themselves, too.
> Even now they can get the Chinese on the line in a minutes notice. I’m pretty sure the Chinese are running one of their ports
China has actually been more arms length in this conflict, possibly due to its relations with Iran, possibly because it wants Israel to fully commit east. (Possibly because they have a moral position on occupation and genocide, though unlikely, it's not like they're handing back Tibet and Xinxiang.)
>My point is this isn't a realistic threat for Israel. Its exports are highly desirable to too many parties. Technology. Weapons. Energy.
Everything Israel makes is fungible. The middle east is a river of gas. Israel's defense technology industry can't exist without Western partners. Hell, America denying them F35 repairs/upgrades effectively kills their airforce.
>Yes, if the war in Gaza continues for another half decade, Israel will run out of goodwill. But if it wraps up within a year or two? I don't see anything happening quickly enough that they can't adapt. Apartheid was a permanent state. The war need not be.
The damage has been done. Hundreds of millions globally now voice opinions about Israel openly that they wouldn't have allowed to just a few years back. These people vote in their countries, buy products, interact in the real world. We're seeing Israeli tourists get harassed openly. Would have been unthinkable in, say, 2020.
>Yeah, I'd say a strategic prerogative for Israel at this point is to diversify away from America. For the aforementioned reasons, however, I don't see that being a problem. Particularly given India and China have what they consider to be problematic Muslim populations within and around themselves, too.
India cannot even field 4.5 generation jets. Their airforce (French Rafales) got whooped in the recent confrontation with Pakistan. In fact, after China delivers Pakistan's J35s, India would have nothing to counter it. Israel's military core is air supremacy so much so that it is state doctrine to use nukes if the IAF is ever destroyed.
And China, trying to project an image of fairness to the third-world, as an alternative power, supports a two-state solution. Unlike Western politicians, they can't be lobbied and bribed to support endless wars.
I have my gripes with the West but they're still a superpower bloc. If they sanction you, you're fucked. There's a reason even China keeps its dealings with sanctioned Russian companies plausibly deniable. To avoid contagion.
You just don't understand how dependent Israel is on the West. 53% of their exports are technology goods. If you're cut off from Western markets, not only will China not buy much from Israel, they will copy their products and compete with them.
The only country you can build a shared resistance towards Muslims is India. For now, their economy is small and irrelevant. China has their Islamist problem under control and they won't want to offend the moneybag Arabs by supporting Israel (LMAO).
Israeli weapons are absolutely not fungible, particularly not for non-Western buyers. And something being fungible doesn't make it less valuable.
> America denying them F35 repairs/upgrades effectively kills their airforce
Correct. I am guessing we'll see diversification here.
> India cannot even field 4.5 generation jets. Their airforce (French Rafales) got whooped in the recent confrontation with Pakistan
...and guess who makes a state-of-the-art integrated air defences? And knows how to penetrate (and thus harden) state-of-the-art Russian air defence systems?
> China, trying to project an image of fairness to the third-world, as an alternative power, supports a two-state solution
Uh, China is doing whatever it can to keep America distracted. If Israel can give China technology, China will continue calling for a two-state solution while buying what it needs. (Chinese-Israeli trade has increased throughout the war.)
> have my gripes with the West but they're still a superpower bloc. If they sanction you, you're fucked
Israel is not at material risk of blanket sanctions from the West in the next decade. And being a democracy, there is a lot of good a change of face can do.
> 53% of their exports are technology goods
Why does this have to go to America and Western Europe?
> China has their Islamist problem under control and they won't want to offend the moneybag Arabs by supporting Israel
Which of the Arab monarchies is particularly distressed with Israel? Which has even walked back its previous support and recognition? The Gulf is more than happy for Israel to fight their wars against Iran. If the war dies down, they've got more important things to worry about. (Their populations have never liked Israel. Not super relevant.)
It seems that everyone in this conflict has doomsday fantasies for their opponents. The Gazans will all shrivel up and die. Israel will poof away because young Americans decide foreign policy--not jobs or housing or the rule of law--is their single issue. These extreme outcomes are incredibly unlikely.
>Israeli weapons are absolutely not fungible, particularly not for non-Western buyers.
My claim was specifically with China in mind. Pretty much everything the Americans will let Israel sell to non-Western partners can be gotten from China, Turkey, etc. cheaper and with less headache.
>Correct. I am guessing we'll see diversification here.
Yep. Introducing my magical new fighter jet that replaces the f35!
>...and guess who makes a state-of-the-art integrated air defences? And knows how to penetrate (and thus harden) state-of-the-art Russian air defence systems?
Well, it probably didn't work great given how India fared recently, did it? They're a committed partner of Israel and collaborate on military tech.
>Uh, China is doing whatever it can to keep America distracted. If Israel can give China technology, China will continue calling for a two-state solution while buying what it needs. (Chinese-Israeli trade has increased throughout the war.)
The only thing China reliably does is single-mindedly pursue their interests. Propping Israel up doesn't achieve that. In fact they're quite chummy with the Palestinians and lots of the weapons used for the Oct. 7 raid were Chinese-made.
>Israel is not at material risk of blanket sanctions from the West in the next decade.
If you say so. The chances of the Five Eyes breaking with America on recognizing Palestine were also exactly zero just a few months ago.
>Why does this have to go to America and Western Europe?
Because they're the only ones who have the money for it. No non-Western company/country has the amount of tech demand/cash to have completed the Wiz acquisition for $32b in cash. Their software markets have no viable customers outside the West.
>Which of the Arab monarchies is particularly distressed with Israel? Which has even walked back its previous support and recognition? The Gulf is more than happy for Israel to fight their wars against Iran.
Good point.
>It seems that everyone in this conflict has doomsday fantasies for their opponents.
I have no dog in the fight. Both countries could disappear overnight and it wouldn't affect my quality of life. I'm simply a student of history and I'm trained to see patterns.
I'm curious to know what it is that India didn't fare well in the recent conflict. Based on my reading I was under the impression that original incursion was a military success for India and everything else after that was theatre on both sides. What am I missing?
> curious to know what it is that India didn't fare well in the recent conflict
Pakistan shot down Indian plane(s). India didn't return the favour. Worse, Pakistan's integrated air defence systems had situational awareness; it's clear Indian Rafale pilots didn't even see the shots coming.
It's not a victory for one side or the other, overall. But in the air battle, Pakistan gained tactical supremacy.
The Indian government claims to have shit down Pakistani jets as well and Pakistan denied it. Pakistan claims to have shit down six jets and India says it's 3. So there is that
> Indian government claims to have shit down Pakistani jets as well and Pakistan denied it
A lot of folks have looked at a lot of OSINT. There is no evidence of any Indian kills. The best we can say is we have zero confirmed kills by India on Pakistan. For what it's worth, New Delhi seems to have backed off repeating its claims of kills internationally.
> Pakistan claims to have shit down six jets and India says it's 3
India claims three jets crashed for unknown reasons [1]. French and US officials have indirectly confirmed those kills [2][3]. Internationally, it's being treated as three confirmed kills by Pakistan.
> Introducing my magical new fighter jet that replaces the f35
You really think the French, Swedes, Russians or Chinese won't sell them planes? They're seeking to be a regional power. They don't need F-35s. (Though they're certainly handy.)
> probably didn't work great given how India fared recently, did it?
India doesn't field Israeli air defences...
> only thing China reliably does is single-mindedly pursue their interests. Propping Israel up doesn't achieve that
I'll grant that China has been the most consistent on Israel and Palestine. Nevertheless, Israeli-Chinese trade keeps growing.
> If you say so. The chances of the Five Eyes breaking with America on recognizing Palestine were also exactly zero just a few months ago
Really? According to whom? I haven't been in the UN for a while, but everyone I knew was asking when, not if. It clearly works for domestic politics, doubly following the recent trade concessions.
Netherlands (not Five Eyes) was 1 in 3 [1]. Canada and France were making motions for a while; Japan and Italy were like 50% going back two months.
> they're the only ones who have the money for it
The U.S. funds about 15% of Israel's defence budget. We allow them to splurge in a way they can't alone. But that just means they can't defeat Hezbollah and Iran and Hamas at the same time without us.
>You really think the French, Swedes, Russians or Chinese won't sell them planes? They're seeking to be a regional power. They don't need F-35s. (Though they're certainly handy.)
The fact we're even having this conversation is the point. Top-end equipment was always guaranteed. The fact you're shopping around mentally for second-best points to that.
>I'll grant that China has been the most consistent on Israel and Palestine. Nevertheless, Israeli-Chinese trade keeps growing.
Well, there's a reason why they've been consistent on it so far. If Israel's trade comes to depend significantly on them, they can use it as leverage against them.
>Really? According to whom? I haven't been in the UN for a while, but everyone I knew was asking when, not if. It clearly works for domestic politics, doubly following the recent trade concessions.
I should have been more specific than a few months ago. Here's what I meant. Many of these countries have no issues against Palestine, but wouldn't break openly with the US position because of how dependent they are. That happening is a vibe shift.
>The U.S. funds about 15% of Israel's defence budget. We allow them to splurge in a way they can't alone. But that just means they can't defeat Hezbollah and Iran and Hamas at the same time without us.
You keep taking my statements out of context, attacking a point I didn't make and then claiming victory. I'm not even addressing US aid to Israel, which is extensive. I'm talking about their economy! Without that trade, the economy will shrink by a lot. The technologists bringing in that FX will move away in large numbers. Spending will have to reduce by half or more, especially given Israel already has a high tax-to-gdp-ratio. The country won't survive it. More high earners will leave and you'll go into a death spiral.
Dozens of UN resolutions have been issued against Israel and vetoed by the US. If it happens without American support, they'll be placed under an intl. embargo until they comply. Ask Iran what intl. embargoes have done to crush their economy before you wave it off. What America offers Israel is both a large export market they don't have internally, and protection from consequences.
Israel is too integrated with the West, going as far as competing in Eurovision, UEFA, etc. If they break with the West, they can't survive it. I cite Rhodesia as an example repeatedly because that's where they slowly but surely ended up.
If you end up with Western sanctions, no matter your country's size, you're fucked. USSR and Maoist China can give you any lectures you want.
The 'chosen people' delusion can make it seem economic realities don't apply, but the earlier Israel can get to a lasting peace while conditions are favorable, the better.
> fact we're even having this conversation is the point. Top-end equipment was always guaranteed. The fact you're shopping around mentally for second-best points to that
I've literally not thought about this until you brought it up. My point is there is an extensive list of eager jet sellers who would step up to the plate.
> If Israel's trade comes to depend significantly on them, they can use it as leverage against them
Sure? Same as America can now. This defeats the argument that Israel is being economically isolated, or faces devastation from losing America as a close ally in decades.
> Many of these countries have no issues against Palestine, but wouldn't break openly with the US position because of how dependent they are. That happening is a vibe shift
It's been months in the making. Not paying attention doesn't make something surprising. It would have been extremely surprising if Canada, the UK and France didn't recognise Palestine, and I'm saying this going back half a year.
> I'm talking about their economy! Without that trade, the economy will shrink by a lot
But going back to the top, there are plenty of other trading partners America's third of exports could be replaced with. Not entirely. Not on as great terms. But close enough to keep Israel reigning as a regional hegemony.
> technologists bringing in that FX will move away in large numbers
Where are you getting this notion that tech exports are a major source of FX for Israel? Or that Israel would stop being a tech centre if America turned its back on it? (And again, major emerging gas exporter.)
> you'll go into a death spiral
I'm not Israeli. I've never been to Israel.
> Dozens of UN resolutions have been issued against Israel and vetoed by the US. If it happens without American support, they'll be placed under an intl. embargo until they comply
Look at the list of UNSC sanctioned countries [1]. They're symbolic. The point is to cause members to enact follow-on sanctions [2]. When that doesn't happen, they're ineffective.
> Ask Iran what intl. embargoes have done to crush their economy
They're...still around. You also missed Angola, Yemen, North Korea...
> Israel is too integrated with the West, going as far as competing in Eurovision, UEFA, etc. If they break with the West, they can't survive it. I cite Rhodesia as an example repeatedly because that's where they slowly but surely ended up
I get this is your hypothesis. It simply isn't sustained. This is before we get to the point that if a couple Western countries sanction Israel for shits and giggles, there is a lot of money to be made by someone defecting and acting 'neutrally'.
(Also, in any world where Israel is sanctioned, Palestine gets devastated. That's simply the nature of having an economic basket case as a neighbour.)
Again, there seem to be folks who like to see patterns that sustain extreme outcomes that support a moral view of the world. You're having to go so deep into hypotheticals while being able to surface zero sources because the precedented outcome for this war--like most others that caused moral outrage in the West--is that we forget about it and move on and then everyone goes back to making money again.
(The only note I'd add is that if this rhetoric becomes commonplace, that America is destined to abondon Israel, it incentivises one outcome and one outcome only: destroying Palestine today, quickly and decisively. Nobody talks about that because nobody really buys the pitch you're making outside pro-Palestinian activist circles. I'm also not criticising you personally. Ukraine was my pet war. I absolutely bought into all sorts of conspiracies about Russia getting sidelined and partitioned up. We all want to see patterns that sustain the illusion of a just world.)
>Where are you getting this notion that tech exports are a major source of FX for Israel? Or that Israel would stop being a tech centre if America turned its back on it? (And again, major emerging gas exporter.)
From their own economic publications. Tech exports are 53% of their export output. Gas is a laughable non-issue. Like I said earlier, the middle east is full of it. It's not a significant source of leverage since every third country has it.
>UN sanctions are way less biting than American secondary sanctions alone.
You can always tunnel around sanctions, but it kills a lot of your open-market economy. You have to sell for a lower, discounted price. Acquisitions and mergers are effectively over. Sales shrink by a lot. Your largest companies move away to avoid contagion. I mean, have you ever read about the sanctions on Rhodesia & south Africa?
>They're...still around. And they never had a weapons sector like Israel's.
They're severely, terribly weakened. Even China won't sell them any modern airframes. That should tell you something.
>I get this is your hypothesis. It simply isn't sustained. This is before we get to the point that if a couple Western countries sanction Israel for shits and giggles, there is a lot of money to be made by someone defecting and acting 'neutrally'.
I have evidence of Western & non-western countries banding together to sanction consistent bad actors, despite being even more Western than Israel will ever be. Do you have any evidence of any country surviving sanctions without severe economic damage? Please share; my viewpoint has abundant proof. I'm just supposed to believe yours.
>Again, there seem to be folks who like to see patterns that sustain extreme outcomes that support a moral view of the world. You're having to go three levels deep for every turn because the most precedented outcome here is everyone forgets and moves on.
I don't have a dog in the fight. Both countries could die to the last man and I'd still go on my merry way, whistling. I'm simply projecting based on history, which is why I cite precedent that you refuse to admit.
Sure. Where are you getting that these are a critical source of FX?
> Gas is a laughable non-issue
To FX? Seriously?
> have you ever read about the sanctions on Rhodesia & south Africa?
Yes. Zimbabwe is still sanctioned. South Africa had preëxisting power-sharing negotiations.
> Even China won't sell them any modern airframes. That should tell you something
...that Beijing isn't drunk? Why do you think Washington got pissed off when Turkey bought Russian air defences and let them paint our fighter fleet?
> have evidence of Western & non-western countries banding together to sanction consistent bad actors
One, during a unipolar world. Someone else commented on this, but in a multipolar world, that is a luxury that simply doesn't emerge. (Even the bilateral world of the Cold War very rarely saw international sanctions regimes effected. That was just a nudge for someone to switch from one system of alliances to another.)
> Do you have any evidence of any country surviving sanctions without severe economic damage?
Yes [2]. In the short term, they cause damage. ("Severe" needs to be quantified, however--when regime change is targeted, it's only successful about a third of the time.) In the long term, they're less effective. Economies go into cockroach mode.
If you want a list, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Belarus, Burma and Venezuela are each heavily sanctioned and pretty much setting themselves up to permanently be so. (Pyongyang and Minsk having practically turned it into an art.)
> I'm simply projecting based on history, which is why I cite precedent
You haven't cited anything! Based on history, Israel is highly unlikely to get sanctioned by anyone, let alone America, and if it were, it's likely to be fine.
China and India have problematic local Muslim populations. That doesn’t extend to supporting Israel.
And they clearly don’t. China actively talks against it (because it builds global goodwill on the diplomatic stage) and India only plays lip service (they have more to gain from the Gulf than Israel).
They're opportunistically buying/selling what they want. None of these are an ideological commitment to Israel's status quo. If the wind direction changes, they'll change with it.
> They're opportunistically buying/selling what they want. None of these are an ideological commitment to Israel's status quo. If the wind direction changes, they'll change with it
Yes. That's trade. It's true for most international relationships.
Yes. That's trade. It's true for most international relationships.
You don’t get to have your cake and eat it too. China and India don’t have an ideological relationship with Israel. So Israel is never going to “diversify” (your words) their relationship to the point that China is shooting down cruise missiles flying over Tel Aviv on their behalf.
America is a perfect ally to Israel. I’m not arguing they’ll replace us 1:1. Just more than adequately, certainly enough to maintain a regional hegemony if not fight for it anew.
> India don’t have an ideological relationship with Israel
Right-wing Indians and Israelis actually have quite a bit in common. I don’t think it’s enough to sustain a long-term alliance. And New Delhi is no Washington. (It’s also a buyer of Iranian oil.)
But there are outright exterminationist wings in both countries, and their enemies share the same faith.
>America's voting demographic for the next 40 years has begun to see Israel as a genocidal terrorist state. They will be voting for the next 50 years, while the boomer evangelicals die off.
The pro-palestine progressives are rapidly loosing political power, if not being targeted right now by the Trumpian administration. The National Conservatives may be isolationist regarding free funding, but they certainly aren't going to sanctioning Israel or ending arms sales, while Pro-Palestine is pretty much a useful proxy as is for them to signify "un-americans".
Furthermore, the sanctions on South Africa occurred within the context of the Liberal International Era where one could afford to alienate a state in a region with little importance. But it's posters like you that have been calling for the so-called multipolar world, which is where NGOs and Human Rights will be sidelined in favour of a Westphalian-Type Sovereignity whereby hard interests decide foreign policy, not human rights concerns. In that Realist context, it is virtually within complete interests for the Gulf States and other actors to align with Israel over Iran, the former which has proven itself militairly and acts accordingly to economic interest, whereas the latter is bordering on a failed state still motivated by irrational hegemonic concerns. In the same context, a Palestinian states that takes over Israel basically will likely be detrimental to the other actors.
> a Westphalian-Type Sovereignity whereby hard interests decide foreign policy, not human rights concerns
Westphalian sovereignty refers to "a principle in international law that each state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory" [1]. It doesn't support realpolitik nor negate human rights. The only degree to which it intersects with the latter is in arguing against foreign intervention. (Which realpolitik encourages.) It's a concept that was promulgated to integrate previously-independent city states into the larger nation-states and empires of the time.
It's also quite idiotically named, given the actual Peace of Westphalia dealt with foreign powers deciding what to do with the Holy Roman Empire at the end of the Thirty Years' War, with France and Sweden being "recognised as guarantors of the imperial constitution with a right to intercede" [2], sort of the opposite of inviolable sovereignty.
Today, it tends to be something Putin brings up, again, quite idiotically, given he's constantly fucking around in other countries' affairs.
(You're broadly correct that in a Realist international framework the morality of Israel's actions are irrelevant. And that everyone advocating for a multipolar world shifts us in the Realist direction. Practically, however, these are models, not theories, and they coëxist with each other.)
I’m one of the folks whose opinion of Israel has shifted. I don’t see them as a “genocidal terrorist state.” I see them as “just another middle eastern country.”
While it’s bad what’s happening, it’s still nowhere near Syrian or Yemeni levels, although that may change.
The best analogy I can think of is the Allied conduct in Germany at the end of WWII. WWII was a just and defensive war. But the bombing of Dresden and atrocities by the Soviet Army were unnecessary and dishonorable.
Israel is now engaged in unnecessary and dishonorable conduct. They’ve been demoted from impressive to embarrassing.
But they’re still a legitimate country, just like, say, Saudi Arabia.
>I’m one of the folks whose opinion of Israel has shifted. I don’t see them as a “genocidal terrorist state.” I see them as “just another middle eastern country.”
Okay. Opinions are on a spectrum. just like you, hundreds of millions of people who used to be pretty neutral on Israel now have strong opinions on the country. As a country, you generally want to blend in like Singapore/Switzerland and just not attract attention. Israel is attracting that attention, and for very bad reasons.
Western voters are childlike and emotional. They hate seeing blood on screen, children crying, starving, dying, being squeezed in queues for food. For any reason at all. Israel might seem like just another middle eastern country to you, but when you aggregate across 8 billion people, the average vibe has shifted negatively. By a lot.
>While it’s bad what’s happening, it’s still nowhere near Syrian or Yemeni levels
Tell that to Western voters who will be voting for 50 years. No one cares. just make it stop.
>But they’re still a legitimate country, just like, say, Saudi Arabia.
You're being nuanced. Cool. But the average human is not. Good luck beaming that moderate position into everyone's minds.
> Western voters are childlike and emotional. They hate seeing blood on screen, children crying, starving, dying, being squeezed in queues for food
There are like half a dozen wars of extermination currently occuring with lots of disturbing footage. Nobody really cares. Israel is close to home because it's an ally and we styled it as a Western-style democracy (versus something closer to the Middle Eastern democracy it is.)
> Tell that to Western voters who will be voting for 50 years. No one cares. just make it stop
There are precisely zero foreign policy issues that have survived this long on the back of vibes alone.
>There are precisely zero foreign policy issues that have survived this long on the back of vibes alone.
Christian Zionist support for Israel is 100% based off vibes. Hitler's plan to invade Russia & exterminate its people for living space was based off Master Race vibes. America's Manifest destiny was based off vibes. Anti-communist domino theory was based off vibes and 58k young American kids died in Vietnam for it, not counting the 153k maimed and injured. Japan's imperial delusions that got them nuked was based off vibes.
Want me to go on?
>There are like half a dozen wars of extermination currently occurring with lots of disturbing footage. Nobody really cares. Israel is close to home because it's an ally and we styled it as a Western-style democracy (versus something closer to the Middle Eastern democracy it is.)
Would you kindly name them, good sir? Off the top of my head, I think Sudan. But, no Westerner really cares about Sudan. Israel they do care about because of the media onslaught and their countries' stance on the issue. It's one of those conflicts you just can't unsee.
> Anti-communist domino theory was based off vibes
Couldn't possibly be that in the post-colonial world there was a burst of new countries, the superpowers were constrained militarily by MAD, and thus both engaged on a worldwide game of attracting potential military allies and trading partners into their respective spheres of influence while denying the other the same wherever possible?
> Would you kindly name them, good sir? Off the top of my head, I think Sudan. But, no Westerner really cares about Sudan
Sudan. Burma. Tigray. (Ukraine. Uyghurs, technically, too, but we don't have footage because China's gotten good at this since Tibet.)
> Israel they do care about because of the media onslaught and their countries' stance on the issue. It's one of those conflicts you just can't unsee
One. Among many.
Uniquely capturing American attention. But so was Darfur once. And #StopKony before that. Barring Israel literally continuing this war for another twenty years, chances are, it too will be forgotten. There really is just that much horribleness constantly happening in the world. I cannot imagine the 2030s will be so blissfully peaceful as to allow us to continue to fixate on the crimes of decades past.
>Christian Zionist support for Israel is 100% based off vibes. Hitler's plan to invade Russia & exterminate its people for living space was based off Master Race vibes. America's Manifest destiny was based off vibes. Anti-communist domino theory was based off vibes and 58k young American kids died in Vietnam for it, not counting the 153k maimed and injured. Japan's imperial delusions that got them nuked was based off vibes.
This is totally serious analysis that is reflective of mainstream analysis and not just the projection of highly partisan political views. Foreign Policy Analysts certainly will be going to be making decisions based on views like this!
You didn't debunk any claim I made in my comment. All the historical episodes I referred to were deluded people coming up with nice-sounding theories on why they deserved to take other people's stuff or force their compliance by force. Each last one ended badly.
>All the historical episodes I referred to were deluded people coming up with nice-sounding theories on why they deserved to take other people's stuff or force their compliance by force.
There's no need to debunk a gish-gallop. I'd simply make the claim that this poster's views are not reflected by the overwhelming majority of academic historians and foreign policy analysts in any country, certainly not in reductively reducing things to "deluded people". That's more of sign of unserious polemics.
They haven't "neutered" Iran, all they've proven is that they're actually quite ineffective against Iran and Yemen. They've also become the most hated country in all of the world. Their citizens have to hide their citizenship when they travel back to Europe. Israel won't last another 10 years.
The article says on a low period they found people were eating 1400 calories a day at one point. If there was more than that they would have listed it. Israel targets a higher number but that is what it got to in the worst situation the article could find to list.
The United States Red Cross sets as a floor 1500 calories a day for people in distress. Is the Red Cross trying to starve Americans in distress?
The UN just cut food aid in Kenya for 800,000 refugees from the war in Sudan in half to 588 calories per day, yet the UN says it is willing and able to provide significantly higher amounts of food (and to not do so would be criminal) to the 2 million people of Gaza. Is the UN criminal/genocidal against Kenyan/Sudanese for offering starvation level assistance to one group but significantly more to another? The UN says they are ready and able to provide assistance to one group at the very same time the cut in half/say they can't provide aid that meets the level they say Gaza must receive when it is people in Kenya that need aid. Kenyan war refugees are receiving significantly less per person than that 1400 calorie at 588.
Agreeing with the other sibling comments. I think in part it was following the same vision that the current Israeli government had been following already before Oct. 7 - they had annexation of the West Bank listed as one of the official goals of their coalition since they were elected.
Another part stemmed from the extreme dehumanization of Palestinians that was already established in Israeli society long before (and to a lesser extent also in other western countries). The overton window had already been shifted so far that this kind of response was seen as mostly normal.
I found the standard justifications of "eh, war is always cruel" and "when their kids grow up, they will just become the next generation of terrorists" pretty telling.
In all this description, with which I agree to a large extent except in believing the "lashing out" to have been very much deliberate, except simply murderous and grossly inept, it's worth mentioning the specific name of that murderous war criminal Netanyahu who is responsible for the majority of the decision making and impetus.
Public opinion in the US has turned against Israel, yes. Trump doesn't care about public opinion. He'll be buddy-buddy to Netanyahu other than symbolic acts of distancing / reprimanding.
I think that's mostly accurate, but to be fair he did recently sign an executive order guaranteeing military defense of Qatar, which was clearly a message to Israel that they better not mess with them. It's far from a backpedal on his support for Israel, but it does show he won't let them do anything they want (at least if he is speaking honestly)
Of course he does. But he's currently most sensitive to Republican voters' opinions, and they're still at 64% net sympathy for Israel and 9% for Palestine. (55% of Trump voters say "Israel should continue its military campaign until Hamas is fully eliminated, even if it means the civilian casualties in Gaza might continue," while only 29% say "Israel should stop its military campaign in order to protect against civilian casualties, even if Hamas has not been fully eliminated" [1].)
As the midterms come closer, that 26% independent net support for Israel becomes more pertinent, as do the 67% of independents who want Israel to stop its campaign.
Trump is also "buddy-buddy" with a lot of the Gulf States, in fact, he probably likes them more because they have more money to give him. If Israel does something they don't like, such as bomb Qatar, Trump can swing against Israel.
Look at the situation on October 7. 6000 armed terrorists swarmed across the border of gaza, commiting atrocities the like of which were not even thought to be possible in todays day and age among civilised people. I was never under any illusion of what hamas was and i was still shocked. The political climate in Israel up until that day was trying to help gazas economy and assuming hamas were pragmatic enough not to seek a war.
But it became clear that not only did they spend their main efforts in the previous few years planning this massacre, but they had embedded themselves as deeply as possible in every single part of gaza as possible. Their tunnel network is more extensive then the London underground. Their bases are in hospitals and schools. Undeniable facts except to the most cynical and dishonest people out there.
But what dismayed me the most was the response of the average palestinian on the street. Ecstatic celebration, i saw videos of crowds literally shrieking and crying for joy, at the single most shameful crime against humanity that was ever committed in their name.
No other country in the world would do anything different in Israels place. Most would go much further. You can express disgust at their actions from your place where you would never have to confront such barbarity. Hamas planned and created the entire situation you just described and left no other course of action for Israel to take. What else should they have done? Don't tell me some stupid idea like make peace with them and stop the settlements etc. Those are grievences entirely made up of anti israel people and does not address the reality of who hamas and far too many palestinians are.
War is horrible. I don't want it. No one wants it. This one is just and necessary. The world can sit and wait or they can help meaningfully.
If you want to argue explain to me how Israelis and any human being should view and respond to the scenes of joy and celebration they saw on and after Oct 7. Even today there is very little remorse or even regret.
> Neither of those are natural or forgivable, and I've never listened to a damn word Kirk said in my life
I haven't either. That's probably why I don't have an emotional reaction here. A guy was brutally murdered in public, and that's all I had to respond to.
Finding someone having mean thoughts--not actions, just thoughts and words--unforgiveable is, well, it's how you get entrenched, hateful, multigenerational conflicts like the one we're discussing.
I don't think killing Sinwar means much. Israel definitely wanted him dead but, to their national security, it doesn't mean anything. Sinwar isn't unique and he'd just be replaced by the next guy who wants to do the same thing and also doesn't care if he's made a martyr in the process.
Strategically, they have to destroy the entirety of Hamas and hope the Palestinians are allowed to and do elect better leadership. Anything less is accepting the status quo that led to Oct 7.
> don't think killing Sinwar means much. Israel definitely wanted him dead but, to their national security, it doesn't mean anything
You don't think the next jackass who pitches an October 7th attack won't get second thoughts from his lieutenants when they consider that all of them will be killed, their friends and families--best case--rendered homeless, their cause set back decades, all while Israel suffers fewer deaths from the entire operation than Hamas was able to notch on its one day of glory?
If they were able to repeat Oct 7, I think they'd gladly be martyred for that.
I think Sinwar would have loved to stay alive and recommit his attrocities but martyrdom is a nice consolation prize. The next in line should be so lucky.
> If they were able to repeat Oct 7, I think they'd gladly be martyred for that
I'd love to see firm evidence for this. It seems a little too fatalistic, and convenient for arguing for the permanent subjugation of a people, to suggest that two million people can't be left to their own devices without obsessively committing to destroying themselves against their neighbors.
for context about hamas thinking in general [0] (quote from article)
"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"
Your metrics are yours alone. Ask Hamas if they won? If they stay in power in Gaza, trust me, they won. Same as if the Nazis were still in control of Germany, Stalin in charge of Russia, ISIS in charge of Iraq and Syria and the Khmer Rouge in charge of Cambodia…
Your suggestion that Israel stop fighting in contrast to Trump’s direct words stating that he will back Israel fully in defeating Hamas if Hamas does not accept his deal which involves them fully disarming, is essentially suggesting that Israel should accept defeat even when it has the backing of the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Now either you are ignorant or you are intentionally malevolent in your suggestion… take your pick
> Their strategy is and has been for decades to kill as many Palestinians as possible.
This is just obviously false, Israel obviously has the military capability to kill effectively every Palestinian in Gaza, and yet they make significant efforts to prevent civilian casualties there.
It's more accurate to say "as many Palestinians as they thought the US would let them get away with". This is why each new kind of atrocity was first messaged and checked with the US before proceeding. Without cover in the UN and unlimited bombs from the US Israel's actions in Gaza would not have been possible.
Folks may remember when Israel thought they had to cook up a bunch of fancy 3D renders of a "Hamas command center" and do a multi-week propaganda blitz before attacking Al Shifa hospital. Then they eventually realized that the Biden administration didn't care, nor did they care about the lack of evidence for this supposed massive complex [1] after the fact. So they could bomb hospitals with just a generic justification after the fact.
It was the same with every escalation, from murdering UN aid workers to dropping 2,000lb bombs on tents to completely flattening cities they had designated as "safe zones".
Israel would push the envelope a bit, see that their key patron didn't care, and push it further. What was once a line they feared to cross became the new normal.
[1] It turned out to just be a couple hospital rooms that a former Israeli PM admitted they themselves had built.
> It's more accurate to say "as many Palestinians as they thought the US would let them get away with". This is why each new kind of atrocity was first messaged and checked with the US before proceeding. Without cover in the UN and unlimited bombs from the US Israel's actions in Gaza would not have been possible.
Israel makes far more efforts than even the US when it comes to trying to prevent civilian casualties.
> Folks may remember when Israel thought they had to cook up a bunch of fancy 3D renders of a "Hamas command center" and do a multi-week propaganda blitz before attacking Al Shifa hospital. Then they eventually realized that the Biden administration didn't care, nor did they care about the lack of evidence for this supposed massive complex [1] after the fact. So they could bomb hospitals with just a generic justification after the fact.
There's plenty of evidence Hamas used Al Shifa for military purposes, although it's maybe somewhat unclear to what extent exactly. Also from my understanding Israel didn't bomb Al Shifa, they raided it instead.
> It was the same with every escalation, from murdering UN aid workers to dropping 2,000lb bombs on tents to completely flattening cities they had designated as "safe zones".
The entire Gaza strip is a war zone, Israel largely tries to avoid combat operations in the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone but that doesn't mean Hamas has complete immunity there[0].
> [1] It turned out to just be a couple hospital rooms that a former Israeli PM admitted they themselves had built.
Regardless of who built the bunker under the hospital if Hamas uses it for military purposes that makes the hospital a valid military target. I'm not sure how a bunker having been built by Israel decades ago would make a difference in regards to it being a valid military target or not.
> …and yet they make significant efforts to prevent civilian casualties there.
This is just obviously false. All you have to do is look at how many children they’ve killed. Those aren’t the number of someone going out of their way to prevent civilian casualties.
lol... bots are up in arm. No one with two brain cells believes this, anymore. The only reason they are not just straight nuking the places (both gaza and west bank), because of external pressures.
They would if they could.
- De-escalate. Disproportionate violence legitimizes Gaza's resistance, reinforces domestic support for retaliation and signals to third-parties like China and Russia that they need to have a stakeholder in this fight. It also weakens American support for Israeli right-to-defense.
- Negotiate a release of all illegally held hostages and fair international trial for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detainment. Hamas should have no illegal captives, but neither should Israel. Without a solid and agreeable plan towards releasing these captives in a timely matter, neither side has an incentive to stop fighting.
- Establish a good-faith interrim government to rebuild trust with the international community. Defer some power back to the UN as a gesture of goodwill, draw-back from annexed Gaza but draw the line firmly on pre-October 7th borders. Give up on the idea of annexing anything else. In a perfect world they also give Mount Hebron back to Syria, they'll be asking for it soon.
That's easy -- releasing all hostages would de-escalate immediately. Imagine a situation when there was no Oct 7, so Israel would have no reason to de-escalate.
> Negotiate
How to negotiate with one side pre-condition that the other side is all dead and their country does not exist. Now it starts to change, but not because of negotiations, sadly.
> Establish a good-faith interrim government
Sorry don't understand -- Gaza already has the official government -- HAMAS. Since 2007 there was no Israeli forces on Gaza territory (until Oct 7).
Or you mean Israel should've established a different goverment in Gaza? Well taking down governments is already a military objective.
No, what's happening is that you are describing pro-Palestinian protests as pro-Hamas and then acting confused. You only confused yourself!
Hamas is absolutely a terrorist organization but Israel has revealed itself as a terrorist state. I hold one to a higher bar because I pay for the bombs that one side drops.
A terrorist state does not need to be "baited" to attack.
It is absolutely correct to hold the state to higher standards, regardless of what you pay for. But it is not correct to refuse state's right to defend itself, when it is attacked by a terrorist semi-state that not only does not care about its people, but actively using them as bait. This only incentivizing Hamas to keep using Palestinians as bait, and to turn more of them into "martyrs".
Actually it's quite possible that a state exists with Dominant Political Regime A at one point in time, then after an event, they transition to Dominant Political Regime B.
In fact this is what did happen, as is plainly obvious. October 7th effectively stripped the moderating forces in Israeli politics of their power.
Agreed the incentives are fucked up in every direction. For example, giving Israel impunity to respond to such attacks with extremely aggressive pursuit of related and unrelated geopolitical objectives actually creates an incentive for Israel to sustain such attacks from time to time.
This was actually Netanyahu's explicit strategy: allow Hamas to take power in Gaza so no credible government could achieve a second state in the region.
> “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Netanyahu told his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy"
Creating such perverse incentives is sort of the entire point of terrorism.
So what would you do if you're Israel? Suck it up? Leave the hostages to rot in Gaza? Wait until the next coordinated attack from Iran, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza? Israel's enemies want it destroyed- that's what's at stake here. If Hamas had a chance it would keep going and murder all Israelis, not just the ones they managed to before they were repelled.
What sort of adaptation are you proposing?
I do agree Israel is taking a hit on the world stage. This is part of the war and Israel has a hard time defending itself against enemies with vast resources. Those enemies are also more than happy to distract and splinter the western nations with this topic. Russia has a better standing in the world with its war of aggression on Ukraine amongst many other problems. Most western countries who were/are happy to abandon Israel would (and have) respond with significantly more force to a similar attack on themselves.
It remains to be seen what are the longer term consequences here. Not just on Israel.
What we have seen throughout this is not criticism. It is hate. It is often directed at Jews, not just at the Israeli government. Not 100% but a large percentage. It's not that Israel's response has no problems - it has many problems. But the discourse on this is not rational and not fact based. The media and the various actors are pushing agenda and ideology. This isn't unique to Israel here, we see this on political issues, a discourse that is tribal, not rational but rather emotional, manipulated by the media (social and otherwise). CNN here is treating Israel basically as it treats Trump and the republicans. CNN is not in the news business, it is in the shaping political opinion business.
Would you say the west's response to ISIL/ISIS chopping the heads off a few westerners, a couple of random terrorist attacks in the west, and burning a Jordanian pilot alive would also be characterized as "extreme actions against a weak opponent"? How did CNN cover that conflict?
So criticism is hate? I'm Jewish does that mean I am hateful when I am critical of the actions of the Israeli government? Are you claiming none of the critism is legitimate and its all hate? Is criticism of Israel antisemetic? Because last I checked Israel is not a religion.
My other reply got flagged, please read it. But to add:
This specific article is not "criticism". The headline claims Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza. The title, and the article, completely ignores other actors like the government of Gaza (aka Hamas).
"How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized" -> is basically a lie. The truth is that Israeli actions contributed to the food situation in the Gaza strip. The cause is obviously the war. The cause of the war is obviously Hamas. The entire article rests solely on a report by a UN organization. The UN is not unbiased. It is openly anti-Israel.
The reporting is completely one sided. It is not news. It is agenda. CNN's agenda is anti-Israel. There is no mention of the UN leaving food on the border to rot and not deliver it. There is little to no mention of the UN's refusal to cooperate with Israeli initiatives to distribute food (and generally refuse to cooperate with Israel on anything).
At best the authors don't understand the idea that correlation doesn't equal causation. I would say the authors and CNN's goal is simply to attack Israel for political reasons.
I think Israel's decision to block aid around the end of February was stupid and a mistake. It is far from clear that decision is a war crime. Israel claims there was plenty of food in Gaza that was delivered during the ceasefire and ofcourse also claims that Hamas has plenty of food in its tunnels. Egypt also at times contributed to the condition in the Gaza strip by blocking aid and preventing refugees from leaving. The actual responsibility for the well being of Palestinian citizens in Palestinian controlled areas (which Gaza city still is) is on their government. That government has a choice to stop the war, it has a choice to distribute the food it controls to its citizens. Ignoring that in any article basically tells us what we need to know. Israel does have responsibilities under international law but is being held to impossible standards that are not applied to any other country. The media intentionally creates an artificial separation between "Hamas" and "Palestinians" where in fact we are talking about combatants and non-combatants of the same non-state or state-like actor (Gaza). Israel is responsible, to the same degree any other country would be, to take steps to allow non-combatants to leave battle areas and to not target them. Israel has asked all non-combatant population to evict the Northern Gaza strip a long time ago. The food situation is worse in that area. So Israel arguably has done what international law requires it to do with respect to non-combatants. Is Israel perfect? no. Is it worse than most western countries? I don't think so, and there's plenty of comparisons we can make. Can we criticize Israel? Definitely!
In terms of contribution to antisemitism, there is a large number of people who will read the title as "How Jew actions caused famine in Gaza". That is literally the conversation on some social media. Just because you haven't seen that doesn't change it. This means there should be more sensitivity and better accuracy and context.
Being Jewish is also not a religion by the way. It's an ethnicity as well. I'm sure you know this but just to remind others. The Jewish people are also known as Israelites and the word Israel is sometimes used as a synonym for Jewish.
Israel started this war long before October 9, and Israel will never end it.
A Zionist Israel can not allow the Palestinian people to exist. Every member of every government that Israel ever had 100% believed this.
This war is part of Israel's DNA, and the total security Israel demands can never be achieved, so the war can never end.
Until significant portions of the political right in Israel are outlawed, and until the entire Jewish population of Israel undergoes deradicalization, we will keep fighting.
If that solved the problem I would endorse it. I don't see how it does or how you do it.
How do you get food to all of Gaza while there is raging fighting? The biggest problem is in Gaza city where there is intense fighting. The southern areas have a lot more food. How do we flood Gaza city with food? Ceasefire? We had one. Then what?
Let's plan this in more detail. Who is going to distribute the food in Gaza? Who in Gaza has weapons and control? How is the hostage problem resolved? How do we get Hamas to not rule over Gaza any more?
> How do you get food to all of Gaza while there is raging fighting?
Berlin airdrop and pile it up at the borders from trucks for starters.
> southern areas have a lot more food
But not enough. Start there. Also, if you make food plentiful enough in the south, it will find its way north. The point, again, isn't just to starve the famine. It's also to reduce the value of food as a recruiting tool.
> How is the hostage problem resolved? How do we get Hamas to not rule over Gaza any more?
It's true that it's objectively hard to get the food from the border into e.g. Gaza city while a war is raging on. Israel has asked all civilians to evict Gaza city (basically for the entire duration of the war). Many people returned to Gaza city during the last ceasefire despite no green light from Israel. There is more food in the south and it's easier to get food into there.
There is an effort to get even more food into the south. For example World Central Kitchen is scaling up their operations there right now (with Israel's support). The GHF effort was also mostly focused on the south.
Air drops can't move in enough food. They're also dangerous.
> There is more food in the south and it's easier to get food into there
Yet there are still credible claims of famine in the south.
> Air drops can't move in enough food
This is nonsense. West Berlin had a civilian population of about 2.5mm [1]. Gaza is smaller. Our planes are better. We've solved this problem, but harder, before.
> They're also dangerous
What's the threat model? Initially, you'd literally air drop--no landings. Gaza isn't fielding air-defence systems.
Once you're reduced the desperation, you'd secure a couple airfields and make unsupervised drops. (This is cheaper.) You wouldn't even bother handling distribution. Again, the point is the flood the zone with so much food that it starts to become sort of worthless.
in this case they divert more desirable goods that they sell and make aid agencies pay protection money for "securing shipments".
as example, there was a story on Israeli news a couple of months ago, about some NGO that setup a new aid distribution network. One day they got some of their people killed in Gaza and received a phone call demanding payment "or else"
story credible. channel 12 news is very solid organization and their investigations resulted in a bunch of criminal cases.
essentially ngo established this summer (july/august) new aid distribution network, I think it was at south with it's own drivers, distribution points, etc. during the time when supposedly was impossible to bring aid in gaza, but in reality it was going in.
"local interests" in gaza didn't like it, as NGO wasn't paying protection fees so they killed some of people who helped ngo in gaza and made threatening calls to person who runs NGO demanding payments or that this person will be harmed and distribution will be stopped.
not sure how it all ended. my guess it was "public" ask from military or security services to get involved in some way
If it's the events that I'm thinking of, one of the drivers killed was a Bedouin from the Tarabin family. They literally gathered hundreds of family members to record a cellphone message to the perpetrators, who were mentioned by name. In the video, dozens of illegal weapons - mostly M-16 variants - were paraded and fired in the air. Tarabin is a well-known dangerous and hostile family, the Israeli police don't interfere with them (that's why they have all the illegal weapons).
I know of other Bedouins families that have rewards for the heads of other Hamas members.
your entire narrative screams “I’m the victim here, please validate my aggressions, abuses and violence”.
the state of Israel has not been respectful since day one of it’s inception (violating the defined borders) neither truly wants a two state solution.
this outcome is the product of what escalated from that.
at least you understand the correlation between a figure like Trump and the state of Israel, that’s exactly on point.
it’s ok when one side violates borders and even settles on foreign land but when reactionary action (you’ve helped shape) takes place, you’re now the victim…
The state of Israel offered Palestinians a two state solutions multiple times starting at its inception (and it also offered them a one state solution at its inception with them being equal citizens in a free democratic country). Maybe it wasn't the best the Palestinians were looking for but it wasn't unreasonable and it was very close to what everyone (other than the Palestinians) says when they say "two state solution". Where we are today is the result of them rejecting it and instead opting for the "one day we'll send all the Jews back to Europe" solution (despite more than half Israeli Jews being from the middle east and generally no place for Jews to go). This is still their plan today, they say it out loud, you just need to listen.
EDIT: I'd also challenge you to tell me why these two states weren't created when Egypt ruled over Gaza and Jordan over the West Bank and Jerusalem up till 1967 (the six day war) when Israel took those areas. Where were all those supporters of the two state solution then? Why didn't they recognize the state of Palestine then over those territories that Israel didn't control?
Before 1948 the Palestinians were peasants living under foreign rule. But at least they were alive. When Zionist interests moved in, backed by English and American militancy to enforce land purchase contracts, the Palestinians were not a centrally organized collective. You cannot “offer” to people who are not organized, and that’s what Israel has exploited. Jews went on a 2,000 year holiday in Europe, then came back and expected they could relive the glory days of a kingdom from over 2,000 years ago. The issue has been the presumption that you can “offer” to people who have occupied the land consistently for thousands of years. Their lack of central government as peasants does not negate their humanity. Except in the Israeli government’s expansionist eyes.
> So what would you do if you're Israel? Suck it up? Leave the hostages to rot in Gaza?
What they're doing doesn't seem to be working, so maybe something else.
This is just armchair military philosophizing, but after the October attack, go ahead and do some big disproportionate response stuff for 30-90 days, then a ceasefire and prisoner exchange (this happened). But if the ceasefire doesn't work out, you can't go back to disproportionate response on the October attack; that doesn't look reasonable. Cat and mouse strikes on leadership until the hostages are released (edit: but not while leaders are gathered for peace negotiations!). You can still do proportionate response for any tit-for-tat kind of attacks in the occupied zone.
A war of occupation is a PR thing. You need to convince outside observers you're occupation is reasonable --- two years of disproportionate response doesn't do that. You also want to convince the occupied people not to support armed resistance; disproportionate response can work for that, but IMHO not over a long period of time; in the short term, it can get people to demand a stop to fighting, but after two years, again IMHO it just breeds more desire to fight.
You also need some sort of plan for after the hostilities end. How do you set the conditions so this is less likely to happen in the future. Really, the best way to have peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine as two states is for Israel and Palestine to both be prosperous; Israel needs to help make that happen, because it's in Israel's interests --- even if maybe it doesn't feel like it; a prosperous Palestine will be incentivized to be peaceful because prosperity is tenuous; a destitute Palestine has no need to be peaceful, because it has nothing to lose.
There's a lot of talk about ending Hamas; maybe that would do it, but if Hamas disbands today, you need something to replace the government services they provide. What's the plan for that? What would the interim system look like between now and that; can you enforce the interim system now as a way to push Hamas out?
Alternately, big problems require big solutions. Forcibly return Gaza to Egyptian control, as it was before the Six Day War, and encourage Egypt to deal with Hamas through diplomacy and response to future attacks from within Gaza as if they were from Egypt.
Perhaps return the West Bank to Jordan ... maybe do the return of the West Bank first as a show of 'if y'all give us the hostages, we'll end the occupation' Returning the West Bank is hard, because you've got to figure out what to do with the settlers, which is probably a lot of tricky negotiations over which settlements can be kept with a land swap and which have to be abandoned, so it probably can't be done super fast.
Egypt doesn't want Gaza and Jordan doesn't want the West Bank. That's a total non starter.
So after 90 days we have the bulk of hostages still in Gaza. Hamas in total control of all of Gaza. Hamas doesn't want to exchange all the hostages, we've been there after the first ceasefire (24 November 2023 to 30 November 2023).
Look at Hamas' calculus. Surviving in any shape and form while holding hostages is a clear win. Increasing Israel's isolation is a win. Anything else is mostly a don't care. They have no intention of giving up control in Gaza or in ceasing future hostilities against Israel. They would love nothing more than to go back to the tit for tat where they make and fire rockets and mortars at Israel all day and Israel has some limited retaliation.
Ask Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers about whether force works or not. Or the Turkish and the Kurds. Or anyone who thought they could go against China. That's not to say that should be the default or the preferred solution, but more force works in situations where you have the power and the other side won't yield.
There is a somewhat stupid/joke saying in Hebrew. What doesn't work with force will work with more force. That's sort of where Israel is right now. Many Israelis don't think this can solve the problem but the government does. I think pretty much everyone would prefer a better/easier way out of this that includes security guarantees and the release of the hostages. There just doesn't seem to be one. It's a problem when fighting an enemy where their loss is their win. There's no leverage. Though in theory Hezbollah was also like that, until it surrendered. The difference in Lebanon/Hezbollah is no hostages and less mix of combatants and civilians.
> Alternately, big problems require big solutions. Forcibly return Gaza to Egyptian control, as it was before the Six Day War, and encourage Egypt to deal with Hamas through diplomacy and response to future attacks from within Gaza as if they were from Egypt.
This sounds kind of like the proposed peace plan, no? They’re supposedly going to put an Arab force in charge of Gaza.
I would never be in Israel's position because I don't believe in genocide or land theft, thus would not have created this fake state in the first place.
"What we have seen throughout this is not criticism. It is hate. It is often directed at Jews, not just at the Israeli government. Not 100% but a large percentage."
This is exactly the blackpill. I live in a Muslim-majority country. Jews and Muslims have been allies since the start of Islamic history. Yes, there was some hate for Jews 20 years ago, but it has been gradually displaced into Zionist hate.
The recent analogy is Imperial Japan. The Japanese killed, raped, starved our people. But it was specifically the Imperial Japanese, not the citizens. Firebombing citizens didn't make anything better and it only slowed the process of post-war healing. We have great relationships with Germans and Japanese today despite their past. Moving on is an option.
Some of it is because we see the same pattern. Nationalist politics will always say, "Everyone hates you. We are the only ones who will protect you." For the former British territories, it was the playbook.
I do believe the only way to break from this cycle is to break this hold. Internally: don't keep genocidal leaders in power. Externally: avoid all this racist shit that gives fascists their power base.
I'm not sure where you get "Jews and Muslims have been allies since the start of Islamic history" and then you pivot to hate for Jews 20 years ago.
Antisemitism is alive and kicking. Hate to Jews has not been "displaced into Zionist hate". It's just s/Jews/Zionists/ the hate is the same hate. The blood libels are the same blood libels. The stereotypes the same stereotypes.
If you are talking about how Jews have been treated in Muslim countries it ranged between second rate citizens (dhimmi) to outright massacre. Yes, there have been a handful of examples, in a handful of countries, where Jews managed to thrive despite the discrimination but it was the exception that proved the rule.
I would love to see Israel's government gone and the Palestinian government of Hamas gone. I'm not seeing any analogy to Japan.
That's not true; I have seen many members in the Satmar community here in NYC that join pro palestinian protests, and are met with absolute love. They're spat on by the Israeli side at said protests. I think people here at least separate the two very well and it's not a s/Jews/Zionists/g at all.
This is the equivalent of "some of my best friends are Jews".
So the Satmar anti-Zionist Jews are ok? But the other Jews? Also met with love? Do you love the Jews that have opinions that differ than yours on this conflict? Why do Palestinian protests where I live (Canada) target Synagogues, Jewish owned businesses, Jewish neighborhoods?
Do Zionists control the US? The Media? Not Jews... nono. "Zionists".
I'm not necessarily talking about you specifically. But it is a fact that antisemites use this technique and this is being normalized. Why does it matter than you have a token Jewish person in your protest at all? Who cares if someone in your protest is a Satmar Jew or an Iranian Bhaii?
As a jew, I have never felt more targeted by anti-semitism than I have following israel's genocide of Palestinians. israel is making jews like me look bad by association, even though that association is false.
The worst part is, most of that antisemitism comes from zionists. Zealots making posts not unlike yours, frequently accuse me and my kind of being 'self-hating jews' for being insufficiently zionist. It really sucks.
As a side note, please stop repeatedly, unsuccessfully trying to conflate jews with zionists. We are not the same thing, and it is hurtful to hear you insult jews like that. It is somewhat akin to conflating all South Africans with apartheid supporters, or all Germans with nazis, except you are stereotyping based on religion, rather than national origin.
That conflation was made by antisemites first, many decades ago. That is simply historical fact, whether people know it or not. In that time and place antizionism was a barely concealed excuse for straight antisemitism; it didn't actually matter what their targets believed.
And yet, you are the one making the antisemitic conflation here and now. The fact that you're repeating the words of people you believe to be antisemetic should be a clue that the words you're repeating are antisemetic. Just because an antisemite says something doesn't mean you should agree and reshare their post.
So maybe don't? Next time you see an antisemite saying that, rather than parroting their talking points to others, you can tell them the same thing: zionists and jews aren't the same thing, and many jews are members of the global consensus in opposing the ongoing israeli genocide of Palestinians. Or don't, maybe it won't make a difference, and it's your choice.
In the meantime, please stop repeating hurtful antisemetic tropes by conflating us jews with zionists. We are not the same. Criticism of zionism and the israeli genocide of Palestinians is totally legitimate. Propagating antisemetic language is antisemetic. That means smarmy posts I've seen around saying things to the effect of, 'zionists... you mean jews??? [*wink wink*]'
Then why is it that self-proclaimed "anti-zionists" use the exact same talking point as those antisemites back then? It is difficult to ever unsee that what you call "the global consensus" was invented decades ago in the halls of the Kremlin.
I simply informed you of the historical precedent; why do you immediately include me in those you say are conflating the two?
If criticism of Israel sounded more like the criticism of America's War on Terror instead of a Kremlin anti-West propaganda manual, then maybe it would be worth thinking about.
Why are you still defending your antisemetic language? Repeating that you think your antisemetic language is ok if other antisemites said it first?
Just don't say it. I'm not even asking you for an apology for your hurtful, antisemetic words. Just recognize that your spreading of antisemitic tropes is bad, and please stop. Are you seriously so dead-set on repeating antisemetic tropes that you refuse to do even that?
I start talking about historical Kremlin propaganda campaigns, and you accuse me of antisemitic language. Interesting. Did you have anything to say on the actual points I raised?
I explicitly ignored the weird distraction about the kremlin or whatever, because the kremlin didn't force you to repeat antisemitic tropes. You chose to repeat antisemitic tropes, and still haven't even been able to acknowledge that your repetition of antisemitic tropes was bad.
Remember, the topic isn't bibi's fellow war criminals, it is antisemitism, with you, yes YOU, contributing to it. This is what I meant when I said that most antisemitism I've seen and felt as a jew lately, is coming from zionists.
So, back on topic: Do you have anything to say on the actual points I raised even earlier?:
For a century, Israel has been telling the world that they represented Jews, and Nakba was what the Jews wanted and it was their right. So for a century, the world hated Jews because of this narrative. And only recently people are learning the truth.
There's a lot to unpack in the last 1400 years, but basically everyone cherry picks what they want to see.
Medina, the first actual Islamic state, was established on an alliance between the Muslims and Jewish tribes. When the Muslims took Jerusalem, they welcomed the Jewish back. There's a few of these right up until Ottoman times. Dhimmi literally meant "protected person" - they can't be attacked or looted by Muslims and were not conscripted. Alliances aren't necessarily friendships, and a lot of these were built on mutual protection vs a common enemy rather than brotherhood.
Even in recent times, there's common grounds, especially in terms of religion. It's a kind of cousinhood. Notably all kosher food is halal, though not vice versa. In countries with both, it's popular to have a Jewish/Muslim district and Muslims often join Jewish student accommodations.
Of course there's plenty of bad history, but I find that the people who are pro-genocide will bring up massacres by Muslims. The people who advocate for treating Israeli Arabs as second-rate citizens will bring up dhimmis.
In the end, we pick the history we want to repeat.
> Jews and Muslims have been allies since the start of Islamic history.
Only when the Jews were Dhimis - in fact as I understand it the term literally means to protect. But we are not interested in being Dhimis any longer - no more taxes to Muslims, and we want to hold prestigious jobs and own land and participate in government.
but that takes a level of humanism, and effort, abusive leaders don’t have and unfortunately people are too brainwashed to see (and lack the knowledge to understand?).
> Their strategy was, I think, as bad as it could possibly be.
After the October 7 attacks it was critical that Israel re-establish deterrence, not doing so would be inviting more attacks.
> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response that killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, which played directly into the dynamics of guerrilla warfare where a strong state's extreme actions against a weak opponent undermine its legitimacy.
It turns out a disproportionate response is a rather effective strategy at deterring ones enemies from attacking, it worked quite well with Hezbollah which was considered by Israel to be a much more serious threat to Israel than Hamas was.
> Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation.
What other option did they have realistically? The middle east isn't a region where pacifism tends to work out well.
> Yet, rather than adapting, Israel's network doubled down with censorship campaigns, crackdowns on protests, and weaponizing "anti-semitism" accusations to silence critics -- actions that have all backfired. Now international support is collapsing, the EU is pushing sanctions, and the US is slowly distancing itself. Israel's best option right now is to end the war as quickly as possible, and devote all of its efforts to repairing damaged relationships and mitigating the war's effects, before isolation accelerates to the level of sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa.
Keep in mind that statements politicians make publicly about Israel are often rather different from what they really think, politicians placating various activist groups for domestic political reasons doesn't often translate into meaningful adverse actions against Israel. The Israeli stock market is at all time highs right now despite everything that has happened.
I agree Israel has been way too slow at ending the war, their reluctance to take actions to finish off Hamas(or force their capitulation/surrender) and end the war is not helping either the Palestinian people or Israelis.
> I'll also note that it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost. Hamas lost the shooting war, the people of Gaza have lost lives and livelihoods which may take more than a decade to rebuild, and Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this.
Israel losing the media war was probably somewhat inevitable, the extreme disparity between worldwide Muslim population sizes and Jewish population sizes being a big factor, but that isn't really an entirely new issue either.
Despite all this Israel has largely re-established military deterrence in the Middle East and is on a path to normalize relations with countries like Saudi Arabia once Hamas is either forced to surrender or degraded enough that they lose their ability to govern Gaza.
A country loses its right to "re-establish deterrence" when the population it's "deterring" is born inside its own de-facto borders, and when the only reason it needs to deter so many of them is that they would (rightly) like one of a) sovereignty or b) voting rights inside the federal system that controls their borders and can kick down the doors of the houses they were born in.
If Israel would like to give Gaza full sovereignty, or Palestinians born inside the occupied territories the right to vote in the federal systems that determine their law enforcement environment, we can talk about deterrence and law enforcement respectively.
Israel has unilateral control of who it recognizes as its citizens, and what sovereign states it recognizes. No complaint about current or past bad behavior by the Palestinians excuses its failure to grant sovereignty or voting rights to people under its territorial control.
> A country loses its right to "re-establish deterrence" when the population it's "deterring" is born inside its own de-facto borders, and when the only reason it needs to deter so many of them is that they would (rightly) like one of a) sovereignty or b) voting rights inside the federal system that controls their borders and can kick down the doors of the houses they were born in.
It's not just Palestinians they needed to deter, by the way most Israelis were also born within the borders as well. Israel has in the past made efforts to give more sovereignty to Palestinians but those efforts have largely backfired. I think initial efforts really need to focus on de-radicalization of Palestinians first before there's any reasonable chance another attempt at giving them more sovereignty will be more successful.
> If Israel would like to give Gaza full sovereignty, or Palestinians born inside the occupied territories the right to vote in the federal systems that determine their law enforcement environment, we can talk about deterrence and law enforcement respectively.
They already tried that[0], it didn't work out and arguably made the situation worse as they voted for Hamas[1] which quite openly advocates for the destruction of Israel.
> Israel has unilateral control of who it recognizes as its citizens, and what sovereign states it recognizes. No complaint about current or past bad behavior by the Palestinians excuses its failure to grant sovereignty or voting rights to people under its territorial control.
Are you seriously suggesting Israel can just give citizenship/voting rights to all Palestinians and make a group that largely wants their destruction a voting majority? There's a reason this will basically never happen, and that reason is that it would effectively be suicidal for Israelis. This sort of one-state solution is completely unrealistic. Some variation of a two-state solution is probably the most realistic, but I think we're a long way off from that being viable due to a lack of Palestinian desire for peaceful coexistence.
> Are you seriously suggesting Israel can just give citizenship/voting rights to all Palestinians and make a group that largely wants their destruction a voting majority?
Can you think of any reason why Palestinians might feel this way? Does anything come to mind?
Since the 1990s Israel has been trying to give them a state, to varying degrees. They got civil and security autonomy in Areas A of the West Bank, for example. And Israel pulled her citizens out of the Gaza strip in 2005.
The problem is that the PA, who rules the West Bank are extremely corrupt, and Hamas is committed to Israel's destruction. Neither side has been actually performing all the functions of state, UNRWA has been doing that.
The leaders of Hamas have stated the the Jewish state is to destroyed and the Jewish residents exterminated.
The PA leaders have stated that the German genocide of Jews never occurred.
And Egyptian, Jordanian, Palestinian, Libyan, and Iraqi leaders have all stated the the idea of a Palestinian People was invented in the 1960s. No joke.
If you want to start pulling out quotes to judge merit in the Middle East, there's enough material to hang anybody.
The leaders of Israel have not just spoken about it, they have actually destroyed the Palestinian State in the last few months. They have killed tens of thousands of kids.
Then from where came the rockets that were shot at Ashdod, Barnea, Nitzan, Kfar Aza, Miflasim, Saad, and Nir Am come from? This was during Yom Kippor, the Jew's holiest day.
You are invited to check that those rockets were fired from the Gaza strip. I know, I live walking distance from the strip. And you should then realize that the sources who tell you that Hamas is not shooting at Israel are using the tactic of Lies of Omission to influence your opinion.
I won't dispute that 50 people were killed yesterday, I have no idea, and I don't know how many of them were killed by Hamas and how many of them were killed by Israel. The Arab media reports all of them as being martyrs because that is their culture. The Western media just translates with the Arab media says. I do know that yesterday, Yom Kippur or the Jew's holiest day of the year, Hamas shot barrages of rockets at Israeli cities and towns. I don't know how many of those rockets fell back into the Gaza strip, typically a third of them do. So go figure how many of the 50 Gazans were killed by Hamas own rockets. In any case, when the Gazans decide that they've suffered too much then they are invited and welcomed to return the hostages. The war will be over that minute.
It is very telling that the side which has the ability to end the suffering now, by returning the hostages, chooses not to do that.
So the photos of flattened buildings are all "hamas"? You came in, blew up everything, and now you are saying "they did it to themselves, that wasn't us". Their dead kids - oh they did that? The occupation? Oh, that's their fault! If only they would start being nice, so we can stop killing them and give them a city! Ah let me build a settlement in their land - but it's THEIR fault!
> So the photos of flattened buildings are all "hamas"?
No, if buildings are flattened then that's not Hamas. Israel uses HE explosive, Hamas uses FA. HE is the one that levels buildings, FA is the one that leaves burn marks. Just like we saw at the AlAhli hospital where 500 people were killed - burn marks. Flattened buildings are Israeli munitions.
> Their dead kids - oh they did that? The occupation? Oh, that's their fault!
Often, yes. This is not disputed among Gazans. By their culture, no matter which side had the hand in killing you, you are a martyr and afforded the rewards of heaven.
I suggest you go open the guys and Telegram channels. There's a photograph being shared right now of half a dozen Gazans that were killed by other Gazan's hands. All piled up on a blanket.
> The occupation? Oh, that's their fault!
There's no dispute that the beginning of the occupation is squarely on the Arabs, the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank lasted 19 years. That said, both sides are responsible for it having been dragged out for an additional 60 years. Various Israeli governments have had different levels of intentions of giving or not giving the Palestinians certain autonomies and land. But no matter what the intentions of any specific Israeli government, the Palestinians have rejected every single offer. At some point one has to be content with what they've gotten, and realize that they can't destroy the other side completely and those people need some place to live. We, the jews, watched the British give over three quarters of the land of Palestine to the Hashemite kingdom, and left us less than 25%. And we were content with that. Then the UN came in and gave half of that to an Arab state and half of that to a Jewish state. And we were content with that. But then seven Arab nations invaded us to slaughter us. The Jews were ethically cleansed during that war from the West Bank and other places. Just as the Jews were content with what we were offered when we were weak, so should one reasonably expect the Arabs to be content and realize that we're not going anywhere and we need a safe place to live as well.
> If only they would start being nice, so we can stop killing them and give them a city!
Yes, generally in Western culture it is expected that when you want something from somebody, you treat them nicely. Especially if what you want is to live next door to them.
> Ah let me build a settlement in their land
Their land? Are you pulling the Arab Land card? How would you respond to British who reject Arab immigration to Great Britain on the basis of GB being White Land? The Jews have 3000 continuous years of history in the West Bank, broken only for 19 years when Jordan ethnically cleansed the West Bank of Jews. Even Israel didn't ethnically cleanse the land she won, Israel was (and remains) 20% Arab. If you support ideas of one-race-only Land and ethnic cleansing, then you and I will never agree.
> Then give the inhabitants of the land citizenship and the right to vote! It's simple.
Effectively saying Israel should have over control of their government to a majority voting block that will likely elect terrorists again just isn't something that's ever going to happen. There's a reason the international community largely regards a one-state solution as entirely non-viable.
Either you know what the consequence of that would be, and you therefore seek to destroy the Jewish state. Or you do not know what the consequence of that would be, and you therefore should not be talking about a subject that you know little about.
However, there are no groups vying for government in the Levant which are secular in nature other than the Jewish leftist groups. And none of the other groups have a culture compatible with those Jewish leftist values.
What I can't unsee is your argument depends on Palestinians having no agency. And thus blameless.
As soon as one assumes they do then ones sympathy is very limited indeed. Bookends for me are Munich and finally 10/7. And I'm just done with that group of people. They'd be way better off if everyone abandoned them.
Discussing this topic with you is impossible because you have committed to spreading Israeli state propaganda regardless of what the actual facts of the situation are. If you are unmoved by the children being savagely blown apart by Israeli rockets because you equate that with some Arab states bad-mouthing Israel then I fear nothing will ever convince you that Palestinians are human. Have a good day and if you have kids, give them a hug and be glad they don't live in Gaza.
> Discussing this topic with you is impossible because you have committed to spreading Israeli state propaganda regardless of what the actual facts of the situation are.
If I have stated something infactual, point it out. I can back up every fact that I've stated.
> If you are unmoved by the children being savagely blown apart by Israeli rockets because you equate that with some Arab states bad-mouthing Israel
You are correct that I don't use emotional strategy in my arguments, nor am I swayed by emotional arguments. I stick to facts. And if you did too, you would recognize that one third of the Hamas rockets fall back into the Gaza strip and kill Palestinians as well. If you were to read the Palestinian Telegram channels like I read, you would have seen the recent little girl being destroyed by an IED that was placed to attack Israeli soldiers. The Muslim culture considers all killed to be martyrs, no matter whose hand killed them. The Western media treating this as if Israel killed every martyr is disingenuous. If you really cared about Palestinian lives, you would recognize that Hamas is also a major factor in killing Palestinians today, and that Hamas could end this entire war by returning the hostages any minute.
> then I fear nothing will ever convince you that Palestinians are human.
How many Palestines in Palestine have you talked to in the recent past? I talk with them almost weekly: face to face, and online. In English, in Arabic, and in Hebrew, in their own towns. You'll see in my past posts that I quote them often, both in defence and in opposition to the state of Israel, and both in defence and in opposition to the Palestinian cause.
> Have a good day and if you have kids, give them a hug and be glad they don't live in Gaza.
Thank you, I hug my children and like you said, I am glad that they don't live in the Gaza strip.
Why not? It was part of Mandatory Palestine, lost to Jordanian occupation in the war for independence, and in 1967 recovered by Israeli forces in the same manner that Jordanian forces took it in the previous war. It had a Jewish population for the past 3,000 years, the only exception being the 19 years that the Jordanians held it because the Jordanians ethnically cleansed the area upon conquering it. At what point in this timeline do the Israelis lose claim to the area, or what have I misrepresented in the timeline?
> Being forced into a never ending apartheid situation may also be the reason.
An occupation is not apartheid.
> Give them voting rights
Israel tried that...Palestinians straight up voted for Hamas terrorists[0] who promptly eliminated voting rights(although based on opinion polling Hamas would likely be elected again).
> give them a state
Israel tried moving towards that in Gaza[1], it backfired spectacularly leading to the current conflict.
Any other ideas on how to move towards peaceful coexistence? I think the first step is some sort of de-radicalization program, but not sure how one would implement that.
Apartheid by definition means race based discrimination, which is different from citizenship based discrimination(which basically all countries have to various degrees).
Anyone in the world who has one race can freely move there. People of other races cannot. Rights are awarded based on race. Nothing to do with citizenship.
> Anyone in the world who has one race can freely move there. People of other races cannot. Rights are awarded based on race. Nothing to do with citizenship.
You're obviously referring to a Israeli citizenship law[0] here. Your claim that it has nothing to do with citizenship makes no sense.
So eternal apartheid? That's what will make the Palestinians happy? When the Tamil Tigers were defeated, they were able to vote in their country. The separatists in Spain get to vote in Spain. The kurds get to vote in Turkey.
Israel is the only country that says: do not separate and create your own state, but at the same time if you stay here, we will NOT give you civil rights.
> So eternal apartheid? That's what will make the Palestinians happy? When the Tamil Tigers were defeated, they were able to vote in their country. The separatists in Spain get to vote in Spain. The kurds get to vote in Turkey.
A military occupation is not an apartheid, apartheid is race based discrimination, the occupation here is citizenship based discrimination(which basically all countries have in various forms). I'm not really sure what the best solution here is, but it's probably going to need to involve some serious de-radicalization on the part of the Palestinian people and then some form of a two-state solution.
> Israel is the only country that says: do not separate and create your own state, but at the same time if you stay here, we will NOT give you civil rights.
They tried that approach already with Gaza, it backfired massively. It's pretty obvious giving the people who elected terrorists(and based on Palestinian opinion polling they would likely elect Hamas again) the right to vote in Israeli elections isn't going to lead to a peaceful coexistence.
An eternal military occupation, where the GOVERNMENT says - you will NEVER get a country, and you will NEVER be part of our country IS apartheid.
These are direct, unambiguous statements from the Prime Minister and all members of the cabinet. They have said that the Palestinians will NEVER get a state.
So what are you saying then about Israel wanting a two state solution? They have said there will be no state, and they have said they will not give civil rights.
> An eternal military occupation, where the GOVERNMENT says - you will NEVER get a country, and you will NEVER be part of our country IS apartheid.
That's not apartheid, apartheid means race based discrimination which is simply not an accurate characterization of what is going on here.
> These are direct, unambiguous statements from the Prime Minister and all members of the cabinet. They have said that the Palestinians will NEVER get a state.
Israel isn't a dictatorship and these things can change over time, I'm certainly no fan of Netanyahu in general, right now there is very little support for a two state solution amongst Israelis because they largely don't believe the Palestinians currently have a desire to live in peace with Israeli Jews. Unfortunately they appear to be correct for the time being but if those viewpoints were to change on the Palestinian side I would expect Israeli opinions to change as well. I'm just not sure how you de-radicalize a population like the Palestinians.
> So what are you saying then about Israel wanting a two state solution? They have said there will be no state, and they have said they will not give civil rights.
My point is that Israelis in the past have supported a two state solution, obviously there is currently a war going on right now so a two state solution is not going to happen any time soon.
> This is apartheid.
That's still not apartheid, it's an occupation, there's a difference.
> Israel isn't a dictatorship and these things can change over time
Indeed, Israel is a democracy, and things have in fact changed over time. These changes in Israeli public opinion have been based largely on the actions of the Palestinians.
There was optimism about peace in 2007, after the withdrawal from Gaza: 70% of Israelis supported the two-state solution. After the Hamas massacres in 2023, there was 70% opposition to the two-state solution.
It is race based because if there was a jewish person living in Palestine, they could apply for and get the right to vote. A muslim person cannot.
The Israeli PM has said: There will never be a Palestinian state. If you plan to eternally occupy and dominate a people, what is the difference to Apartheid?
> It is race based because if there was a jewish person living in Palestine, they could apply for and get the right to vote. A muslim person cannot.
Jews are not allowed to live in Palestine controlled territories at all(i.e. Gaza and West Bank areas A/B). This still wouldn't be race based discrimination however. Apartheid is a form of discrimination among citizens, immigration law is a somewhat separate issue. Many countries take factors into account when it comes to immigration laws that wouldn't be applied with regards to those who are already citizens. You don't see those cases of immigration law preferences being called Apartheid in general.
> The Israeli PM has said: There will never be a Palestinian state.
Israel has elections and things can change.
> If you plan to eternally occupy and dominate a people, what is the difference to Apartheid?
That's still not race based discrimination so not Apartheid.
Israel was formed atop the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians (not to mention massacring of >5000). There were no Israeli citizens before it was formed, this was purely racial discrimination.
Palestinians under Israeli occupation generally have no pathway to Israeli citizenship, with the exception of those in East Jerusalem, which is occupied under international law but is considered part of Israel by Israel; in the West Bank there is a process to apply for Israeli citizenship, but only a small percentage of Palestinians in East Jerusalem can become citizens every year (I believe I read it was <5% of those who applied).
People who are not Palestinian, anywhere in the world, can convert to Judaism and make Aliyah. This pathway is denied to Palestinians, especially those under occupation.
So I don't know how you can claim this is not race based discrimination.
> It's pretty obvious giving the people who elected terrorists
8% or fewer of the people in Gaza today actually voted for Hamas. Most of them were not even born at the time of the last election, and combined with those who were under 18 at the last election and those who voted for other parties, 92% of people alive in Gaza today had no part in Hamas coming to power.
> Israel was formed atop the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians (not to mention massacring of >5000).
There were various push and pull factors involved, it's not entirely accurate to say they were all forcibly expelled(there were many that were not expelled as well).
> There were no Israeli citizens before it was formed, this was purely racial discrimination.
Palestinians that remained were given Israeli citizenship however.
> only a small percentage of Palestinians in East Jerusalem can become citizens every year (I believe I read it was <5% of those who applied).
It's around 5% that have Israeli citizenship I think, about a third that apply have been approved with the remaining being rejected or postponed looks like. The majority do not apply for Israeli citizenship for various reasons.[0]
> People who are not Palestinian, anywhere in the world, can convert to Judaism and make Aliyah. This pathway is denied to Palestinians, especially those under occupation.
There being no Jews allowed to live in Palestinian controlled territories(i.e. Gaza and West Bank areas A/B) may make converting a bit uncommon/difficult(converting in general is rather difficult AFAIU), but I don't think there's any outright prohibition on accepting Palestinian conversions for the purposes of citizenship(even though in practice it may be extremely rare).
> So I don't know how you can claim this is not race based discrimination.
I'm not claiming there's no race based discrimination when it comes to Israels immigration policy. Apartheid would be considered racial discrimination between those that are already citizens however, which is a different issue. Many countries have immigration laws that have various forms of racial discrimination and you don't normally see those cases described as apartheid either. I am not a citizen of the country I was born in due to these sort of policies.
> 8% or fewer of the people in Gaza today actually voted for Hamas. Most of them were not even born at the time of the last election, and combined with those who were under 18 at the last election and those who voted for other parties, 92% of people alive in Gaza today had no part in Hamas coming to power.
That may be true but keep in mind Palestinian opinion polling does indicate Hamas would still likely win elections if they were in fact held today.
> After the October 7 attacks it was critical that Israel re-establish deterrence, not doing so would be inviting more attacks
Sure. They did that when they killed Sinwar. After that, they could have just continued to Mossad individual leaders in Hamas.
> Israel losing the media war was probably somewhat inevitable, the extreme disparity between worldwide Muslim population sizes and Jewish population sizes being a big factor
> Sure. They did that when they killed Sinwar. After that, they could have just continued to Mossad individual leaders in Hamas.
Killing one enemy leader is insufficient to re-establish deterrence, with how severe the October 7 attacks were I don't think Israel can possibly accept any outcome that doesn't effectively remove Hamas from power in Gaza.
> Not relevant to America.
It still has some effect in America, but less so than other parts of the world.
However Hamas has yet to capitulate/surrender, Israel basically has no choice but to finish Hamas off if they won't surrender, not doing so would significantly weaken their deterrence capabilities and allow Hamas to rebuild. There are potential consequences to ceasefire agreements where an enemies leadership retains power[0] historically.
> Like, Hezbollah got the message pretty clearly.
They eventually got the message after Israel essentially eliminated the entirety of their leadership chart multiple levels deep and crushed Hezbollah's will to fight, the ceasefire Hezbollah eventually agreed to was effectively a surrender agreement.
Sure, and I don't see credible evidence that they are[0]. Just more of the same false narratives pushed by the all too common antisemitic UN officials[1].
An NGO "Agence France-Presse has described...as 'a lobby group with strong ties to Israel'" [1] is not a credible source for disputing two separate groups at the UN, the IPF and--at this point--more than a few independent investigations.
> An NGO "Agence France-Presse has described...as 'a lobby group with strong ties to Israel'" [1] is not a credible source for disputing two separate groups at the UN, the IPF and--at this point--more than a few independent investigations.
This doesn't make the information they are putting out false, the UN bias against Israel is well documented by many sources.
> This doesn't make the information they are putting out false
It makes it unreliable. If you’re claiming the IPC is an unreliable source, you need a reliable source to back you up on that. (And neither article actually cites any data that would undermine the IPC’s case.)
I’m genuinely open to being convinced. Another comment raised the issue of insufficient CDRs for IPC 5 status, which may or may not be relevant. But these UN Watch interviews are rally the base stuff, not argument.
> If you’re claiming the IPC is an unreliable source, you need a reliable source to back you up on that. (And neither article actually cites any data that would undermine the IPC’s case.)
I think the most detailed rebuttal to the recent IPC claims is this one[0] backed by the COGAT[1] published aid data. There are other responses to prior IPC reports that go into more methodological details[2] as well. The impression I get overall is that the IPC is largely just cherry picking incomplete data to create a false narrative[3]. IPC forecasts also basically never end up being accurate historically either.
What Israel is doing is essentially sowing the seeds for a new crop of leaders hell-bent on destroying Israel. Children who saw ghe carnage Israel is inflicting will grow up to join Hamas and Hezbollah, and the cycle repeats.
> What Israel is doing is essentially sowing the seeds for a new crop of leaders hell-bent on destroying Israel
This isn't necessary! Plenty of peoples have overcome cycles of revenge. There isn't something inherent to Israelis and Gazans that requires they metabolise past trauma into future violence.
Overcoming this cycle requires the cooperation of both sides, or at the very least that both sides stop fucking with one another.
Israel, the stronger entity, should've been the one to abstain first and attempt to understand and forgive, instead they kept building illegal settlements and driving more and more people out there homes. Israel made sure the embers stayed hot, and I can't think of any reason for that aside from hoping those hot embers produce a flame that justifies genocide and completely eradicating the Palestinian population.
> Despite all this Israel has largely re-established military deterrence in the Middle East and is on a path to normalize relations with countries like Saudi Arabia once Hamas is either forced to surrender or degraded enough that they lose their ability to govern Gaza.
Citizens in the Gulf feel very differently on a large number of issues than their leaders.
> Citizens in the Gulf feel very differently on a large number of issues than their leaders.
Yeah, this is a common pattern, in general most Muslim counties have leadership which is far more moderate than their populations overall, with Iran being a notable exception.
This is disturbing. You seem to imply that there are legitimate reasons to starve an entire population, which is to me so repulsive that you’re not even allowed to consider entering that territory.Under that reading, once you’ve crossed that line, how can you actually win a media war ?
> You seem to imply that there are legitimate reasons to starve an entire population, which is to me so repulsive that you’re not even allowed to consider entering that territory.
No, I'm not saying that, I'm saying that the claims of starvation are simply not accurate.[0] They also tend to be pushed by antisemitic individuals[1].
You’re really saying that there is no starvation , and plenty to eat in Gaza ? ( I won’t debate the technical meaning and definition of the word famine, which I didn’t use ) There are enough Israelis who confirm this , and they’re hardly antisemitic.
> You’re really saying that there is no starvation , and plenty to eat in Gaza ?
I'm saying there are varying degrees of food insecurity but not to the levels one would typically call famine/starvation. I'm saying there is sufficient food availability to prevent starvation/famine, I'm not sure I would neccesarially characterize that as being the same thing as there being "plenty to eat" however.
The layman's understanding of war is less guided by international law and more around ideas like "tit for tat". Eg if Hamas kills 1000 Israeli civilians, Israel is entitled to kill 1000 Palestinian civilians, but should stop after that.
Is it the better response under international law? Not necessarily, but it would be better PR.
One interesting comparison I saw is the Siege of Mariupol. The fighting there had very high rates of civilian deaths (per day, and also vs combatant deaths), but:
* a large portion of civilians (and thus civilian casualties) in Mariupol actually identify as ethnic Russians, so it seems unlikely Russia targeted them intentionally
* nobody has filed a genocide case against Russia on the basis of the large number of civilian deaths in Mariupol
> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response
Was Hamas' response proportionate to Israeli actions? What actions specifically.
Before you answer wildly, note that you're talking to someone who knows a dozen hostages and ex-hostages personally. Someone who knows two women whose babies were burned to death. Some whose daughter lost a close friend (that friend was slaughtered in his home along with both siblings and both parents, in their pajamas). Someone whose son's camp counselor was dragged to Gaza and murdered. I could go on. What was Hamas' actions a proportionate respond to?
>It’s been way too short a time to tell if this will work, but responding in a softer manner has proven to not. Might work is better than won’t work.
Absolutely! As R.A. Lafferty correctly posited[0]:
“When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure clarified your
attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer to a definite problem.
For better or worse you have acted decisively. In a way, the next move is up
to him.”
― R.A. Lafferty
Yes. It's up to those dead Palestinians to now make peace. And the more dead Palestinians there are, there are more who are on the hook to do so. In fact, if we kill them all, they'll be in the perfect spot to make peace, amirite?
> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response
Is it disproportionate? Why do we talk about proportions when it comes to Jewish people defending their security but don’t bring it up in other conflicts? There was no talk of proportionate response after 9/11, for example. Virtually all nations who participated in the global war on terror didn’t care.
Proportionality is also not relevant when you’re talking about terrorists who are hiding among civilians on purpose. Why should Israel have to sacrifice the security of its residents to limit collateral damage among the very people who voted for Hamas and still support Hamas, as polls show.
Some of America's most famous writers weighed in at the time. Here's Hunter S. Thompson warning about how 9/11's narrative will be used to warp the perception of empire:
I've lived in the US since around 9/11; there was lots of discussion around the responses to Iraq, and Afghanistan. It went on to Yemen, and Libya. There was always criticism and utter disappointment with Obama in many circles over this. Many US soldiers came forward and condemned the Iraq war.
Also, the people who voted for Hamas over 20 years ago? Considering how young the population is, I doubt many were alive then. Hamas won 74 of the 132 seats back then. It's very dangerous rhetoric to say collateral damage should not be limited. Did the babies and the many women who were slaughtered in endless bombing campaigns vote for Hamas to deserve their very end? This rhetoric is exactly why the world has turned their back on Israel. In the US, huge majority of under 35s do not support the state, for example.
We can talk endlessly about strategy and long term implications (for example, the destruction of the Iranian "ring of fire" network of proxies, the permanent changes in Syria and Lebanon, etc), but consider something much more basic: Israelis around Gaza can finally live securely. There are no rockets coming from Gaza, no mortars, no chance of another October 7th or smaller incursions as long as the Israeli military is there. Israelis have peace. No Gazan rocket can disturb the life in Tel Aviv or Ashdod.
This couldn't and shouldn't have been a re-run of the countless previous clashes with Hamas. Israel needed to go all out to change the security situation, permanently.
I'm pretty sure people said the same thing after operation Cast Lead and other previous crackdowns. A country making itself into an international pariah while pursuing local security from an antagonist it nurtured in the first place is extremely myopic. As this conflict has dragged on, it has become more and more apparent that a great many Israelis (including in government) view their strategic situation through the lens of ancient historical conflicts from >2000 years ago and fantasize about resorting to the triumphant excesses of legend. Mass psychosis is not a good basis for long-term security.
Israel has seen more rockets and daily attacks than probably in its entire existance since they commenced the Gaza genocide what are you talking about.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this? The claim is that there are less rockets now, but that article doesn't show anything for 2024 or 2025. There is an article specifically for 2024 that is linked but only shows attacks up till May. Whether that means rockets have stopped, as is the claim, or that they simply haven't been recorded in the Wiki is unknown.
It’s a very high hill to die on, expecting Israeli civilians to prioritize the lives of enemies over their own. Any historical precedent, or are we entering into the fuzzy realm of uncharted morality?
The war in Gaza did not save a single Israeli’s life. Hundreds of Israeli are dead because of it though, many through accidents and friendly fire.
So it’s not about prioritizing lives, it’s about prioritizing ideologies.
And the pervasive ideology in Israel is that Palestinians are not people, and therefore our children, the IDF soldiers who daily target them, are not war criminals.
It's a neat little trick to just say any child you shoot in the head is Hamas. Or any women a children you starve was actually Hamas. Or every hospital you blow up was because Hamas was hiding in there. Or just pretend that October 2023 was the start of the conflict ignoring the decades of death, apartheid, and brutality preceding it.
I'm just glad people like you are willing to publish stuff like this to the internet so we can look back and understand why genocides are allowed to happen.
>> It's a neat little trick to just say any child you shoot in the head is Hamas. Or any women a children you starve was actually Hamas.
Your words; not mine. I am supporting the military campaign against Gaza, and I also reject the separation between "Gaza" and "Hamas" as entirely artificial and serving an agenda.
Hamas is the elected government of Gaza, they administrate Gaza, they pay salaries and they're the ones you negotiate with regarding Gaza. When your hear casualties numbers coming from the "Gaza Health Ministry", they're provided by Hamas.
In October 7th 2023 it's Gaza, not Hamas, who started a war with Israel (not with the Israeli Defense Forces). It's a war between populations that for various reasons will not coexist on the same piece of land.
Back in WWII, USA fought Japan, not the "Imperial Japanese Armed Forces".
The "Hamas is the elected government therefore women and children deserve to die" is Israeli propaganda.
It was a single election 20 years ago for a party running on change, not what Hamas stands for now. It was a protest vote. Palestinians have been experiencing genocide for decades.
Your seething hate for brown people is apart though. I'm glad you're willing to share it for the world to see.
>> Hamas is the elected government therefore women and children deserve to die
It's your own propaganda. Not mine, nor the Israeli government.
If your concern was with saving "brown people" lives, the most effective way to do so was to advocate for Hamas to release the remaining Israeli hostages and surrender. As it is, you're advocating for an Israeli surrender.
As it is, I openly and proudly call for Israel to win this war, decisively, with a surrender of their enemy.
P.S. Israelis are "brown people", given that most of the Israelis are of Arab origin (Jews, Christian and Muslim), about 70% or so.
If I remember correctly, the side holding people in concentration camps and shooting children in their heads weren't the good guys. It's not surprising that someone like you is making themselves the hero for supporting genocide though.
“Israel has built the most efficient starvation machine you can imagine.”
There's political opposition to this within Israel. Here's what happened to an elected member of the Knesset who spoke out against the cruelty in Gaza.[1] He was forcibly removed from the podium of the Knesset.
People sometimes forget how bitterly divided Israel was before October 7th, with hundreds of thousands of people protesting in the streets. The war put some of the infighting on hold for a while, but all the former problems still exist, and the stakes are higher.
The division is not about the starvation of Gaza. All Zionist parties in the Israeli parliament support the military campaign in Gaza. Apart from some lip-service from left-wing leaders, to my knowledge no Jewish leader has spoken against the starvation. Israeli media (except for Haaretz) have largely denied that there is a famine, and have called it a "propaganda campaign" by the Hamas.
About 22% of Israel is orthodox and about 13% can be called "ultra-orthodox".
They play a major role in politics. Most prominently and recently, the 8-decade long exemption from the draft for Haredi Jewish people was ended causing a major crisis in Israel's government. All Haredi representatives of the Knesset withdrew leaving Netanyahu's party's majority with a razor thin margin of 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset
You mean the really small minority of orthodox Jews who live outside Israel and oppose Zionism because they believe the coming of the Messiah should not be driven by humans (or something like that)? Or the ones who oppose the current Gaza conflict because of the recent push to conscript them into the armed forces, when they previously enjoyed the exemption?
Trust me, no orthodox Jews are opposing the Gaza conflict on humanitarian grounds. On the contrary, there is a STRONG orthodox faction in Netanyahu's government (of which Smotrich is a member).
My understanding is the defense made by Zionist parties is more that Hamas has culpability in the starvation. I haven't seen this claim verified or debunked sufficiently to have a strong opinion about it but it at least seems within reason to me that Hamas is acting in bad faith and is weaponizing starvation of Gaza residents.
Perhaps the fact that the Israeli state are the only ones making this claim, and many multiple experts, humanitarians, countries, leaders, are saying the exact opposite should be sufficient enough to debunk the claim.
Utter genocidal nonsense. Israel kills and maims deliberately civilians and children daily, starves deliberately millions, but it is Hamas who is to blame? Shameful.
Honest question from someone whose knowledge of Israel's government isn't deep: does "Zionist parties" mean anything other than the parties which are not Arab parties? (are members of the Arab parties free to advocate against Zionism and Israel's status as a Jewish state?)
All parties except for the Arabs and ultra religious are Zionist. The ultra religious have their own relationship with Zionism, but are members of the government.
While Arab MKs do enjoy freedom of speech, they are ostracized and delegitimized by the majority of Jewish MKs.
> they are ostracized and delegitimized by the majority of Jewish MKs
Not exactly.
A conservative Arab party was part of the ruling government coalition in 2021. They joined with a wide spectrum of political parties seeking to defeat the Likud Prime Minister Netanyahu.
If you watch Peter Beinart's channel, he has had Ehud Olmert and Avraham Berg on. IDK if they touched upon starvation specifically, but it seemed like they were not in denial about Israel's actions, especially the latter (I think Beinart lightly pressed Olmert on whether Israel's actions constitute genocide, and Olmert disagreed, and I don't know that I begrudge him that, given his position).
Neither of these former politicians are current leaders, of course.
> how bitterly divided Israel was before October 7th ... people protesting in the streets. The war put some of the infighting on hold ... the stakes are higher
What are the factors that transform a society that is generally decent, even if not free from flaws, into a society devoid of any moral restraints, into a multitude that wallows in the dubious pleasure of its cohesion and unity, indifferent to suffering, completely closed to others?
The victims of the Nazis' knowledge were indeed the Jews. Nazi anti-Semitism was indeed particularly destructive and murderous.
But the Nazis disregarded human life wherever it was. The extermination of hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners of war is just another example, but their attitude towards their own army, on the Stalingrad front for example, was also devoid of any human consideration.
Hitler did indeed lead these moves, but only here and there did anyone voice a complaint or reservation. With the outbreak of the war, the spirit of those who could truly resist was completely broken.
Is it really that easy to break the spirit? How does that happen? Few history books deal with this. Huffner tries to explain, and even if he is not always convincing and does not see everything, this experience of his, so close to the moment of truth in Europe on the eve of the outbreak of World War II, is unique and one of a kind. I believe that even in our time and even in our places, it is worthy of in-depth study.
- Shulamit Volkov (afterword to "The Story of a German" by Sebastian Huffner).
I don't know much about Charlie Kirk except what I've read recently. But he does/did seem to be part of a growing element of the right in the USA who stand against Israel and Netanyahu specifically. And while I support that, I don't think it's necessarily to support Palestinians, but more as an America First policy.
In that context, "of all people" makes sense to me. I too have been surprised by the move, of some on the right, against Israel, considering their almost unanimous support previously.
> I too have been surprised by the move, of some on the right, against Israel, considering their almost unanimous support previously
The right is not a monolith. Various elements on the right have always been anti-Israel, from the non-interventionists to the straight-up racists. Kirk was one of the former.
Kirk is on video making a joke about how he used to tell leftists, "they would throw you off a tall building in Gaza," but now there are no tall buildings in Gaza (hyuk hyuk), because of those "stupid Muslims attacking Jews."
As the genocide has become more and more indefensible, many right wing water carriers (also including Tucker Carlson) have been peeling off and voicing occasional (but essentially harmless) criticisms of the relationship. It's more cynicism than principle.
For context these are the questions asked since obviously this claim will change a lot based on questions. I wouldn't say it's terribly surprising based on my experiences, I've met Republicans against a lot of these things. I'm also wondering a bit how they got their sample since they had way more Democrats than Republicans and how representative it is (it also didn't close to match the racial makeup of the US). Not hating on the study, I didn't spend enough time reading it to know it's effectiveness, mainly the actual questions seemed important.
Item 1) Abortion should be illegal.
Item 2) The government should take steps to make incomes more equal.
Item 3) All unauthorized immigrants should be sent back to their home country.
Item 4) The federal budget for welfare programs should be increased.
Item 5) Lesbian, gay and trans couples should be allowed to legally marry.
Item 6) The government should regulate business to protect the environment.
Item 7) The federal government should make it more difficult to buy a gun.
Item 8) The federal government should make a concerted effort to improve social and economic conditions for African Americans.
Edit: to be clear I read the study and they used Prolific (https://www.prolific.com/) to get the participants but that means nothing to me.
This and my original comment apparently struck a nerve for some people, but I’m just sharing what I observe from the links I’ve included. I’d love to see some actual response to the content of these videos given Kirk’s apparent change of heart on Israel (especially if I’m off-base) as opposed to just downvotes with substance-free responses
The US was the victim of a terror attack at 9/11. It became the bad guy by invading Afghanistan and Iraq for 20 years using one terrorist attack as the justification.
You could argue Israel's right to strike back on Oct 8th, 15th, 31. That justification has vanished as the onslaught has continued. 2 years later.
Yes, Israel is the bad guy for committing genocide. Being the target of a terrorist attack doesn't give a country the right to wage war on civilians.
USA tried to establish themselves in those lands also to prevent future terror attacks, which I think they did. It's questionable if it was worth it or the right thing to do, but in the meantime, you guys in the USA didn't have a single terror attack afterwards, or? (I can't remember to be honest)
What would a single Israel's strike on the 8th of October etc have done? They got 100+ hostages, some are still there btw after 2 years, and there is proof that the civilians knew about it and actually supported it.
People still support Hamas and still believe they will win. Without mentioning that those people (the civilians, yes) supported that s** that "Hamas" had done on the 7th of October - there is plenty of evidence for it.
They did not. ISIS was a direct consequence of the US invasion of Iraq. Instead of stomping out terrorists, they created a whole bunch of new terrorist cells and inspired the arab spring uprisings.
And more for Israel itself "Israeli intelligence officials had new evidence that Iraq was speeding up efforts to produce biological and chemical weapons"
All I ever hear are calls for "ceasefire now" as long as Israel is winning, and those calls are silent whenever there's an offer to exchange hostages for a ceasefire. It does not seem to me that the peace these people are calling for are what you or I would call peace.
I see the "ceasefire now" people, who are usually very vocal, quiet every time there is a serious ceasefire proposal.
Furthermore, I see very little international pressure on Hamas to release the hostages, other than from the US. Quite the opposite, the Europeans pressure Israel, not Hamas.
When asked whether it supports or opposes the disarmament of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in order to stop the war on the Gaza Strip, an overwhelming majority (85% in the West Bank and 64% in the Gaza Strip) said it is opposed to that; only 18% support it.
When asked whether it supports or opposed the eviction of some Hamas military leaders from the Gaza Strip if that was a condition for stopping the war, 65% said they oppose it and 31% support it. Support for this step stands at 47% in the Gaza Strip and only 20% in the West Bank.
This is very much one sided. Other side of the argument, in civillians supporting horrible violence, doesn't do any favors dor Israel. Most of the world is appalled in the delusional civil society.
He is not political opposition. He is Arab mk, which is allowed to be elected in free democratic elections, something many Arab countries don't allow.
He was removed after being called to order 3 times by the chairman, and removed when he didn't oblige to continues his speech in a normal way. This is a very small portion cut from a very long speech, and the only reason is to flame The Guardian readers against Jews.
The man speaking is Ayman Odeh [1], an Arab Israeli MK and chairman of Hadash, a left-wing Arab Israeli party. Arab Israelis and their political leaders are marginalized in Israeli society. Arab Israeli parties are largely considered illegitimate by a majority of Jewish Israelis.
Political opposition to the starvation of Gaza is still marginal, especially in Jewish society. Protests in Arab cities against the starvation and the genocide are being curbed and prevented by the police. the Jewish majority is still largely silent on these issues, if not outright supportive of the government policy.
Israel is where we in the west get shown a mirror in front of our faces. A country led by religious fanatics, who don't respect other religions and for the most part feel no remorse when people of other faith suffer due to their actions or inaction. A genocidal military, that continues its deeds, seemingly aiming to reach ISIS level of despicability. But we have tons of people here, who don't want to see anything wrong with Israel and how it acts. That really shows us our double standards. Religious fanatics are OK for us, as long as they are not against us. Crimes against humanity are OK, as long as they are inflicted upon a group, that is not seen by the mainstream as "us".
We have really lost the plot when it comes to ethics. Not all of us, but many, and especially in our leaderships and governments.
Just to be fair, Israel itself is considered illegitimate by those parties. I doubt most democracies would let parties that are staunchly anti-state run, but Israel, for some reason, does.
Canada has a federal party since 1991, the Bloc Québécois, "devoted to Quebecois nationalism, social democracy, and the promotion of Quebecois sovereignty."[0] They're explicitly separatist by policy. Quebec's last attempt at attaining sovereignty was a provincial referendum in 1995 that lost by 0.5%. Had it succeeded, the provincial gov't was prepared to declare full independence the next day.
As a Canadian I'd also say that having such a party is a huge boon to the country. Separatists are going to separatist - your choice, as a nation, is whether to allow them to organize and have their voices heard within the system of politics or whether to force them to resort to violence and underground organization. Those underground separatist groups will always exist but giving formal political representation to the desire for separation (even if it isn't granted) can help defuse extremism and provide better methods for airing grievances.
The modern BQ is much more tame than the BQ of thirty years prior - they've mainly morphed into a party focused on franophone rights within Canada and the maintenance of QC labor rights. So while they specifically no longer represent that separatist movement as directly there are other groups focused on prairie separatism that are a better modern parallel.
Hadash is a communist party, first and foremost. But the Arab parties - Balad, Raam, Taal - they are advocating for Palestinian "right of return" and turning Israel into a bi-national state, therefore ending what we know as Israel today.
> hardly in the way that could be described as the destruction of the state
It would be a destruction of the nation-state of Israel as a state for the Israeli, predeominantly Jewish, nation.
> Abolishing Jim Crow in the south hardly destroyed the south
It certainly felt that way to them! Strongly enough that they fought a war over it. (EDIT: Nobody went to war over Jim Crow. They did over slavery. Jim Crow was basically an attempt to regain part of what was lost in the war. Put another way, even a war--alone--is not enough.)
That's the point. The single-state solution, practically, would require a war. I know we pulled out of Afghanistan. But I thought we'd have a bigger gap before another group of Westerners decided they like drawing borders in the Middle East, and that anyone who disagrees with them--including the people on the ground--should be violently forced to comply.
> It would be a destruction of the nation of Israel as the people of Israel see it.
Just like the people in my home states of Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee thought that ending Jim Crow would destroy them. They were wrong, just as the people of Israel would be wrong.
> It certainly felt that way to them! Strongly enough that they fought a war over it.
No war was fought over the end of Jim Crow.
> That's the point. The single-state solution, practically, would require a war. I know we pulled out of Afghanistan.
At the moment, probably. That can change.
> But I thought we'd have a bigger gap before another group of Westerners decided they like drawing borders in the Middle East, and that anyone who disagrees with them--including the people on the ground--should be violently forced to comply.
Those Knesset members are not asking western intervention to end their ethnostate.
> They were wrong, just as the people of Israel would be wrong.
They may be. Maybe India and Pakistan could peacefully reünify, too. I'm doubtful. But that matters less than the people there being very much more doubtful.
> No war was fought over the end of Jim Crow
Sorry, fair enough. Ending Jim Crow wasn't a credible threat to the South at that time. The war had already been fought.
> At the moment, probably. That can change
Sure. But sentiment has to shift before one can peacefully move borders.
> Those Knesset members are not asking western intervention to end their ethnostate
I've lost your argument. (Also, ethnostate and nation-state are practically synonymous.)
The war for a single state is already happening mind you, and westerners are already involved and influential in it. i disagree that there is now an option to decide now that we dont want to draw borders, only whether we're satisfied with the new borders or not.
Not a real argument, but I don't think I can come up with a real argument for your case, so fair enough.
Show me a single case where previously-warring nations peacefully unified (i.e. not through conquest or subjugation)? Poland-Lithuania and England-Scotland are the only two I can think of.
Because the counterexample--multiethnic nations that split along national-identity lines--is far more frequent since the age of conquest. Former Yugoslavia. Pre-Partition India. Sudan. Ethiopia. Algeria.
Multiethnicisim is hard. Where it works, it happened through immigration. Combining previously-warring nations under one roof is basically just assisted civil war.
Mostly the ones where multinationality has been reduced to a different set of cuisines. If you look around the Middle East region, then every multiethnic state there has had civil wars recently.
It’s borderline bigoted to force your values onto a completely different population that’s Islamist, tribal and radicalized. After Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza people thought it would be a good idea to hold elections there. Hamas, the Palestinian equivalent of ISIS, won. There haven’t been elections since. In the West Bank, no PA elections since 2005 because the PLO feared Hamas would win there too.
> name all the democratic states which have Arab culture
This is a genuine pro-Israeli argument. It’s not a valid anti-Arab one.
How many extraction-economy former colonies have successfully democratised? (Extraction being the sole or overwhelming economic sector.) Because that’s the common link between e.g. Central Asia and the Arab world.
Sorry, I meant to just characterise the argument, not its speaker. The absence of Arab democracies doesn't have a well-established predictive mechanism that would allow us to predict a Gazan democracy should fail. It does highlight a unique aspect of Israel in its region.
For rule of the people (democracy) to work, certain base values and education are necessary. I implore you to research this, it is discussed often by both Arabs (who understand Arab culture) and Westerner scholars (who do not).
Sure, no problem, I actually had this conversation with somebody a few months ago. He's an Israeli Arab, not a Gazan Arab, but they are both Sunni Muslims. The conversation was in Hebrew, though I often speak with Arabs in Arabic as well. I spend much time interested in their culture and language - Israelis and Westerners know almost nothing about them.
Firstly, legal authority lies only with God. Not with man, as in Jewish and Christian societies (his comparison, not mine, and yes he mentioned Christians for some reason even though his town does not have Christians). There is no decision of man about what is permitted and what is not - even if the majority in a democracy want it. Allah has revealed what is good and just for man, even though he emboldened man with other desires and temptations.
Another problem with democracy in Arab society (not Muslim society as the previous paragraph dealt with) is how would voting even work. Two women's votes would be needed for every man's votes. He specifically said that this is an Arab problem, not a Muslim problem. And he says that women should not vote anyway, nor should children whose father is still alive, because they can only vote for who the father or husband says. Secret voting does not change that.
Another problem is Jews will manipulate the voting, or the results. Or any voting results the party doesn't like, will be blamed on Jewish intervention. I think he means Israeli intervention but those are his words.
That's just from some store owner I was talking to. You can choose to decide that he doesn't represent anybody. But he is a Sunni Muslim who lives a half hour drive from Gaza city.
I understand all this very well. What I don't agree with is that the solution to this problem is to not give them any say in their government. The solution is education, and that doesn't happen when they're starved and bombed. Analogously, the slaves freed in the US Civil War were mostly illiterate and had been kept so by law. It is very difficult to run a democracy with an illiterate electorate, but nobody would suggest that we just throw up our hands and give up on having the government represent the will of the people.
hamas killed or tortured into submission all opposition in gaza.
palestinian authority stopped having elections as well. because hamas will win. latest polling (in link that i sent you in other thread) shows hamas polling at 40+%
got mistaken with previous polls. hamas not 40+ but 30+. 10 points higher than fatah and in case those that don't know who they vote for, won't vote - i guess hamas gets majority.
But PA promised to France/UK/Canada/Australia that Hamas wouldn't be allowed to participate in elections, so...
Thank you. I don't have a sense for the credibility of the poll.
But taking their numbers at face value, we have 58% of Gaza residents saying Hamas was incorrect to launch its 7 October offensive. (Surprisingly, 59% in the West Bank say it was correct. That's problematic.)
Problematically, too, is the 2/3rds of respondents in Gaza who oppose Hamas disarming. Based on this survey, which again, I have zero ability to judge in terms of accuracy, there would need to be a long civic transition to democratic self-rule while new political parties are given a safe space to form and grow.
They are not parties considering Israel illegitimate nor are they calling for the destruction of Israel. They are parties calling for a two-state solution, and consider the globally-recognized-as-illegal settlements as illegitimate i.e. they call the ever expanding borders of Israel as illegitimate.
If you were to make them illegal, you're basically legally disenfranchising 25% of Israel's population.
Is there any direct source for the questionability which does not come from Israel, or from entities backed by Israel? Because nowadays, all of these “sources” which I’ve seen to be shared were clearly lying propaganda, like “they lied about what the link said” obvious lies, or shared links which were said by Israel basically. The funniest was the account whose only purpose was to show that Palestine was rich in reality, and tried to show that shops are still full with stuffs there, while clearly tried to disguise from where or when the information came. And it does only that, nothing else.
I don't know what you mean by "logical" narrative. There is no logic here. Israel facilitates the entry of virtually all the food going into Gaza. They monitored the food prices and when they spiked, they took action, bringing them back down.
Considering factors like different countries having different populations, "most efficient" has very little to do with the raw number of people starving.
There is simply no excuse for blocking the entry of food into a region wholesale. For that alone they should, at the very least, be an outcast in the international community. But here we are.
That they have the backing and blessing of the US government is the counter-argument to this. The US can almost unilaterally end this war if they want to.
US has a lot of both soft and hard power globally. If you don't treat their puppet state with deference (and do treat it as an outcast), you can face consequences. The current US admin is using this as a stick against its own citizens, even.
OK, but I still don't see how that's a counterargument to the proposition that "There is simply no excuse for blocking the entry of food into a region wholesale."
> Israel fully controls USA (especially this administration)
This is the political equivalent of Flat Eartherism.
The 'Earth is a perfect sphere' take would be that there are significant numbers of Americans for whom Israel is a single-issue item, and significantly more for whom it's a top three. These voters can swing elections in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and possibly Michigan, and so are given a lot of deference by the Congress and President.
yea, lets go with that, definitely we are involved in a genocide because of 7 voters in arizona.
additionally, neither party’s candidate can dare be “anti” israel so this is an election issue as much as … don’t even have a witty comparison for this :)
> neither party’s candidate can dare be “anti” israel
Plenty do. They lost their primaries because most Americans don't want to be lectured on foreign policy while their grocery bills are going up.
Most Americans won't rank any foreign policy as a top-10 issue. Out of those that do, until very recently, most of them were passionately anti-China or Russia, pro-Israel or anti-Cuba. So those become electorally-salient divides.
You're now seeing, in Democratic politics, the winds sort of change. Hence less explicit pro-Israeli rhetoric from some electeds. But that still doesn't mean the median American voter cares about a war in Gaza more than they do their personal finances.
The claim I've heard them make is that the food aid is making it in, but being stolen by Hamas so that it can be resold at markup. How do you convince people that believe this that it isn't true (or is irrelevant)?
The UN's own data (https://app.un2720.org/tracking) shows 86,531 pallets were intercepted, while only 26,772 pallets arrived at their intended destination.
We don't know many of the interceptions Hamas was behind, but that isn't really important.
Either side of the conflict could say this and be 100% justified in their accusation. That's what people "see with their own eyes" if you needed some perspective.
Top comment: "The claim I've heard them make is that the food aid is making it in, but being stolen by Hamas so that it can be resold at markup."
> the relevant thing is that they're being intercepted and not making it to ordinary civilians
Hell of a straw man. People care that the aid is getting to militants. Israel said it was getting to Hamas. That's the justification for limiting aid. If it's not getting to people who are shooting at Israeli troops, then it's not a security risk to provide more aid.
The strawman is that Hamas is intercepting all the aid. Sure people occasionally say that, but you're attacking an oversimplification of the real underlying points, which are that
- Groups of men with rifles tend to be belligerents in the conflict, even if we can't say definitively if they're with Hamas, PIJ or some smaller gang. Israel doesn't want an aid program where the bulk of the aid goes to their literal war enemies.
- Even if some of them are "civilian armed gangs" and not actual belligerents, the aid they steal still isn't getting to civilians (except when it's sold at extortionate prices). Hence the shift to GHF which, while it has its own problems, does actually deliver most aid to ordinary civilians for free.
There’s no “proof” but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. The pallets that never made it to people in need didn’t magically disappear. There is also a history of Hamas stealing aid that goes back MUCH longer than the post-October-7 conflict:
I have no idea. I've heard a lot of "just because a minister says it it isn't true, do you believe everything Trump or congresspeople say?" in response to what ministers say. That, and the usual "the media (particularly mainstream, like NYT) is lying/anti-semitic/etc." So I imagine the reply would be the same.
> How do you convince people that believe this that it isn't true
It's not like the Gazans have any money to speak of.
> (or is irrelevant)?
If the way to prevent starvation is to flood the zone with food shipments, it's a moral imperative to do that. That it will also help keep the enemy fed is entirely beside the point, since causing starvation is not a legal or ethical form of warfare.
If that was true, wouldn’t the best course of action be to let as much aid as possible into Gaza to flood the market rather than restricting the flow (therefore increasing prices) like Israel has been doing?
Then Israel severely limiting the amount of food is helping Hamas by artificially, and cruelly, limiting supply. People want to feed their families and will go to great lengths: sell their valuables, harm others, or wait in line at a Gaza Health Ministry site with the knowledge the IDF might fire into the crowd.
If they flooded Gaza with food then Hamas would benefit less from the supposed stealing/reselling.
>it allowed the US to build a pier for food delivery
You mean the one that Israel was caught on camera using to help carry out a raid (the Nuseirat refugee camp massacre) that killed 276 civilians and injured over 600? And then promptly disintegrated after spending only 20 days distributing 1/5 of the aid actually needed?
How magnanimous of them. Why don't we send them another billion off our paychecks to fund their free healthcare to thank them?
The sheer blatant disregard for human life that Hamas exhibits is staggering. They could end the suffering today by returning the hostages. The fact that they do not, tells you all you need to know about the society that UNRWA education enabled.
Hamas wanted to negotiate the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel, that it why they took the hostages. Israel decided that their citizens were not worth the price and Zionists used the opportunity to expedite the genocide.
There is currently a deal on the table to get thousands of those prisoners released in exchange for the ~30 hostages and Hamas has refused. Hamas' by far largest goal is pressuring Israel, not saving civilians.
> Hamas wanted to negotiate the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel
No it didn't. The hostages are leverage only for Hamas, not the Palestinians. Unilaterally cede the hostages and Israel would be put into a really tough spot.
Great. So why did Gazans elect Hamas to power in 2006? Their charter includes things like eliminating Israel, people of all other religions, subjugating women, etc. It doesn’t seem like they wanted to decide who is to live or die. And by “they” I don’t just mean Hamas but the population that put them into power and still supports them today. Hamas is the one who attacked Israel with rockets for more than a decade. Their actions caused numerous intermittent blockades that affected residents of the area. It seems like they are content deciding who gets to live or die both in Israel and in the Gaza Strip. But somehow the comments here don’t seem to acknowledge this.
Remember, there have been several two state solution offers in the past. None were accepted by the Islamic Arabs who now call themselves “Palestinian”. Because they aren’t content with coexisting. They want to eliminate Israel and take over the entire region of historical Palestine. That’s what “from the river to the sea” means.
Netanyahu supported Hamas, classic divide and conquer strategy. "Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
Hamas changed their charter in 2017 and supported the 1967 borders. Israel does not.
This entire situation has been engineered from the start by Zionists to take over and ethnically cleanse the area. This plan goes back to Ben Gurion.
That's an unverified quote which Netanyahu denied saying.
> Hamas changed their charter in 2017 and supported the 1967 borders.
First it's only certain Westerns who like to frame it as a new charter, while Hamas never used such language and never recanted their original charter.
More to the point, Hamas' 2017 document accepts the concept of a state along 1967 borders, presumably as a stepping stone, "without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity", i.e. while still demanding "the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea".
> Israel does not.
There's nothing sacred about the 1967 armistice line in particular, but the 2ss offers Israel made in 2000 and 2008 would have been pretty close.
Great question because Hamas was funded by Benjamin Netanyahu in the 90s because he feared the peaceful PLO would become too powerful and result in a two state solution.
Knowing this does this change your position or have you decided on a viewpoint that you will push regardless.
If what I just said was true (and it is) Benjamin Netanyahu put them in power. Doesn't that change everything for you?
Debating that two state solutions were offered and other Arab states not supporting a two state solution because they wanted everything restored to before the world wars victors carved up the world and took away their piece is worth debating. But that's not why Hamas exists.
Benjamin Netanyahu disparate needed an enemy a group violent and extreme. Benjamin Netanyahu setup a strawman.
Hitler's Nazi party in the begining use to send men in to attack an area create chaos then use that justification to take over that area to protect them. Scared people obey.
Jews are the indigenous people of Israel. The archaeological records and excavations is clear on that. The leftist and white guilt that ignores that and subverting the definition of Zionism is disgusting.
They are not. They were banished centuries BC by their own God per their own scripture. The Palestinian people are the indigenous ones fighting against waves of Eastern Euro trash immigrants fleeing Europe during the 20th century.
Literally doesn't matter. Dead people don't get a vote on where who can live. The people alive today live where they do and will fight to keep from getting displaced. The sooner folks can understand that the sooner we might see peace.
It's you people that's using the terms "colonizers." Of course it matters. Changing definitions willy nilly in the face of evidence is how authoritarianism starts. Very hypocritical of your kind.
All of you guys out there in the Middle East are out of the same melting pot. And you're all as crazy as a butterfly on absinthe. I don't know whether you're all Canaanites at the base, or you're all Jews at the base, or out of the Land of Nod, or whatever the hell you were at the get-go, "semites" or whatnot. But you've been fighting it out for something like eight thousand years! And you've never had five minutes of quiet and peace! You're forever killing each other, and sticking knives in each other, and burning babies - and the world has had to suffer with this.
Great things have come out of the Middle East - great things like the *Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam* - but *stupidity* seems to be your chief export! Stupidity, and violence, are your cash crops. All you.
They stole this land within a century using the first cases of modern terrorism against the British and then eventually the Arabs. They're old enough to be forced to not only give it back but work hard labor to rebuild it for its original inhabitants.
This particular piece of land was stolen, using terrorism and forced displacement among other colonial techniques, as recently as 1948, and some of the beneficiaries and victims are still alive.
You need to hear “it”, again because “it” is the foundation of civilized coexistence.
That's why you are subhuman and not fit for modern society. You are literally posting Nazi opinions about favoring the complete eradication over other races as preferable to a risk to your race.
Remember that the editor of Der Sturmer was hanged at the Hague!!!
> For example it allowed the US to build a pier for food delivery
"allowed"
The pier was never going to work. Israel should just allow aid in via the normal ways. Notice that Israel controls all the borders of Gaza and they're the ones preventing food from coming in. Not to mention destroying all the farmland in Gaza too.
I'm glad to see you use "most of this war", acknowledging that Israel has at times totally blockaded all food and medicine from Gaza (and not for logistic or military reasons, but as a pure pressure tactic as stated by Israeli officials).
And it's true, Israel is not required to accept aid from other countries for Gaza. They could instead provide the full required resources for civilians in the occupied areas themselves.
No it cant because israel controls the borders and isnt letting any arms in. It can be used to pay terrorists but Israel just has to live with that. If they are confident aid is being used to pay terrorists the correct move is not cutting off aid its defending the aid
Ethnic cleansing is deeply wrong, starvation as a tactic of war is horribly wrong, we all know what's happening, please have some respect for peoples' intelligence.
Ethnic cleansing is deeply wrong. Starvation as a tactic of war is horrible and evil. But it doesn't sound like people here do know what is happening.
The CNN article gives the low calorie consumption amount as 1400. 1400 was a specific time/event and the worst case CNN listed.
The US, in post war Germany, doing it 'the right way' according to history, targeted (so many received lower) 1500 calories a day. Or 1000 a day when airdropped.
According to the CNN article, Israel's action during an ongoing conflict is about par with how the US did it for years in post war Germany. And remember Germany is much larger than Gaza, so people had much larger distances to cover. Those that couldn't be reached received airlifts that only targeted 1000 calories per day.
War sucks. It sucks that the government of Gaza chose to start a war. What we are seeing is the impacts of that. And it is awful. But it's also in line with the conditions in post WW2 Germany, arguable one of the best historical treatments of an aggressor by victors over it.
Germany isn't referred to as a starvation, but as a successful reconstruction. It is the 'norm' to which people speak when they speak of how to treat an aggressor population when they lose to victors. It is the literal 'norm' that people are calling for in Gaza. I only looked into it because people here were pointing to it as how Israel should be acting in Gaza on last weeks Gaza story. And I was surprised to find that Israel is acting within that established norm that people here were calling for just last week (until I looked up what the norm/numbers were and brought those facts into the discussion).
I'm not sure why this is important to the discussion. The important question is: are people in Gaza starving or not? If they are, I couldn't care less what we did during WW2.
Secondarily, just because there was a guideline during WW2 that was deemed "the right way", it's the result that counts. Were people starving in Germany post WW2? If so that was wrong then too.
The Red Cross sets a floor of 1500 calories within the USA, lower than the floor Israel sets for Gaza. Does the Red Cross starve American's/use food as a weapon?
The UN itself has cut food distribution/caloric intake in Kenya (in need in huge part because of war refugees from Sudan) in half, is the UN using food as a weapon? The UN is saying it wants to provide aid at a much higher level to the people of Gaza than it provides to the people in Kenya.
> Starvation as a tactic of war is horrible and evil. But it doesn't sound like people here do know what is happening.
The problem for your argument is that Israeli leaders have publicly said over and over again that they are intentionally starving the Palestinians in Gaza.
> 1400 was a specific time/event and the worst case CNN listed.
Israel let in 0 calories for months on end. They have blocked the UN from providing food aid, and have attempted to completely destroy the main UN agency providing food in Gaza. When Israel does let food in, it is only in response to international pressure. If the Israeli government thought it could get away with killing every last Palestinian in Gaza, it would.
> Israeli leaders have publicly said over and over again that they are intentionally starving the Palestinians in Gaza
To be fair, Israeli leaders can be quoted saying just about anything, same as in pretty much any democracy. What matters is which leaders are saying what, what authority they have, and what's happening on the ground.
The Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister are not just random, low-level people with no authority who are shooting the breeze.
Nobody who has followed the news over the last two years can seriously claim that this isn't Israeli policy. Did Israel block all aid shipments for months earlier this year by accident?
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: "We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals, and we are acting accordingly."[0]
CNN: "Israel says it will block Gaza humanitarian aid until Hamas agrees to new conditions"[1]. This official announcement came directly from Netanyahu's office. After this announcement, Israel blocked all humanitarian aid to Gaza for nearly 3 months. What's particularly remarkable is that this came after Hamas agreed to a ceasefire and hostage exchange. Netanyahu exchanged the first few batches of hostages, and then refused to continue as previously agreed. He demanded that the entire deal - which both sides had already agreed to - be renegotiated, and blocked humanitarian aid as a means of applying pressure.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalael Smotrich: "No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages."[2]
I could go on, but you get the point. You can't possibly claim that this isn't Israeli government policy or that we have no way of knowing what the top Israeli leaders think about the matter.
All the more reason they shouldn't support doing it to others, and yet many do.
And population growth looks the same everywhere in the world: the poorer the country, with less access to health care, less job security, independence and opportunities for women, the higher the birth rate.
The source of the food scarcity being discussed started on Oct 7th though when the government of Gaza chose to kill over 1000 people, maim/injure/torture/rape thousands more, and kidnap many (including the approx. 6 year old girl they posted videos on the internet of themselves kidnapping from her house, they were so proud they posted video of kidnapping a little girl from her home). That all happened starting Oct 7th.
The Allied occupying powers tried as hard as they could to get food into Germany. Israel is intentionally blocking food from getting onto Gaza. There's a massive difference.
> War sucks.
That's an awfully glib way of justifying deliberately starving a civilian population. Saying "war sucks" doesn't make it okay to commit war crimes.
Our clinical and other observations convinced us that 2,000 calories a day was a bare minimum and sufficed merely to keep the population at a subsistence level.
Where "bare minimum" refers to a community with high numbers of women and children doing little exercise or labor. They observed malnutrition in people consuming 1800 calories daily and recommended substantially more than 2000 calories for people doing hard labor.
If you had read literally the first line of the article, you would see that it discusses the 1948-1949 years of the blockade. The wikipedia article you're citing covers the 10 years after 1945, which includes those years. Even if the years didn't overlap, human nutritional needs obviously didn't double in 6 years.
Of course, if you had read the wikipedia article you would have seen these lines:
The Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force initially set the ration scale for Germans at 11,000 kJ (2,600 kcal) per day... Once the occupation of Germany commenced, it proved impossible to deliver the intended levels of food...As a result, once supplies which had been stockpiled by the German government during the war ran out, the ration scales were reduced to 4,200–5,200 kJ (1,000–1,250 kcal) per day.
So they didn't set the number to 1000 out of a principled stances about nutritional needs, it was what they could manage actually deliver given the enormous logistical and infrastructure limitations of the blockade.
The LA city (not Red Cross) document is much the same. Again, you've failed to read literally the next line in a document because the Red Cross is cited with the proper figure immediately after the "1500 calorie" figure:
The Red Cross suggests 2,000 to 2,500 calories per person, per day.
I don't quite understand why you keep pointing to post WW2 as a justification.
For 1 we should be looking at results and the situation on the ground, not the guidelines for what's "the proper way to do things". Were people in Germany starving or not, are people in Gaza starving or not? If the answer to either is yes, then it is / was a problem.
Secondly, what we consider ok changes over time. Go back far enough and killing prisoners, taking civilians as slaves etc were all considered ok. We frown on those now.
The Gaza thread on HN last week was talking about how Israel needed to fit to norms. That Israel needed to be like the US in Germany. Which is what got me looking into numbers. I think it's relevant as the Allies in Germany are where the current norms come from.
not that much to the minimal amount of 1400 the CNN article found occurring. Horrible I agree, but not that far off from the Red Cross floor for aid distribution with the USA.
The UN provides much less calories (currently 552 to refugees from Sudan's war) yet says it can provide more than Israel in aid Gaza. Is the UN anti Sudanese/Kenyans because it claims to have food for 2 million on hand yet won't feed the starving 800,000 in Kenya? If it has food for Gaza's 2 million that is isn't giving out, how can it justify not giving at least part of that to the smaller 800,000 war refugees in Kenya? The UN itself says it's a crime not to give out food in those higher quantities if there are stocks of it. The UN has stocks. The UN does not give those stocks out to those in need, only giving 552 calories.
Maybe you should take a look at the IPC report, which details exactly how they know that Gaza is in the middle of a deliberately created, man-made famine.
Kenya has the ability to grow food. Gaza doesn't. Israel has destroyed 100% of the farmland and shoots anyone who walks around freely outside of a tiny fraction of the Gaza Strip.
The USA only target 1000 calories per day for airlifted populations in post war Germany. The CNN article lists 1400 as the low calories intake. So Gaza is still 400 calories a day above 'doing it the right way' post war German reconstruction numbers for hard to reach areas.
According to the article 1400 calories are the number people are actually consuming, not unavailable to them. It is in the CNN article all this discussion is about.
the one that was fired for misconduct, begged to get his job back and threatened that he will become their nightmare in case they don't rehire him ? sounds very reliable.
That's what the GHF claims, yes. To be clear, they haven't shown any documentation showing that he was fired, while Aguilar did show letters and messages sent by GHF hailing him as a great colleague and saying they were sad to see him go.
The only material evidence GHF has shown are small chunks of SMS conversations that are perfectly compatible with the "Aguilar was trying to convince GHF leadership to change policies" hypothesis, and WhatsApp broadcast of Aguilar telling his staff they were doing a great job.
Meanwhile, Aguilar has multiple photos and videos showing the conditions aid was distributed in which you can see right now on Youtube, testimony of seeing the GHF security contractors firing into crowds (to which the GHF replied by saying its contractors only fired above crowds, still a Geneva Convention violation), statistics that showed that people got shot during every single GHF distribution, matching testimony from Palestinian doctors and journalists and IDF whistleblowers, etc.
The evidence is overwhelming unless your curiosity cuts off as soon as you read the GHF damage control statements.
ain't it comfortable that there are 2 sets of videos.
given that there is "statistics" (comfortable provided by hamas) of people getting shot during every single distribution, do you find it strange that there is not even 1 video of people actually getting shot en masse ? surely someone would have thought that it will be amazing video evidence that will be easy to make, as it happens daily, and a way to make israel look real bad, yet - nothing. the only video that comes close to it is when bullets very precisely hitting absolutely nothing few meters away from people.
with regards to " IDF whistleblowers", in case you missed the memo, the famous haaretz article with whistleblowers was mistranslated from hebrew. in hebew was used expression with meaning of "shooting at air/ground to prevent advancement". it was translated to english as "shooting at people". haaretz got it's 13 pieces for this
And even before then, Egypt's peace with Israel (and Egypt's subsequent ~$1B/yr in defense aid from the US) depends on playing nice with Israel in several respects, including deferring to Israeli policy on the Gaza border.
There has been smuggling of course, but (perhaps unintentionally) Israel gives them most of what they use.
> But recent intelligence has shown the extent to which Hamas has been able to build many of its rockets and anti-tank weaponry out of the thousands of munitions that failed to detonate when Israel lobbed them into Gaza, according to weapons experts and Israeli and Western intelligence officials. Hamas is also arming its fighters with weapons stolen from Israeli military bases.
> “Unexploded ordnance is a main source of explosives for Hamas,” said Michael Cardash, the former deputy head of the Israeli National Police Bomb Disposal Division and an Israeli police consultant. “They are cutting open bombs from Israel, artillery bombs from Israel, and a lot of them are being used, of course, and repurposed for their explosives and rockets.”
Also repurposed infrastructure like water pipes and lamposts. But they had plenty of weapons and explosives pre war, before egypt sealed their border to gaza.
The explosives are the part that obviously should be given the main focus.
And quite a bit of what's being talked about wrt to re-manufacturing Israeli unexploded ordance was stockpiled prior to Oct 7th. Israel did not start bombing Gaza only after Oct 7th (and in fact had been bombing Gaza as late as Sept 23, 2023).
These articles are from over a year ago and they all say that Israel took control of the Rafah border.
"On May 7, Israeli forces seized the main border crossing at Rafah, closing a vital route for aid into the besieged enclave."
Understandably, the Egyptian government does not want to coordinate with the Israeli government after seeing how the Israeli-organized aid sites have been going.
Why did Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Europe, Canada etc. take Syrians during the war in Syria but Egypt (and everyone else) refuses to allow civilian Gazans to escape to safety?
> Why did Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Europe, Canada etc. take Syrians during the war in Syria but Egypt (and everyone else) refuses to allow civilian Gazans to escape to safety?
Spitballing here, but it might be continued unease about Arafat. He weaponised the Palestinian population in Lebanon [1] and Jordan [2] in ways that would make it politically untenable for them to accept Palestinian refugees.
> And this didn't start in 2023. Gaza has been under Israeli blockade for decades.
The blockade was also imposed by Egypt[0] and Hamas certainly provided no shortage of security related justifications for the blockade. Unfortunately those security concerns turned out to be accurate[1].
> In February 2020, former Mossad Director Yossi Cohen and Israeli general Herzi Halevi, under Netanyahu's orders, went to Qatar to plead Qatari officials to continue the payments for Hamas.[8] Later, in September 2023, David Barnea, the Director of Mossad since 2021, went to Qatar to meet Qatari officials to discuss about the payments for Hamas.[10][44]
(...)
> Israeli intelligence officials believe that the money had a role in the success of 2023 Hamas-led attack.[10]
It wasn't just him, all the governments for the last decade tried to keep the peace while enforcing the blockage but allowing cash for salaries, humanitarian aid etc which made Gaza flourish with hotels, restaurants, beach resorts and high end shopping (see the videos). All no longer :(
A few months prior to October 7th, Natenyahu had allowed the highest number of work visas for Gazans to work in Israel proper. They genuinely thought economic prosperity would bring an slowdown and eventual end to terrorism. Now try and find Israelis who support the idea of 10s of 1000s Palestinians cruising the borders for work each day - thanks to Oct 7th.
Doesn't quite fit the narrative you want to portray, does it?
Not OP, but there were many videos posted, (especially early on in this conflict,) depicting very nice neighborhoods and commercial districts in Gaza (some of which were in the process of being destroyed or abandoned).
> Unfortunately Netanyahu actively encouraged Qatar to send cash to Hamas.
Yeah, Benjamin Netanyahu certainly got complacent thinking he could keep a genocidal terrorist group like Hamas under control with that strategy. Qatar and their support for terrorists has long been a problem as well.
It’s not been under a “blockade” for even a year continuously. Literally earlier this year, hundreds of trucks carrying aid were allowed in per day. That was during the ceasefire that didn’t last. If you go back to the history of blockades of Gaza you’ll see it was very intermittent. And when things were tightened, it was in response to incidents like Hamas rocket attacks.
The requirement is about five hundred trucks per day of food (so each truck feeding about four thousand people). The fact that on rare occasions they'd let in about half that isn't really a point in your favor.
Untrue. Your quoting total imports (eg concrete that was largely misappropriated to build Hamas tunnels). The amount of food delivery on average is comparable to before the war.
food tracks fluctuate between 2000 and 3000 a month prior to oct 7th. a few more dozens of of tracks with "non-edible consumables" and "medical supplies". rest of tracks are construction materials
iirc, gaza farms and fishing provided less than 10% of calories to population. animal farms were dependent upon imported animal feed.
ps. good chunk of farms were actually not for gaza consumption but for export (to israel and other places). stuff like strawberries, some leafy greens, etc. but in general farming in region is hard. there is no water. droughts been severe. Israel survives by desalinating majority (80%) of potable water (and supplying it to jordan, west bank, gaza) and recycling 90% of waste water for use in agriculture.
This is how ridiculous things have gotten. HN has quite civilized discussions, and even here people are blaming Jews for Oct 7 and getting upvoted for it.
I wouldn't be surprised if in a few more decades there will be another Holocaust in the West.
They are literally on camera killing their "people", and they buried a ton of evidence to hide it. They also have documented execution of Hannibal Directive. This is all objectively documented. You don't have to launch into nebbish histrionics about literal facts.
It's wild to me how many people here use the "it's war, bad things happen" to justify the situation. Weird that it needs to be said, but this is why war crimes are a thing. Just because it's an armed conflict, doesn't mean anything goes.
> wild to me how many people here use the "it's war, bad things happen" to justify the situation
The point is to distinguish this war from how others have been fought. A lot of accusations against the IDF's conduct have been baseless. Not wrong in that they're factually incorrect. Just wrong in that it's how everyone else fights wars when they go to war.
This is different. America didn't trigger a famine in Iraq or Afghanistan, and it's not like we fought those wars honorably. That is where it's worth answering the question, is this just war or is this worse.
The US-led sanctions regime against Iraq in the 90s did lead to high rates of malnutrition and excess deaths, with Madeleine Albright publicly insisting that half a million dead children would be 'worth it'.
Tangentially related:
On the other hand, several later surveys conducted during the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq (2003–2011) "all put the U5MR in Iraq during 1995–2000 in the vicinity of 40 per 1000," suggesting that "there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after 1990 and during the period of the sanctions." from same link above.
She made a mistake by saying it, but she meant it for sure. "Saddam Hussein could have prevented any child from suffering simply by meeting his obligations."
I struggle to believe that cessation of food imports, medicines, medical equipment etc would have no impact on a country reliant on them, and can't see why these sanctions would be enacted in the first place if they were thought to have no effect.
I see no moral justification for using food as a weapon.
Not really. Very very early on we knew (verifiable objective fact) that Israel used very different math on combatant:civilian casualty ratios than coalition forces in OEF and OIF.
This isn't "they're waging a more intense war and accidentally killing more people" -- it is that their actual decision framework was to authorize killings with several multiples higher ratios of civilian deaths than the US authorized in the Middle East.
The US military math for calculating combatant:civilian casualty ratios was, to quote:
every boy 15 and over killed in drone strikes now is automatically listed as an enemy combatant
This math is why the civilian casualty numbers from US military shows almost zero deaths for drone strikes.
The New York Times reported in the 29 May 2012 article Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will:
Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.*
By the Obama administration's counting, they killed 64 to 117 civillians in airstrikes. Independent estimates, which do not use the "any military age male" definition, put the number at 380 to 801. These higher, independent estimates still put the fraction of civillian or unknown casualties at around 15%. That is what a military that wants to avoid civilian casualties but sometimes makes mistakes looks like.
For comparison, the Israeli government claims that a mere 53% of fatalities are civilians, substantially below independent estimates.
No, a lot of the accusations were not baseless; you’re using a different definition.
The accusations of them deliberately shooting children in the head and targeting journalists have been proven unfortunately accurate time and time again.
We must be precise in our language when describing war crimes. No wiggle room.
This is just a variant of "it's war, bad things happen", with the addition of "they started it".
Putting the debate of who started what aside, does someone starting a war justify war crimes against them?
- who started what
- specific conditions to end things
- who agrees to what
All of these are distractions. The core issues are, are there war crimes being committed or not? Is the population of Gaza starving or not? If so, is Israel actively contributing or deliberately causing the situation or not?
EDIT: this is a good example of how collective punishment is being justified, to blame the population of Gaza for the actions (or inaction) of Hamas. "Well, if they just do X, then they wouldn't have to starve".
Gaza has been under blockade since 2007, and the roots of the conflict date back to the founding of the Zionist Organization by Theodor Herzl in 1897 with the purpose to facilitate the escape of Jews from persecution in Eastern Europe by establishing a colony in Palestine. Israel has persecuted the indigenous people of Palestine ever since.
> the roots of the conflict date back to the founding of the Zionist Organization by Theodor Herzl in 1897 with the purpose to facilitate the escape of Jews from persecution in Eastern Europe by establishing a colony in Palestine
Please, the roots of this conflict go back millenia. Nothing done in the last hundred years have helped it. And the Palestinian people keep getting fucked by outside powers using them for their own ends, whether it be the Arab countries invading Israel or Iran having their sock puppets invite bombs. But it's a bit silly to imagine that if we poofed Israel and turned Israel & Palestine into a democracy that we wouldn't, within like two minutes, start seeing missiles flying.
> that’s worse than the current situation how exactly?
Uh, look at the civil wars in Sudan, Ethiopia and Burma.
> it would be objectively better because there would be justice: no apartheid, no occupation, no tiered citizenship, and no blockade
What? Why do you think changing borders on paper has any effect on how the people actually on the ground feel about and treat each other?
We're not half a decade out from our withdrawal from Afghanistan and we're back to the notion that remote powers drawing lines on a map somehow dictatates reality in the Middle East?
First, ending an occupation and apartheid is not “changing borders”. You are maliciously oversimplifying the situation in Palestine.
Second, are you seriously saying that people’s feelings have nothing to do with injustices waged upon them by force?
And just to add one thing - the theoretical worsening of a situation in response to ending injustice never justifies the maintaining of said injustice. You can argue this point all you want, but it will never be true.
> Hamas started the war. Israel has continued it way past where it made sense.
The war will continue to make sense until the hostages are returned. When Hamas believes that the war no longer makes sense, then they are invited to return the hostages and the war will end.
Which hostages? Israel still detains several thousand Palestinians in violation of international law. There are no plans to release them or give them a fair trial, that I'm aware of.
Which international law is Administrative Detention a violation of?
Are you aware that Egypt holds 16,000 to 20,000 people under administrative detention. A similar number is found in Japan. I can't find numbers for Australia, but I think it's number is also over 10,000. The highest number that I could find for Israel is 3000.
For what it's worth, a guy I'm friendly with (not a friend per se, but we've exchanged phone numbers and talk on the phone) had his son in administrative detention for several weeks. Probably more than a month. There was no "plan" to let him go, the police released him when it was deemed that the circumstances of his arrest did not merit further procedure.
I'm not actually defending Israel. I'm demonstrating that the practice is not only widespread among nations that the West generally agrees with (Japan, Australia), it is practiced more there than here. And our neighbours here (Egypt) as well. So arguing against Israel on this subject does not put Israel at a moral disadvantage here.
In any case, at least in Israel, the vast, vast majority of those under administrative detention are held for violent acts such as throwing stones, molotov cocktails, etc. There are a few cases in which the authorities have not stated reason, I know this, but that number is in the single digits. Administrative detention is not a violation of Article 9.
I'm not excusing it, I'm putting it in perspective. For what it's worth, I personally am against the whole idea of administrative detention in any country. If a government body detains someone, the reason should be clear and transparent before the arresting officer punches out of his shift.
And your equivalence of administrative detention to the taking of babies hostage and murdering them and their mothers in captivity only reinforces the notion that those who oppose the state of Israel are generally unreasonable and lack the morals which form the basis of a stable, productive Western society.
> at least in Israel, the vast, vast majority of those under administrative detention are held for violent acts such as throwing stones, molotov cocktails, etc
Actually, the vast majority of hostages israel holds, have done nothing at all. Just like the hostages hamas holds.
This is easily demonstrated: show the list of israeli detainees and the fair trials they had to determine if they were, in fact, guilty of the accusations israel unconvincingly levels. Otherwise, if you take the IDF's word for it that their hostage taking is righteous, intellectual honesty requires that you also take hamas' word for it when they say the same thing. Notably, israel kidnapped, raped, and tortured hostages first.
Also, israel has willfully or indiscriminately killed way more babies and mothers than hamas. Surely you view an innocent civilian life as equally valuable regardless of religion, skin color, or national origin? Surely your emotional outrage won't evaporate when the victims are Palestinian?
This is such a gross misrepresentation of not only the Israeli side of events, but even Hamas' own description of events, that I have no idea on what you base your claims. I can't use facts to change your mind when your mindset is not based on facts. And I'm not the right person to get into a no-I'm-right screaming match with. So have a nice day and I'll go have a nice day myself.
> This is such a gross misrepresentation of not only the Israeli side of events, but even Hamas' own description of events, that I have no idea on what you base your claims. I can't use facts to change your mind when your mindset is not based on facts. And I'm not the right person to get into a no-I'm-right screaming match with. So have a nice day and I'll go have a nice day myself.
Your reply to my post does not seem to address anything it said (or indeed, anything of substance), but it is noted that you, 1 person out of billions, disagree very, very strongly with both international and scholarly consensus, which I merely repeated, and which are each individually more authoritative than your opinion. Thank you for your invaluable contribution and have a nice day!
> "And your equivalence of administrative detention to the taking of babies hostage and murdering them and their mothers in captivity "
I did no such thing - I just joined the thread, go lick a battery and calm down.
But seriously, this tactic of hysterically conflating replies in a long, tedious reply to create a straw-man which then becomes the topic is taught to propagandists and zealots the world over.
> only reinforces the notion that those who oppose the state of Israel are generally unreasonable and lack the morals which form the basis of a stable, productive Western society.
I bet most IDF personnel would think that. You really need to disclose this sorta thing before you accuse other people of lacking moral fabric or international perspective.
I would have an honest discussion on-grounds with you about this, because it seems like we're in agreement that the detention is bad. But your (quoted) conclusion is hysterically disproportionate, and does not reflect any opinion you are qualified to tender. Furthermore, the parent is right; you know exactly what I am referring to, admit it is an issue, then pretend that we're the dumb ones when we demand accountability. It is a bad-faith tactic that you are deliberately employing to deflect valid criticism of Israel. So instead of stimulating discussion I will just tell you this, expedite some shit slinging and let you react however you like.
Most of us here are willing to put things in perspective. I'll show some vulnerability, I'm a US citizen. Abu Ghraib turns my stomach, the 1953 coup and the SAVAK files make me appalled. But I also know those aren't the scariest skeletons in the closet, so do you. Neither of us probably want to talk about the lingering consequences of apartheid, or the fact that the US has knowingly supported no fewer than three genocides in the past century (Bangladesh, Rwanda, now Gaza). They're horrible, world-defining revelations. Which is why we both have to look past the phenomena, which tells us they are justifiable, to interact directly with the geist, the actual truth.
As Americans and Israelis, we are partners whether we like it or not. We have the benefit of hindsight (both countries individually!), to admit that empire politics are worthless. 21st century colonialism is pointless. It is a waste of human life, and for what? To subvert a free market economy we're both ultimately at the whims of? If Israel wants to play the long game, my wholly empathetic opinion is that they need international credibility. There is still a road for the Israeli state to persist with international - perhaps even Arab - support. The first step on that road starts by unseating a president who only demands war and resists his corruption charges. Supporting this war is literally killing Israel as a functioning nation, which sickens me, as an American. I'm still advocating for an expedient and fair trial for those prisoners because someone has to care about Israel even if Netenyahu won't.
> war will continue to make sense until the hostages are returned
Not really. Hamas should unilaterally return the hostages. They're not getting any negotiating points by keeping them.
But Israel prosecuting the war as it has is permanently debilitating its long-term security and economic prospects. (Its zenith was probably after its Iranian bombing campaign. Tel Aviv should have withdrawn then and fallen back to targeted bombings of Hamas leadership.)
> But Israel prosecuting the war as it has is permanently debilitating its long-term security and economic prospects.
If the economic prospects are being debilitated, it is only because people are actually believing in the narrative that Hamas has hoped they’d be manipulated into believing, through a sustained campaign of disruptive rioting and propaganda - all while trying to not talk about the decades-long rocket attacks, the murder/rape of October 7, etc. But it’s silly for the world to fall for this narrative when it is clear who the aggressors are. Only one of these parties fundamentally believes in genocide of the other party - and that’s Hamas, per their own statements about their goals.
As for the long-term security - this I am not clear on. Why do you think Israel’s security has been reduced? I think it will be very hard for Hamas to regroup quickly to the extent that it has been built up previously (especially thanks to Qatar’s help). But if left alone rather than stamped out, I think eventually they will build up strength and in 20 years we’ll have the next October 7. I think Israel’s only choice is to put a definitive end to Islamic terrorism.
If they don't destroy Hamas now, then a war will happen again in another 10 years. At which point 10s of thousands of palestinians will needlessly die, again. The only resolution to all of this, will happen when Hamas is completely disarmed and out of power.
You can criticize how Israel goes about achieving that goal. But that goal is the only one that gets to a real, permanent peace.
1) As long as Israel treats Palestinians the way they current do, there will always be another Hamas. That or completely remove Palestinians from the area, which seems to be the current goal. So no, completely destroying hamas is not the only way to get to a real permanent peace.
2) How Israel is going about things is the exact issue at hand. You can't just hand wave it away.
3) Let's say for the sake of argument destroying Hamas IS the only way to achieve long lasting peace, how much death and destruction does it justify? 10% of the population? 20%? 50%?. So again just because it's an armed conflict, doesn't mean anything goes.
> As long as Israel treats Palestinians the way they current do, there will always be another Hamas
Eh, Trump's peace deal isn't great for Palestinians. But it gives them peace and a path to more peace in the future, and paths where considering options for resistance other than terrorism may flourish.
> Let's say for the sake of argument destroying Hamas IS the only way to achieve long lasting peace, how much death and destruction does it justify? 10% of the population?
Yikes. Based on precedent, I don't think countries have typically put an upper bound on this figure. I think a better question might be what's the upper bound on civilian deaths that should not be required to be exceeded if Hamas has to be routed out by force.
History there has shown that other types of resistance don't work very well. Just need to look at the west bank. No Hamas, no rockets being lobbed into Israel and yes peace as long as the people there put up with their land being taken over arbitrarily, being beaten or killed at some frequency and just in general being treated as a lower tier of humans.
yeap. lets look at west bank. there is so much hamas in west bank that there are areas that PA doesn't go to. Last/this year PA tried to clean it up [0] but failed and asked Israel to help
There are occasional attempts at shooting rockets from west bank. Rocket workshop was found two week ago in Ramallah [1]. The only reason that we don't see 20,000 rockets from west bank like from gaza, it's presence of Israeli army and security services there.
> History there has shown that other types of resistance don't work very well
“Paths other than terrorism” doesn’t mean non violence. It October 7th had been limited to military bases, the hostages IDF soldiers, this would be a very different conflict.
If Hamas attacked a military target on Oct 7th, killed 1000+ IDF personnel and took a few hundred more hostage, you don't think Israel will be bombing Gaza today? There isn't a way to prove either way, but I'm highly doubtful. I think the demands would still be the same; "return the hostages or we'll keep bombing you".
> If Hamas attacked a military target on Oct 7th, killed 1000+ IDF personnel and took a few hundred more hostage, you don't think Israel will be bombing Gaza today?
Oh, they'd absolutely be at war. But I don't think they'd have the freedom to collectively punish as they do now. There would also be a credible argument for Hamas remaining in power, possibly armed, after the peace.
> It October 7th had been limited to military bases, the hostages IDF soldiers, this would be a very different conflict.
The same thing happened when Hamas attacked an IDF post and captured a soldier, Gilad Shalit. There were multiple invasions by Israel, including "Cast Lead" which was described by the UN Fact Finding Mission as "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability."
> Replace Palestinians with Black South Africans, and imagine this offer was made in 1990 to the ANC
Black South Africans weren't de facto surrendering in a militarised conflict.
The ANC resorted to small-scale terrorism [1]. (It didn't work.) If the ANC had launched an October 7th scale attack, not only would it have derailed the international pressure that ended Apartheid, but in the likely ensuing civil war, yes, one side would have probably been forced to unconditionally surrender.
The practical options on the table are war and peace. If you're losing this badly, you take peace. Then you litigate over war crimes, et cetera. Gaza has no seat at the table because there is currently nobody to take the seat, that's what peace gives them. (I'd be shocked if Gazans, in a plebescite, rejected this deal. The only people who win by continuing this are Hamas and Likud.)
> But that didn't help and would have derailed the international pressure that did end Apartheid if it had escalated into a single attack with a thousand casualties.
Let’s stick to the facts instead of coming up with conclusions out of thin air.
And your understanding is wrong: the ANC gained freedom for South Africans because of its decision to resort to violence. Mandela and the ANC did not make this decision lightly, but it was a decision of last resort. The same applies to other African independence movements.
> Gaza has no seat at the table because there is currently nobody to take the seat, that's what peace gives them.
They have no seat at the table because: a) they saw what a “seat” resulted in (Oslo and then limbo) and b) the response to their democratically gained “seat” was a coup by Fatah backed by the US and Israel.
> the ANC gained freedom for South Africans because of its decision to resort to violence
This is a genuinely ambiguous question--I respect your position. What we can agree to is there were no large-scale terrorist attacks leading up to the negotations that ended Apartheid. (The Boipatong massacre almost did, and that was forty something casualties.)
> the response to their democratically gained “seat” was a coup by Fatah backed by the US and Israel
This is entirely accurate. It's also a fact that Hamas proceeded to never hold an election again. (Which isn't grounds for ignoring them. October 7th is.)
Hamas can't credibly represent Gaza. It continues to call for the destruction of Israel. It's shown a complete lack of concern for its own civilians. And it has no evidence of a popular mandate.
Gazans need a seat at the table. They can only get that through peace.
Maybe they can set up another extremist party to undermine Hamas, lke how Netanyahu used Hamas to undermine the Palestinian Authority and draw off momentum from the prospect of a Palestinian state getting established.
It is not possible to destroy an idea with violence. The more palestinians you shoot or starve the stronger Hamas will be when it returns. The only way for Israel to get real, permanent peace is probably removing all the palestinians which is why they are currently engaged in a genocide.
> It is not possible to destroy an idea with violence. The more palestinians you shoot or starve the stronger Hamas will be when it returns
One, lots of ideas have been destroyed by violence across history. When a nation with an oral tradition of history is exterminated, their ideas quite literally die with them.
Two, it's not a given that Palestinians will be terrorists. Eliminating Hamas gives room for other, better ideas around resistance to rise.
Well they could accept that Israel is always going to exist and that the Palestinians should instead have an actual government that is focused on helping the palestinian people as opposed to launching failed attacks that will only cause 10s of thousands of palestinians to die.
If you want a good template, look at Egypt and Jordan. Countries that were previously at war with Israel and made peace and eventually became thriving allies of Israel.
The Egypt/Jordan model, where you accept whatever the current borders are, has worked out quite well for them in comparison to the groups that won't accept this.
Once that happens, well you can look at some of the stuff that was in the Trump plan, where the surrounding Arab states would help setup a coalition government and would invest significant amounts of money into rebuilding Gaza.
> What other types of resistance hasn't already been tried and failed there?
Literally everything other than terrorism!
You can fight a resistance without killing kids at a concert. Remember the videos of Ukraine treating its POWs well? Imagine if Hamas had restricted its targets to military assets, released all non-active duty hostages, and then released videos of them being served tea and hummus while Israeli planes pounded above. How different would the narrative be?
To be honest, I don't think things would be much different. If Hamas took only military personnel hostage, the IDF would still be bombing Gaza and demanding they be returned.
When Gilad Shalit was taken hostage Operation Summer Rains followed. That was one soldier. You really think if Hamas took hundreds of soldiers hostage, they wouldn't go bomb Gaza?
You are basically saying that regardless of criticisms and international condemnation, Israel has no choice but commit war crimes and genocide? This is like "look what you made me do" defence in court, not sure it will save genocider Netanyahu from rotting in the Hague jail.
Nor would it stop us from boycotting Israel and calling out their genocide.
Yeah thats basically how thing will end up. Because if they dont get rid of Hamas now, they will end up in another war and end up killing 10s of thousands of more Palestinians later. Thats just what would happen.
I mean, people are saying Israel is doing a genocide now right? If thats the case, why wouldn't they just do a genicide again if another October 7th happened? Obviously thats what they would do.
> Nor would it stop us
You don't have to stop doing anything. Just realize that they have a modern military that they are going to continue to use to kill their enemy until that enemy has surrendered or been destroyed. Thats the only way this ends.
The only question is how many people have to die and how much of gaza has to be flattened in order to achieve that outcome. Boycotts aren't going to stop anything. Nor will condemnation. The only thing that would come close is serious military action, but well would you look at that, every major of enemy of Israel is now destroyed, from Syria to Hezbollah to Iran. Military action seems rather unlikely now, given how successful Israel was in obliterating every enemy it has in the area.
So, the people of palestine are left with choice. Accept peace, or watch as Israel keeps killing people until Hamas is gone for good.
> rotting in the Hague jail.
Even if this fantasy land future did come to past, trials don't bring back the dead. If Israel has to kill another 50 thousand people to get rid of Hamas (because a peace deal with rejected), well those 50k genocide victims are still dead. The world's not turning on a dime here. Nobody is coming to save palestine. Boycotts don't stop bombs.
> only question is how many people have to die and how much of gaza has to be flattened in order to achieve that outcome. Boycotts aren't going to stop anything. Nor will condemnation
I agree with the last part of this sentiment: boycotts and weapons-sale bans won't stop Israel.
But they will decrease its wealth and power in the long term. That should be something Tel Aviv seeks to avoid. Eliminating Hamas should not require inducing a famine.
Russia vs Ukraine is much more of a stalemate than Israel vs Palestine (although Russia is still winning.. ish). It is being fought with modern armies on both sides, and the lines of battle have barely changed in months. And it is fought over a huge area.
Thats much different from a conflict over a tiny area, where one side can quite literally bomb every single building in a matter of weeks.
As for how Ukraine vs Russia ends, well probably there will be a continued grinding down of both sides, continued increasing costs, while the borders don't change at all. And then when Russia wants to stop throwing money and lives into a metaphorical pit, there will be some sort of ceasefire/peace deal where Russia gets to keep all the land it took but the fighting stops. Ukraine isn't going to kick out Russia back to its original borders, and Russia isn't going to have some sudden breakthrough where it takes over Kiev. Its sad that Russia will get to keep its gains, but in war there are few good endings and most bad compromises.
But fortunately, Russia simply doesn't have the capability to flatten its enemy on a timeline measured in weeks, and is just stuck in a slog thats going nowhere.
If things had gone differently at the start of the war with Russia's blizkrieg having succeeded well we'd be having a different conversation now about much worse compromises that would have to be made, but fortunately that didn't end up happening.
The only reason more Israelis haven't died is because Israel builds bunkers and iron dome rockets to protect its civilians. Hamas builds tunnels to protect its rockets and hides among civilians.
You can't compare the death of people who are willing to release 1027 terrorists to get back just one solider to the death of people who are taught from kindergarten to kill and die for Allah. [1] Nobody criticizes Britain because it killed more Nazi civilians that the Nazis killed British civilians. Back then we understood that war is between good and evil, and we didn't take the side of evil.
> Nobody criticizes Britain because it killed more Nazi civilians
The bombing of Dresden has absolutely been condemned. British area bombing was contemporaneously criticised by America. It's why we flew our bombers in the day, despite that meaning more of them got shot down--so they could see what they'd hit.
Bombing civilians wasn’t right when Germans did it and it wasn’t right when it was done to them in retaliation either.
I think in the next millennia, as the objective historians review the last century, they will write that the civilian towns were fire bombed in ww2 to gain military advantage and nobody cared about the innocent, just like how we talk about how Caesar becoming an emperor without getting lost in the daily politics and blindness of the day.
> in the next millennia, as the objective historians review the last century, they will write that the civilian towns were fire bombed in ww2 to gain military advantage and nobody cared about the innocent, just like how we talk about how Caesar becoming an emperor without getting lost in the daily politics and blindness of the day
Doesn't your example suggest the opposite? You're arguing for reductivism. The reductive view on WW2 would almost certainly skip over the bombing of Dresden and even the Holodomor, because those didn't have long-term strategic effects.
Also, Caesar was never an emperor. And plenty of people love to obsess about the daily politics of the late Republic.
I’m saying that those historians, being divorced from the guilt of committing those atrocities, will call things out as they see them. Fire bombings of Dresden, Tokyo, and many other cities were done to gain military advantage, knowing full well that they were killing innocent civilians, because a) they were forcing the enemy to come out, and b) killing an entire population en masse. But only the losers of the war had to admit their part in these atrocities, although this was a crime against humanity.
Regarding Ceaser, I meant emperor in the modern sense not that he held the bundle of sticks during war time. The dude practically took over a republic from within using political games and bribery, assassinations and all kinds of stuff, but the gist of it is that, he wasn’t elected democratically by popular vote or anything, he took an army and pass the Rubicon and if you didn’t vote for him you could die in mysterious ways, and some people loved him because he handed out free grains (who cares), in the end, in ww2 innocent civilians, kids, elderly were killed by millions of tons of high explosives on purpose, and my conscience is just not okay with it.
Is a questionable statement, many of the joint US|UK WWII bombings were carried out at night, in the Japanese theatre the Tokyo bombing by the US was carried out at night time as were most (IIRC) of the 71 bombings of other Japanese cities (not including Nagasaki and Hiroshima).
The atomic bombings in Japan were carried out in daylight, accompanied by photography aircraft, with radio calls to proceed based on low cloud cover - the primary objective in the bomb | not bomb on the day decision was visibility to record the effect of the new weapons.
Your comment that I responded to implied that the British engaged in indiscriminate area bombing while the Americans did not. Nothing to do with who was or was not criticised. Don’t straw-man.
It's not, this conflict was started by Israel in 1948. The current genocide is just the most extreme phase of an ongoing, highly unequal, struggle since then.
Hamas releasing hostages will not end the genocide. Look at how the last ceasefire was intentionally broken by Israel.
How did Israel start the war in 1948? As I understand it, the UN proposed a partition plan between the Jews and the Arabs. The Jews accepted and declared a state. The Arabs did not accept, and seven Arab nations invaded the new Jewish state.
I would go as far as to say that the very existence of Hamas is due to the actions of Israel.
Do you think that Israel, with the most advanced intelligence agency in the world, capable of planting bombs in pagers just in case for when they need them, did not know about the october 7 attack beforehand ??
> Do you think that Israel, with the most advanced intelligence agency in the world, capable of planting bombs in pagers just in case for when they need them, did not know about the october 7 attack beforehand ??
Yes. Quite easily. We missed 9/11. And nobody can still find Al Houthi.
9/11 is incomparable. The amount of resources and interest Israel has to monitor the movements of Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere, particularly the Hamas, cannot possibly compare with US trying to keep tabs on half a continent across the globe.
And finding a simple person that could be anywhere is also an incomparable situation.
9/11 was different. Yes, that's the difference. airport security was more lax, the way we dealt with hijackings was different, and the security on airplanes was minimal.
You had a heavily fortified military DMZ between the massive surveillance and military state of Israel and Hamas flying in with kites, bulldozers, and motorcycles. I hope it was merely a massive failure due to arrogance and misallocation of resources, because a plausible alternative is sadly realistic and believable.
We still don't have a comprehensive map of Hamas' tunnel systems. I think you're overestimating the degree to which 2 million people can be surveilled.
Perhaps not, but it doesn't help when Israel demonstrates with pretty high frequency the ability to precisely target things, but then goes and drops a couple of 2000 pound bombs on a refugee camp. Or claim they know precisely how many hamas fighters have been killed but have no idea how many civilians have been killed.
Oh sure. I'm just saying that yes, it's overwhelmingly plausible that Israel missed October 7th because Netanyahu was distracted with his court-overhaul gambit.
> they didn't come through via tunnels? They used bulldozers and hang-gliders to go above ground
And the 9/11 terrorists used planes.
Unless there were literally zero unusual bulldozer and hang-glider citings ever made in Gaza, it shouldn't take that much imagination to see how the three thousandth one gets put to the side.
What was crazy about that, was seemingly the majority of Israels active military personnel were stirring up trouble in the west bank. Its a bit like they were showing their bare arses to Hamas. There were stories over the next few days about conscripts having to take civilian transport to the front line after activating.
The war had to be fought hard, because at the very least it was required to distract from the absolute mess the IDF was in when it started.
The horror that starvation inflicts on the human mind is beyond comparison. My grandfather experienced this firsthand when he fled from the Japanese invasion, an occupation that stripped civilians of their food supply. He helplessly watched as his parents, relatives, and even his older brother succumbed one by one to hunger. Barely escaping the same fate, he fled the country just before starvation could claim his own life.
When I was eight years old, I asked him why he always kept a room filled with dried cassava root. His reply was simple but unforgettable: dying from starvation is the most terrifying experience imaginable, and he was determined never to endure it again.
Starvation may also cause epigenetic and metabolic changes, which persist and are even passed to next generations. In children tissue dystrophy is particular damaging, since their bodies are still developing. Starvation is a really fucking bad thing.
In many ways, the fear of hunger is deeply ingrained within us as human beings. Our instincts continually drive us to optimize for consumption and survival. Yet, how often do we pause to reflect on how much of our daily lives revolve around thoughts of food or the pursuit of security?
I think this is pretty evident, observing your emotions when someone, a sibling loads up too much in a shared meal. If you ever tried fasting, you realize how much time we spend daily on food intake.
But let's not trivialize the issue. Most certainly, no-one here can even begin to understand starvation from experience. For starters, you would be in a total different state of mind, potentially delusional, disassociated, depressed, abulic, manic, have an altered perception of reality. During the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, participants mutilated themselves, one guy cut off three of his fingers with an axe and didn't remember why... in the rehab phase! Starvation is an holistic horror.
Pretty cynical and tone-deaf comment in this context, in my opinion.
Molecular evidence was notably described in nematodes, so epigenetic inheritance is a very old mechanism. I don't think you could describe molecular transgenerational trauma as beautiful, or useful adaptation regarding human life. Especially considering the artificial nature of every famine in today's world, where we are producing enough food to feed all humans on earth three times over.
My grandfather had to join Nazi German military towards the end of the war at the age of 15. Fully indoctrinated of course, thinking, that he must serve his country. Got captured in Russia, survived prisoner camps there, by eating grass to avoid starvation. He told me stories about the conditions there. Hard work, and every morning someone would be dead from the cold or from starvation, or from suffocating in puddles of water. Later he was moved to an US managed prisoner camp, where food was plenty and good.
He also survived a head shot wound (visible on the side of his head) and doctors told him, that he should drink and smoke as much as he wants, because he wouldn't make it long anyway ... Well, he made it to old age and only dies a few years ago. (He did stop smoking, when my grandma also stopped. He smoked cigars and then from one day to the next, they both stopped doing that.)
However, I think it is in those Russian PoW camps, that he developed something we call "Hungerhast". I couldn't find a translation in 2 dictionaries, so I am not sure it is a proper term. Basically, body begins shaking, cannot stop hands from shaking, if he got hungry.
He didn't have higher education, but definitely had an engineer's mind. He built many things out of wood to sell them. For example he got into woodturning and also made traditional nutcrackers, which he also painted in various colors. Back in DDR this stuff was highly sought, because getting it from West Germany was not possible for everyone. He also had a writing side. Was able to come up with spoonerism (I just looked up that word. Not sure if correct. Some kind of phrase that rhymes.) and collected them.
In 1942, Jewish doctors conducted the Warsaw Ghetto Hunger Study used the man made famine to study the physiological and psychological effects of hunger.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Hunger_Study
Not all scientific studies need to be replicated.
There are articles about Israel planning for Gazans to emigrate for months. The idea is they would 'voluntarily' emigrate to several African countries Israel made deals with. So I think that is more proof the starvation is deliberate. They can claim they aren't forcing anyone to migrate but if you stay you die. Not only is that evil but they are forcing some other country to deal with the problem.
UK surgeon Nick Maynard, a volunteer at Nasser Hospital, tells Good Morning Britain that he and other doctors tried to bring baby formula into Gaza and the Israelis confiscated it from them with no justification. [0]
If a justification was given we'd be able to evaluate the worthiness of that decision - if there were technical notes about, for instance, food safety concerns, we could evaluate the justification against other standards in different areas of the world around proper formula storage.
Without a justification the decision is arbitrary and silences any ability to push back against it within the normal bounds of dialog. A justification would potentially allow aid groups to remedy whatever the specific deficiency is if it is a reasonable deficiency to remedy.
If there was a justification it might be acceptable - depending on the justification - without a justification it is unacceptable when there is such a clear need. The aid is blocked and there is no recourse to unblock it outside the current attempts to just smuggle it in.
No, but the callousness of an arbitrary decision without even spending 10 seconds to make up a pretend reason is a pure display of power. They do what they want and they don’t care one bit about even looking like the good guys.
That would be an acceptable justification for confiscating sugar. If Hamas were making rocket fuel somehow out of baby formula, then yes, that would be an acceptable justification.
That said baby formula cannot in fact be meaningfully used to make explosives, so this is not acceptable.
Only in the same way that pointing at a starving infant as a prop is a moral justification for using food meant for the infant instead to manufacture weapons.
That rather depends on the justification. "We think you might be planning to use that to feed babies," no. "There's a small canister of nerve gas concealed in the middle," yes.
The reason for that is apparently that you can use baby formula to make rocket candy. Because apparently extracting the lactose from 40kg baby formula is all it takes to make a quassam rocket.
If you can get your hand om 20kg of oxidiser that is. It is all more than ridiculous.
Same for water. I've heard they could electrolyze drinking water into hydrogen and oxygen. Then they could explode the hydrogen using the oxygen as an oxidizer.
Only solution is to cut off all wells and water supplies.
> Hamas did not start it though, according to history
Hamas absolutely started this war. It did not start the conflict, and is not the sole party that has antagonised the situation. (Iran, America, Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf countries each played a role in that.)
The Eastern Mediterranean is probably the most fought-over tract of land in human history, principally because it's on the shore of the largest easily-navigable body of water near where human history began. Before the British and French there were the Ottomans and Mongols; before them, the Greeks, Romans and Parthians; before them, the Macedonians; before them, the Achaemenids and Babylonians; before them the Egyptians. The last time the region of Palestine contained any independent power was under the Crusader Kingdom. (Before that, around the Jewish-Roman wars.)
I think one could credibly claim that pretty much every nation on Earth has some credible historical claim to some land in the Levant.
Okay, let us look at it this way: you are constantly starved, blocked from trading food and water, and all sorts of things Israel did to Palestine. Would you just sit back and watch?
What do you think that Israel is doing to civilians going to do to long-term? There will be another Hamas, I guarantee it. Israel's actions only breeds violence, i.e. Hamas.
What I am saying is that you cannot expect people to be okay with it. And they will not be okay with it. These kids who survived will turn adults and will retaliate for these actions of Israel. They may have fled, but they will come back full force one day.
In any case, no, Hamas did not start the war, they only started this battle. There will be more because of Israel's ways of doing things.
That depends, did you want enough water to flush your shit into some kind of septic system so all the people around you don't get some awful disease, and maybe enough left over to grow something to eat since your territory is effectively blockaded and situated in an area that requires irrigation?
Though different from the rocket fuel, I've read Israel has dumped so much ordinance on Gaza that the Hamas weapons primarily use material from unexploded ordinance as their warheads.
Definitions matter. It's possible for an organization to redefine "acutely malnourished" as less than 4000 Cal/day, and then use that to make an accusation. Is that reasonable? No, because that does not match reality. It's unreasonable to criticize pushback on changing definitions because definitions should be pushed toward reality.
As you say definitions matter - so let's not invent hypothetical scenarios to dismiss points.
Israel was not arguing about the definition of 'acute malnourished'. The threshold for famine is 15%. The IPC said it had just hit 16% and was thus a famine. Israel was arguing that other data showed it was only 12.2-13.5% and therefore not a famine. When you get to the point of arguing "only 12% of the children are starving, not 16%" you probably shouldn't bother.
> When you get to the point of arguing "only 12% of the children are starving, not 16%" you probably shouldn't bother
Devil's advocate: we grow enough food to feed every human. What we lack is the logistics. War disrupts logistics. Food insecurity rising is thus, unfortunately, an expected (and probably unmitigatable) consequence of war.
That's why we have to define a line, based on history and capability, that sets what's a tolerable amount of starvation. And what is not.
Famine is not an inevitable outcome of war. It is the inevitable outcome of Israel's deliberate actions to limit access to food, which are well-documented.
Food insecurity is. Famine is not. The latter is statistically defined, which is why we have levels and people arguing about which side of that level they stand.
> Acute malnourishment going above 10% is not an inevitable outcome of war
I don't know enough about this topic to debate levels. I'd just point out that you're still specifying a level, and that level can't be zero if it's going to be taken seriously.
Not sure this is defined the same way but 10% seems pretty common even without war. Even India is apparently already worse than that [1]. Who would you blame for starving the Indians?
According to the IPC, "acute malnutrition is a form of malnutrition that occurs when an individual suffers from current, severe nutritional restrictions, a recent bout of illness, inappropriate childcare practices or, more often, a combination of these factors. It is characterised by extreme weight loss, resulting in low weight for height, and/or bilateral oedema, and, in its severe form, can lead to death." [1].
Your chart measures undernourishment, which the FAO defines relative to "how many calories [one] need[s] to maintain a healthy life" [2].
You've chosen a number there, conveniently lower than the one the Israelis picked. I must say, an argument that convenient is not persuasive.
To address it properly we must start with whether anything above zero is "acceptable" (in the sense of a level that would accord with the realities of increased food insecurity in a war zone, not morally).
If it is, then a level needs to be set, and if the level is met then I would expect the parties in question to argue about it, if only because of the propaganda value, let alone the truth of the claim.
The claims about mistakes in the data, or presentation of the data, are here[1], I am unable to tell if they are right or not, but that is not the point of this conversation. The point is, whether their should be stages at all, and if so, should the results of reports be scrutinised?
> You've chosen a number there, conveniently lower than the one the Israelis picked. I must say, an argument that convenient is not persuasive.
They're disputing whether the actual rate is 12% or 16%. So if I can make my argument without any numbers inside that range, of course I will do so.
Why is that less persuasive?
You could say that I'm giving Israel the benefit of the doubt. Sure, let's say it's 12%. That's still bad.
> whether their should be stages at all
Sure, there are many levels of hunger issues.
> should the results of reports be scrutinised?
In general yes. But in this particular case we can be confident it's at least the number Israel is giving, plus or minus some fraction of a percent, so that's what I based my argument on.
It has also been well-documented that the controlling interest within Gaza also limits access to food - of it's own citizens/people.
While it seems undeniable the people of Gaza are experiencing food scarcity - we cannot lay blame soley at the foot of Israel here. That would be grossly disengenous and an outright falsehood.
> we cannot lay blame soley at the foot of Israel here
For the famine, yes we can. Let the aid in. Let Hamas steal it. Now you can blame Hamas. The fact that we have zero evidence of Hamas stealing the current aid makes it entirely one side's fault.
Aid did get in, and Hamas did steal it. The media ignored it, so the narrative continues status-quo.
Israel has no reason to support Hamas and their efforts here. If Hamas wasn't stealing all of the aid earlier in this conflict, perhaps aid would still be flowing into Gaza.
It doesn't seem so absolute/cut-and-dry like you try to make it.
The UN's own data does not support your claim or article[1]. The UN's data showed 88% of trucks delivering aid to Gaza were looted along their routes - failing to reach their intended destination.
> explain to us who is armed and can loot a moving UN convoy in the Gaza region
That's not what the data say! "Intercepted" means what in retail one calls "shrinkage." It was there before. It isn't now.
A staffer could have stolen it. A security guard or driver could have been bribed. It could have been dropped off at the wrong location, or not tracked. It could have been ripped off a moving truck by unarmed, hungry people [1]. It could be non-militants who picked a gun off a dead combatant. Or it could be armed militants. Concluding that all shrinkage is the result of armed robbery is sort of like figuring everything a store's inventory system says was delivered to the store that isn't on the shelves and hasn't been sold was obviously robbed at gunpoint.
(I'm also not sure where you're getting the idea that these are armed convoys of UN assets being run through Gaza. Aid provisioning is generally much more rinky dink. And the "U.N. does not accept protection from Israeli forces, saying it would violate its rules of neutrality.")
Ah then cut off the whole region entirely. Makes perfect sense.
Here's a crazy idea. If hamas steal even 90% of the food, why not flood the area with so much fucking food it becomes worthless instead of letting humans starve as terrible collateral against your war goals?
Which approach do you think better serves the stated goals of defeating the terrorists?
Nah, isolation and cruelty it is. Israel has created generations of enemies.
> The damage to the Israeli state is incalculable.
Is it? Because not even the Arab countries that have recently recognized Israel don’t seem to particularly care about what Israel does in Gaza. Aside from a press release or a vote at the UN. All empty words.
Not a single Arab country that recognizes Israel has suspended (or even lowered) diplomatic relations with Israel.
I’m pretty sure that once the war in Gaza ends, everyone will be all too happy to forget that it even happened. Even if they won’t say it out loud.
> once the war in Gaza ends, everyone will all too be happy to forget that it even happened. Even if they won’t say it out loud.
It may have a lasting effect in America. Which would mean Israel finding friends in Russia, China and/or India, the latter two which would probably be fully on board with an actual ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
> whole EU is debating putting sanctions on Israel
Not really. It's debating applying "tariffs on some Israeli goods and impos[ing] sanctions on Israeli settlers, and two members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet" [1].
(The EC has also endorsed Trump's 20-point plan [2].)
Eh. Just about everyone is doing the absolute best they can to give an impression that they are doing something about it, without actually doing anything meaningful at all.
Even the recent recognition of the Palestinian state from Canada, UK and France. They know full and well that it’s basically a meaningless gesture.
> why not flood the area with so much fucking food it becomes worthless instead of letting humans starve as terrible collateral against your war goals?
...this is a really good idea. And American farmers are over a barrel due to tariffs...
Sure, I believe them when they say that they’ve got all the food. I believe them when they say that if the residents of Gaza don’t want to starve then they should send their sons to sign up as a soldier. I believe them when they say that they want to kill all Jews between the River and the Sea. They may not be very trustworthy in most respects, but when they say these things then I believe them. Not much reason not to.
Does this particular (supposed) definition change matter here? Because if it doesn't, pushback by the aggressor is heinous and obviously disingenuous even if your abstract love of accuracy means you happen to agree with the objection.
From my understanding there is an argument about whether 12% or 16% of children meet a certain threshold of food availability, which affects whether or not it is called a famine. One is regarded as not a famine, one is regarded as a famine, and there is argument over what data to use.
And the definition does matter, because 'famine' has the meaning of a certain level of bad thing happening. If we do not preserve the meaning, then the word will not have a meaning, then we have no more word to talk about that bad thing, so we will pay no attention to averting or fixing the bad thing because we don't have the literal ability to talk about it.
I'm in favor of being able to have a productive discussion about famines and how to avoid them, so I'm in favor of having a word for 'famine' with a clearly defined meaning.
Ok, so the aggressor is saying “it’s not a famine, we’re only starving 12% of the children.” You do understand that this is not a good faith argument, right? You might care about preserving the meaning of the word but they don’t give the slightest shit about it. They are not trying to preserve the meaning of the word so that we have the ability to talk about it. They are trying to muddy the waters of the actual facts of what is happening so that people talk about whether there is actually a famine or not rather than the fact that a large number of children are starving. Stop being a patsy and doing their work for them.
We just watched this nonsense happen with the word genocide. Both sides were careless with it. Now, it's lost meaning. Famine is still a hard line in the sand. All the evidence points to Israel having breached that line. The solution isn't to get rid of the line, it's to point to the line, point to the ground and say you're past the fucking line.
If "genocide" lost meaning, it's because people got pulled into a debate around the word rather than focusing on the fact that innocent people are being killed in large numbers. Whether "genocide" or "famine" or any other atrocity, the response to "this doesn't actually meet the definition" should be "you're trying to deflect from the atrocities you're committing and I'm not going to fall for it."
The word “famine” does not have a clearly-defined statistical meaning outside of some very specific circumstances. We abhor the idea of famine whether it occurs at 12% or 14% or 23% of children because we see all of these things to be very bad circumstances. One particular organization chose a 15% threshold for a legalistic definition in their framework, and the government is lawyering this because they can lawyer an arbitrary threshold and they think that will help them win some PR points. Thats all this is.
PS Do you really think the number “15%” is some natural value that nature or the Bible or teams of scientists chose to define “famine”? It’s an arbitrary threshold that someone picked because it’s a bit larger than 10% and less than 20% and divisible by the number of digits on the human hand.
> Their whole strategy since 1948 has been about distracting the Palestinians with fake peace processes that were never meant to lead to anything
Totally untrue. Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza in 2005 [1]. The current divides aren't as entrenched as the belligerents would have us believe.
> Bernard Avishai states that the Gaza withdrawal was designed to obviate rather than facilitate peace negotiations [...]
> Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's senior adviser, Dov Weissglass, explained the meaning of Sharon's statement further: The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process, and when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state [...]
> Shimon Peres, then Vice Prime Minister, stated in an interview that: "We are disengaging from Gaza because of demography"
For the same various reasons (safety, opsec, etc) every modern military does. Ukraine for example only allows invited, escorted media in "red" zones. Most people seem to understand and accept such restrictions, except when it's Israel.
...if foreign media was banned from Gaza, how would you get your propaganda from Hamas now?
How did Hamas get UK/Australia/Canada/France etc to recognise Palestine?
Or do you think that Israel has control over every inch in Gaza...? The truth is that Israel from the media standpoint has lost this war already 2 years ago, on the 8th of October. The world was very sad for just 1 day. The moment Israel decided to go to war, that's when the machine started. They knew, Hamas knew it, they did it on purpose. And they are reaching their goal. So tell me, who is the winner?
Everyone claiming Israel is the worst of the worst - just put yourselves in their shoes, and imagine for a moment that your friend/your husband/wife/baby/kids are still kept hostage by brutal people. Hostage. Not prisoner because they had done something. Hostage - grabbed in the night while sleeping or whatever.
>Everyone claiming Israel is the worst of the worst - just put yourselves in their shoes, and imagine for a moment that your friend/your husband/wife/baby/kids are still kept hostage by brutal people. Hostage. Not prisoner because they had done something. Hostage - grabbed in the night while sleeping or whatever.
Ok, so I have systematically erased a people, and colonised their land in full view of the worlds media. I built my community right up against the wall of their open air prison while ignoring their rights and supporting a blockade of their country. Heck, the foundations of their original homes are probably still somewhat visible in my back yard.
They fought back and took hostages and am sad now HOW DID THIS HAPPEN TO ME!!!!! I could have stayed in Europe and not built my house on land that people in the adjacent prison have a reaffirmed right to return to.
Pretending that zionist colonists are civilians instead of a militia is crazy. Talk about human shields. Building a farm on land cleared of palestinians less than 50 years ago, right next to where those palestinians are imprisoned, is the biggest case of FAFO you could possibly imagine.
Is it bad to kill unarmed people and take them hostage? Yes. Can I empathise with a single person living next to the imprisoned refugees whose land they occupy? Never.
>Everyone claiming Israel is the worst of the worst - just put yourselves in their shoes, and imagine for a moment that your friend/your husband/wife/baby/kids are still kept hostage by brutal people. Hostage. Not prisoner because they had done something. Hostage - grabbed in the night while sleeping or whatever.
This happened routinely to Palestinians for decades (detained without charge is a kidnapping), but since those detainees (often kids) are considered subhuman by zionists it never mattered to them.
Oct 7th didnt just come out of nowhere. It came from people who were exactly as furious as you are now for identical reasons.
> Yet Israel is the baddies and America/the Allies are sited as doing the correct thing even though they had equal or less food going in.
If Israel institutes a Marshall Plan equivalent that rebuilds Gaza/West Bank to the NEMA equivalent of West Germany and Japan, then maybe decades from now their actions will receive the same deference that the historical actions of the Allies have now.
Israel blocks the entry of Plumpy Nut into Gaza, a peanut-butter like paste meant for treating severe acute malnutrition. They say it is a luxury item Hamas might steal.[1] The amount of evidence Israel is committing genocide is embarrassing.
As a side note, that's the same stuff that just sat on shelves and went back instead of going to starving kids all over the world because Trump and Musk and Co. decided that USAID was a "waste of money".
He took a credible claim by the IPC and changed several things (~12 months -> 48 hours, 6mo-5yr children -> babies, acute malnutrition -> death), making it patently false. There's no excuse for that kind of deliberate disinformation.
Do you really believe that this have anything to do with the hostages? They want the land, that's it. It could be done little by little or it could be done like now, when they have an excuse. But the end goal is the same.
Do you think that what they are doing in the west-bank have anything to do with the hostages or Hamas?
> Do you really believe that this have anything to do with the hostages?
To a significant degree, yes. If Hamas turned over the hostages today, Israel's position would significantly weaken. Palestinians' would strength. But so would Hamas', which is why they haven't.
Man, in a scenario where all the hostages are freed, I can't image Netanyahu stopping the genocide... so far he's been "Well, what are you going to do about it?!" about all the war crimes and killings, I would bet my left nut he'd continue the bombings even if all the hostages are returned. It's too easy to say the terrorist want to annihilate Israel (and so, Israel being a rules-abiding civilized democracy, must annihilate the Palestinian state first - terrorists, civilians, all the same...).
> in a scenario where all the hostages are freed, I can't image Netanyahu stopping the genocide
Okay. Are you certain enough about your imagination that it's not worth attempting? Two, it may not end the war. But it reduces Israel's leverage. If you think any of the international pressure and opinions have any effect, then returning the hostages is a winning move.
Israel has rejected every peace offer from Hamas, including ones brokered by the US. They invited Hamas peace negotiators to Qatar and then bombed them. They have shown no indication that they are willing to agree to a peace deal in exchange for the hostages, it’s just a rationalization they use so that people like you can counter every anti-Israel argument with “well what about the hostages?”
> Israel has rejected every peace offer from Hamas, including ones brokered by the US
Which offer did Israel reject that was put forward by Hamas and endorsed by the U.S.?
> They have shown no indication that they are willing to agree to a peace deal in exchange for the hostages
Maybe you're right. The Palestinians' hand is significantly strengthened if this is shown to be true. If Hamas unilaterally turned over the hostages and sued for peace, I really don't think Israel could continue the war. If they did, they'd lose a massive amount of of international indifference.
Israel's ideal outcome with gaza is for egypt to take it and all the gazans. They do not care about controlling the region, they just want the gazans gone.
> they want the people that it's there now gone, and the control of that territory
Israel's actions so far have shown it doesn't want Gaza controlled by Hamas. Some elements want to annex it. But it seems they've been quelled given Netanyahu's agreement to Trump's 20-point plan, which does not grant Israel control.
Ah, let’s try your logic the opposite way around: if hamas and the middle east is so hostile, why do Israeli’s not move to some flyover state. What do you think?
You are shockingly uninformed. All major human rights organizations are saying the exact same thing: Israel is actively committing a genocide.
> All major human rights organizations are saying the exact same thing: Israel is actively committing a genocide
Your argument loses credibility when you overstep like this.
Human rights organisations (and credible third parties) agree that Gaza is in famine. The term genocide is not universally applied, though it is increasingly and increasingly credibly, albeit at the expense of the clarity of the term.
> Human rights organisations (and credible third parties) agree that Gaza is in famine. The term genocide is not universally applied, though it is increasingly and increasingly credibly, albeit at the expense of the clarity of the term.
UN commission uses word genocide [0].
ICJ used word "plausible" [1].
HRW has used the word genocide [2]
...actually the list of explicit accusation of genocide is quite big [3].
Is there some single, powerful organisation left that does not agree that there is genocide? All the big mentioned also [4].
Yes, that's the credible third party I referred to.
> ICJ used word "plausible"
Correct.
> HRW has used the word genocide
In the phrase "may amount to the crime of genocide" [1].
> the list of explicit accusation of genocide is quite big
Yet not amounting to "all big humanitarian organizations." Like, the two you chose to highlight stepped back from making that claim prematurely because they don't want to cry wolf with a word that should have a lot of meaning, but which activists have effectively neutered in American political culture.
Maybe you missed it but Hamas are terrorists, they don't care that much. Hamas mistake was believing that Israel would care more about civilians, turns out they care much less. And Israel is supposedly this western democracy.
> Hamas mistake was believing that Israel would care more about civilians, turns out they care much less. And Israel is supposedly this western democracy
Let's be honest, betting on civilian shields when attacking any country, including a democracy, has never been a winning move.
what are you talking about? The sheer number of 10+ year old hn accounts tirading to defend, downplay and whitewash the actions of Israel in the comments in this exact thread is simply horrifying. .
And Israel will still get away with it. There will be delays, complaints, but 10 years from now Israel will have Gaza and at best the Palestinians, reduced in number, will live in a small ghettos. At worst somewhere else or dead
They will get away with it if we believe we are powerless to change it. Russia has been proven to be pushing defeatist propaganda similar to your sentiment, and I'm sure Israel has been as well.
The situation in Gaza is horrifying and despair-inducing. While acknowledging the incredibly complex historical context of the region and the security bind that Israel is in, IMO they have surrendered all moral authority by their actions there. The military campaign and blockade of aid into Gaza is wildly disproportionate and monstrous.
Denying Palestinians their basic human rights to create an apartheid ethno state is not complex.
The narrative that “it is complex therefore there is nothing to be done” is meant to paralyze people from standing up for what’s right.
The solution has always been a single democratic secular state from the river to the sea. For all inhabitants of the land. Including those expelled previously.
A two-state solution is still possible, but becoming vanishingly small:
On the Palestinian side, it doesn't give them the "right of return" (to the land they were expelled from in 1948) that they frankly deserve, which is a tough pill to swallow for them. But besides some hardliners they've pretty much resigned themselves to the fact they'll never get their stolen land back (much like the Native Americans).
On the Israeli side, it's much more problematic as it would mean dismantling many or all of the settlements on the WB. This is anathema to Israel and would be heavily resisted (perhaps violently) by the settlers who were put there in the first place expressly to prevent a two-state solution. Israel deliberately violated all the agreements about settlements reached over the years in order to create a situation where it could say "we can't expect those settlers to move out". It's no coincidence that the settlers who were given the stolen land are generally the most militant of the Israelis, and many are heavily armed, by the way.
They've taken steps to stop Hamas from hoarding food aid.
People's complaints are they "had to eat rice instead of bread".
The people posting with pots near a truck was asstaged photo with the backstage readily available - there wasn't even any good being handed out.
Restaurants and markets are open on Gaza social media.
The UN has a proven bias against Israel, easily proven by the amount of resolutions against Israel versus say North Korea or Iran or Qatar or Pakistan, and the funding of UNRWA (that promotes terror to children as its own custom defintion of 'refugee') rather than UNHCR the actual UN organization for refugees anywhere else.
The starving children were 12 different disabled kids, with fat parents and siblings that were cropped out of the photos.
The real issue here is why the flagging that probably happened on this post was undone.
Question:
There is a repeated claim that more calories have been provided to the Gaza people than several other human crisis scenarios, but that Hamas is currently stealing it all.
But I have never seen rampant obesity in Hamas prisoners that the IDF have captured alive? Hamas can't be extorting the Gazan people for those calories, the Gazan people have no money at this point by and large due to the huge swath of destruction of property and infrastructure via bombing-- only Hamas has those underground tunnels or somesuch.
> Question: There is a repeated claim that more calories have been provided to the Gaza people than several other human crisis scenarios, but that Hamas is currently stealing it all.
This claim is made by supporters of the war _outside of Israel_ for external consumption. If you look at what the Israeli cabinet, generals and politicians are saying for internal consumption... it's pretty deliberate.
Intercepted is defined as "either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors, during transit in Gaza." Some fraction of that may be Hamas. But we have no evidence of that.
But hey, between hungry peasants and buff hamas soldiers we do know who has the guns.
This is a truck. You are a hungry person. How do you even stop a truck? And why, if you could just... follow it to a location where it was supposed to despense stuff to you?
the article also states that the US has looked into the reports of Hamas stealing the aid and found that none of the aid appears to have been stolen by anyone.
given the current US administration and their hard-on for Israel, I can't imagine this is a faked report. if it were faked, it'd be to agree with Israel
From the article: "An internal US government review found no evidence of widespread theft by Hamas of US-funded humanitarian aid in Gaza."
Other reporting supports this.
So what is going on is that the IDF are lying to justify their genocide. There is a massive propaganda machine at work to muddy the waters.
> at least two in every 10,000 people die each day from starvation, or from malnutrition and disease.
Gaza population is 2 million * 2/10000 = 400 people dying per day in order for it to be a famine.
> After more than 700 days of war, 455 Palestinians have died of malnutrition or starvation, including 151 children, the health ministry in Gaza reported on October 1. One hundred and seventy-seven of the total number have died of malnutrition or starvation since the IPC confirmed famine on August 15, it said.
Is 455 in 700 days more than 400 per day? I don’t know, I’m having trouble doing math. Perhaps the people of HN can tell me the IPC standard is being met as the CNN article states?
Media and general literacy is apparently impossible even for journalists.
In August, the IPC found about 514,000 Gazans are Phase 5 (famine / humanitarian catastrophe) [1][2]. It projected by September that was around 641,000. So the threshold you're looking for is a crude death rate (CDR) between 100 and 120 per day.
CRD "needs to be directly attributable to outright starvation or to the interaction of food consumption deficits and disease" and does not include trauma [3]. So it will be more than just confirmed deaths from malnutrition or starvation (which is, in practice, impossible to procure for anywhere on even the brink of famine).
The mortality exceeding the rate I mentioned is a prerequisite for declaring stage 5. It has not been met. You don’t declare stage 5 until it has according to their own standards.
The rate of death in Gaza from those causes is nowhere near that CDR. The total death rate from all causes is substantially below that number (by a factor of 4).
> The mortality exceeding the rate I mentioned is a prerequisite for declaring stage 5
Source?
> The total death rate from all causes is substantially below that number (by a factor of 4)
You're still making the mistake of taking statistics from across Gaza and pretending that's relevant. Based on your method, there has never been a crime wave anywhere in the world because the global crime rate tends to be somewhat stable across time and countries.
So focusing on the details of the situation in Gaza is quite awful. The general tone of the comments in this thread, along with basically any public forum I think speaks for the reverberation of human suffering throughout this -- civilians are being made into casualties, Israeli and Palestinian, and it's terrible.
Taking a broader perspective, large parts of the human race have come to realize famine is a relic of the past. Modern agriculture, synthetic fertilizer, and the technology of the last 100+ years has made famine optional. There is without a doubt the technological capacity to supply every person on earth with food and clean water. Nobody needs to go hungry to feed every person in Gaza. The same could be said of Sudan, or Bangladesh, or Haiti.
200 years ago, famine was usually a natural disaster; now it is almost exclusively a political choice.
Famine is political, always. The world produces a significant excess of food. The only reason famine exists is because one group of people is perfectly happy to starve another group of people. Gaza is not unique here although Gaza is a aprticularly egregious example of industrial mass starvation and death at the hands of a highly-developed military and state actor.
I can't disagree. Modern famine is a tool used to cause harm indiscriminately. It is a testament to the human capacity for cognitive dissonance that so many people can be against the starvation of children yet support politicians responsible for mass starvation.
Though my point was more about considering the historical context. Famines used to happen all the time but largely because of crop failures. That famine is _caused_ has become common knowledge is, I think, at least an improvement. ~All~ Most of the famines that could've happened for the old reasons haven't.
Admittedly, I'm grasping at straws to avoid dwelling on the horrid situation at hand.
You make a good point, and it extends to other disasters besides famine. As humans we have evolved to the point where there are certain problems that we can eliminate -- starvation being one of them as you pointed out -- thanks to technological solutions. And yet, we deliberately choose not to. There are millions of people who die each year whose deaths are wholly preventable -- we have the technology and the resources to prevent them (without harming anyone else) -- but we choose not to, mostly so that some relatively small group of people can amass more wealth than they need. Humans have always been that way, I suppose, but never have these solutions been more within our grasp and yet, we choose not to use them. It's a terrible indictment against the human race.
For reference: While the gas chambers were are the prominent way of death during the Holocaust, the majority of victims died of starvation. Starvation death looks like succumbing to a random sickness (the body is just too weak for a functional immune response), and thus saves the perpetrator from the usual psychological consequences of direct murder. This methodology was agreed on during the Wannsee conference in 1942.
Israel is prioritizing defeating Hamas over making the world like it. This is partly due to the incompetence of the government, partly due to the impossible realities on the ground, but also partly due to an understanding that the survival of Hamas in Gaza and their perceived win is a larger threat.
I would also say that it's the propaganda war against Israel that's causing most of the alienation. To some extent Israel can do no right here and its critics aren't really proposing any alternatives that they would be able to live with if they were in a similar situation. The extent to which social (and traditional) media has been mobilized as part of the war here is unprecedented.
Re: "end and means" why is this argument made here but not e.g. wrt/ the world's war on ISIS/ISIL or Al Qaeda? Or WW-II? Should Ukraine surrender because the end (having a free/democratic Ukraine aligned with the west?) doesn't justify the "means"?
Ukraine isn’t trying to eradicate the general Russian population, they are fighting Russian military on their own territory. The Ukrainian war effort is largely in compliance with international law, which Israel on the other hand is in grave violation of.
Is there any version in your mind that stops Israel from genociding innocent Palestinians while also allowing them to get hostages back?
What does that look like? Is it realistic?
Ukraine gets the luxury of fighting an internationally recognized country with internationally recognized borders who wears compliant uniforms and recognized infrastructure that can be targeted. When Russia faked "separatists" in Ukraine in flagrant breach of laws of war, there was minimal international response and Ukraine was left to fend for itself.
Russia tried to freeze all of Ukraine and Europe to death early on in the war. It's not really a war crime, because blowing up infrastructure and cancelling trade is fair game. Countries did not give Ukraine immense aid even after that. The thing that got Putin labeled a war criminal was abducting children. Not shooting missiles at children, which he does regularly, but abducting them.
Hamas is breaking international law by fighting without official uniform, and is therefore in breach of the Geneva Convention. I don't think they actually recognize it so it doesn't matter. Hamas members commit a war crime every time they shoot at an IDF soldier, so don't lend much credence to "war crime" as a morality thing.
At some point though, you should be willing to recognize that "leave Palestine alone" without putting any requirements on Palestine is just "Let Hamas do whatever it wants", right? Palestinians are not jumping at the chance to replace Hamas. They are being oppressed by Hamas, and dissent is met with murder. Hamas is clear that they intend to keep killing Israeli people, regardless of religion even. Nobody has demonstrated an ability to liberate a populace from terrorists like that. So what strategy can we use to actually fix things?
Israel accepts like 10:1 innocent casualties for every Hamas member they kill, which is obscene. But whats the correct number? If it's zero, you have decided that it should not be possible to fight against non-traditional combatants.
Lets agree Israel needs to be stopped from controlling food going into Palestine (and probably other things). I would also advocate for Netenyahu in prison forever. What next? Assume a magical organization rose up and waved it's hands and those things happened. How do we go from there to both no more Palestinians dying AND no more Israeli people dying?
This isn't a real answer your question, it's just an idea that's crossed my mind a few times.
We've seen with the exploding pagers and all kinds of other covert ops that Israel has a really powerful spy network that's capable of doing precisely targeted strikes that kill specific people. Could they put a lot more into that and use it to carry out an enormous infiltration of Hamas and assassinate lots and lots of Hamas fighters? Like not just leaders but even lower-level participants? It's true that if you detonate someone's pager in a cafe you may injure or kill some bystanders, but it seems like such collateral damage would have to be multiple orders of magnitude less than what's going on right now.
> A senior COGAT official told a briefing in early September that 27% of the trucks entering Gaza are UN vehicles, claiming it was “a lie” that the UN had brought in 600 aid trucks a day before the war.
food tracks fluctuate between 2000 and 3000 a month prior to oct 7th. a few more dozens of of tracks with "non-edible consumables" and "medical supplies". rest of tracks are construction materials
"farm land" part, they forgot to mention that gaza was always totally dependent on imported food. farmland iirc provides only few percent of calories required in gaza. live stock is also sustained by imported feed
It's amazing to see how support of Israel has started collapsing. Scores of US-aligned nations now recognise Palestine. Even inside their traditional support base in the US, it's on the decline; 50% of Republicans under 50 don't support Israel. At least one republican is calling it a "genocide". MAGA split over Iran.
What's interesting is that I don't see the zionist talking points changing at all. They still hold out hope they can accuse everyone of "anti-semitism" and they'll all get back in line like it's 2020. I think they're holding out hope things can go back to normal, but it will be hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
I've heard it said by eliminating all other avenues of Palestinian political expression, Netanyahu created modern Hamas.
He undermined the two-state solution and Palestinian Authority. When you do this, you back people into a corner. There's no path to peacefully making progress on anything you care about. It also conveniently gives Netanyahu a boogeyman for his own political ends.
You might argue the PA was corrupt, etc. But that status quo was far better than what exists now.
Israel gave Hamas seed funding back in the 1980s. They thought it would weaken the PLO. This was when the US funding the Taliban. Having pet Jihandis' was cool back then.
More recently, USA gave ('returned') $1.7 billion to Iran. Of course a large chunk of that has gone to Hamas and Hezbollah and numerous other interests that destabilise Israel and Western powers.
I would argue that the 2005 Israeli unilateral withdrawal from Gaza created the vacuum that allowed Hamas to grow. Palestinians and Hamas interpreted that withdrawal as a validation of their resistance strategy [0]—including suicide bombings—and it boosted their confidence in the goal of liberating all of Palestine “from the river to the sea,” which effectively means the elimination of Israel.
So no, what really happened was precisely the opposite of “eliminating all other avenues of Palestinian political expression.”
Calling the old PA-led status quo “far better” ignores how dysfunctional and destructive it was. The PA was given territory, money, and international legitimacy after Oslo, yet instead of building a transparent, functioning state, it became notorious for corruption, power struggles, and failing to deliver basic services. Worse, during that same period, suicide bombings and the Second Intifada erupted under its watch, so for ordinary Israelis, that “status quo” meant buses, cafes, and markets being blown up.
Even for Palestinians, the PA’s rule was hardly a path to peace or progress. Billions in foreign aid were stolen by elites, elections were canceled, dissent was crushed, and everyday life was marked by both authoritarianism and insecurity. So while today’s Hamas reality is undeniably worse, pretending the old PA era was some kind of lost golden path to peace overlooks that it was already a dead end for both peoples.
> Israel wasn't paying Hamas so they'd launch October 7th
Agreed. But as a close friend -- who spent years living and working in the Middle East, including Gaza, and very well connected there -- pointed out to me, it's very hard to believe that Israel, with one of the most, if not the most, heavily guarded borders in the world, with arguably the best intelligence force in the world that is very embedded in the Palestinian Territories, did not know of the attack in advance, if not the details. Think about how much Israel had to gain from letting it happen and it becomes an easy decision.
On the contrary, I think you will find that most people simply cannot comprehend the idea that Netanyahu/Israel would aid Hamas, they will think you are a conspiracy nut for stating the plain facts.
I'm not sure what the point of this is. "Do you want Hamas or the PA?" is like asking someone "do you want rotting meat or polluted drinking water?" Why are these the only two options?
The PA is a captured extension of the Israeli security state. The PA is standing by while Israeli settlers systematically kill, chase off and terrorize Palestinians on the West Bank. IOF soldiers will idly stand by while a settler just comes up with a (government-supplied) gun, shoots a 60 year old farmer and then complains to the Army that the locals are harassing them.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel’s regular allowing of Qatari funds to be transferred into Gaza, saying it is part of a broader strategy to keep Hamas and the Palestinian Authority separate, a source in Monday’s Likud faction meeting said.
The prime minister also said that, “whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for” transferring the funds to Gaza, because maintaining a separation between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
By those HN guidelines, your shallow dismissal of my clear criticism is what is against the HN rules that you quote. So is your twisting of my words to a conclusion that I did not state.
Furthermore, if you're dragging out the HN guidlines, it clearly states that comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Your comment was neither thoughtful nor substantive. Further furthermore, that document states that Hacker News should not be used for political or ideological battle - yet that is all that we see in these Israel posts that happen here every few days. The top of that document states that most stories about politics are Off-Topic. Yet HN happily drags many non-tech discussions about Israel on for over a thousand comments, whereas discussions about similar situations are completely absent from HN.
Fall in line with what exactly? Living under military occupation? Denied statehood by having their borders controlled? Being forcibly relocated out of Gaza?
As the GP said, there needs to be an actual alternative.
Not sure what you mean by "military occupation". The military was for the most part not in Gaza itself. Not all borders were controlled (why do they even want to cross over to Israel?).
Israel is here to stay. Gazans need to an accept that and try to progress towards civilized society. And Hamas definitely needs to go.
The people of Gaza fighting a terrorist group is also lunacy. They shouldn't be held responsible and if Israel can't fight Hamas without overwhelming causing suffering to the people of Gaza they shouldn't.
do you happen to have a link to a helpful YouTube video tutorial on how to organize a coup against a terrorist state while starving to death in the middle of a total occupation?
> Funny how literally every written record of history agrees the Jews are the people of Israel, but the Arabs don't.
Why do people keep bringing this up as if it matters? Every piece of land has had someone living on it for the last 10,000 years, how does it matter that some group lived there in like 500 bce then a jewish tribe came in and then later some other tribe came in and so on.
There's no mormon land/state, or sikh, or uygur or a dozen other religions. What makes this religion so special that they should be allowed to conquer another nation to take their land for their own?
At some moment in time, the first human built a house there, then sometime later some other people showed up then sometime later the israeli tribe conquered the land then the romans conquered it and so on until some muslim tribe conquered it and then in 1950 or whenever the current people conquered it.
Which one of those groups is supposed to have some kind extra special entitlement to live there?
I feel like you could say Ukraine were backed into a corner, multiple times, they didn't resort to October 7 levels of horror either. In fact, there is not a single documented case where they have attacked civilians or civilian infrastructure.
So while I'm not closed to the idea that Netanyahu is a bad man. I find it hard to rationalize the actions of the people who were "backed into a corner"?
> Ukraine were backed into a corner, multiple times, they didn't resort to October 7 levels of horror either
While I personally condemn Hamas's tactics and don't recognize their political legitimacy, Ukraine has billions in modern military equipment, including tanks and fighter planes. They have conventional military options Palestinians could only dream of.
Ukraine has also been supplied with intelligence, weapons and materiel from other countries in Europe, with which they also share land borders, as well as the United States. Palestinians can't even get food from Egypt, their immediate neighbor.
> there is not a single documented case where they [Ukraine] have attacked civilians or civilian infrastructure.
It must further be observed that Israel has likely killed over 100,000 civilians and miles of civilian infrastructure, even as they enjoy the upper hand economically and militarily. Whatever damage Hamas has done to Israel, Israel has retaliated far out of proportion to Palestinian civilians, in a way that is judged calculated to be genocidal.
While I personally condemn Hamas's tactics and don't recognize their political legitimacy, Ukraine has billions in modern military equipment, including tanks and fighter planes. They have conventional military options Palestinians could only dream of.
It's funny because until they started winning, it was basically, "they're done in 3 days", now it's, oh they have billions in equipment etc.
Here's a question for you, why didn't Hamas have that? Why didn't the rest of the world send them more aid and weapons aid? Hmm strange.
If you were in an "open air prison" (silly term, but ok), would your next move be to raid a peace and love festival and slaughter kids ? Just wondering?
Thats a weird framing. It seems more like an escalation of an already violent clash than Pro Ukrainian protestors burning a building full of Pro russians alive intentionally.
>A 'United Ukraine' rally was attacked by pro-Russian separatists where Stones, petrol bombs and gunfire were exchanged. The pro-Ukraine protesters then moved to dismantle a pro-Russian protest camp in Kulykove Pole, causing some pro-Russian activists to barricade themselves in the nearby Trade Unions House. Shots were fired by both sides, and the pro-Ukraine protesters attempted to storm the building, which caught fire as the two groups threw petrol bombs at each other.
Abhorrent. Not only in the crime but that "although several alleged perpetrators were charged, there has yet to be a trial."
But also, that's forty-eight dead. The fiasco started after "a 'United Ukraine' rally was attacked by pro-Russian separatists." And this was criminality by a protest group (in predominantly pro-Russian territory, no less) not any party claiming to govern Ukraine.
Nethanyahu didn't vote for Hamas, the Palestinians did, and they did it while the party in power in Israel was kadima, which just gave the Palestinians gaza literally for free.
Shortly after the election Hamas murdered the Fatah in Gaza and those elections were the last time the Palestinians had a say over who controls Gaza.
Nethanyahu only after the 7th of October decided that letting hamas rule Gaza is unacceptable, and this decision was only made after the terrible cost.
There Palestinians simply preferred hamas and terrorism over the PLO and relative peace in the one historical vote they were given. The situation might've changed since then. Making deals of two state solution when that second state could turn into another hamas state overnight would be an even bigger mistake.
The Palestinians can't barely make peace with themselves, between Fatah and hamas and agree to resolve their political conflicts in peace rather than armed conflict. When that's the case you can hardly blame Israel that they can't make peace. They need to commit to non violence between themselves before it's possible to commit to non violence with their enemies.
There's also a generation of Palestinians who's never even voted in Palestinian elections because there weren't elections in a decade.
> There Palestinians simply preferred hamas and terrorism over the PLO.... They need to commit to non violence between themselves before it's possible to commit to non violence with their enemies.
Hamas won 44% of the vote and then, as you noted, they murdered their political opposition. For this, everybody in Gaza should suffer both under a terrorist group running their lives and Israel bombing them?
Improve the living conditions of the average person so they're more interested in watching the next football game instead of taking vengeance for their murdered father.
> can understand why desperate people, whose land is increasingly stolen, whose rights are increasingly abused, and who cannot see their lives improve would turn (or be turned) to an organisation who would ultimately commit such abhorrent acts
I can't. It doesn't work and makes you the bad guy. Even if just temporarily, that's enough for the other side to exploit. It's always been enough for the other side to exploit. Terrorism has a terrible track record for a reason.
That said, I challenge the premise. Palestinians didn't vote for October 7th. They didn't vote to suspend elections. They voted to kick Fatah out.
I can understand why desperate people, whose land is increasingly stolen, whose rights are increasingly abused, and who cannot see their lives improve would turn (or be turned) to an organisation who would ultimately commit such abhorrent acts.
There are a lot of examples of really bad stuff happening to groups of people over the centuries, very few of them have resorted to October 7 levels of horror.
I'm not Jewish, but the soviets did some really horrific shit to our family, and we actually lost all our land, our whole livelihoods and strangely, no one in our family killed women or children over it. We never resulted to terrorism to deal with the issue. We did get our land back in the 90s though.
I can guarantee you that if the Palestinians / Hamas didn't do October 7, they would be in a much better position than they are now. 99% of people lost the ability to feel sympathy for them after that. Which is why Israel can basically make the plans. Most of the world just gave up.
Comparison of two peoples occupation and suffering and response to it is quite unfair.
And you act as if Oct 7th is the be all and end all of the story of the Palestine/Israel. "Oct 7th levels of horror". I won't excuse Hamas for what they did, but worse levels of horror have been inflicted on the Palestinian people. It's odd you ignore those levels or are ignorant to them. Just saying.
And you say 99% of people lost the ability to feel sympathy. I'll dispute that because the sane among us don't blame civilians for the actions of a paramilitary organisation gone wild. But let's pretend you're right. Isn't it ironic then that the world has so strongly turned against Israel now? (at least in the UN and your average people).
I'll contend that Israel may have destroyed Gaza, but in so doing they have destroyed their reputation and brought ill and hatred to their people now for a generation.
I'll defend Jews always as many have stood side by side with those against what's happening in Israel. But Israel has made their lives harder. Israel's actions have now made it much, much easier for the crazy people among us to do crazy things (c.f. today's Manchester, UK synagogue terrorist attack).
The way you conflate upwards of 150.000 slaughtered civilians (numbers directly from Isreali military sources - who are being ethnically cleansed according to UN experts, with Hamas is sinister and beyond dark, especially when you also completely ignore 75 years of Israeli violence and occupation before october 7.
Yeah the over thirty thousand dead kids really shouldn't have "done" october 7, a response done by completely different people to decades of violence, it was so stupid of them.
This is vile and incredibly dehumanising if not straight up violently racist.
In all objective measures of life quality, gaza was better off occupied by Israel, both compared with before 67 (Israel's occupation made Gaza prosper relative to when it was controlled by Egypt), and compared with after hamas took over and forced Israel to isolate gaza increasingly in order to deal with the terrorism from Gaza.
The only thing gaza didn't have under Israeli occupation was democratic election. And guess what, they didn't have that after the occupation stopped either. They don't have it in most Arabic countries either.
CNN is quoting data from the Gaza health ministry, an organization run by genocidal Islamist Hamas, without mentioning its affiliation and without questioning the data. So much for objectivity on CNN and "Hacker News". There is also no mention on the food convoys that get plundered by Hamas. Just to mention: Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization in the US, since 1997 - just adding some missing background information.
the absurdity of blaming the victim is really atrocious/despicable; nobody is forcing Muslims to hate Jews, that's part of the core of Islamic fundamentalist ideology. Everyone who pays the slightest amount of attention to media bias knows that CNN "leans left" and, even though there is suffering in Gaza/Palestine, let's ask ourselves: "why is this once again the 'flavor of the decade'?". "Those evil Jews, so unjustly 'causing' the suffering in the Middle East, why can't they all just stay in New York and Hollywood and leave the rest of the world to be overtaken by Sharia law as Allah intended!?" I'm sure this comment will get downvoted into oblivion, but oh well.
this financial blacklisting was done on the mere allegation of famine and no court tribunal was involved at all and nobody split hairs on the definition
find and replace Ethiopia with Israel, Eritrea with Gaza, and that's all we need to do
happy Yom Kippur! there's a lot to atone for, as some say, and an easy way for the US Government to ensure it
" We will clean Gaza of every potential murderer, and everyone there is a potential murderer." - Michal Woldiger, member of the Israeli Knesset
"Tulkarm and Jenin will look like Jabalia and Shujaiya. Nablus and Ramallah will look like Rafah and Khan Younis. They too will be uninhabitable ruins, their residents will be forced to migrate and seek a new life in other countries." - Bezalel Smotrich, Finance Minister of Israel
"It's a simple matter, existential and survival, of wiping these crazy Amalekites off the face of the Earth. Like the Nazis, so with Hamas: we will fight them and hunt them forever. Until not one of them is left. This is a Jewish commandment. This is an Israeli commandment. This is a historic commandment. And today's pictures are just another reminder of what we must not forget for a single moment: the nature of this deranged enemy. And why they must be wiped off the face of the earth." - Shai Golden, Channel 14 News
"Gazans will be concentrated in a very defined area and live as refugees their whole lives without water or electricity until they decide, of their own accord, to emigrate." - Eyal Shalit Snir, Lt. Col. in the Israeli
military
"Anyone who stays there [in north Gaza] will be judged by law as a terrorist and will go through either a process of starvation or a process of extermination." - Uzy Raby, Professor of Middle Eastern History, Tel Aviv University
[Quotes taken from zionism dot observer, a website that aggregates statements from Israeli sources]
I think there's a sort of naivete amongst people who don't pay close attention to the realities of Israel's social and political climate, and simply ascribing a sort of ghoulish evil to the vague bloc of 'nationalist' or 'religious' right-wing is simply not true. Genocidal intent permeates every level of Israeli society, from citizenry to the highest decision-making levels of the government, to all strata of the military. Israel is a fascist society and it's plain to see. This is a Pandora's Box that cannot be shut anymore, and people won't magically unsee or forget the horrors that are broadcast on a daily basis on social media. The ghastly accusations of 'Pallywood' don't cut it anymore, either. The sheer speed of information dissemination has ensured that whatever horrors the Palestinians are experiencing the rest of the world sees in real time, as opposed to being memoryholed for 5-10 years, then uncovered in a viral tweet. Now, every airstrike is actually recorded as it happens, alongside its outcome.
Not sure how much sarcasm did you put in this comment, but banning from entering other countries and disconnecting from visa / mc only hurts. Here's why.
I am originally from Russia and I do not support the war my country has started. I moved to another country because of that. And I face all the fun consequences from two nice restrictions above. Some of my former neighbors or acquaintances who decided to stay in the country or even support the invasion face no issues. They don't visit other countries and don't need international cards.
Which means both these things primary target people who most likely do not support the shit which is happening. Is that the goal?
that's exactly what I am on about, and facing those restrictions as well
as such, sarcasm here is beyond measurement - obviously those measures were just a distraction for own voters, but presented as a matter of principle yada yada yada
an absolutely identical situation gets a 100% hush hush reverse treatment, hence my comment on being a matter of principle - even though I don't agree with such measures, seeing them implemented against Israelis would at least be an honest thing to do instead of the current hypocrisy
Remember that Gaza has the most amputated children per capita in the world. Next time you see a child, you should remember this fact. because Palestinian children aren't this abstract concept, but real people just like the children in our own neighborhoods
I did. 450, according to CNN, no sources cited, and no reference to how many died of hunger before the war. One thing I did not expect on this board is innumeracy.
That's presumably the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
But, obviously, there's no reliable source in a war zone, and starving people often don't die directly from hunger, but from disease after being weakened. Most statistics about deaths from famines are estimates after the fact.
What I find the most jarring about this on a day-to-day being in tech circles is how some of the smartest people I know are not only unwilling to call out what's happening, they're unwilling to acknowledge it to begin with, and some like the triangle man and Collison brothers even support it.
The more time I spend in tech the more I realize there's a deep moral rot here covered up by noveau-rich wealth
There's a special brand of anti-intellectualism running rampant in tech circles. They've drunk the koolaid on STEM vs. humanities and therefore glorify their willful ignorance towards all things "soft" science, like morals or philosophy.
The problem is we’re in an age of mass disinformation that makes any claim potentially propaganda. It comes down to trust and belief and those things are either easier than ever or harder than ever depending on media you consume and common sense.
I feel like the community is censored or rather finds inconvenient to talk about it because of the big role that Israel plays in the tech scene. SV has an ethos of avoiding name calling and finger pointing at members of the community, since they know it's a long repeated game they are playing.
But I'm glad to see some prominent voices step up. Particularly, PG and Amjad Massad (Replit) have been very vocal. I hope their voice makes people feel like it's OK to call out human right violations when they see them.
Then there's the other extreme of the tech scene that simply decided to play politics for its own gain. The All In Pod crew as the poster children of this. Their cynicism is s transparent and disgusting in how they kiss the ring to get favor of the king in turn. I think that's a bit of what triangle man is trying to get, and it's certainly what sama was trying to do when this admin started.
Where did the idea that being smart meant being moral come from? Why would anyone assume that people in tech are "good"? A lot of (I would say most) people go into tech to make money. All the people you expect to say something won't because doing so could jeopardize the amount of money they make. The same goes with celebrities, academics, politicians, etc. If you are someone who makes a lot of money, and you speak negatively about america's greatest ally, you will probably make less money as a direct result.
Because tech people spent probably 5 years signalling their moral goodness about a wide array of topics, indeed proclaiming these the most important political topics. IT was and still is insufferable.
I've seen air dropping videos, if random countries were to try that would they be at risk of being shot down, probably right for violating air space (cough cough).
Yes, airdrops are only done with permission from Israel since they control Gaza airspace (they have for decades). But airdrops are not an efficient way to feed millions of people (and the pallets have killed multiple people by landing on them). Shipping by truck allows a much larger volume much faster, and the UN has experience doing so, but they have been largely blocked from doing so for months by Israel, which runs its own much less efficient aid operation with many fewer distribution points guarded by mercenaries who regularly kill aid seekers who often have to travel long distances through dangerous areas.
For anyone commenting on this, I'll leave this: Official aid delivery reported by UN. I'd also assume this to be of the lower side, as there probably is more that doesn't get reported thorugh UN 27720 mechanism. I find the fact that this article does not use this or point to this data very questionable, but maybe I am wrong and I am imagining things.
> Intercepted - Either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors, during transit in Gaza
I presume you meant to suggest Hamas is bathing in baby formula, but your link isn't evidence for that. It could be desperate people doing desperate things, you know, because they are starving.
Nope. My main question is why journalists do not use official, readily available data, but instead talk about bullshit. How can you talk about aid, famine and not put this information in there is beyond me. The problem is not aid. the problem as proven by UN data is logistics and interceptions by someone(probably mostly Hamas, but even if it's some other peaceful side) How do we deal with that?
Samantha Power wrote an excellent book: "A Problem From Hell" - America and the Age of Genocide [0], [1]
She had seen war and genocide first-hand in Bosnia and that provided the impetus for her to study how America had responded to various genocides.
I will repeat the last paragraph of her Preface for some context.
>Before I began exploring America's relationship with genocide, I used to refer to U.S. policy towards Bosnia as a "failure." I have changed my mind. It is daunting to acknowledge, but this country's consistent policy of nonintervention in the face of genocide offers sad testimony not to a broken American political system but to one that is ruthlessly effective. The system, as it stands now, is working. No U.S. president has ever made genocide prevention a priority, and no U.S. president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on.
Readers should be dubious of her moral authority on this issue. When given influence, her advocacy of the war on Libya resulted in endemic violence and showed that she was as misguided as anyone else in American politics when it comes to intervention in world affairs.
Genocide is a terrible thing. But that doesn't mean the USA has any obligation to directly intervene in foreign conflicts. Most of these aren't worth sacrificing the life of a single US soldier, and even when we do intervene it often makes the situation worse. Unless critical US national interests are involved, our actions should usually be limited to sanctions and diplomacy.
(I am commenting on the general US policy and not making a statement about the current situation in Gaza.)
Most of the time US sells the weapons used to do the genocide. This time they're just giving them away, and that is what a lot of Americans have a problem with.
> Most of the time US sells the weapons used to do the genocide
We sold weapons to Burma, China, Russia, ISIS, Sudan and Somaliland [1]?
We're absolutely complicit in Gaza, the DRC f/k/a Zaire and Bosnia. And we helped defend the Yazidi and Ukrainians. Honestly, looking at the list, that's a better record than Russia or China have had since WWII.
Germans would often say _their_ grandparents were never Nazis.
Ironically, the same thing will happen in future Israeli generations when they look back at the current genocide - "No, my grandfather wasn't involved in the Gaza war"
There is massive narrative deception from Israel... wake up world:
>“There is no famine in Gaza. Period,” the [Israeli] official said, adding that “Israel and the IDF are trying to strengthen the humanitarian situation in Gaza with partners.”
If you want to see what Netanyaho looks like when he's covering things up [lying] just watch the 2024 documentary The Bibi Files — about his corruption charges (which features over an hour of Netanyaho lying to investigators about his accepting roses and leaves [wine and cigars]) — complete with his shit-eating-grins galore...
World leaders know this, they're pretending not to see it. For example, the Biden administration set specific aid targets for Israel to meet and even acknowledged that they weren't being met by the "deadline" but neglected to impose any consequences.
Israelis (including those who use this platform to repeat the same warmed-over genocide denials for the umpteenth time) know it's happening too. That's why the argument is usually 50% "it's not happening" and 50% "but they deserve it".
>The charter defines the struggle to be against the Jews and calls for the eventual creation of an Islamic Palestinian state in all of former Mandatory Palestine, and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel.
Okay, I read the wiki. My question is simple: why does Israel have the Right to "reclaim its historical territory," but the Muslim Brotherhood does NOT?!
If I were to continue this line of questioning, next would be: why does ANY religion have ANY right to wholely-rule ANY territory?
They're being pushed by world powers to provide aid for civilians that have been caught up in a war zone and who are being systematically starved to death, according to a lot of reputable organizations including Israeli human rights organizations.
If you want to discuss aid to the regime then maybe we can start with the suitcases of money Bibi's government sent Hamas for years because they thought a more extreme group would be easier to control.
For those out of the loop the actions of the Israeli gov. are not some fringe overreaction. This is what the people want. by their own admission, 48% of Israeli Jews want Palestinians to be ethnically cleansed which would constitute a genocidal act, while 79% believe they should get preferential treatment over Arabs. [0]
Both Israeli Arabs & Palestinian Arabs. This is not some, 'oh no! it just happened.' Everyone who has actually spent time studying this conflict, the state of Israel has a policy of systematic rape, torture, mass incarceration, murder, and dehumanization of Palestinians at an industrial scale that's been in place for decades now.
They're just going mask-off in a way Western audiences can't pretend not to know about it any longer.
Israelis and their Western supporters try to make out their actions as that of fringe far-right loonies like Smotrich, etc. Nope. Systematic rape, torture, murder, of non-Jews has been their policy for decades now. You're just finally learning about it after so long. The ultra-orthodox don't make up a plurality of the population and used to not serve in the military until recently. So, if their abominable ideology is state policy, it's because Israelis are okay with it.
> Systematic rape, torture, murder, of non-Jews has been their policy for decades now.
I'd like some evidence for each of these three. I'm aware of the policy of interrogation which might count as "a policy of systematic torture". Can you do systematic rape and murder?
> Jewish sources like Jewish Chronicle, ADL and JVL are largely banned, as well as all the major conservative news sources.
Source?
My personal rule-of-thumb is that an international news source is likely to be fairly reliable so long as it's not reporting on something that they have a conflict of interest in (eg home country/demographic).
> Most editors seem to agree that Al Jazeera English and especially Al Jazeera Arabic are biased sources on the Arab–Israeli conflict and on topics for which the Qatari government has a conflict of interest.
> Al Jazeera's live blogs should be treated with caution, per the policy on news blogs.
The note about bias does nothing to prevent it from being used. Wikipedia doesn't really have any policy of avoiding biased sources; see WP:BIASED.
The live blog warning is mostly ignored in practice, even though it reflects a broader policy (WP:NEWSBLOG). Al Jazeera's live blog alone is probably used more than any other source in the topic area.
> The note about bias does nothing to prevent it from being used.
If you actually edit in this topic area, you should know that its bias comes up all the time. Almost every talk page on I/P is littered with endless debate over whether Al Jazeera covered this or that accurately.
> From a very particular pool of sources. Jewish sources like Jewish Chronicle, ADL and JVL are largely banned, as well as most of the major conservative news sources.
This is a misunderstanding of Wikipedia policy. In particular the ADL is still considered a reliable source outside of a few narrow circumstances.
Unreliable sources may still be cited as a reliable source of the source’s author’s opinion of a matter. So they are not, in any real sense, “banned.”
> Meanwhile Al Jazeera has the highest status, and is the top source for most articles in the topic area. . .
This is incorrect. Wikipedia’s list of perennial sources contains the following disclaimer:
> Al Jazeera is a Qatari state-funded news organization and in the 2024 RfC there was consensus that it is generally reliable. Most editors seem to agree that Al Jazeera English and especially Al Jazeera Arabic are biased sources on the Arab–Israeli conflict and on topics for which the Qatari government has a conflict of interest.
It's not a policy, it's a summary of past community discussions.
> In particular the ADL is still considered a reliable source outside of a few narrow circumstances.
They're not narrow at all, they're essentially the only areas that are relevant to the ADL. It's like "narrowly" banning CNN, but only for news.
Al-Manar (Hezbollah's propaganda arm) has a similar carve-out for example. It doesn't really matter; even deprecated sources are generally useful for basic uncontroversial information about themselves and what not.
> This is incorrect. Wikipedia’s list of perennial sources contains the following disclaimer:
Which part do you think is incorrect? If it's the RSP part, GREL is indeed the highest status, and the note about bias is inconsequential since there's no particular policy basis for avoiding biased sources (see WP:BIASED).
There is an abundance of allegations and testimony from not exactly neutral sources and a few isolated cases that have actual evidence going for them - which have been investigated and prosecuted by authorities.
"Both the definition and charge of ethnic cleansing is often disputed, with some researchers including and others excluding coercive assimilation or mass killings as a means of depopulating an area of a particular group, or calling it a euphemism for genocide or cultural genocide."
That's not what anyone said. I said that moving people is not genocide. Killing people is genocide. And sometimes one happens (like when all muslim states in the entire world moved out the jews into Israel) and that's not a genocide, and sometimes the other happens (when the nazis killed the jews) and that IS genocide.
Trying to put an equivalence between those two things is idiotic. And if you DO that, then the arab world perpetrated a massive "genocide" in 1948, much bigger than what the Nazis did. See how crazy that is? Obviously that's not what happened!
-cide is a latin suffix that quite simply means "kill". Trying to call ethnic cleansing genocide is like calling divorce mariticide or moving away from home patricide.
The correct latin term would be something like "expulsio gentium".
Raphael Lemkin, the guy who first coined the term "genocide", considered "cultural genocide" (the killing of a culture if you will), a central component of genocide.
Also, I don't know if you've noticed, but people generally resist being ethnic cleansed, and so the perpetrators have to kill a lot of them.
Historically, forced mass migrations are usually both a mechanism and an ideological cover for genocide. People like you are an integral part of these genocides by legitimizing their actions with statements like "moving people is not genocide".
Please don't comment like this on HN. We all know it's an awful situation. It needs to be discussed with sincerity, even if we find other people's opinions about it to be abhorrent. It's unbecoming to use tropes like this to sneer at other people's positions.
You can make a good argument that a state forcefully resettling ethnicities is a form of genocide (the Nazis did that, too, e.g. with german speaking northern Italian minorities).
But comparing that with the holocaust is just disrespectful hyperbole.
Holocaust had 6M jewish victims[1] (depending how you count). Current confirmed gaza death count is -as yet- ~65K [2], with projected ~600K at risk by year's end [3][4][5]. The original population of gaza was ~2M [6] which sets the upper bound to the crisis. (If you look at it as a % of population, it's quite a large number already.)
Of course, one can argue that if the allies had been able to intervene sooner, the holocaust would have been less severe. Obviously we'd like to demonstrate some lessons learned here.
A huge part of the Holocaust was the forced relocation of Jewish people* to concentration camps, which would have been (rightly) remembered as an inexcusable horror even if the killings in said camps hadn't been as extensive and inhuman.
* and Roma, and Armenians, and others - but that's less salient here.
> [Palestinians] will raid and murder, rape and destroy
> those savages
Wtf? I already responded to a later comment of yours here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45454043, but this rhetoric is unacceptable on HN and if you continue to post like this we will ban you—the same way we ban accounts that post like this about other groups.
My parent comment said :"the state of Israel has a policy of systematic rape, torture, mass incarceration, murder, and dehumanization of Palestinians at an industrial scale that's been in place for decades now."
How is that allowed while what I said isn't? My parent comment literally says the same thing. Your moderation is one sided. I didn't say anything that wasn't claimed by the other side.
I see far worse slurs about Israel and Jews here which remain unmoderated. And you won't even let me attack them back.
There's a big difference between making such a statement about a government vs. about an entire population. That ought to be obvious.
> I see far worse slurs about Israel and Jews here which remain unmoderated
There are many comments criticizing Israel (and many defending Israel), but comments slurring Jewish people in general are another matter and we crack down just as hard on those (see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45377645).
We don't see every post on HN, but I don't believe there are many such comments going unmoderated, because readers are usually pretty quick to point them out to us. If you see a comment that should have been moderated but hasn't been (and certainly if you see one that is slurring an entire population), you can help by flagging it and emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.
Also, the outright antisemitic comments I see are mostly by a small number of serial trolls, by which I mean troll accounts in a sequence n, n+1, n+2, ... where they create n+k+1 after we ban n+k. That tells me that these are mostly, if not entirely, fringe participants.
Edit: as a spot check, I just skimmed through all (live) comments from the last week that contain the word 'Jews'. I didn't see any slurs in there, and most seem to be from people defending Israel, arguing against antisemitism and so on.
Not every antisemitic comment is going to contain the word 'Jews'; the art of being antisemitic without such overt references is a long-honed one that few are aware the totality of. Unfortunately, today is also the one day of the year that the already relatively few people best equipped to identify and flag antisemitism are mostly offline.
Governments are hierarchical, and they can (and should) be held responsible for their actions. The population of Palestine, taken as a whole, is not. If you had said "the Hamas state is savage and murderous" that wouldn't have bothered me very much, but instead you generalized each individual Palestinian as a savage. I think @dang's moderation makes perfect sense here.
I was gonna argue with the parent comment but instead here you are doing your best to prove their point. In your mind there’s one Palestinian person, multiplied by a couple million, and you hate that person. It’s the same as any racism.
> Gaza was given to the Palestinians for free in 2005.
That doesn't mean anything. Israel was illegally occupying Gaza before 2005, and has been illegally blockading it since.
And every single year for the past 50 years or more, Israel has murdered more Palestinians than the Palestinians have murdered Israelis - most years, at least 2 dead Palestinians for every dead Israeli. Not to mention, Netanyahu has been one of the biggest international supporters of Hamas in the world, and he has admitted to as much repeatedly: the PLA having control of Gaza would have risked a real two state solution, and he will never allow that to happen.
The Ottomans had conquered the whole of Palestine, including Gaza, and had been ruling it for some few hundred years at the time their empire crumbled and the British Empire acquired it from them. The vast majority of the population, both Arabic and Jewish, and either Muslim and Jewish and Christian, were regular citizens of the Ottoman Empire. It was not being "occupied" by the Ottomans, any more than Turkey is "occupying" Istanbul today.
Then, the majority of this population, and the vast majority of the Arabic parts of this population, were displaced to make room for the novel state of Israel, most of the population of which were Europeans and Americans of Jewish descent. They came in and took the homes of the Palestinians living today in Gaza and the West Bank, or their parents or grandparents. And then they have occupied the lands where these Palestinians had been driven away to, with direct military presence for a long time, and then with "just" a blockade and controlled movement.
You sound almost exactly like Trump talking about Mexicans. When you dismiss an entire people as murderers, rapists, and savages, something's gone wrong with how you understand the world.
I'm sure that many many Palestinians hate Jews, but that shouldn't be a surprise when Palestinians have been brutally oppressed for a century for the sake of creating a Jewish state. This is the natural consequence of oppression, and the way to end that hatred is to end the oppression.
Lastly, you say "Gaza was given to the Palestinians for free", but neglect to mention how Israel came to control Gaza. Is it really that generous to return a small piece of the land that was stolen?
As if rolling out the tanks, building a wall and using the population for low skill low wage workers is giving away anything. Gaza is under a blockade since 2006.
This genocide reveals how much Israel truly controls the US government and other Western countries. I am beyond appalled this is allowed to happen.
The last couple of months also showed that international rules and agreements don't mean anything - they are in fact only there to please the Western countries, until they throw it in the bin when it is convenient to them.
Anyone who isn't from the West, hell even Southern Europeans, are taking note. There is no rights and freedoms for us. All this for to support a bully of a fundamentalist state and a bunch of theocratic kingdoms/emirates.
I've got to wonder if Israel is one the pillars propping up Trump along with China and Russia. It would make perfect sense with its relation to the Epstein files (in which Trump is likely mentioned every other paragraph).
I'm not saying the Democrats have done great by Gaza, but I feel like the point we're at - irrefutable genocide through starvation - there would at least be significant pressure to stop attacking humanitarian convoys.
All I can really say about the current situation is that it would be a great time for the EU to step up, demonstrate some international leadership, and forcibly deliver aid under the guard of military force.
That simply will never happen. As outspoken as EU countries are, they are not inclined to act beyond the diplomatic equivalent of a strongly worded email. It's a fantasy to think that any single EU nation would risk a shooting war with Israel by trying to deliver aid without permission, and they absolutely could never reach a consensus on doing it as a unit.
> genocide reveals how much Israel truly controls the US government and other Western countries
Nonsense. Israel has influence because a lot of American voters make Israel one of their ride-or-die issues. If that support shifts, the influence does, too.
> last couple of months also showed that international rules and agreements don't mean anything
Did you miss Russia invading Ukraine, America invading Iraq and China annexing Tibet? Or the ongoing genocides in Burma, Sudan and recently-concluded one in Ethiopia? (I think.)
Nothing has opened my eyes more to how much mainstream media is distorting reality to fit their narrative, than the genocide Israel is committing in Gaza.
You can sit with literal video of an incident, and then see media headlines tell a completely different story than what actually happened.
Social media in our generation has been a weird amplifier of both misinformation as well as truth from the ground that contradicts misinformation in the media.
My selection of topics I trust media to report on has greatly narrowed down to ones that are completely apolitical, which is sad (they’ve always been biased, but at least I felt you could tell that they were biased and read through it).
If any other country in the world was doing what Israel is doing, there would be international sanctions against them and talk of military intervention (if they had oil or natural resources to grab). The fact that Israel can get away with this is almost entirely due to the US' "unwavering" support for political (a strategic military ally in the Middle East) and religious (Evangelicals and the "Promised Land") reasons.
As an American, I'm disgusted that my tax dollars are actively supporting genocide.
And let's not fall into the trap of telling ourselves that this only started in response to Oct 7. The Palestinians have been severely oppressed for _decades_ -- which is why it's almost impossible to root out something like Hamas, because the next generation of boys will be more than willing to sacrifice themselves to break and/or avenge the oppression of their families when they get old enough to carry a gun.
You're posting the same comment, each time linking to a source on WWII, but never linking to evidence of Israeli's policy or confirmation from any third-party attesting to it.
1500 calories per day is not, by any measure we now know of, an adequate number of calories. The fact that 80 years ago we thought it was does not have any moral value in discussions about Israel's actions today.
A third-party source attesting to the validity of Israel's claims regarding the nearly the 4400-calories-per-person-per-day they're letting into Gaza would at least be something in a discussion of their actions.
But yes, that source would obviously be viewed somewhat skeptically given the level of starvation we see in Gaza.
The Red Cross does not target 1500 calories minimum. They allow for 1500 as an absolute minimum. In the event of a disaster.
From your own link:
"Sites should plan their menus based on available foods and must provide a minimum of 1,500 calories per person, per day. The Red Cross suggests 2,000 to 2,500 calories per person, per day."
2,000 to 2,500 calories per day.
Which Israel is more than capable of allowing into Gaza.
From my link, as you quoted, the Red Cross lists 1500 as the floor. Just like I stated. It's considered bad but the acceptable floor for disasters in the USA. 1500. Not great, but the floor to ensure is being met.
I see all this talk and am trying to understand what is going on. The only actual numbers I have seen are the CNN 1400 in one area at one point in time, so I tried to compare that to what could happen in the USA. My quest to understand started last week when people said Israel needed to behave like the USA in occupied Germany, that is the norm to be followed. When I looked up the numbers and pointed out Israel was, people said 'no, not like that'.
Israel targets 3200, above Allied occupied Germany. In some areas for some lengths of time actual consumption dropped to 1400, bellow but not that far from the Red Cross published floor in emergencies.
Looking at other war areas, Kenya has 800,000 war refugees that the UN just cut down to 552 calories a day, even though the UN claims they have enough food on hand to feed Gaza's 2 million, but aren't allowed to give out. The UN stated they have the food (but only for Gaza), and provide much less food in Kenya than Israel in Gaza (even though the UN says they have food for 2 million).
It's all horrific and awful that the government of Gaza chose to initiate a hot war, and that the people in Gaza are suffering because of their governments killing of over 1000, injuring/maining/raping/torturing of thousands more, and kidnapping of so many (including the apparently 6 year old girl that Gaza's government broadcast video to the internet of themselves kidnapping from her home). But from the numbers I can find it's not that far outside of norms, especially for an active armed conflict.
I generally use conversations on this topic as a litmus test for a group or community. I’m pretty disappointed by all the whatabout-ism and false equivalence.
I expected better from HN.
We can study why this happened later. The genocide needs to stop now.
The first question that should be asked is this: if there is indeed so much suffering in Gaza, why is no one pressuring Hamas to end the war by accepting Donald Trump’s peace plan? The war could have been over by now if Hamas had surrendered, yet this point is rarely mentioned. Why is that?
Instead, many—including major Western media outlets—repeat Hamas’ narrative: that Israel is responsible for the killing (while Hamas has been accused of using human shields [0]) and that Israel prevents the UN from distributing aid (even though the UN is said to be heavily infiltrated by Hamas [1], and the GHF was established to restrict Hamas’ access to food supplies and prevent profiteering through resale [2]).
Furthermore, if starvation in Gaza is a pressing reality, why does the UN refuse to distribute food directly [4]? In fact, the claim that there is a famine going on just doesn't match the numbers [5], and UN-linked IPC finds no mortality data to prove famine is present, despite their very intention of proving so [6], and media was found to misrepresent the situation on the ground [7]
Finally, little attention is given to Egypt’s role in maintaining the blockade of Gaza, which also contributes to "famine". Egypt does not allow Gazans—who are described by some as facing genocide—to cross its border to escape [3]. It often seems as though those who argue that starvation is being deliberately inflicted prefer to keep the situation unchanged, only to place the blame on Israel.
Not in a thousand years I would have expected CNN to start reporting on this.
Hope they got some good lines responding to accusations on how every single one of them, including the janitors at the CNN Center in Atlanta are antisemitic.
-"But we're not!" -"Aha, that's exactly what they always say, clearly a sign of guilt!" /s
Doubtful, they have been spending tremendous efforts and the population of Gaza has barely bulged downwards. If this is genocide, they are shitty at it.
In fact, Hamas are almost certainly not being starved at all. They have the guns, and they will make sure they get food. They have shown again and again they are quite willing to shoot Palestinian civilians for just being slightly inconvenient to them. They certainly won't mind shooting some for food.
A boycott is people choosing where to spend their money (exercising their right of free association). That's not even in the same universe as punishing innocent people by murdering and starving them.
Israel is doing neither, as far as I am concerned. Israel allowed in more than the required amount of food. Collateral damage within the context of war is not murder. Internal food distribution difficulties are not systematic starvation. If truly there was a famine, propagandists would not need to use photos of cancer patients (and similar) as false evidence for starvation.
Fair enough, what are sanctions, if not collective punishment? There is a concentrated campaign to isolate the entire country and its citizens, from the same type of people that say Hamas does not represent Palestinians. Either there is a double standard here, or collective punishment is fair game. Choose one.
How are they Judeo-supremacist? Israel peacefully lets Islamic Arabs to live and practice their life - a whole 20% of their population. On the other hand, Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, literally talks about their Islamic supremacist goals in their charter. It’s not even something they’re afraid of admitting or think needs to be hidden.
Probably because Israel violated the ceasefire earlier this year (that was a sham from the beginning) that lasted from January to March. The first phase of the ceasefire saw an exchange of hostages, but then the Israelis refused to move on to the second phase and broke the ceasefire by bombing Gaza in the middle of the night, killing over 400 Palestinians in one day, including over 200 children. [0]
Not to mention the fact that Israel just killed a top Hamas negotiator in Doha, Qatar only a few weeks ago. [1] How can you negotiate with someone who just killed your negotiator?
> Probably because Israel violated the ceasefire earlier this year (that was a sham from the beginning) that lasted from January to March. The first phase of the ceasefire saw an exchange of hostages, but then the Israelis refused to move on to the second phase and broke the ceasefire by bombing Gaza in the middle of the night, killing over 400 Palestinians in one day, including over 200 children.
Israel has been rather consistent that a permanent ceasefire will only happen when Hamas effectively surrenders and gives up power. Hamas had also refused to continue releasing hostages which effectively ended the ceasefire(as the terms of the second phase were never finalized).
> Not to mention the fact that Israel just killed a top Hamas negotiator in Doha, Qatar only a few weeks ago. [1] How can you negotiate with someone who just killed your negotiator?
I suppose when attempting to negotiate the surrender of Hamas if the negotiators refuse to surrender after having clearly lost a war they started then eliminating the current negotiators may result in their replacements being more likely to capitulate. That seemed to work out with Hezbollah at least.
>I suppose when attempting to negotiate the surrender of Hamas if the negotiators refuse to surrender after having clearly lost a war they started then eliminating the current negotiators may result in their replacements being more likely to capitulate.
So how exactly do you negotiate with genocidal terrorists that refuse to surrender despite having clearly lost a war? There certainly isn't an easy solution here.
> The point is that surrender is something that has to be negociated.
It actually doesn't have to be negotiated, one side can simply make a demand for surrender with their terms and then apply military pressure until capitulation. This is largely what happened with Germany/Japan in WW2.
> By organizing boring meetings with negociators and never killing them.
If it's clear the current negotiators/leaders will never surrender then there is arguably no benefit in keeping those particular negotiators/leaders alive. Once an organizations leadership tree is wiped out a few levels deep there's a decent chance you will get negotiators/leaders that will eventually capitulate to the demands(i.e. like what happened with Hezbollah).
> If Israel believes they are genocidal terrorists that won't surrender why are they even negotiating?
One reason would be to try and get back as many hostages as possible, regardless of whether or not the terrorists surrender.
> You either negotiate or you attack the people you want to negotiate with. Not both
One can still attack an enemy while negotiating with them, I see no reason one would have to pick one option over the other.
It's not at all uncommon to negotiate with ones enemies while you attack them(including trying to kill them). If Israel explicitly gave the enemy representatives they were negotiating with diplomatic immunity then one might have a better argument against attacking those with immunity, but that was AFAIU not the case here.
> Well Israel's current solution is to impose famine and genocide on the civilian population.
There is no credible evidence that there is famine or genocide occurring in Gaza. Obviously the situation in Gaza is bad but that's to be expected for a war.
> This thread is literally about an article in which it is outlined that there is indeed a famine in Gaza.
It's not credible however[0]. There have been many claims without appropriate evidence for a while[1] and those involved tend to be antisemitic individuals interested only in pushing a specific narrative regardless of the facts on the ground.
As opposed to the first source you posted which is the text of a sky news interview with Hillel Neuer
From wiki
"Neuer was selected as one of the "top 100 most influential Jewish people in the world" by Israeli newspaper Maariv,[9] and by the Algemeiner Journal in 2017. He is an outspoken defender of Israel[10][11] and critic of the UN's human rights councils' actions.[12]"
So he's not pushing a pro-Israel view? How can you dismiss one source with claims of bias by providing a source that is also bias but of the opposing view?
I want to point out that I don't think sources should be ignored merely due to bias. You do though so I await your defense
I don't think I ever claimed his view was neutral. Groups on both sides putting out analysis papers will likely have some degree of bias.
> How can you dismiss one source with claims of bias by providing a source that is also bias but of the opposing view?
I mostly consider them unreliable because they have a history of putting out reports that push a narrative that simply isn't in line with reality and tend to have major methodological issues. They also have a history of putting out wildly inaccurate future projections.
> I want to point out that I don't think sources should be ignored merely due to bias. You do though so I await your defense
There's two aspects, one is the history of methodologically problematic analysis put out by these organization like those involved in the IPC report along with other UN organizations.
The other is that individuals involved in the reports tend to hold extremist viewpoints that point to a clear motivation for pushing narratives regardless of the reality on the ground.
UN officials in particular have a rather common habit of straight up lying about facts(and even what their own UN reports say in regards to starvation risk) and when caught they simply try and justify their lies[0] because those lies supposedly help their cause.
The most detailed responses/rebuttals to these IPC reports would generally be reports that COGAT is involved in producing[1][2]. While COGAT is arguably biased they do put out sufficient data/references for one to validate their analysis, groups like UN Watch do likely source from these reports. Keep in mind there's not many organizations that have access to data on the ground, COGAT likely has the most complete view while humanitarian organizations likely only have data specific to their own operations. By cherry picking data(often non-public data), ignoring counterfactual data and largely excluding COGAT data the IPC report authors can paint a false narrative more easily.
Claims of famine citing the UN/IPC are normally appeals to authority, whose convincingness depends on the credibility of the authority.
The UNWatch article isn't that - you can easy verify their points yourself. I.e. by IPC's own definition and Hamas' own casualty data, we're about three orders of magnitude short of meeting one of the requirements of a famine. IPC is just ignoring their own definition and declaring a famine anyway.
That wasn't me. I would say the question of how often UN officials lie is rather moot. If it follows from plain facts and basic math that the famine claim is false, we don't really need to argue about the credibility of those making the claims.
> How can you negotiate with someone who just killed your negotiator?
The only other option seems to be that Israel is about to destroy the rest of Gaza City, and take out the last major location that Hamas controls. So their options are to either accept the peace plan, or die.
I don't think Israel cares that much which choice Hamas choses. But yeah accepting this peace deal sounds like it it quite obviously the mostly likely option to help prevent all the buildings that are about to be destroyed and people who will be killed.
No. They couldn't come to an agreement with Hamas.
> [Israel] broke the ceasefire
No. The ceasefire was over - it was time limited. The 2nd phase was supposed to be release of the rest of hostages. Hamas wouldn't release the hostages.
Let me take a guess. You are against Trump's plan as well and think Hamas should refuse it.
I can't believe I'm weighing in on a political thread, but the "deal" is very one sided. It offers very little for the Palestinians in terms of creating their own country and ability to self govern and gives Israel pretty much everything they want including some control over Palestine.
The current "peace deal" is terrible for the Palestinians. No other country would sign it either.
Yes they did. The jews were ready to accept the UN plan in 47. If the palestinains agreed the nakba would have been the end of this conflict. Instead the Palestinians chose governments that attacked israel. Even when Israel left gaza after the second intifada the gazans continued to launch rockets at tel aviv.
In context, of course pro Zionist leaders such as David Ben-Gurion were strongly in favour of a plan that saw a two-thirds majority Arab population pushed back into 43% of the territory, at the time such leaders were advocating acceptance of that plan as their ideal stepping stone to to future territorial expansion over all of Palestine.
Naturally the opposing Arab leaders were against a plan that saw a majority population receive less land, a plan that was being put forward by people openly stating it was a first step to total control of everything.
> Naturally the opposing Arab leaders were against a plan that saw a majority population receive less land, a plan that was being put forward by people openly stating it was a first step to total control of everything.
Keep in mind that there is a state with a Palestinian majority population that came out of the division of the territory under the British Mandate system, that country of course is Jordan.
> It's a shame a better deal could not have been struck for the benefit of all the people with a millennium plus history in the Levant, of all faiths.
I think it's pretty clear that the Arab leaders at the time would never have accepted an independent Jewish state regardless of how fair the land division was.
Most people wouldn't accept a new country being made over their heads within their land. Jewish people had largely not been there since Roman times. That's a long, long time. Would you accept a country being founded in yours for, say, the Roma? I highly doubt it.
> Most people wouldn't accept a new country being made over their heads within their land. Jewish people had largely not been there since Roman times.
There were plenty of Jews living on the land by the time of Israeli independence, land which had largely been acquired by purchases from Arab landowners.
> Would you accept a country being founded in yours for, say, the Roma? I highly doubt it.
Palestine was never a country prior to Israeli independence so that's probably not a realistic comparison either.
Most of the land allocated to the jews was uninhabitable desert. You can count acreage but that doesnt really tell you anything about the value each side received. Im not going to act like the plan was a great deal for palestinians, but it was an choice they had and they spurned it in favor of a never ending war that they can not win.
> The indigenous people of Palestine did not start this conflict.
These arguments are not particularly helpful because you can easily make the case for either side being the indigenous people depending on how far you want to go back in history.
> They did not choose to be colonized by Jews fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe.
At this point the majority of Israelis were born in Israel and hold no other citizenship, so if you're suggesting the Jews all go back to Europe that isn't a realistic expectation, also many Jews were forced out of other middle east countries shortly after the founding of Israel. You can make these same arguments about many countries like the United States or Canada as well as being colonies that pushed out their indigenous people, but these arguments are not going to be particularly productive as nobody is expecting these countries to return all land to their indigenous populations either. By the way these Jews fleeing Eastern Europe prior to Israeli independence were largely purchasing the land from Arab landowners which is arguably better than them haven taken the land by force.
Germany and Japan also got to keep their countries in the end. What guarantees do the Palestinians have that they'll get to keep Gaza and not have it be overrun by Israeli settlers (who are already wreaking havoc in the West Bank)?
> Germany and Japan also got to keep their countries in the end.
Germany was split in two for many years. Ultimately they were able to keep their countries because the occupation forces were successfully able to largely de-radicalize those countries.
> What guarantees do the Palestinians have that they'll get to keep Gaza and not have it be overrun by Israeli settlers (who are already wreaking havoc in the West Bank)?
I suppose that would depend on the surrender agreement and whatever agreements are subsequently put in place, but the settler issue differs significantly between Gaza and the West Bank for various reasons. For example the issue of religious sites is a much bigger issue in the West Bank, there has been little desire amongst Israelis to settle Gaza compared to the West Bank. The security issues in the West Bank tend to also be more problematic due to proximity to major Israeli cities.
the deal is not with palestinians but with hamas (unless you say that hamas represents palestinians). palestinians at large and palestinian authority support this deal.
Because it doesn't move the situation any closer to liberation of their people and their homeland.
They have been willing to constantly fight, and constantly keep getting killed by an enemy with overwhelming advantages, for their cause for two years now. Why would you assume that being able to escape with their lives is suddenly more important to them?
> They have been willing to constantly fight, and constantly keep getting killed by an enemy
Thats not true at all. Most people in palestine do not want to throw their lives away for nothing. Most of them want peace. Its only Hamas that would apparently prefer to get killed and have gaza be flattened instead of accepting peace.
The question I responded to was: "why is Hamas refusing a peace deal that ends all this and lets them escape with their lives?" Your responding that what I wrote is "not true at all" makes no sense in the context.
> They have been willing to constantly fight, and constantly keep getting killed by an enemy with overwhelming advantages, for their cause for two years now
Hamas has. If you put this deal to a plebescite in Gaza, do you really think they'd vote for more war?
Yes, Hamas (and all the other resistance factions that are active in Gaza). The question I responded to was: "why is Hamas refusing a peace deal that ends all this and lets them escape with their lives?" My answer was perfectly within the scope of the original question.
> If you gave the jewish resistance in Nazi Germany the same deal, would you be just as suprised if they continued to fight for total freedom?
Yes?
Just so I understand the hypothetical, the Jewish resistance in Nazi Germany (not really a singular thing, but I'll read this as the French Resistance and ghetto leaders) are offered amnesty, i.e. an end to the Holocaust, in exchange for literally anything? Why wouldn't they take it? It's literally a choice between life and death.
And again, it gives time for regrouping, clear thinking, rallying support. Turning it down seems to scream that the offer, in this hypothetical an end to the Holocaust, in our timeline a ceasefire, isn't actually that important. At that point, both sides are choosing to fight. European Jews didn't choose the Holocaust. I don't think Palestinians are choosing this war, but if they turned down a peace deal, they by definition are.
I mean, it moves the situation closer to not living in war and famine? Also the idea of amnesty to all Hamas members looks pretty generous to me - Nazis didn't enjoy the same privilege
> I mean, it moves the situation closer to not living in war and famine?
And then what? Look at the West Bank to see what happens when you don't resist the occupation and fully cooperate with the colonial state. You get slowly cleansed anyway.
> Also the idea of amnesty to all Hamas members looks pretty generous to me
Israel specializes in assassinations and has a history of relentlessly pursuing those it deems its enemies. If you were a Hamas fighter, your choice would be to either die fighting for a purpose, or be killed in exile without a purpose anymore.
The Israelis (and their suppliers) are the ones with the power to end it. They have chosen this. There are actually other avenues you know. This is entirely on them.
Like, not at all? They tried to withdraw from Gaza, and preferred to educate their population on living under daily rocket attacks just to avoid waging a war in Gaza. It all dragged on with no hope for a permanent peace and culminated in the October massacre.
Hamas on the other hand does indeed have the power to end it all - if not with all their dreams and wishes being fulfilled - which is a pretty outrageous expectation for the losing party
They are not Western, but they are a democracy for sure. The extremist minority got into the government by democratic mechanisms - happens in Western democracies too from time to time
Tried to withdraw? Seems like they like things just how they are. (Well except for the part where they want the Palestinians to give up any claims to the land that was stolen from them and just evaporate.)
The result of Israel:
- subjugating Palestinians in a ghetto, controlling everything that goes into and out of Gaza
- preventing Gazans from having their own power, airports, piers, and more, and
- "putting them on a diet", and
- propping up Hamas to have a plausible enemy to fight against in Gaza, and
- occasionally "mowing the lawn" to kill hundreds (or thousands)
is the creation of anti-Israel hatred. Once that boils over, you get what happened, which is the murder and kidnapping of innocent people in Israel.
> Hamas on the other hand does indeed have the power to end it all - if not with all their dreams and wishes being fulfilled - which is a pretty outrageous expectation for the losing party
Maybe instead petition Netanyahu et al to stop committing a genocide? They can stop flattening Gaza and starving Gazans at any point. They hold all the cards.
They could stop the current stage of the war, sure. They couldn't achieve peace though - basically stopping the operation would mean reverting to pre Oct. 2023 state with Israel trying to improve their security (aka "blockade") so that it doesn't happen again. Given the recent advances in military practice I would imagine that would involve lots of drones flying over Gaza 24/7 and I can already hear what international organizations are saying about that.
Hamas on the other hand has the keys for the permanent peace. Not implying that the way current operation is waged is justified though.
Israel can become one state with democracy for all its residents. That's the real answer.
> I can already hear what international organizations are saying about that
What will they say? (And would they be wrong?) Imprisoning Palestinian refugees is definitely a human rights violation.
> Hamas on the other hand has the keys for the permanent peace
Not sure why everyone says Israel (the state with all the power in this relationship) is powerless. What do you propose Hamas do to ensure permanent peace?
>The Israelis (and their suppliers) are the ones with the power to end it
Israel cannot unilaterally end hostilities any more than Hamas can.
Peace requires two willing parties.
Israeli people need to remove Bibi the genocider and be willing to concede land and leave Palestine alone
Palestinians need to be willing to evict and eliminate Hamas, run the country in a non oppressive way, and leave Israel alone
Israel can end the genocide it is perpetrating, and then accept more death in a few years when Hamas feels like doing more marketing (which, fyi, is the point of their terrorism: Fundraising). Is that desirable or useful?
Please show me where Hamas has signaled in any way that they would leave Israel alone if Israel completely left Palestine alone. Right now neither side can even manage a token ceasefire. There's no trust, and there's no accountability.
The real question is this: How many dead people are either side willing to accept to work towards lasting peace?
Lasting peace, a solution to the Palestinian horror, requires people willing to give up legitimate grievances from the past. Are Palestinians willing to move on from half of their children starving to death? Lots of Israeli people were willing to protest their own government before October 7th to agitate for less Palestinian oppression. Hamas targeted some of those young adults for that.
> Israel cannot unilaterally end hostilities any more than Hamas can.
They absolutely can! For a moment consider the power differential in this assault. Do not equate Hamas' attacks with Israel's blockade, exploitation, starvation and war crimes of the entire Gazan population. The displaced Palestinians imprisoned in the Gaza ghetto don't have war planes, armed drones, and tanks, let alone nukes and billions and billions of aid from allies.
Also, consider Israel has a total blockade of Gaza. Nothing gets in or out without Israel's say so. And we haven't even talked about "the hostilities" of the expanding illegal occupation of the West Bank.
Israel can stop their genocide and starvation today. They can stop further occupying the West Bank today.
> Palestinians need to be willing to evict and eliminate Hamas, run the country in a non oppressive way, and leave Israel alone
Israel's flattening of Gaza has nothing to do with Hamas. You don't get to starve and murder everyone in Gaza because of Hamas. You don't get to commit genocide. (An intent stated many times by Israeli officials BTW)
> Please show me where Hamas has signaled in any way that they would leave Israel alone if Israel completely left Palestine alone.
Hamas existing or now is irrelevant to Israel starving everyone in Gaza and destroying every building, hospital, school, house, cemetery in it including all the farm land. This is rank inhumanity.
> Right now neither side can even manage a token ceasefire. There's no trust, and there's no accountability.
One side holds all the cards and it's not Hamas nor the civilians in Gaza. IF you want to talk about accountability, maybe the world should actually hold Israel responsible for its actions. Maybe we can get the Israelis to kick the genociders out of its government for a change? (Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben Gvir for starters)
> Are Palestinians willing to move on from half of their children starving to death?
Wait--The Palestinians are blockading themselves?
> Lots of Israeli people were willing to protest their own government before October 7th to agitate for less Palestinian oppression. Hamas targeted some of those young adults for that.
Polling consistently shows Israelis are in favor of what's happening in Gaza.
What do you mean? Trump's plan to end the war, Israel has accepted it. Now Palestinians will probably refuse it. Why refuse the end of the war and the "genocide"?
It's like they demanded a country, but when the country was offered multiple times, they refused it because what they actually want is to destroy Israel and not build their own country.
Rhodesia was "destroyed", and the outcome was for the better.
Apartheid South Africa was "destroyed", and the outcome was for the better.
French Algeria was "destroyed", and the outcome was for the better.
When Israel gets similarly "destroyed", and it is no longer a supremacist colonial state, and the people who remain are living with equal rights, it will be for the better. Everyone other than colonists and white supremacists understand this. If yoru country was colonized by outside invaders, you would understand anti-colonial struggle perfectly well.
Just out of curiosity, what does "destroyed" mean in Israel case? Is this a situation, that can potentially lead to Israel ruled by Hamas and Hamas having a nuke and army, that can easily reach Europe? How is that "better"?
There is a reason why no one, except extremists (on both sides, both Greater Israel or whatever, or Greater Palatine) support one state solution.
Not a problem at all. South Africa's nukes were destroyed and/or handed over to USA prior to the dismantling of the state. The same can be done with Israel's nukes, and any other military gear that they wish to keep out of hands of the palestinian resistance.
And what if they say no? And what if they are willing to use every last one of them if needed to prevent their destruction and there is absolutely no way to convince them otherwise, other than to not destroy them?
Then what? They have 100+ nuclear weapons. They can't all be shot down.
You are demonstrating one case of reality denial that props the Palestinian to keep fighting Israel from generation to another, even though they've never been in a worse situation.
There are many other proponents of the Palestinian struggle, that would hate for them to surrender or just go elsewhere, because they need them to keep fighting. I'll name some examples:
1. The Muslim clerics promising them Al Aqsa, who look at the Jews self-rule as an historical insult to a place that should have been "Dar al-Islam";
2. The different movements and people of interest that are implanting nostalgic longing across the 4th generation Palestinian diaspora to a place they never visited and to a country that never existed;
3. Those Arab rulers, like in Egypt, that don't want the "Palestinian Issue" (their words, not mine) to go away because it nibbles at Israel;
4. Those with interests of self preservation, like King Abdallah of Jordan, who rules over a Palestinian majority and fears the moment they try to realize their national aspirations in his kingdom instead of in Israel;
5. Those like Greta and other who look to pick up a cause, and of course lets not forget those who just hate Jews.
6. Lest we forget the billionaires Palestinian leaders, like Arafat and Haniyea who amassed huge fortunes and lived lavish lifestyles on the back of the "Palestinian struggle";
7. All of those functionaries in the UN and elsewhere who feed off this huge machine of handouts in the form of UNRWA, the Red Cross and all those agencies that funnel money and goods to Palestinians wherever they are, keeping them fed and content so they can avoid assimilating and building a real future for themselves, while teaching in their agency schools a curriculum of hate towards Jews and Israel.
8. The Iranian mullahs who need a cause to rally their people, to keep their thoughts away from being thirsty, poor and oppressed.
All of those people making grand plans for the demise of Israel, while Israel just keeps getting stronger. No, seriously; the Israeli GDP per capita has surpassed that of the UK.
What's common to all of those groups that I mentioned is that none of them care about what becomes of the average Palestinian. 10,000 dead, 60,000 dead, it's all worthwhile if Israel suffers.
Golda Meir wisely said, "Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us". As long as those powerful interest groups are interested in keeping the Palestinian struggle alive, there can never be peace; and destroying Israel is just a dangerous pipe dream that kept the Arab world poor and beaten for 80 years now.
What an interesting historical stretch to call Jews "invaders" in Israel, when the entire place is riddled with Jewish history and artefacts dating back thousands of years.
While Rhodesia and South Africa were colonial experiments by people with no prior connection to Africa, that's not the case with Israel. Since the onset of told history there were Jews in that area.
Yes, many thousands of years ago the land was populated by Jewish peoples. Then Romans sacked Jerusalem and kicked them all out. The Eastern Roman empire never reversed that ban. After the muslim conquest of Levant in about 630 AD, caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab lifted the Christian ban on Jews entering Jerusalem some time later during his reign. After a millenium of mixing and slow but gradual conversion to the dominant socio-cultural muslim group, we know that the Jewish population of Palestine at the time (1917) that the British government initiated the process of handing over Palestine to jews in return for Lord Rothschild's money that they needed to keep fighting WW1 [1], was only about 7%.
Subsequent immigration of mostly European jews into Palestine, resulted in about 30% jewish population by the time Western powers decided to declare an independent Jewish-dominated state of Israel on top of Palestine in 1947.
The vast majority of the current jewish population of Israel are absolutely foreign invaders and their second or third generation descendants.
The party refusing any kind of deal are Israel since their goal is annihilation of Palestinians. Hamas were ready from day one for a deal, their goal (contrary to israeli narrative of course) was to negotiate prisoner exchange for the 1000s of Palesitnian prisoners held by israel (including children). This is still their goal along with ceasefire and complete withdrawal from Gaza.
> The party refusing any kind of deal are Israel since their goal is annihilation of Palestinians
First, there is no such thing as a Palestinian - that’s a made up identity to falsely claim the region as their own. Second, there have been five two-state solution offers in the past, that Israel was ready to accept. Leaders on the other side refused. Third, Hamas is not accepting the current deal that is on the table, and is incredibly fair (given the lopsided hostage/prisoner release that favors Hamas). Fourth, Israel had already withdrawn from Gaza - that was the status quo when Hamas got elected and began a decades long campaign of terrorism - remember the literal thousands of rocket attacks on Israel? Fifth, if Israel’s goal is the “annihilation of Palestinians”, why are the 20% of Israel’s population that would identify as such doing so well? Clearly this isn’t their goal, but just misinformation.
A quote from the Minutes of the Ninth Session of the League of Nations, 1922:
Colonel Symes explained that the country was described as "Palestine" by Europeans and as "Falestin" by the Arabs. The Hebrew name for the country was the designation "Land of Israel", and the Government, to meet Jewish wishes, had agreed that the word "Palestine" in Hebrew characters should be followed in all official documents by the initials which stood for that designation.
Haha. No. Hamas goal with October 7 was exactly this. To provoke an Israeli overreaction in order to derail the diplomatic recognition talks between Israel and the Saudis.
Hamas just underestimated how much it would actually cost. Or maybe they didn’t, who knows.
> the negotiators in Qatar who were supposedly working towards a ceasefire
Supposedly is the key word. Qatar has urged Hamas to accept Trump’s ceasefire terms publicly. But let’s not forget they welcomed and housed Hamas’s leaders, and funded them, for a long time prior to today. Qatar has a history of supporting other terror groups as well:
That's not true, if you’re referring to the Trump plan, as he contradicted one of the main points upon return to Israel. He selectively backed some part of it, which is not really “signing” on the same plan that was offered to other parties.
Also, what value has Netanyahu’s word? I mean, after blowing up a truce unilaterally, after killing negotiators, after all the corruption reckoning that is coming to him if/when out of office...
Whenever they've tried to agree to any peace deals in the past, what ends up happening is they make concessions and then Netanyahu turns around and resumes the war anyway.
Well, hows the "peace" in the West Bank, where there's no Hamas? Israel has proven in both the West Bank AND Gaza that they do not care whether you violently resist or you attempt to be peaceful. You WILL BE REMOVED from your land, dispossessed of everything you own, because growing the Israeli people is more important than your life, your rights, your anything.
Leadership of the political organisation, not all. However the military branch's leadership is/was in Gaza (like Yahya Sinwar and others who were killed)
That is, technically, at odds with the truth, and morally, a transparent attempt at misinformation, please read the comments above you, or use “the internet”.
Because Netanyahu is already saying he wouldn't comply with the deal that he's already agreed to, and isn't treating it as a peace deal.
> While Netanyahu agreed to the plan on Monday, he already appears to be pushing back on several of its terms.
> In a video posted on X, he insisted that the IDF would would be able to remain in parts of the territory and that Israel would 'forcibly resist' the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Killing 736 Israeli civilians, 79 foreign nationals, and 379 Israeli military and security personnel, and kidnapping an additional 250 civilians is not, by any fathomable definition, genocide. It is a war crime for sure, but it's not genocide.
Edit: the post I was replying to was claiming Hamas/the Palestinians perpetrated a genocide in Israel. It has since been edited to be a completely different thing.
> Killing 736 Israeli civilians, 79 foreign nationals, and 379 Israeli military and security personnel, and kidnapping an additional 250 civilians is not, by any fathomable definition, genocide. It is a war crime for sure, but it's not genocide.
I think the evidence is quite overwhelming that Hamas had clear genocidal intent, even if they did not have the means to accomplish that intent.
Something I try to explain to people is that HAMAS tries to kill civilians, but fails at achieving their goals, meanwhile Israel tries to avoid killing civilians, but fails to achieve that goal.
One of these is better than the other.
Weirdly, many people disagree over which one that is.
> How could one cause a famine accidentally, without intent to murder civilians?
There isn't credible evidence of a famine in Gaza. I'm not saying things are great(it is a war zone after all), but they certainly haven't gotten that bad. Look at pictures of Palestinians on the street in Gaza and compare them to pictures of people in countries where there is actual famine, they look nothing alike.
Maybe so. Genocidal intent is not genocide, by any stretch of the imagination. The shooter at the UK synagogue would love to be able to kill every last Jewish person in the world. That doesn't mean he committed genocide when he killed those 2 people and injured 4 others.
I think you are mixing up genocide and the acts that are committed in furtherance of genocide.
Genocide is legally a set of acts committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.
So yes, what Hamas did on Oct 7 was not genocide, and similarly what Israel does on any given day in Gaza is not genocide. Rather they are both part of ongoing campaigns that arguably are genocide.
This is patent absurdity. What Hamas did on October 7th was an atrocity and a war crime. Many of the perpetrators, and of Hamas military leadership, would be very happy to be able to commit genocide against the people of Israel, and maybe even Jewish people in general.
However, there's no such thing as "unsuccessful genocide". Wanting to commit genocide and even terrorist bombings which target the population you'd like to exterminate are not genocide. To be committing the crime of genocide, you have to actually be in a position where you are actively displacing or exterminating a population.
Israel is committing genocide in Gaza since October 7th, because they are actively working towards a goal of eliminating the Palestinian population from the Gaza territory, or at least from the majority of it. They have already achieved a part of the genocide. They're not going all scorched earth and killing by the millions for the same reason they're not launching one of their illegal nukes in Gaza: they fear international reaction if the move is too sudden and overwhelming.
Hamas, by contrast, is not committing genocide in Israel, because it's not actively killing or starving or displacing any part of the population of Israel. I'm sure Hamas would love to do that, but it's a simple obvious fact that they're not succeeding. This is like claiming that Al Qaeda has an ongoing campaign of genocide of the West, because of 9/11 and some other attacks on, say, British troops.
You are honestly blaming the killing of 60,000+ Palestinians on Hamas for not accepting a Peace Deal (Israel didn't honor the last one months ago) only?
Assume it is a hostage situation, 2,000,000 Hostages. Israel has killed 60,000+ hostages trying to rescue hostages. Starvation also counts as killings to me, but I supposed "Starved" is less direct than "Shot"
> They do not value their own lives [...] If the Palestinians valued their own lives
You can't post slurs like this to HN, no matter which people you have a problem with. No more of this, please, regardless of how divisive the topic and how justified the strong feelings about it are.
> Israel values the lives of their hostages above all else and will try to rescue them no matter the cost.
Then why did the Israelis violate the ceasefire in March earlier this year, after they refused to move on to the second phase which would've seen the release of more of the hostages? They broke the ceasefire by killing 400 Palestinians in one day, including over 200 children. [0] Conveniently Netanyahu used it as an excuse to get out of a court appearance for his corruption trial the next day.
On the other hand: how idiotic would they have to be to believe the Israelis will let them escape with their lives, given all the evidence to the contrary?
That's the entire point of "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" definitions like intentional starvation. It doesn't matter what the justification is, they're not allowed by the international law and need to be punished as such in all cases unconditionally.
Nonsense, this is about the land. Israel wants Gaza and the West Bank, and who knows what more, and if they have to go genocidal to getting it, they will. So simple like that. Any other explanation is just obfuscation of this obvious fact.
Just so we are clear, Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor and we eventually nuked them killing 250k. Was that an international war crime?
Al Qaeda attacked us and killed 3000 Americans and in response we killed about 200k Afghanis. Was that a war crime?
Israel has simply responded as any other country would to the attack.
Point 1, nonsense: Allies fed Germans during WW2, the US fed Iraqis and Afghans during their wars and occupations. Point 2, nonsense: The Rafah crossing has been intermittently open, and Egypt has allowed aid in coordination with the UN. Israel has bombed the Rafah crossing multiple times since October 7th. Point 3, whataboutism. Sudan and Yemen are in the news in my circles weekly and there's care for all these horrible events.
My whole point is that there is a double standard applied to the only Jewish state vs all other countries, and I'm afraid you have given pretty weak rebuttal.
Point 1: nope, the Allies provided minimal food to the Germans during the conflict. They were too busy bombing the crap out of German cities, and they didn't bother on warning the civilians first, as Israel does in Gaza. The aid came AFTER the Nazis had unconditionally surrendered.
Point 2: nope again - there has been some food coming from Egypt, but they are not at war and nobody is marching in the streets demanding that they give more. And yes, Rafah was bombed, because there is a war taking place, with Hamas smuggling arms and food through the crossing.
Point 3: nope, the famines in Sudan and Yemen are real vs the fake famine in Gaza, and yet I see no street marches or HN posts on these tragedies. Maybe it's because it is Muslims killing and starving other Muslims. No Jews, No News.
If you actually cared about Gazans you would demand that Hamas release hostages and surrender - conflict ends immediately.
You move goalposts and mire yourself in falsehood.
Point 1 empirically wrong. Of course more food was provided after guns went silent.
Point 2 you sound like you agree with me and disagree with your original post.
Point 3. Reveals you as a propagandist.I've demanded that Hamas releases the hostage. From your rather uninformed framing it's clear you think there's a war on all of Gaza and not just Hamas. You just read an article on how Israel engineered a famine, correct? This reveals quite a lot about your relationship to truth and human suffering.
Well, unfortunately once again lots of opinions in your post but no evidence to back it up.It doesn't look like we will be learning anything new from you. Buh Bye.
Huh, interesting. Search with Grok seems to concur. While they did commit many atrocities against women and children, the ripping from belly events failed journalistic verification.
Insane brutality has happened on both sides. However the statistical numbers are different, before oct 7 and after, one side has been much more successful in its brutalization of the other.
Even if Israel actually were trying to recover the hostages, this wouldn't make sense. Over 20,000 dead Palestinian children and blocking aid does not recover any hostages. On the contrary, it only fuels the terror ideology ensuring Hamas is never eradicated.
Israel is responsible for its own actions. It is not Hamas who is using starvation as a weapon of war, it is Israel.
You should look into the accounts of doctors who are not allowed to take in baby food. Israeli mobs destroying aid trucks. Israeli soldiers gloating about killing children.
While Hamas has done atrocities, this does not allow atrocities to be committed in response. Especially by an occupying power that controls every variable in the environment.
It's incredible how two years of continuing pounding a small strip of land still leaves ample space for Hamas to operate. To the point that Israel international reputation is damaged because, check notes, they don't allow baby formula for babies that might otherwise die under those aforementioned bombs. Or being amputated.
Same with the latest "because Hamas": apparently Hamas, while being under the bombs with Israeli soldiers everywhere, was able to organise, finance and operate a flotilla of several boats to bring food that is otherwise blocked by Israel. Either the IDF has been bombing randomly in the last two years (to inflict the highest pain to civilian) or they are lying. Or both.
but this was already known: Netanyahu must cling to power, otherwise he will be screwed on so many levels, that's why he is sabotaging any agreement (and this has always been his modus operandi, see what he did back in the 90s).
It appears that Hamas struck a deeper blow on October 7th than we realized. Perhaps Israel's humanity was the primary target. It's like watching a family member destroy everything in a fit of grief and rage. Surely there is a wiser path.
I didn't downvote you but I have no idea what you're trying to say.
It's a style of post common in twitter, where you obliquely refer to several things that you personally are familiar with and assume that the reader will understand because they should have basically entirely the same things on their mind that you do.
He's alluding to some prophetic beliefs shared by some jews and some evangelical christians that the temple of Jerusalem needs to be rebuilt again (on the place of the current al-Aqsa mosque). This same mosque is important in Islam because it is in the place where the prophet ascended to heaven.
If the temple is rebuilt (and some more things happen depending on the belief) some jews believe then that the messiah will come, and some evangelical christians believe instead that it starts the end of times, where good christians go to heaven.
> This same mosque is important in Islam because it is in the place where the prophet ascended to heaven.
Is it actually important in Islam? Or is it just a way for fundamentalists to make a claim to land that was historically Jewish? Islam was not invented until the 7th century. The temple ruins that the Al Aqsa mosque is built on is much older - by over a thousand years. I’ve also seen some Muslim scholars claim that the “real” Al-Aqsa is actually not on this site but elsewhere, and potentially lost over time.
>Is it actually important in Islam? Or is it just a way for fundamentalists to make a claim to land that was historically Jewish?
A little of both. Mohammed was sort of a weeb, but for jews. But the jews snubbed him, and he said he'd run off and start his own Abrahamic religion. So while it was just to make a claim to land, it was done right at the beginning, and nothing that any muslim alive today is guilty of... or even their great-great-grandparents, come to that.
>where you obliquely refer to several things that you personally are familiar with
It's sad, I suppose, that you are unfamiliar with the basics such that you can't much discuss (or even follow) current events.
The Third Temple refers to a predicted temple that jews believe they are destined to build some point in the future. Unfortunately, there is an Islamic mosque in the only spot in the world they can/will build it. This is in the West Bank. I don't know how anyone who grew up hearing about Israel/Palestine on the news for the last 20 years wouldn't at least get the vague idea of what I'm talking about. I'll try to have Cliff Notes published for each of my comments published a few weeks before from now on.
> And why is there never any posted articles with criticism of Hamas?
There definitely is; discussion of the Yemen conflict has been constant on HN. The Israeli criticism of Hamas gets much less coverage because it's less globally important. The consequence of one side or the other "losing" has very little bearing on global affairs.
I mean "bad things" Hamas has done to their own? people ( Gaza people).
Example - Hamas has killed people who criticise it ( or I should say thats whats been reported )
I don't think you read my last comment. Hundreds of embedded reporters living in Gaza have died, the only remaining perspective is the famously biased hasbara news, subject to the Israeli Military Censor unit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Censor
We can't take Israel's word for it, since the IDF controls their media. We don't have much independent reporting since Israel suppresses it. You can pretty easily read between the lines to figure out who's hiding what.
Hamas controls the reporters in Gaza too.... Its reported, Some have been killed by Hamas for not reporting as directed by Hamas.
Any reporters previously associated in any way with Hamas would be a extremely dangerous position.
Israel while having release some information on such journalists would NOT be releasing sensitive information that would give clues how information is collected and associated surveillance techniques. No doubt they and lots other militaries would have amazing tracking and interception capabilities. Israel would also be receiving information contributed by associated powers from other countries.
Also maybe Israel have recruited some Gaza people as spys?
Gaza journalists would be in IDEAL position to be spys. Would always be roaming around hotspots, where the fighting is, so would have a increased much probability of being killed.
> Based on logical (to me) probabilities , both sides would be doing "Bad things”
This doesn’t make sense from a Bayesian perspective. Israel’s war capacity far outstrips anything Hamas can field by orders of magnitude in every metric.
Assigning the uninformative prior here requires a degree of ignorance that is not credible.
I mean "bad things" Hamas has done to their own? people ( Gaza people).
Hamas has killed people who criticise it ( or I should say thats whats been reported )
Should also include many where Hamas built their war infrastructure un important (school and hospital ) infrastructure -causing these items to be valid military targets under military law
Must have cost $Billions to build (reported) 500 KM tunnels. Money that was supposed to be spent improving lives of ordinary Gaza people.
Militants and terrorists being captured for specific acts of terrorism or from the battlefield (and being prosecuted according to law btw, also fed and get medical treatment) vs civilians forcefully and randomly captured by terrorists while being randomly slaughtered beaten and starved along the way.
What do you suggest (based on your madeup accusations)?
They let go and ignore teenagers throwing rocks only or all of them?
What about teenagers firing rpgs?
Also even with your nonsense you still don’t understand the difference?
> So yes, maybe Israel started the war, not least by colonizing a territory and forcibly displacing its inhabitants (also called “stealing their land).
As well as ensuring funding of Hamas[1][2], and willfully ignoring warnings the attack was imminent[3][4].
The idea that simply empowering the PLO would have produced peace ignores the reality of what happened when they were empowered. After Oslo, Israel handed over cities in the West Bank and gave the Palestinian Authority control in Gaza. Instead of building the foundations of a peaceful state, the PLO leadership became riddled with corruption, failed to create functioning institutions, and tolerated or even encouraged waves of violence. The Second Intifada, launched under the PLO’s watch, was one of the bloodiest chapters in the conflict and shattered Israeli trust in their willingness or ability to deliver peace.
It’s true that the post-Oslo period exposed serious failures in Palestinian leadership, but the picture isn’t one-sided. The Palestinian Authority was granted limited autonomy under Oslo, not true sovereignty. Israel retained control over borders, resources, movement, and security, meaning the PLO never had the conditions to fully build a state. Corruption and mismanagement within the PA certainly damaged trust, but so did ongoing settlement expansion, restrictions on movement, and the lack of progress toward final status negotiations.
The Second Intifada was indeed devastating and eroded faith on both sides, but framing it only as a PLO decision ignores the buildup of frustration from years of unfulfilled promises and worsening conditions on the ground. Empowering the PLO in a genuine way, with real authority, accountability mechanisms, and mutual commitment to peace, might have led to a different outcome.
In other words, both leadership failures and structural limitations played roles. Reducing it to "the PLO blew it" risks oversimplifying a very complex situation.
Those claims have been investigated and were found to be insubstantial. Given that the government of Israel is extraordinarily biased in this matter and would never, under any circumstances, admit to deliberately starving civilians, we can safely disregard whatever excuses they put forth in the absence of external corroboration.
> Sam Rose, the acting director of affairs for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza, says Israel – which has near-total jurisdiction over what goods enter and exit Gaza – has controlled “to the calorie” the volume, type and overall flow of food into the enclave. “The system is designed not to function smoothly,” he said.
> Last October, Israel’s government banned UNRWA from operating in areas under its control, a prohibition that went into effect in January, having accused the agency of failing to stop Hamas’ alleged theft of aid. An internal US government review found no evidence of widespread theft by Hamas of US-funded humanitarian aid in Gaza.
Additionally:
> since when did negotiating with terrorists like Hamas even become acceptable
When people say they "don't negotiate with terrorists," what they mean is that they will not make concessions in response to terroristic threats. This idea has no relevance in this situation.
> Why has the rest of the Arab world not volunteered to receive Palestinian refugees?
You're describing forced displacement, which is a component of genocide. The reason why the Arab world has not collaborated with Israel's efforts to commit genocide in Gaza should be self-explanatory.
This is disingenous. Obliterating entire neighbourhoods, mass-killing children, and engineered starvation, avowed by the main political responsibles are hardly “crossfire” and can only be part of a savage conception of war, at odds with the Geneva convention, and human decency. It is shameful and deeply dispiriting to read such rationalization of genocide.
Could you please stop posting ideological flamebait? Looking at your history, most of your comments seem related to politics/ideology, including multiple comments referencing stereotypes, like this one [1]. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We have to ban accounts that continue to do this after being warned.
Reminder: Only right wing supporters of Iaraeli Likud party actually support genocide going on.
Literally half of Israeli citizens hate Likud and Natanyahu.
ps. Interesting trivia: Mahmoud Abbas (President of the Palestinian West Bank) and FATAH militia also are against Hamas. They always have been:
This is a popular idea in the Israeli propaganda. Israelis like to say that they hate Netanyahu, but in reality, majority of Israeli Jews fully align with his policies towards Palestinians, and multiple polls confirm this. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-08-05/ty-article/.p...
There tends to be a lot more nuance[0] when it comes to polling results like these, the reality is that opinions amongst Israelis vary quite a lot. There are also a lot of problems with organizations like the UN historically wildly misrepresenting the food situation[1] which are likely to make Israelis question the accuracy of many of these starvation reports, especially from organizations that have historically made many highly inaccurate claims. UN backed IPC reports like those cited in the CNN article likewise have serious credibility issues as well[2], additionally there are extremely biased individuals like Michael Fakhri(the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food) cited in the CNN article that even publish comic books with some rather overt antisemitic tropes[3].
This equivocation is absurd. Literally every international aid organization is saying the same thing - and even a few Israeli ones are now recognizing the genocide in Gaza. The fact that Israel, far from sending "large amounts of aid", has, in fact, systematically blocked aid to Gaza was recognized even by the US government. The US even resorted to building a pier to send their own aid in.
Edit: looking at the claims more specifically, this one is particularly easy to debunk:
> even publish comic books with some rather overt antisemitic trope
The supposed "antisemitic trope" is an image of a person holding a cracked globe. The blog post implies that this is supposed to be an image representing the antisemitic "masters of the world" trope. In fact, the image represents the UN rapporteur himself looking at how the lack of international reaction to Israel's crimes has left a crack in the UN-led rules-based world order.
Ok, find a single international humanitarian organization active in Gaza that believes that Gazans are treated well. Or even a single one active in Gaza that is not saying that a blatant genocide is taking place.
And the "tentacles" are the heads of a hydra labeled "Imperialism", "Racism", "Extractivism", "Capitalism", "Patriarchy". Not sure how much clearer the imagery could get, and which part of this is antisemitic.
> Or even a single one active in Gaza that is not saying that a blatant genocide is taking place.
World Central Kitchen is active in Gaza and last I checked makes no claim of there being a genocide in Gaza.
> And the "tentacles" are the heads of a hydra labeled "Imperialism", "Racism", "Extractivism", "Capitalism", "Patriarchy".
What seems to be implied here is that these are the means in which the Jews control the world. Casting Israelis/Jews as demonic figures in general is also a common antisemitic trope.
> Not sure how much clearer the imagery could get, and which part of this is antisemitic.
The implied world domination part as well as the demonic imagery.
> World Central Kitchen is active in Gaza and last I checked makes no claim of there being a genocide in Gaza.
They don't talk about genocide, true, but they do talk about the famine they're seeing and the extreme difficulty of getting humanitarian aid into Gaza - causing them to have almost ceased food delivery at the beginning of this year, before finding ingenious new ways of cooking and delivering supplies.
It's also funny to pick an organization which has suffered one of the most clear and well documented assassinations of aid workers by Israeli forces, the World Central Kitchen attack in 2024. This was one of the cases that even the IDF couldn't invent a justification for (the convoy they killed had been coordinating constantly with them, they had followed the root exactly, etc). They called it a regrettable error, of course.
> What seems to be implied here is that these are the means in which the Jews control the world. Casting Israelis/Jews as demonic figures in general is also a common antisemitic trope.
The comic is quite explicit, we don't have to look for implicit innuendo. It says that these forces (imperialism, capitalism, etc) are the main reasons for food insecurity everywhere this happens in the world, and Gaza is just one example. While Israel, backed by the USA, is the aggressor in the case of Gaza, the same forces (again, meaning imperialist tendencies, not some conspiracy of "evil Jews") behind other acts of aggression by other states in other places impacted by famine.
> They don't talk about genocide, true, but they do talk about the famine they're seeing and the extreme difficulty of getting humanitarian aid into Gaza - causing them to have almost ceased food delivery at the beginning of this year, before finding ingenious new ways of cooking and delivering supplies.
It's much less an issue of getting aid into Gaza and much more an issue of distribution, with most aid being intercepted before reaching the intended destination[3]. Even then I've yet to see any credible evidence that there is a famine, although there are certainly various degrees of food insecurity.
> It's also funny to pick an organization which has suffered one of the most clear and well documented assassinations of aid workers by Israeli forces, the World Central Kitchen attack in 2024. This was one of the cases that even the IDF couldn't invent a justification for (the convoy they killed had been coordinating constantly with them, they had followed the root exactly, etc). They called it a regrettable error, of course.
It's a war, targeting mistakes happen, the IDF generally makes an effort to investigate when these sort of things happen. It quite clearly wasn't a case of the IDF intentionally targeting aid workers. There are simply no incentives or evidence for the IDF to have a policy of deliberately targeting WCK aid workers. Friendly fire incidents where IDF soldiers have been killed have been somewhat common in Gaza in general so it certainly doesn't seem to be improbable that a targeting mistake like this could happen by accident.
> The comic is quite explicit, we don't have to look for implicit innuendo.
Lets go through these and see if they match up with antisemetic tropes as well.
> imperialism
So here we have the "world imperialism"[0] antisemetic trope.
> capitalism
Here we have the "Jewish Capitalism"[1] antisemetic trope.
we even have a "Patriarchy"[2] trope as well
Seems pretty clear to me what the author is doing here.
> While Israel, backed by the USA, is the aggressor in the case of Gaza, the same forces (again, meaning imperialist tendencies, not some conspiracy of "evil Jews") behind other acts of aggression by other states in other places impacted by famine.
This war was started by Hamas on October 7th, it's quite clear they are the aggressor here.
> It's much less an issue of getting aid into Gaza and much more an issue of distribution
The WCK that you cited is very clear on this: the problem is getting aid into Gaza, not distributing it. They had to close their kitchens at the beginning of the year because they just couldn't get any supplies into the territory, because Israel wouldn't allow them - especially fuel. They found creative solutions in the meantime.
> Even then I've yet to see any credible evidence that there is a famine, although there are certainly various degrees of food insecurity.
Again, the org you yourself cited has many examples.
> It quite clearly wasn't a case of the IDF intentionally targeting aid workers.
It quite clearly was. The WCK said plain as day that it was. It wasn't the first or the last either - the IDF has killed more international aid workers than even the Russian barbarians have in Ukraine. When you systematically make such "targeting mistakes" over and over again, at some point the deliberate targeting becomes obvious.
> [ going one by one]
Decrying the ills of imperialism and capitalism and patriarchy is not antisemitic. Sure, the nazis used these crisicisms to refer to Jewish people. But the Indians also used them to refer to their British colonizers, the Romanians used them to refer to the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians, the Afghani and the Nicaraguans used them to refer to the USA etc. Stating that imperialism and capitalism and colonialism are the cause of much suffering in this world is not antisemitic, unless you associate it with other antisemitic imagery. Pointing out that Israel is an imperialist country that is trying to conquer (pieces of) its neighbors and opressing the Palestinian people, sometimes for patriarchal/religious reasons, sometimes for capitalist interests, is not antisemitic.
> This war was started by Hamas on October 7th, it's quite clear they are the aggressor here.
This war started when the state of Israel was formed and kicked out much of the local Palestinian population (mostly Muslims, but also some Christians and even Jewish Palestinians). Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been under Israeli occupation for some 70+ years. October 7th was just one atrocity, from a long series of atrocities, on both sides, that have punctuated this war. But the aggressor in a war doesn't change just because of one attack by the defender, even when that attack is a war crime. If Ukraine launches a terrorist bombing in Moscow tomorrow killing 700 civillians, that war crime will not change the fact that Russia is the aggressor in that war.
> The WCK that you cited is very clear on this: the problem is getting aid into Gaza, not distributing it.
I'm referring to the current situation, I'm not disputing that there have been times where aid was not allowed in, however at those times there was generally sufficient stockpiles available.
> Again, the org you yourself cited has many examples.
Examples of food insecurity, sure, but not to the level of famine.
> The WCK said plain as day that it was.
How would the WCK alone be able to make that sort of determination? Only those with direct access to the targeting decision making process would be able to with any reasonable degree of certainty be able to determine if the WCK incident was a genuine mistake vs an intentional attack. The details the IDF provided regarding how the mistake was made certainly indicate it being a mistake is plausible IMO.
> When you systematically make such "targeting mistakes" over and over again, at some point the deliberate targeting becomes obvious.
So when the IDF systematically has friendly fire issues where their own soldiers get killed does that mean they are deliberately targeting their own soldiers by that logic?
> Decrying the ills of imperialism and capitalism and patriarchy is not antisemitic. Sure, the nazis used these crisicisms to refer to Jewish people. But the Indians also used them to refer to their British colonizers, the Romanians used them to refer to the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians, the Afghani and the Nicaraguans used them to refer to the USA etc. Stating that imperialism and capitalism and colonialism are the cause of much suffering in this world is not antisemitic, unless you associate it with other antisemitic imagery.
You seem to agree that these are in fact historically documented antisemitic tropes(i.e. used by the Nazis), you appear to be saying their use is justified...that's a rather different argument.
> Pointing out that Israel is an imperialist country that is trying to conquer (pieces of) its neighbors and opressing the Palestinian people, sometimes for patriarchal/religious reasons, sometimes for capitalist interests, is not antisemitic.
One can easily make an argument that Israel's formation was anti-imperialist because its independence was an act of breaking away from an imperialist power(the British). I would agree that is a bit of an oversimplification. This particular conflict has a number of elements to it that are somewhat unique which make these sort of broad categorizations somewhat misleading.
> This war started when the state of Israel was formed and kicked out much of the local Palestinian population (mostly Muslims, but also some Christians and even Jewish Palestinians).
That's not exactly accurate IMO, the Arab-Israeli War started when the British Mandate ended and the Arab states attacked[0].
> Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been under Israeli occupation for some 70+ years.
This is simply factually inaccurate, Gaza has not been occupied by Israel for 70+ years, you seem to forget that it was occupied by Egypt[1] until 1967. The West Bank was annexed/occupied by Jordan until 1967 as well[2]. So in reality this occupation by Israel of Gaza and the West Bank has only been happening for around 58 years. Most Palestinians say the occupation has occurred for 70+ years because they consider all of Israel proper to be an occupation(as they largely reject Israel's right to exist outright).
> October 7th was just one atrocity, from a long series of atrocities, on both sides, that have punctuated this war.
This is certainly a conflict where one can easily blame either side depending on at what point in time you start.
> But the aggressor in a war doesn't change just because of one attack by the defender, even when that attack is a war crime. If Ukraine launches a terrorist bombing in Moscow tomorrow killing 700 civillians, that war crime will not change the fact that Russia is the aggressor in that war.
There's no clear original aggressor here as it largely depends on how far you look back in history, there's been so much back and forth fighting that's it's hard to pin the blame on either side for starting the conflict due to the lack of clearly defined national boarders being recognized by both sides as was the case with Ukraine and Russia.
> You seem to agree that these are in fact historically documented antisemitic tropes(i.e. used by the Nazis), you appear to be saying their use is justified...that's a rather different argument.
No, I'm saying that the nazis also ate apples, but that doesn't mean eating apples is antisemitic. Just because the nazis accused the Jewish people of being the root of all evil doesn't mean that saying evil is bad is antisemitic, if you're not accusing the Jewish people of being the root of this evil. Yes, even if you're accusing a particular group of Jewish people, such as the Israeli state, of doing this.
> There's no clear original aggressor here as it largely depends on how far you look back in history
This is actually very simple. The historic region of Palestine has been inhabited by more or less the same people ever since Biblical times. It was conquered a few times by various empires, and a large part of the population has converted to various religions (from pre-Biblical religions to Judaism, to Christianity, to Islam). The languages they speak have changed various times, and of course the genetic makeup of the population has not been constant, especially given it's a relatively common trade route.
Then, starting with the 1930s or so, a colonization effort by an initially fringe group of Jewish zealots, the Zionist movement; they became much more mainstream after the horrors of the Holocaust. This colonization effort culminated with the proclamation of the state of Israel as a "Jewish and Democratic" state in 1948, led mostly by the colonists who started to expel the local population from the region, with the assent of the British Empire, the USA , and even the USSR (and other European powers). This is the beginning point of the current conflict. Going back further in history is completely absurd: the Palestinians of today are descendants of the ancient Jewish people, of ancient Romans, of ancient Arabic tribes and so on - just as much if not more so than the Jewish people "returning home".
> This is actually very simple. The historic region of Palestine has been inhabited by more or less the same people ever since Biblical times. It was conquered a few times by various empires, and a large part of the population has converted to various religions (from pre-Biblical religions to Judaism, to Christianity, to Islam). The languages they speak have changed various times, and of course the genetic makeup of the population has not been constant, especially given it's a relatively common trade route.
There have been many rather significant demographic shifts since biblical times[0] including migration waves of Egyptians during the Ottoman period. The genetic makeup of the population changing would be something one would expect to result from things like population movements into and out of the region, so I'm not sure what you mean by "The historic region of Palestine has been inhabited by more or less the same people ever since Biblical times." if there have been significant changes since Biblical times.
> Then, starting with the 1930s or so, a colonization effort by an initially fringe group of Jewish zealots, the Zionist movement; they became much more mainstream after the horrors of the Holocaust.
That didn't just start in the 1930s[1].
> This colonization effort culminated with the proclamation of the state of Israel as a "Jewish and Democratic" state in 1948, led mostly by the colonists who started to expel the local population from the region, with the assent of the British Empire, the USA , and even the USSR (and other European powers). This is the beginning point of the current conflict. Going back further in history is completely absurd: the Palestinians of today are descendants of the ancient Jewish people, of ancient Romans, of ancient Arabic tribes and so on - just as much if not more so than the Jewish people "returning home".
The origins of the current conflict arguably started in the 1800s, however Jews occupied the region prior to that period as well in smaller numbers.
Regardless of the history most Israelis living in Israel were born in Israel and hold no other citizenship so one can't really expect them to leave their country at this point.
The ICC has found a significant risk of genocide more than a year ago, based on solid legal documents. People with on the ground experience have been saying it even longer. Holocaust scholars have been looking at the evidence and noticing the patterns. It's ridiculous to claim that it only started being a "legitimate genocide" two weeks ago.
> The ICC has found a significant risk of genocide more than a year ago
Both the court and the finding described are inaccurate: it was the ICJ, not the ICC, and it didn't find a significant risk of genocide (it found that Palestinians plausibly had rights under the Genocide Convention, South Africa had the legal right to bring a case to vindicate those rights, and there was a risk of harm in the period of adjudication of those rights were provisional measures not adopted.)
But what you're saying undersells the decision. They very explicitly found that there is credible evidence of a risk of genocide, and ordered Israel to cease their military operations entirely until the court finishes its investigation. They reviewed numerous indications of genocidal intent from public speeches by President Hertz, ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich, and various members of the Knesset, in addition to various facts about the way the actual operations are carried out.
Here is their specific finding [0]:
> In light of the considerations set out above, the Court considers that there is a real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice to the plausible rights invoked by South Africa [emp. mine], as specified by the Court.
You're treating the "real and imminent risk" finding as being comparable to an injunction, which weighs whether the plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits of the cafe. To my knowledge, the ICJ doesn't do that.
Prejudice to the rights to be protected against genocide doesn’t mean genocide, it can mean making it impossible to litigate the potential violations because of destruction of evidence and witnesses, with or without genocide.
The ICJ decision is important, but it being sold as a ruling on the likelihood of an ultimate genocide finding is inaccurate.
But now, dear reader, just do as instructed and visit the links [0] and [1]. The comic imagery is not antisemitic. But a claim here to the contrary, and the fact that we don't have infinite time to check claims, might have fooled you, as it very nearly fooled me. Fortunately, I clicked and read by myself.
> But now, dear reader, just do as instructed and visit the links [0] and [1]. The comic imagery is not antisemitic. But a claim here to the contrary, and the fact that we don't have infinite time to check claims, might have fooled you, as it very nearly fooled me. Fortunately, I clicked and read by myself.
I posted the link because it's incredibly obvious that these are variations of classic antisemetic tropes, I'm really not sure how one could argue otherwise.
You were refuted in a sibling post. I am not sure what is unclear to you in that situation. Can you screenshot what you think is at fault? Because if it is that subtle, it isn't working.
I think antisemitism is becoming a very elastic concept to neuter any criticism. And, by the way, the Palestinians are a semitic people too. So it should be antijudaism.
> You were refuted in a sibling post. I am not sure what is unclear to you in that situation. Can you screenshot what you think is at fault? Because if it is that subtle, it isn't working.
If you don't recognize the obvious antisemitic tropes based on what I've already shown I don't think further evidence would change your mind.
> I think antisemitism is becoming a very elastic concept to neuter any criticism.
I'm sure there are some cases where that happens, but I don't think this case would qualify as it's far too overt.
> And, by the way, the Palestinians are a semitic people too. So it should be antijudaism.
You're now going as far as trying to redefine the normal accepted definition of antisemitism, this seems to me to just be another attempt at downplaying antisemitism for whatever reason.
“Here's a challenge - find me just one article in the mainstream media that calls for the de-radicalization of Israeli society. I'll save you the effort - you can't!”
The demonstrations are about his power grabs. They have 0 to do with the genocide. On that topic most Israelis are not against him. It is, in fact, what is keeping him in power and why he wants this war so badly.
~15% of Israelis believe that a terrorist who shot up a mosque (literally all he did) is a national hero.
It shouldnt be that that hard to imagine that most of the rest are willing to look the other way in the event of a genocide against the same untermensch.
(It's an archive link because the original is paywalled).
> Nearly half (47 percent) of respondents agreed that "when conquering an enemy city, the Israel Defense Forces should act as the Israelites did in Jericho under Joshua's command – killing all its inhabitants."
> Religious interpretations play a key role in shaping these views. Nearly half (47 percent) of respondents agreed that "when conquering an enemy city, the Israel Defense Forces should act as the Israelites did in Jericho under Joshua's command – killing all its inhabitants." Sixty-five percent said they believed in the existence of a modern-day incarnation of Amalek, the Israelite biblical enemy whom God commanded to wipe out in Deuteronomy 25:19. Among those believers, 93 percent said the commandment to erase Amalek's memory remains relevant today.
Opposition to Netanyahu inside Israel is almost entirely about domestic issues (like judicial reform) and the fact that he refuses to accept any negotiated deal to get the hostages back. Relatively few Israelis care about what he's doing to the Palestinians.
Israeli society is deeply complicit in the mass killing and starvation in Gaza. The IDF is a citizen army. There haven't been mass refusals or resistance. It's not just Netanyahu.
Does Israel have a government structure that allows for a counter-majoritarian government?
In the US, we do... due to the structure of the Senate and Electoral College, low population states wield outsize influence on national politics. This goes as far as allowing the election of a president with <50% national support. Add in political gerrymandering (setting electrical districts to constrain the influence of certain demographics), and we have a national government that's opposed to policies that have wide support across the population in general.
Moderates in Israel have shrunk because for decades, every attempt at compromise seemed to end in more violence rather than peace. From the Oslo years and the Second Intifada, to the Gaza withdrawal and repeated rocket wars, many Israelis came to believe that “giving ground” only brought terror closer to their homes. The sense is that moderation was tried, failed, and cost lives.
On top of that, politics and demographics shifted rightward, and October 7th reinforced the belief that peace is not realistic in the near term. For many Israelis, moderation no longer feels like a safe or responsible option- it feels like a risk their families can’t afford.
I appreciate the response, and I essentially agree with your assessment that this has become the prevailing feeling in Israel. With that being said: surely Israelis understand that the current direction of travel leads to a dark place, not least for Israel itself? I can't imagine a reality where the crisis in Gaza continues and Israel continues to be supported by the West. And then what happens? Surely at some point peace and reconciliation prevails?
I wish that was the natural path, that seeing the damage would turn people back toward reconciliation. But for now, most Israelis don’t see a viable partner on the other side to reconcile with.
This is a very dire situation. We’ve come to realize there are millions, perhaps tens of millions, across the region whose worldview includes the elimination of the Jewish state, and they are very committed to it. We can’t and won’t wage war on whole populations as that is not in our blood. Nor can we realistically change their beliefs in the foreseeable future or find something to offer that would produce lasting peace.
So today our choices feel grim and limited. That is why many Israelis believe we must:
1. Be excellent at predicting attacks and when necessary, strike first to disrupt them
2. Impose a very heavy cost on anyone who contemplates attacking us, so others think twice
3. Remain stronger and more capable than everyone around us
It’s a terrible place to be, and it’s not the future anyone hoped for. But until there’s a credible, sustained shift in the region, a process that would likely take generations of committed leadership, many here see little alternative.
I wish this were true, but it looks like that even if Natanyahu has little support (mostly because of corruption), the genocide is well accepted by israeli public
I think people blaming it on Hamas need to realize that Israel funds Hamas and uses it as a tool to further their goals. Hamas is their version of Talibans. It fully lines up.
Apologies, I thought you were referring to the Taliban.I've had previous conversations with people who had that misunderstanding.
Bin Laden claimed that neither he nor his specific group of Arab foreign fighters (which became the genesis of Al Qaeda) received funding from the US. Though the reality was that the US funded proxies which funded the Afghan Mujahedeen, so it's possible he may have indirectly benefited. Bin Laden was independently wealthy and largely self funded his group though.
To be clear, I don't think we funded bin Laden in proximity to 9/11. Just that we funded elements where bin Laden trained, and was likely--to some degree--radicalised, and then that blew back on us. October 7th looks like Israel's 9/11 in more than one way.
Well, if that was the case, it's not really working out for Israel now, is it? Considering that more and more countries are recognising Palestine, etc.
This comment is widespread on X or other social media as the n-th conspiracy theory that Israel has staged the attack etc. Crazy.
Israel's territory is still expanding, and Palestine's is still shrinking, so it seems to be working out pretty fine. All those countries recognising Palestine don't have the balls to actually conduct any kind of military intervention against Israel.
> Considering that more and more countries are recognising Palestine
Would note that none of the recent recognitions, to my knowledge, said anything about borders. A Palestinian state that solely exists in the West Bank would be consistent with these statements.
Doesn't prove anything, and it definitely doesn't prove he gave Hamas weapons so they would be victims of a terror attack.
Hell, we in the West have given Gaza (and indirectly, we knew it would go to Hamas) so much money. Did we support terrorism? How did we know that they would use our money to buy weapons to murder people in Israel instead of building good things?
For me this is more showing an utter incompetence both from Nethanyau and our Western leaders who totally didn't see how they outsmarted us for years. Why do you think our leaders can control everything and know everything? They can make mistakes out of incompetence.
I guess this strategy sometimes works in other countries, and sometimes they screw you :)
Way to whitewash a genocide. The title make it sound like the famine is accidental or an unintended consequence of Israel's "actions". While in reality, it's the sole purpose of what Israel is doing in Gaza for years, they are conducting a genocide, plain and simple.
One, really important to specify that the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel said this, not the UN as a whole. "The UN" is generally held to be the General Assembly.
Two, I'm not disputing that it probably is a genocide. I'm just saying that people have been calling it a genocide well before we had evidence it was one. As a result, the term has lost moral weight.
Put another way, I don't think support for Palestine increases by calling it a genocide again. I do think it increases by showing, specifically, what the famine means for the kids on the ground can change hearts and minds. (Nobody, at this point, is probably going to be swung on a fundamental opinion. People may, however, re-prioritise this politically.)
It was called a genocide early on because of the disregard for civilian life but it doesn't become one until everyone dies. The more accurate term is war crimes.
At this point public opinion matters less than existing relationships.
The relationship between Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and between Israel and America military matters more than public opinion. It could be 90% against but that would matter less.
> relationship between Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and between Israel and America military matters more than public opinion
The relationship is absolutely guided by public opinion. If Israeli support among registered Republicans starts hitting 50%, Trump is constrained.
It's currently 64% net sympathy for Israel and 9% for Palestine among Republicans. 55% of Trump voters say "Israel should continue its military campaign until Hamas is fully eliminated, even if it means the civilian casualties in Gaza might continue," while only 29% say "Israel should stop its military campaign in order to protect against civilian casualties, even if Hamas has not been fully eliminated" [1].
People called a genocide because if we wait for it to be bad enough to be called a genocide by even the most cynical person, too many people have died.
Quite frankly, the genocide of the Jewish people in Germany also started far sooner than just the final solution. But I guess "Never again" is just fancy words for pretenders.
> People called a genocide because if we wait for it to be bad enough to be called a genocide by even the most cynical person, too many people have died
No, what happened is the word got diluted into popular meaninglessness. ("It's not a war it's a genocide" doubling down on that mistake.) A lot of people called wolf early and often, and that did its damage. (I'm unconvinced they care. A lot of activism on this topic seems to be self serving.)
> the genocide of the Jewish people in Germany also started far sooner than just the final solution
Sure. We also didn't have international institutions whose job it is to investigate and identify genocide in WWII. Now we do. Turning "may be" and "at risk of" genocide into "is genocide" just means that when e.g. a credible UN agency determines it is genocide, the finding doesn't resonate.
Neither of which are around 600 thousand as the previous commenter posted. The French News Channel called France24 did a quick video explaining the current fake news that certain NGOs are spreading with misleading death counts -- https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/truth-or-fake/20250624-...
Saying it's false is a valid argument against something completely ludicrous like 680,000 dead. If you expect everyone to come up with "valid arguments" for blindingly obvious things then it is you who is not carrying out polite conversation (as per your other comments)
It would be a valid argument if you provide evidence for it, such as other commenters here have done. Whereas you just rejected my claim without any argumentation.
I have provided a source for the numbers cited in the original comment. Where those numbers are explained.
Well, these numbers are from July, and from that very first article:
"Official Palestinian tallies of direct deaths in the Gaza war likely undercounted the number of casualties by around 40% in the first nine months of the war as Gaza's healthcare infrastructure unravelled, according to a peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet journal in January."
Still, from those numbers, it seems difficult to stretch from 60k to 600k.
That said, even if you take the absolute tail number, 60k, how anyone can defend a genocide of 60k people in a land area smaller than Portland, in less than a year, is reprehensible. Especially when many of those are children. Almost one child murdered every 10 minutes, at the low end, for an entire year?
Are you surprised I'm being downvoted? I'm working towards my 500 karma so I can also start downvoting obvious nonsense like that comment but publicly correcting nonsense craters your karma.
Small thought exercise: What if the numbers were real? Would that change any of your stances/views? Would you self-reflect and consider that you had been tricked into spreading lies at the expense of thousands of lives?
Maybe it helps to start smaller. Many (Israeli's) have told me that the IDF is the world's most 'honest' military - one that even warns buildings before they're bombed!
Then, you can imagine how difficult it was for me to reconcile that with many facts from the ground. Here's one. Only one. The Rafah paramedic massacre:
"Israel at first claimed that the medics' vehicles did not have emergency signals on when troops opened fire but later backtracked. Cellphone video recovered from one of the medics contradicted Israel's initial account."[0]
Let me turn the mirror around a bit. If numbers or incidents turn out to be false, exaggerated, or stripped of context, would you also self-reflect and consider that you might have been tricked into spreading lies - at the expense of Israelis whose lives are also on the line?
Of course, militaries make mistakes and sometimes issue wrong statements, just as governments everywhere do in the fog of war. The Rafah paramedic case you cite is tragic, and investigations matter. But a single flawed or retracted statement doesn’t prove a systematic policy of “lying” or “massacre” just as one instance of misconduct in any country’s army doesn’t automatically invalidate its overall values or procedures.
if we’re going to judge Israel by its errors, we should also weigh the context in which those errors happen (urban warfare, Hamas embedding itself in civilian areas, use of ambulances to smuggle fighters or weapons, etc.). And we should also judge Hamas by its admitted policies - deliberately targeting civilians, embedding in hospitals, rejecting coexistence.
If we’re honest, both of us need to be open to the possibility that our sources and interpretations can be incomplete or biased. Real reflection means asking hard questions in both directions - not only of Israelis, not only of Palestinians.
You're right that there are two sides to every story, things aren't black-and-white.
To your first point, I've already agreed that the numbers seem faulty. Beyond that, I'm not sure what you're asking me to consider, beyond suspending belief. 60k people did die on the low end, many of them children.
From an outsider's perspective, the killing of 60k people in a small, corralled environment, many of which are children, says everything that can be said about the actor in question. This is without the additional context of years of West Bank occupations, experiencing the crazy two-tiered apartheid like system that is Israel (I've visited and was personally quite shocked), and other things.
Is Hamas terrible? Certainly. Would they do the same to Israel if they had the capabilities? Probably. But that doesn't change the facts on the ground.
Completely absurd projection not supported by any serious sources. That would mean 1 in 3 Gazans dead, and 10 deaths per reported death, which would be completely out of line with other conflicts.
I read the article. It piled about 5 different assumptions on top of each other.
It takes the upper bound for the deaths in the first 9 months. Then extrapolates it linearly to the last 2.5 years. Then multiplies it by 4, because it estimates that starvation deaths must be 4x.
How CNN, a supposedly reputable news source can quote Hamas-run (a recognised terror group in the US) Health Ministry’s number without even noting who runs the ministry or raising any doubt is ridiculous? More ridiculous, noting the prices of different goods in Gaza when the vast majority of those goods enter Gaza as free aid. So who is stealing it and extorting others? Hamas and other terror groups are ghosts in this article. It is time that the UN focus on delivering aid rather than blaming Israel. Gazans die when they both refuse IDF convoys to keep them safe and blame the IDF for not keeping them safe as the “occupying” power. If only the IDF had already won, then Gazans would eat like normal already
Israel's response to Oct 7th has been a major blackpill.
Their strategy was, I think, as bad as it could possibly be. In fact, it really seemed, and still seems, like no strategy at all -- they lashed out wildly and extremely destructively, without a clear picture of what the post-war Gaza Strip will look like.
Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response that killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, which played directly into the dynamics of guerrilla warfare where a strong state's extreme actions against a weak opponent undermine its legitimacy.
Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation.
Yet, rather than adapting, Israel's network doubled down with censorship campaigns, crackdowns on protests, and weaponizing "anti-semitism" accusations to silence critics -- actions that have all backfired. Now international support is collapsing, the EU is pushing sanctions, and the US is slowly distancing itself. Israel's best option right now is to end the war as quickly as possible, and devote all of its efforts to repairing damaged relationships and mitigating the war's effects, before isolation accelerates to the level of sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa.
I'll also note that it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost. Hamas lost the shooting war, the people of Gaza have lost lives and livelihoods which may take more than a decade to rebuild, and Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this.
Sadly I think you are mistaken to paint it as an irrational Israel lashing out - that's too generous.
I think it's quite the opposite - there has been a very clear, cold, calculated strategy - which is to use the conflict as an cover for doing what some in the government have always wanted to do ( and been quite open about it ) - which is to create a greater Israel - drive out all Palestinians from the river to the sea ( Gaza and West Bank ), as well as push to the river in the north into Lebanon and take more of Syria.
Those in government understand the potential reputation loss - but see that as temporary and something that can be managed under the protection of the US, while viewing the gain of territory as permanent.
This is spot on. This has been a recurring practice of the Israeli regime - to take advantage of a terrorist attack or some other pretext in order to take over additional territory and remove the local population. This modus operandi has been practiced since right after the partition resolution at the end of 1947 to conquer Palestinian villages, remove their inhabitants and rase the houses to the ground, and is still practiced today in the occupied territories and Gaza. Like you said, Israel's recent military campaigns in Lebanon and Syria are also examples of the same strategy.
I wouldn't call pouring over the borders and taking hostages and even publishing maps of the land that they conquered as a terrorist attack. Hamas was in Israel for 4 days, I believe the last known Hamas operative was captured in Rahat on the 10th of October - my birthday (and I'm in Rahat quite often). During this time they were publishing maps of the areas they had conquered.
But you are correct, every single time the Arabs have poured over our borders and tried to conquer us - 1948, 1967, 1973 (though we didn't keep it), depending on you look at things 1982 though I would forgive you if you don't see it the way I see it... we've taken land. One would think that if people don't want to lose land, they should not set out to make war.
> One would think that if people don't want to lose land, they should not set out to make war.
What a perverse, meaningless justification. This statement reflects your own insecurity - you would never let someone say this if it was Israeli territory being contested. You would never have to say this if Israel didn't possess illegally claim, genocide and then colonize annexed territory in violation of international law.
Reprehensible double standard.
What deterrent do we have? Attack us, loose land. That's it. That's our only deterrent.
As long as you continue to call your immediate neighbours "enemies" you will always feel insecure and threatened by them.
Perhaps Israel could take a radically different path and aim to call their neighbours "friends" instead, or at minimum a healthy but neutral relationship?
Only a small number of bordering countries worldwide are sworn enemies and the world would be a better place for everyone if this fell to zero.
This is one of the most disingenuous posts I've read in this entire thread. Are you suggesting that Israel's neighbors are not the ones who consider themselves enemies of Israel? Did not upon the founding of Israel seven of our neighbors, including all four nations who border us, invade us? Have they not done this on numerous other occasions as well? Did Gaza not invade Israel at the beginning of the current conflict two years ago?
You might also be interested in this excerpt from our declaration of independence:
> WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
"the ones who consider themselves"
your words betray black and white thinking that demonstrates obvious externalization of responsibility. look up "splitting". it's a psychological defense mechanism.
if you were on the spiritual and moral ground you represent yourself as being on, no one else's actions or stance would change your opinion on whether they deserve love and a psychologically/relationally secure response from you. when someone is psychologically insecure, they overreact, hold double standards, externalize responsibility, and project their own insecurity as a moral flaw onto others. the term "narcissistic defenses" appears in literature. this is why it's so hard to talk to you. you are perpetuating the conflict by using the "logic" you are using. in reality you are displaying entitlement and grandiosity. and that prevents you from admitting it.
an eye for an eye makes the world blind, big man.
realistically, it's your own people and your own children and parts of yourselves that you are attempting to destroy and alienate. You're being used and you're using people.
Just for some agenda that you don't even understand but are all too willing to deploy propaganda to argue for. You remind me of a cult member or someone my grandparents fought against in WW2. Those "Arabs" are just taking your living room, aren't they?
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by the way bro, google Lebensraum.
None of that is unique to Israel. You need less generalizeable logic, if Syria started bulldozing the Golan Heights colonies then Netenyahu would go ballistic.
Correct, it's not unique to Israel. This is the way most nations in the Middle East treat each other, but the Americans and the Europeans don't seem to know this. They have no recollection of what constant threat from one's neighbors was like. Even though it's been less than a century since the Europeans had been in a similar situation.
Now go look at how every other Middle Eastern nation has dealt with the situation. Do I need to talk about Syrian brutality and gassing people in their own capital? Do I need to talk about Iraqi brutality and their gassing of the Kurds? Saudi Arabia, chopping people to bits in their embassies? Iran, Qatar, Egypt?
When one looks at Israel's neighbors, there is no way to not conclude that Israel has been the gentlest of the Middle Eastern Nations. But now we've taken the gloves off, after the 7th of October 2023. Welcome to the new Middle East.
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Not to mention how many Gazans killed by IEDs and failed rocket attacks in the Gaza strip, and how Hamas stoots at people fleeing buildings and areas that the IDF warned they are targeting. Or shooting at people collecting humanitarian aid from distribution centres instead of paying Hamas for it in markets. Or their human shields. Every one of those dead is counted against Israel because in Muslim culture, a martyr dies for a cause no matter which side's hand killed them. And even with those deaths incorrectly attributed to Israel, the civilian:combatant death toll in the Gaza strip is lower than any conflict that NATO or UN forces have ever fought in - by NATO and UN numbers themselves.
That tiny step of land was educated by UNRWA to believe that the highest honour in their society is to kill Jews. There is ample video evidence of children stating this as their life goal, and parents stating they want this for their children. That does not justify killing them, but it demonstrates that when they do start killing us there is no easy tactic to calm the situation. They used to infiltrate our communities, we built a wall. We tried moving out of the strip and living further away, they start shooting rockets at us. We build defensive interceptor rockets at extreme cost, they put over the border en mass to put babies in ovens, rape wowen and even in one case I know of an man, enter medical facilities and execute the entire staff and patients. All documented by Hamas themselves.You need to decide if you feel as strongly about protecting civilians as you do about destroying Israel. Because if you really feel that your ambition is to protect civilians (or at least to defend their cause online) then you need to reevaluate your position on the current conflict. Not because Israel is perfect, but because Israel is fighting to save human life and the Gazans are fighting to destroy it.
I have yet to even mention the hostages, dozens of whom are still in Gaza including people I know personally, which itself is justification for contributing the war no matter the cost to the aggressors. And when the aggressors decide that the civilians of the Gaza strip have suffered too much - the civilians they as the governing body are charged to protect - they can release the hostages and the war will be over.
> I have yet to even mention the hostages .... which itself is justification for contributing the war no matter the cost to the aggressors.
I'm sorry, but from the outside events would suggest that Bibi has little interest in the return, indeed welfare, of all the hostages. `Indeed he seems to have actively sabotaged efforts that would have returned them, in order to continue the war and the wider aims.
Many ex-hostages and families of hostages seem to agree.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/hostage-families-urge-surge-of...
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> If you sincerely believe the grotesquely distorted nonsense you've written above, you're as much a deluded, fanatical lunatic
You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to. The guidelines call on us us to make our points without using abusive terms like this. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You should retreat back to Europe and your other countries of origin.
I actually fail to see how the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank violates international law (not that international law means anything), aside from the obvious fact that they weren’t outright annexed after 1967, when Israel was on rock-solid legal ground to just annex the entire place (nothing in the international law prohibits a country from annexing territory won in a _defensive_ war).
Where in the world have you found any indication that any international law makes any distinction between defensive and offensive war in terms of annexation of land?
That rule was brought about by the UN Security Council Resolution 242.
And funnily enough, nobody objected when Egypt annexed Gaza, and Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1948.
As far as the international law is concerned, Israel was completely in the clear to annex the entire place until 22nd of November, 1967. After that it gets a bit murky.
That still doesn't change the fact that the entire idea of an independent Palestinian state happened because Israel just didn't annex it all in 1967.
But going back to the UNSC Resolution 242.
> Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force
There are still no recognized boundaries of Palestine, and there sure as hell weren't in 1967. The original UN Partition Plan for Palestine was adopted, but the problem with its adoption is the fact that it was a General Assembly resolution, and the problem with General Assembly resolutions is that they are notoriously non-binding, and thus not worth the paper they are printed on.
Which brings me back to my initial point that the international law just doesn't matter, because technically speaking, the original Partition Plan was settled international law. Worked out great in practice.
Noteworthy as well, that while the West Bank was in the hands of Arabs, there were no calls for establishing an independent Palestinian state there. Same in the Gaza strip.
And while I'm on this soapbox, I might as well mention that Jordan was part of the Mandate for Palestine. The Mandate for Palestine divided the land into two entities: Mandatory Palestine which was decided by the British to be the 23% of Palestine designated for the Jews, and Jordan which was the 77% of Palestine designated for the Arabs - the same idea of partition that the UN came up with 27 years later. Only difference being that the UN plan partitioned the 23% designated for the Jews further. And yet in both cases the Jews accepted and the Arabs violently ethnically cleansed the lands of Jews. And before anybody mentions the racist idea "it's Arab land" (is Great Britian white man's land?) it should be clear that Jerusalem was Jewish majority for a century before that time.
Nobody called for a Palestinian state in the West Bank during 1948 to 1967 because everyone in power at the time was aware that there already was a Palestinian state in the Land of Palestine: The Kingdom of Jordan.
The only people who "poured over the borders" were the Zionists, into Palestine. And yes, they regularly publish maps showing Zionist land theft.
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This, for Israel it was a perfect pretext. Netanyahu financed Hamas through Qatar for years because he knew that Hamas is a destructive force for Palestinians and their struggle for nationhood. It was a cold, cynical decision. He exploited the anger and emotions of the people after October 7th to justify what he is doing now.
> Netanyahu financed Hamas through Qatar for years because he knew that Hamas is a destructive force for Palestinians and their struggle for nationhood
It's probably as simple as Netanyahu's branded himself as Israel's protector, and if Palestine were to become less threatening, his political prospects sink.
No, it's probably not that simple. His self-interested maneuvering is without doubt part of the story, but it's very unlikely to be all of it.
It was too perfect. To the point where the stand down order stories are believable.
any links for research proving you state?
In an interview with Politico in 2023, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that "In the last 15 years, Israel did everything to downgrade the Palestinian Authority and to boost Hamas." He continued saying "Gaza was on the brink of collapse because they had no resources, they had no money, and the PA refused to give Hamas any money. Bibi saved them. Bibi made a deal with Qatar and they started to move millions and millions of dollars to Gaza." At a Likud party conference in 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu said:
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas ... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
Gershon Hacohen, former commander of the 7th Armored Brigade and an associate of Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 2019 in an interview:
“Netanyahu’s strategy is to prevent the option of two states, so he is turning Hamas into his closest partner. Openly Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, it’s an ally.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas
I presume boosting Hamas over leftist/revolutionary groups meant less support for Palestinian liberation within the population of Europe and maybe in part the US. The reality of religious fundamentalism in Gaza is heavily exploited in Israeli propaganda, it's an effective deterrent still. If Gaza was held by an organization like the YPG/YPJ (Kurdish autonomy regions) Israel would have had far more, earlier resistance from western governments/populations, I think.
hamas started as islamic charity/community support organization. this is when Israel supported it. when it became political and moved to terrorism - israel stopped supporting it. we are talking early 80s here.
Swiss Policy Research has excellent documentation on the promotion of Hamas in Gaza by Israel:
https://swprs.org/2023/10/20/israel-palestine-overview/
John Oliver did an In-depth analysis complete with sources in his latest Last Week Tonight. It's titled Netanyahu. Go, watch it, it is illuminating.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0_Bwix9IjOE
Unfortunately it's not available to me on YouTube:
Video unavailable The uploader has not made this video available in your country
:-(
If you're willing to invest ten minutes and a tenth of a cent, you can spin up a virtual server in an American server farm and set up a SOCKS proxy with `ssh -D 8080 -nNT <user>@<host>`. Then in the Network Settings dialogue (at the bottom of General Settings), Firefox will let you proxy your traffic through it.
You can download with yt-dlp over tor by starting the tor browser bundle and then calling yt-dlp like this:
yt-dlp --proxy socks5://127.0.0.1:9150 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCh5WrNgydw
Heads up for anyone who assumes (like I did) that that is the URL for the John Oliver video, it is not. OP should have used $URL for his example.
I've come around to the possibility that there is a lot more here under the surface than what we general public/plebs are aware of. Hamas is Muslim Brotherhood. MB itself is the poster child of a movement hijacked by Western spook agencies.
They want a heroic victory for MB because the West knows there are going to be numerous billions of Muslims and they can't kill them all so the best thing is to 'control' the religion as they own and run MB.
October 7 completely undermined the non-MB resistance. Hamas jumped the gun, Israel 'stood down', and the axis of resistance was caught like deers in a headlight. They have been 'reacting' ever since and have been losing every step of the way.
Now the question is: Is Qatar/MB upset about all this? ...
Here's a thought experiment to underline that, in case there's any confusion.
Q. How many times did any Countries hold islamic-only real-estate expos in Mosques for the former and future homes and territories of Jewish peoples either already dispossessed or planned to be dispossessed due to fundamentalist islamic occupation? _Zero_
Q. How many times did any Countries held jewish-only real-estate expos in Synagogues for the former homes and territories of Muslim peoples either already dispossessed or planned to be dispossessed due to zionist occupation? _Countless_
https://lapublicpress.org/2024/09/israeli-real-estate-fair-h...
https://halifax.citynews.ca/2024/03/07/palestine-is-not-for-...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-drawing-protests-in-othe...
https://www.laconverse.com/en/articles/les-coulisses-dun-sal...
They're now at the point where they're paying their contractors $1,500 a house demolished, and constantly inciting violent engagement so as to get the IDF involved and sanitise the area - most notably near the supposed humanitarian relief distribution points they're so fond of double-tap bombing.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250630-shocking-israeli-...
N.B. Israel is now concentrating on the remaining medical facilities, and has carried out at least 17 attacks on or in the vicinity of healthcare facilities in Gaza City since 16 September. (https://www.bmj.com/content/391/bmj.r2078)
Three healthcare facilities—Al Quds Hospital, Al Rantisi Children’s Hospital, and the Medical Relief Health Centre—have all been directly hit, while further strikes were recorded in the vicinity of two more, Al Shifa Medical Complex and Al Ahli Hospital.
Currently, across the Gaza Strip, only 2000 hospital beds remain available, for a population of over 2 million people.
There was no need to hold real estate expos because the ethnic cleansing was a bit more direct during the Armenian and Assyrian genocide.
It was atrocious then and it's atrocious now. There's almost something worse about zionst making it a business now. It's one thing to ethnically cleanse an area out of hatred, it's sick on a whole new level to try and turn a buck in the process.
1 Samuel 15 in the Old Testament describes this situation perfectly. According to the Bible God told Saul and the Israelites to destroy the Amalekites (a familiar term if you’ve listened to Israel refer to the Palestinians as “Amalek”) and all of their cattle as well.
“But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves[b] and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.”
Now this could be interpreted as a direct instruction not to profit from the conflict. Something Israel is planning on doing once the Palestinians have been removed from Gaza and they build luxury hotels on top of uncountable dead bodies of children. You could argue that even if you grant Israel religious justification for destruction of Gaza, they would not be granted religious justification for profiting from it.
It’s a pointless thing to bring up other than that I think it exposes this whole thing for the colonialist enterprise it really is, and calls into question how much religious belief is really driving the decision making over there.
Talk about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon! I just finished reading 1 Samuel this week.
Very interesting insight.
That’s an odd synchronicity to say the least. I haven’t opened a Bible in years (unless you count googling verses online) but for whatever reason I’ve been thinking about this specific passage ever since I heard about Israeli govt officials referencing it. So it’s definitely swirling around in the collective unconsciousness of “the west”.
"The Bible In A Year" podcast is a good companion.
> which is to create a greater Israel
This is fantasy. Israel (or any country really) ability to expand is limited by its neighbors. Egypt, Jordan and the GCC are more powerful than the 60s and the recent UAE message of pulling of the Abraham accord is a clear signal that they have real weight in Washington. Israel cannot, in the current circumstances, expand.
So I agree with your parent. What Israel currently is doing is non-sense and plays in the hands of Hamas (who is not losing, as civilian lost lives do not count in Hamas counter).
Right now - the evidence on the ground is that Gaza is pretty much fully occupied and largely uninhabitable.
Despite agreeing to leave under the brokered peace deal, Israel are still in southern Lebanon and show no sign of leaving. The flagrant breach of the original cease fire agreement appears to have no consequences.
The effective seige and annexation of the West bank appears to be gathering pace.
Smotrich said back in April that their campaign in Syria will end 'when Syria is dismantled' - they show no sign of leaving, and are still running operations in and around Damascus, and appear to be running the classic divide and conquer strategy.
While the countries you mention may be stronger - Syria and Lebanon are both very weak and very dependent on US 'aid'.
And in terms of US support, which I agree is critical in all this, they appear to have carte blanc from the current US administration.
Also criticism from EU countries is much more muted than their populations would like - for example the UK government is spending more effort on trying to lock up it's own protesting citizens ( for 14 years under anti-terror laws for doing nothing more that holding up a sign ) than doing anything to stop Israel.
Long term - who knows - but right now the plan does appear to be working.
Also - in terms of Egypt - the current leader came to power in a 2013 coup, and there has not been any free and fair election since ( elections yes - free and fair no ).
Jordan and Egypt are 3 and 4 behind Ukraine and Israel in terms of being the recipient of US aid.
I doubt El-sisi could remain in power for long if that aid was withdrawn - if you are kept in power by the military but can no longer afford the wages....
And in terms of the GCC - aren't countries like UAE allies of Israel these days?
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uae-yemen-somalia-circle-...
Expansion is relative: consolidating the assimilation of Gaza and the West Bank is a project that has been progressing for decades, not a recent military development. Ridiculous escalations like invading the Sinai peninsula would be considered "expansion"; the current ethnic cleansing is perceived as an internal Israeli matter.
Israel's main best option is to give Palestinians, at least those unambiguously born under Israel's control, the right to vote in Israeli federal elections.
A government that can kick down the door of the house you were born in has a duty to give you voting rights.
(And if your ethnic group is denied voting rights, you have a basic duty to your fellow man to raise hell until you get those rights, because arbitrary starvation is always on the table for your children until you get them.)
International law forbids the occupying power to give voting rights to occupied regions.
Its also a bit unclear what you mean by "unambiguously under Israeli control" since Palestinians in occupied palestinian territories aren't unambigiously under Israeli control, they had little control over the inside of Gaza until recently, and have some power in the west bank that is shared with the PA. Neither is "unambiguous control". The only group unambigiously under their control are the Palestinians inside Israel proper who as far as i understand do have full voting rights.
If you think military presence should equal voting rights, than i think that would imply that Iraq should be able to vote in US presedential elections.
I think "if their authorities can kick down the door of the house you were born in" is a good enough guide here to see the problem as distinct from other military interventions, not like the invasion of Iraq was a good idea.
The US was not established in Iraq long enough for generations of adults born in Iraq to have grown up under US control.
The border between US and Iraq is not like the border between two suburbs, and there were never Iraqis crossing that border daily to drive a taxi or clean someone's house or see a doctor.
They had enough control over Gaza before October 7th to deny Gaza a port, an airport, and even the right to do peaceful commercial fishing without getting their boats lit up.
And for whatever limited access their law enforcement institutions had to Gaza for kicking in doors, they just did missile attacks on cars or apartments instead of kicking in doors, because they had no reason to care how many bystanders they killed.
> I think "if their authorities can kick down the door of the house you were born in" is a good enough guide here to see the problem as distinct from other military interventions, not like the invasion of Iraq was a good idea.
The US had troops in iraq that were going around kicking in doors. I'm not trying to make any claim as to wether the invasion was a good or bad thing (actually i think it was a bad thing), but it clearly meets your definition of when people should get a vote.
At the same time i think most americans would view the proposition that iraqis should vote in us federal elections absurd.
> The US was not established in Iraq long enough for generations of adults born in Iraq to have grown up under US control.
This is a bit of a goal post move but what time frame do you think is relavent? America invaded iraq in 2003. They left briefly but then came back. They still have a small number of troops there right now. There is a generation of iraqis who have grown up never knowing a time where american troops werent in their country.
> The border between US and Iraq is not like the border between two suburbs, and there were never Iraqis crossing that border daily to drive a taxi or clean someone's house or see a doctor.
I'm not sure the relavence. Most borders in europe are like this, they dont vote in each others elections. I don't think at present this would describe the border situation in Israel/Palestine.
> They had enough control over Gaza before October 7th to deny Gaza a port, an airport, and even the right to do peaceful commercial fishing without getting their boats lit up.
Sure, and that's an argument people use to claim that the territory is under Israeli occupation (or sometimes they argue that would not be enough to start an occupation but its enouth to make the occupation not terminate). I think everyone agrees that Israel exerts significant military control over occupied Palestinian territories. That is why they are called "occupied".
International law forbids a lot of things Israel already does. If it respected international law it would withdraw to its internationally recognized borders.
The point of making voting from occupied territories illegal is that this discourages settlers from the occupying nation to move into the occupied territories before the conflict is over. Otherwise the occupying power could send settlers into another country and pretend that it is merely defending its own citizens, when in reality it is still engaged in offensive war.
Let’s your country do that first. Lead by example
I'm under no illusions that the US respects international (or even domestic!) law.
Israel's internationally recognized borders are the borders of Mandatory Palestine. The 1948 borders were ceasefire lines - the fact that they were not internationally recognized borders was for decades the justification for cross-border attacks.
The Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.
The settlements were declare illegal by a UN resolution that did not specify what law was being broken.
> The settlements were declare illegal by a UN resolution that did not specify what law was being broken.
I think this is a bit unfair. Whether you agree or disagree, opponents of Israel have been pretty clear that they think the settlements violate article 49 of the fourth geneva convention. Specificly "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
Sometimes people also argue that the pipelining of Israeli law into settlements violates the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. I think the argument is that you can only distinguish between citizens and non-citizens on your own territory and thus the way Israeli law is applied in settlements but not outside them is a violation. I'm not super familiar with the argument so i might be mis-stating it. I also think its a bit of a catch-22 since Israel isn't allowed to legislate for the Palestinians either. Regardless it is a rule that they point to.
So i don't think its fair to say opponents of Israeli settlements just claim illegality without pointing to which laws. They do point to laws and rules.
The Geneva conventions apply to states, not people. Furthermore, they protect people, not land, political entities, or political ambitions.
> Sometimes people also argue that the pipelining of Israeli law into settlements violates the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. I think the argument is that you can only distinguish between citizens and non-citizens on your own territory and thus the way Israeli law is applied in settlements but not outside them is a violation.
Israeli law applies to both Arab and Jewish Israeli citizens in the towns and cities in Area C. Yes, Arabs live in the cities in Area C. Not many, but they do exist and they have the exact same laws applied to them as do Jews.
The UN doesn't, so the anti-Israel bodies try to see what they can shoehorn in. Sometimes (as in these cases you've presented) it's easy to show why they're wrong. Sometimes you need a lawyer. ))But see, we are already past the "they don't ever say which rule" and on to, they do say which rule but their interpretation is incorrect (and hey i even agree with you on that part some of the time).
> The 49th article of the fourth Geneva convention is the usual answer to that question, but it is wrong. Israel does not "deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies", every single Jew in the West Bank got up and returned to or moved to the West Bank of their own accord.
While i agree it is not clear cut in the geneva convention, generally the argument is voluntary transfer is still a transfer. The prohibition is not just about preventing people from being moved against their will but also about preventing attempts to change the demographic composition of an area. See also what the red cross says about it https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule130
I'm not really here to argue these points, i don't necessarily even agree with all of them, i just think you're being a bit straw-many. Arguments are more powerful if you engage with the strongest form of the counter-argument, not the weakest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerusal...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamization_of_Jerusalem#Isla...
Who cares? My point is the international community regards the settlements as illegal and if Israel cared about that they would immediately and completely withdraw.
And my point is that the international community, which mostly comprise of Arab nations, Muslim nations, or nations that rely on Arab oil, has been shown to levy accusations and resolutions against the state that the Arab and Muslim nations are united to destroy.
If there was merit to the claim that Jews building houses in the West Bank is illegal, they would have stated which law is being transgressed.
Out of curiosity, do you think Israel could 'find a law being broken' if thousand of Palestinians started building houses, towns, farms, and exclusive roads inside Israel - all protected by Palestinian soldiers?
Or would it just be so obviously illegal to adults?
You leave me two things to address.
First, the easy one. The only exclusive roads are exclusive to Palestinians. There are no Jew-only roads, despite our enemies saying it again and again.
Second, the other easy one. Your question is predicated on the assumption that those building houses, towns, and farms are doing so against the will of the body which administrates the territory. Jews in the West Bank build in Area C - other than a tiny extremist minority whose structures are then wiped away by the Israeli authorities. I'm certain if you're partaking in this conversation then you are familiar enough with the administrative divisions of the West Bank to know that Area C was designated by agreement with the Palestinian Authority for Israeli civil development.
There's two ways you could counter my argument - I'm interested to see which one you choose! The Shabbat is coming in soon, so I'll answer you on Sunday or Monday. Shabbat Shalom.
> There are no Jew-only roads
True, there are Israeli-only roads: https://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/200408_forbid...
What's wrong with that? Does the United States not have US-only roads (that Mexican citizens in Mexico) can't drive on.
Those roads link Areas C. Either you know what that means so I don't need to explain it, or you don't know enough about the agreements between the PA and the state of Israel to discuss this. Just in case you are in the later camp, as I stated, there are Palestinian-only roads in Areas A. Those are found throughout the West Bank, everywhere. Only in a single place exists the Israeli-only road. So the argument about "Jew-only roads" is not only a lie, it is an inversion of true state of affairs.
the comparison id imagine is the highway from Washington to alaska.
the americans paid to build it, but its a canadian road going through canadian territory and its canada who decides who drives on it, and thats not by citizenship but by licence. people with recognized licences can drive on it.
If I'm not mistaken, and please correct me if I am mistaken because I've not been to that area, the road in question connects Area C to Jerusalem. There is no utility for anybody to use that road who is not entering or leaving Area C.
I said the same, jew-only rasds don’t exist, it’s Israeli-only roads, like the one you mention.
Here's the third way - acknowledging that Israel’s settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission.
* United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...
It demands that Israel stop such activity and fulfill its obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention. These settlements are in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and in breach of international declarations.
That the resolution did not include any sanction or coercive measure and was adopted under the non-binding Chapter VI of the United Nations Charter is simply a matter of real politik dealing with Genocide, and is irrelevant to the overall judgement.
* The International Court of Justice
Israel sleigh-of-hand in designating "occupied" territories as "disputed" by virtue of the fact that "there were no established sovereigns in the West Bank or Gaza Strip prior to the Six Day War" was roundly rejected in the International Court of Justice over 20 years ago
//The Court notes that, according to the first paragraph of Article 2 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, when two conditions are fulfilled, namely that there exists an armed conflict (whether or not a state of war has been recognized), and that the conflict has arisen between two contracting parties, then the Convention applies, in particular, in any territory occupied in the course of the conflict by one of the contracting parties.//
> Guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and reaffirming, inter alia, the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force,
This is the most nuanced line of the document, as Jordan attacked Israel. Up until about two years ago, even Arabs (Gazans and West Bankers) would clearly state that Egypt started the war - that narrative is now that Israel started the war with Egypt. Let's settle on it being in dispute - if you're familiar with the events then we could argue either way. If you're not familiar with the events, then I'll win that part based on causus belli. In either case, Jordan attempted to acquire territory by invading Israel. Israel won on the Jordanian front, but it was the Jordanians who were fighting to acquire territory.
If you consider that a weak argument, then consider also that the internationally recognized borders of the state of Israel were the borders of Mandatory Palestine by principal of Uti possidetis juris. This was justification for cross-border raids for decades - both before and after the 1967 war. The Israeli-Jordanian frontier was a cease-fire line, not an international border. Thus, the world did not recognize the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank as legal - only Iraq did (the kings of Jordan and Iraq were brothers). Thus, Israel did not "acquire territory" on the Jordanian front, rather they recovered the occupied West Bank (occupied by Jordan). OK, actually, Israel did actually acquire some territory on the east side of the river. We left that area in I think 1994 or so when we made peace with Jordan.
> Reaffirming the obligation of Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, and recalling the advisory opinion rendered on 9 July 2004 by the International Court of Justice,
Here is where legitimate condemnation of Israel can begin. Israel did not annex the territory it recovered. The reasons is quite clear - despite repeated cries to the contrary, Israel does generally not expel populations. Yes, there were expulsions, I'm not blind to that. But you are aware that the Israeli side states that the Arabs who left Israel in 1948 did so at the beheast of Arab politicians requets - and there is ample evidence of this. Yet, many didn't leave and Israel became 20% Arab. Contrast with the West Bank, which Jordan ethnically cleansed of Jews after the 1948 war. Yet you hear no cries about that ethnic cleansing - only cries when Jews return to the farms they were evicted from by the Jordanians.
> Condemning all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, including, inter alia, the construction and expansion of settlements, transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and displacement of Palestinian civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law and relevant resolutions,
This is where people should start opening their eyes. Jerusalem had already been Jewish majority for decades even before the British Mandate for Palestine started. Jordan completely altered the demographic composition, character and status of Jerusalem when it ethnically cleansed the Jews after the 1948 war - so for 19 years out of 3000 years there were no Jews in that area. Yet, when the Jews return (after only 19 years) that is considered us altering the demographic composition, character and status? Any objective observer sees the farce.
> Expressing grave concern that continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperilling the viability of the two-State solution based on the 1967 lines,
This is true. Jews building houses on the West Bank does imperil the ability to form a racist, no-Jew-allowed ethnostate on the West Bank. Why progressive leftists think that such a state is the proper solution to the conflict is beyond me.
> Recalling the obligation under the Quartet Roadmap, endorsed by its resolution 1515 (2003), for a freeze by Israel of all settlement activity, including “natural growth”, and the dismantlement of all settlement outposts erected since March 2001,
This document is from 2015, no? So because seventy years prior to the writing of the document there were 19 years of no Jews in the West Bank, all Jews who returned must stop building houses? And dismantle the prior 14 years' worth of building, even though those houses were built in areas that the Palestinian leadership and Israel agreed are set aside for Israeli civil development, and in return the Palestinians got areas for their own civil development (which there is no call to dismantle)? As an objective outsider, how does this even make sense to you?
> Recalling also the obligation under the Quartet roadmap for the Palestinian Authority Security Forces to maintain effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantling terrorist capabilities, including the confiscation of illegal weapons
Did any member of the Quartet (UN, USA, EU, and Russia) begin, not to mention maintain, any operation aimed at confronting those engaged in terror? Or dismantling terrorist capabilities? Or confiscate illegal weapons? No, only two of those bodies were active in the holy land at the time. The UN "peacekeepers" in Lebanon abetted and filmed Hezbollah's cross-border raid in 2006, in which Israeli soldiers were killed and kidnapped. They didn't film to help, they actually refused to hand over the tapes to Israel. And the EU actually funded (and still funds) the movement of Arabs from Areas A and B to Areas C, in contradition to the agreements made between the PA and the state of Israel. I speak Arabic, I have been to West Bank Arab villages (I won't do it today, I'd be murdered, but I've done it in the past). Many of the hastily-built Arab encampments in Areas C have plaques describing how the EU and member nations have funded construction. The residents will tell you unabashedly from which Areas A and B villages they came from.
> But you are aware that the Israeli side states that the Arabs who left Israel in 1948 did so at the beheast of Arab politicians requets - and there is ample evidence of this. Yet, many didn't leave and Israel became 20% Arab.
Bro really said: "the Palestinians did the nakba to themselves"...
Well, don't take my word for it. Maybe these are people that you trust more than me.
- Syrian Prime Minister Khalid AlAzm - Same guy, Syrian PM Khalid AlAzm - Jordanian newspaper Falastin (Interesting fact, if I'm not mistaken the name of this very newspaper was the first Arab use of the word Falastin - way back in 1911!) - Arab Higher Committee Secretary Emile GhouryObviously you can find quotes to support such a position. Just like I can run around quoting Israeli PMs about how Palestinians are rats and how they must all be killed. You have to look at the whole of the evidence, not individual quotes.
You're correct, of course. Let's look at the Israeli declaration of independence:
> WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.
> WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
Are there any countries at all that recognize the West Bank settlements as legal?
AFAIK no but the person you responded to is dogwhistling by repeatedly referencing "arab" and "muslim". They're using it to imply that not only does the UN not matter, they're also positioning these words as the implicit enemy.
It's a bad faith way to approach this argument, so asking logical questions won't make a difference and will tire you out. That's the core strategy behind that behaviour.
I think a more charitable read would be they are claiming that Israel's geopolitical rivals have undue influence in certain UN organs and are using that influence to unfairly single out Israel.
Its not exactly a crazy claim. The UN is a political entity, its not above the influence of geopolitics. The former secretary general of the UN, Ban ki moon at one point (quite a while ago now) said that "Decades of political maneuvering have created a disproportionate number of resolutions, reports and committees against Israel".
If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.
Abba Eban Sometime between 1967 and 1975
The thing is that if not one single country agrees with you it kind of goes beyond just "undue influence".
Not that I know of. But it still remains a mystery as to what law is actually being broken. Just declaring something "illegal" does not make it so, even if everybody repeats it.
So those settlements were established under Rule .303, amirite?
Literally no country has ever recognized Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank or Gaza. Even Israel hasn't annexed them just yet.
While that is true, it does not change the fact that the internationally-recognized borders are those of Mandatory Palestine. Those were the internationally-recognized borders even between 1948 and 1967, which is why the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank was not internationally recognized, and also why Egypt was able to squeeze all her refugees into the Gaza Strip before severing ties with the strip in 1956. Or did you not know why Egypt has no refugee camps and almost no refugees today?
I think you're confusing "internationally recognized" with something like "there is an interpretation of international law that supports ..." (and it was unwise of me to use the term "international law" in an earlier comment because it contributes to this blurring, although I didn't realize that at the time).
If the borders were internationally recognized, it would mean that other countries agree that those are the borders. But as far as I know no country recognizes the borders of Mandatory Palestine as the borders of Israel, nor officially recognizes Israel's occupation of the West Bank as legal. I'm not talking about citing chapter and verse of some treaty or some principle like "Uti Possidetis Juris". If the fact of the matter is that other countries do not recognize those borders as the borders of Israel, then those are not the internationally recognized borders of Israel.
Internationally recognized by zero nations.
Internationally recognized under Uti Possidetis Juris, the principal under which most of the world's international borders have been defined (I think slightly beating out war, but falling behind geography).
I think this argument is a little difficult to make given Israel right now does not overtly claim that mandatory palestine's borders are its borders. If Israel openly claimed this consistently starting from its war of independence to present day, there would probably be a stronger argument, but its probably a bit too late at this point.
I am not making the argument that those should be the final borders. I'm responding to this quote:
I am demonstrating that the people who are calling for all types of solutions, are not familiar with the full situation and are calling for things that are the opposite of what they actually think should happen.> I am not making the argument that those should be the final borders.
Of course not. Neither does Bibi [1].
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-says-...
Bro, I get that you care about Israel, but posting sophistry to Hacker News is not going to change the fundamentals.
Israel is going to be "the country that committed genocide" unless Israelis find a way to stop it. There's no "but you need to understand the complexities of the situation" when it comes to killing hundreds of thousands of defenseless civilians.
Then we should both do everything that we can to end this war before the death toll get to the "hundreds of thousands of defenseless civilians" stage.
How about Israel stop fighting, right now? Right this minute. The magazines come out of the rifles and the fighter jets stay on the ground. As soon as the Gazans decide that this is what they want, they can return the hostages and this will happen.
There was a ceasefire earlier this year, hostages were being released.
Netanyahu won't stop the killing until Israelis, or maybe a future American President, make him.
I am Israeli and I completely oppose the war ending until the hostages are all returned. You said it yourself, hostages are returned and the war ceases. Return the remaining hostages and we will have no more need for war.
At the very least, acknowledge that war is expensive and one of the most common tropes thrown at the Jews is that we are cheap. We don't want this expensive war either.
> I am Israeli and I completely oppose the war ending until the hostages are all returned.
Then surely you are capable of empathizing with Palestinians. Israel holds thousands of their (civilians!) hostage, in violation of international law, with no fair or expedient trial planned.
Demanding the slaughter of captors does not set a safe precedent for the release of Israel's political prisoners.
> We don't want this expensive war either.
Israel is a nuclear nation. Your countrymen chose to invest in catastrophic war as a way of life, no different from America or Russia. Don't weep about the price of fighting until the IAEA inspects Dimona proper.
Much of the criticism of Israel is self-serving, one-sided, and predicated on definition twisting.
After 9/11 there was ample “glass parking lot” sentiment. If some enclave of Canadians or Mexicans tortured, murdered, raped thousands then kidnapped hundreds of Americans those parts of Canada/Mexico wouldn’t exist any more. And rightfully so. The hyperbole and constant double standards in the criticism undermine the credibility of all involved (I mean, Sudan… Congo… Afghanistans border…).
Every westerner involved in dogpiling needs fundamental clarity in the order of the “Death to ____” claims. Every, single, argument against The Jews applies immediately afterwards to The Brits, The French, The Spanish, and Great Satan itself: The US.
“500 thousand dead Iraqi children” is a “genocide” too, if we don’t care about facts or words. That specific strain of propaganda directly supports 9/11 style attacks and ongoing terrorism against the US.
I deeply disappointed in the mush brained cowardice we’re displaying. The best liberal democracy in the Middle East, and victim of constant horrific terrorism, deserves better.
>How about Israel stop fighting, right now? Right this minute. The magazines come out of the rifles and the fighter jets stay on the ground. As soon as the Gazans decide that this is what they want, they can return the hostages and this will happen.
The Israeli government can stop fighting in a way that's currently killing Gazan civilians and destroying Gazan civil infrastructure.
The Gazan civilians cannot release the hostages. Those hostages are held by Hamas, the Gazan government.
This broad-brush blaming leads to despicable crimes against humanity, and is why so many nations have agreed to rules of war. It is inhumane to intentionally punish civilians for what their government is doing. Collateral damage is inevitable, but there must be an effort to minimize it and to actively preserve the lives of civilians. If that means sending in convoys of food trucks after securing a city, then that's what a humane government should do.
Schrodinger's borders: both internationally recognized and internationally not recognized.
This just sounds like uncritical parroting.
The funny thing is, I agree with you about the contradictions in recognizing borders for the state of Israel, depending on what they're arguing at any particular time.
The borders of a potential Palestinian state and the state of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan is one of the most difficult conundrums to consider. I can think of a few "resolutions", none of them really "solutions". I make a huge effort to understand the Israeli side, the greater Arab side, the general Muslim side, and the side of the Palestinians who actually live there. Very few people - from any of those categories - make any effort to understand anybody else's side.
Well the word "occupying" is doing the heavy lifting here.
How so?
There are troops there, The troops are not present with the consent of the local governing powers, the area has not been annexed (has not been integrated into normal civil law of the country with the troops)*.
That is a textbook definition of what an occupation is.
* except for East Jerusalem, which would normally be considered annexed, but the UNSC has decided (with the binding force of international law) that it is de jure occupied. However Palestinians in east Juruselum can apply for citizenship and get voting rights.
> The troops are not present with the consent of the local governing powers
Are the governing powers legitimate? Hamas banned elections after they won the 2006 election. Why should they be considered any more of a governing powers than Israel? Especially when literally the entire broader region was historically Jewish, long before the modern state of Israel, long before Islamic Arabs (now calling themselves Palestinian) were in the area?
What I see is that the Islamic Arabs in Israel are living peacefully and are integrated into the “normal civil law”. But the residents of Gaza have been pro terrorism - which is why they voted for Hamas on a charter of committing genocide against all other beliefs.
Why is 'legitimate' local government the hurdle here? Surely the presence of foreign troops killing civillians and destroying infrastructure counts as an occupation.
> Surely the presence of foreign troops killing civillians and destroying infrastructure counts as an occupation
The closest comparison would be domestic counter-terrorism, i.e. if one assumes Gaza is part of Israel. (Which, de facto, it is.)
Gaza was de facto administered by the civilian arm of Hamas on the eve of Oct 7, and throughout while there was still infrastructure to speak of, and this is the only sense I understand the term "de facto" to mean when used unqualified; what entity performs the day-to-day administration and security.
It probably doesn't matter much. I agree that both the PA and especially Hamas are despotic dictatorships. So are a lot of countries. That's tragic for Palestinian citizens but ultimately doesn't matter much for determining if a piece of land is independent, occupied or annexed.
Much of it just comes down to drawing a line in the sand at roughly the start of when the United Nations started, and saying this is what the borders are and no one is allowed to change them by force (one of the conditions of joining the UN is to give up the right to acquire territory by force). So from that view, it was egyptian and jordan territory who in turn, supported by the UN, gave it to the palestinian people as respresented by the PA. In a certain way that's pretty arbitrary but i guess its sort of an, it is what it is, sort of thing.
> But the residents of Gaza have been pro terrorism - which is why they voted for Hamas on a charter of committing genocide against all other beliefs
The last election was in January 2006 and to vote you had to be 18+. That means anyone now alive who voted for Hamas has to be over 37. That's less than 20% of of the Gaza population. Furthermore, Hamas got a plurality in the 40-45% range, not a majority.
That means it is very likely that under 10% of people who lived in Gaza at the start of the current war voted for Hamas. Probably closer to 7% because the turnout in 2006 was around 80%.
That’s not relevant. Polls tell us the Gaza population supports Hamas today, after October 7. Even without elections, we know what the population stands for - the principles and goals that Hamas practices.
Without some strong general protection isn't that just 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner? Seems at least some basic guaranteed rights and freedoms is needed.
Guaranteed by whom?
No guarantee is worth anything if it’s not eventually backed up by someone’s guns.
> A government that can kick down the door of the house you were born in has a duty to give you voting rights.
100%
The most basic principle in democratic government is that those subject to the monopoly of violence should also have a voice in how that violence is managed.
> The most basic principle in democratic government is that those subject to the monopoly of violence should also have a voice in how that violence is managed.
I'm pretty sure most democracies also have a right to decide who can become a citizen. Forcing a country to give citizenship to enemy combatants would be kinda crazy, regardless of whether or not the territory those combatants operate from is under a military occupation.
Isn't that basically the USA regime's logic for stripping citizenship from people who vote against the regime?
The current USA regime is attempting all sorts of dumb nonsense, but birthright citizenship certainly isn't universal among countries either. I'm not a citizen of the country I was born in.
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It's always bizarre to hear this sort of doomsaying about what would befall israelis if they treated Palestinians as the equal humans they are: 'it's suicide to treat Palestinians as people'; 'innocent folks will be expelled from their land if we treat Palestinians as people'; "or worse, killed!'
It's bizarre because all the horrible prophecies have already come true, or are coming true, only with the roles reversed: We see that it is actually israel genociding Palestinians, rather than vice versa.
Somehow these doomsaying prophets feel this dystopia is actually totally ok, as long as the victims have a particular religion or skin color. Or, to be charitable, maybe the prophets have been paying exactly zero attention to what israel has been doing to innocent Palestinian civilians over the years.
The last time Palestinians voted they quite literally elected Hamas terrorists[0], you're making it out as if making Jews a minority and Palestinians a majority in Israel wouldn't represent an existential threat to the Jewish population. There are zero Jews living under Palestinian rule(i.e Gaza and the West Bank Areas A/B), why do you think it would be any different if they were given majority voting rights in Israel?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...
After nearly a century of Israeli oppression and zero interest from the international community, them electing a terrorist organization is certainly understable, even if still not justified. The first step is to reassure Palestinians that their neighbors won't start mass-murdering them again, something Israel has currently no interest in doing.
> The first step is to reassure Palestinians that their neighbors won't start mass-murdering them again, something Israel has currently no interest in doing.
Israelis don't just start killing Palestinians for no reason historically however, that pretty much always happens in response to some form of Palestinian aggression. It's not like Israel can just ignore attacks either as that would just encourage further attacks.
Israel is a settler colonial project, as far as I'm concerned they cast the first stone. Or rather, the British sending them here did. Not that it matters much in the end, but today Israel plays the role of the oppressor and Palestine of the oppressed.
> Israel is a settler colonial project, as far as I'm concerned they cast the first stone.
One problem with this conflict is you can credibly call either side the indigenous population depending on how far back in history you go.
> Or rather, the British sending them here did.
At a minimum you should go back to the 1800s during the Ottoman period which is when Jews started buying land from the Arab landowners.
> Not that it matters much in the end, but today Israel plays the role of the oppressor and Palestine of the oppressed.
This sort of entirely one-sided narrative is a huge impediment to peaceful coexistence.
> "This sort of entirely one-sided narrative is a huge impediment to peaceful coexistence."
> "Israelis don't just start killing Palestinians for no reason historically however, that pretty much always happens in response to some form of Palestinian aggression"
Fascinating how these 2 posts came from the same person. You are so close to getting it, you just need to take your advice from the first quote there and apply it to the second quote there.
Notably, israel kills around a hundred innocent Palestinians in Gaza daily, unprovoked, while the Palestinians are queuing for food. israel also regularly stages settler terrorist attacks on innocent Palestinians in the west bank: killing Palestinians; burning Palestinian homes and cars and crops; often claiming Palestinian land as their own. When "the authorities" (the IDF) arrive, they often support the terrorists and join in the violence against Palestinians.
But of course, it was because those innocent Palestinians are "being aggressive" by living in the west bank, which israel says they want, right? (They call it "greater israel", just like how the kremlin calls Ukraine "greater russia"). Obviously israel's ethnic cleansing is justified, because they really want someone else's land and stuff, right?
> At a minimum you should go back to the 1800s
We really don't need to. We just need to go back to the point where international laws came into being, including israel agreeing not to expand their territory through violence (a prerequisite to joining the UN). It doesn't matter who used to own it, what matters is global, international consensus on who owns what now (and who should), and global, international consensus on the right way to behave (in accordance with international law, as judged by the designated international courts). This goes even if israel strongly feels it is biased or unfair: after all, pretty much every criminal thinks the justice system that criticizes them is unfair. Like, of course criminals would say that, wouldn't they?
> Fascinating how these 2 posts came from the same person. You are so close to getting it, you just need to take your advice from the first quote there and apply it to the second quote there.
My point is that this conflict can be characterized heavily by back and forth attacks and retaliation from both sides.
> Notably, israel kills around a hundred innocent Palestinians in Gaza daily, unprovoked, while the Palestinians are queuing for food.
This claim is just wildly inaccurate, it's completely divorced from reality, nobody, not even the UN or the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry claim that around a hundred Palestinians are killed a day while queuing for food(they claim around 20 on average per day are killed while queuing for food[0]). Keep in mind that these are claims made by the GHM without proving much evidence to validate the circumstances of the claimed deaths at aid distribution sites. These claims are especially suspect since the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry has strong incentives make statements that discourage aid distribution mechanisms which bypass Hamas.
> israel also regularly stages settler terrorist attacks on innocent Palestinians in the west bank: killing Palestinians; burning Palestinian homes and cars and crops; often claiming Palestinian land as their own. When "the authorities" (the IDF) arrive, they often support the terrorists and join in the violence against Palestinians.
Did I ever defend this sort of thing? I agree there are significant issues with West Bank settlers/settlements.
> But of course, it was because those innocent Palestinians are "being aggressive" by living in the west bank, which israel says they want, right? (They call it "greater israel", just like how the kremlin calls Ukraine "greater russia"). Obviously israel's ethnic cleansing is justified, because they really want someone else's land and stuff, right?
You seems to be downplaying Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank by calling it "being aggressive". The term "greater israel" is also problematic in general since there's a wide range of claims people make regarding what that term even means.
Part of the problem here is that there is very little clear delineation regarding who's land it is, you're talking about a region where many borders were essentially armistice lines as opposed to clearly recognized borders. Keep in mind that Palestinians themselves largely reject even the 1967 borders as they believe all of Israel to be their land. This is one of the reasons attempts at a two state solution have likely failed.
The situation with Russia and Ukraine is not very comparable since there were mutually recognized borders[1] that Russia unambiguously violated.
> We really don't need to. We just need to go back to the point where international laws came into being, including israel agreeing not to expand their territory through violence (a prerequisite to joining the UN). It doesn't matter who used to own it, what matters is global, international consensus on who owns what now (and who should), and global, international consensus on the right way to behave (in accordance with international law, as judged by the designated international courts).
The issue here is international law is not remotely clear either, a real problem is a lack of peace agreements establishing recognized borders between parties, parties(i.e. Lebanon, Syria) that have so far refused to even sign peace agreements that would recognize Israel as a legitimate state.
The situation with Palestine is even more convoluted, since prior to 1967 Gaza Was Egyptian controlled territory and the West Bank had been annexed by Jordan. When Israel signed peace agreements with Egypt all territorial claims over Gaza were renounced by Egypt(despite Israel attempting to negotiate the return Gaza to Egypt). Jordan did sign peace agreements with Israel in 1994 and had officially abandoned all claims to the West Bank in 1988 prior to the peace agreements. So essentially we have ended up with a situation where there is land without an established recognized UN state being in control(the state of Palestine is not recognized by the UN).
> This goes even if israel strongly feels it is biased or unfair: after all, pretty much every criminal thinks the justice system that criticizes them is unfair. Like, of course criminals would say that, wouldn't they?
The issue is a lack of peace agreements establishing recognized borders, the UN/international law can not force peace agreements onto warring parties. Once Israel makes peace agreements establishing recognized borders(i.e. with Egypt/Jordan) they have not historically violated those borders. There are also numerous issues in general when it comes to enforcement of international law as UN courts don't really have independent enforcement mechanisms, the Security Council members effectively have veto power over ICJ rulings(which is one reason the UN is going to be incapable of enforcing rulings against Security Council members or their allies). Then there is the fact that Israel(similar to most countries) would be unlikely to follow an international court ruling if in their view the ruling would create an existential threat to their countries existence.
So no, saying we should let international law is the solution here isn't likely to be all that productive when it comes to resolving these issues.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Gaza_Strip_aid_distributi...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
Of course its understandable. Its also understandable that the israelis are not willing to accept people who want to kill them into their state. Both sides want to kill each other.
> Both sides want to kill each other.
I don't think most Israelis actually want to kill Palestinians, but at a minimum I do think the majority of Palestinians probably want to expel all Israeli Jews from Israel(at least based on Palestinian opinion polling).
Source? It seems to me the majority of Israel supports the invasion and occupation of Gaza.
> It seems to me the majority of Israel supports the invasion and occupation of Gaza.
This is likely the case at the moment(since there is a war after all), that doesn't mean they want to kill them all however.
> I don't think most Israelis actually want to kill Palestinians
Then why are they standing by while their democratically elected government enacts a starvation campaign? The reality is that most Israelis are now pro genocide, just like most Palestinians
Your post weirdly focuses on only the concerns of israelis, even though Palestinians are equal people with equal human rights, including an equal right to protection from israeli violence. Do you even realize that you're not treating Palestinians as humans?
> The last time Palestinians voted they quite literally elected Hamas terrorists
The last time israelis voted, they quite literally elected not only terrorists, but war criminals, criminals against humanity, and literal genociders. Obviously that's worse! Thus, israel has no moral high ground here to attack others, and should look inward and fix itself first.
> There are zero Jews living under Palestinian rule
"Palestinian rule" is not a thing at the moment: all Palestinians are currently ruled (dominated even) by a genocidal israeli military occupation that kills hundreds of innocent civilians daily.
> Your post weirdly focuses on only the concerns of israelis, even though Palestinians are equal people with equal human rights, including an equal right to protection from israeli violence. Do you even realize that you're not treating Palestinians as humans?
It's not clear what you're suggesting in practice, we can all say Palestinians should be given equal rights in an ideal world but that doesn't really bring us any closer to resolving the conflict.
> The last time israelis voted, they quite literally elected not only terrorists, but war criminals, criminals against humanity, and literal genociders. Obviously that's worse! Thus, israel has no moral high ground here to attack others, and should look inward and fix itself first.
I'm certainly not a fan of the current Israeli government but with how Israeli elections(proportional representation) work you tend to get more extremist parties than you would in systems like the United States where you usually just end up with a two party system.
> "Palestinian rule" is not a thing at the moment: all Palestinians are currently ruled (dominated even) by a genocidal israeli military occupation that kills hundreds of innocent civilians daily.
There is a form of Palestinian rule in which the Palestinian Authority exercises a certain level of control in the West Bank, in Gaza Hamas still retains some control as well. I would agree it's not the same thing as an independent state but I don't think characterizing it as no Palestinian rule at all is accurate either.
> It's not clear what you're suggesting in practice, we can all say Palestinians should be given equal rights in an ideal world but that doesn't really bring us any closer to resolving the conflict.
That is unnecessary, because Palestinians already have equal rights which are not legally alienable. israel is merely illegally violating them.
It's also not necessary for equal rights to bring us to any sort of resolution. Equal rights are more important than israel's unequal, unilateral safety, and a country whose existence depends on the violation of others' rights, must find a new, legal way to exist instead. Equal rights come first, and only then can we even begin to discuss a resolution. We tried the other way around, and it has failed to produce a resolution after decades of war.
> how Israeli elections(proportional representation) work you tend to get more extremist parties
This seems to be agreeing with me? Like yeah, israelis voted for terrorists, war criminals, criminals against humanity, and genociders. That is at least as bad as hamas. It's also kind of telling how you refer to a terrorist as an "extremist" when they're israeli. Why soften the language only for 1 ethnic group in the conflict while hardening it for another?
> There is a form of Palestinian rule in which the Palestinian Authority exercises a certain level of control in the West Bank
There is no Palestinian rule. They are ruled, dominated even, by israelis. They do not have freedom of choice, or freedom of trade, or freedom of speech, or freedom of press, or freedom of movement within their own land of Palestine, because israel denies them each and every one of those freedoms. Palestinians are frequently victims of israeli terrorist attacks in Palestine too. When the IDF shows up, they often participate in the terrorist attacks. israel does not even allow Palestinians to defend themselves from israeli terrorist attacks. That is not Palestinian rule.
> That is unnecessary, because Palestinians already have equal rights which are not legally alienable. israel is merely illegally violating them.
Which rights are you referring to? Do you think they all have a right to full Israeli citizenship?
> It's also not necessary for equal rights to bring us to any sort of resolution. Equal rights are more important than israel's unequal, unilateral safety, and a country whose existence depends on the violation of others' rights, must find a new, legal way to exist instead. Equal rights come first, and only then can we even begin to discuss a resolution. We tried the other way around, and it has failed to produce a resolution after decades of war.
If one knew with a high degree of certainty that giving full voting rights to all Palestinians would result in the elimination of the Jewish population from the land would you still be in favor of giving all Palestinians full voting rights? You seem to be advocating for giving full voting rights to a population which largely doesn't believe in equal rights.
> This seems to be agreeing with me? Like yeah, israelis voted for terrorists, war criminals, criminals against humanity, and genociders. That is at least as bad as hamas. It's also kind of telling how you refer to a terrorist as an "extremist" when they're israeli. Why soften the language only for 1 ethnic group in the conflict while hardening it for another?
If you're referring to people like Ben-Gvir, then I would agree(as did the Israeli courts and likely most Israelis) that he is a supporter of terrorism. At the same time there have been other Knesset members like Haneen Zoabi who have made statements effectively supporting Palestinian terrorism as well. I'm not sure if there have been war criminals and criminals against humanity elected, that's a much higher bar than merely supporting terrorism(which is something that unfortunately large percentages of Palestinian society supports). Since the claims of genocide against Israel are not supported by the evidence I probably would not agree there have been genociders elected. As I mentioned earlier the way Israeli elections work makes it much easier for extremists to get elected, and this plays out for both sides naturally.
> There is no Palestinian rule.
There is some level of Palestinian rule under the Oslo Accords, I agree it's not a full state but it's arguably not "no Palestinian rule" whatsoever. Hamas had effectively full control of Gaza's territory for many years as well.
> They are ruled, dominated even, by israelis. They do not have freedom of choice, or freedom of trade, or freedom of speech, or freedom of press, or freedom of movement within their own land of Palestine, because israel denies them each and every one of those freedoms. Palestinians are frequently victims of israeli terrorist attacks in Palestine too. When the IDF shows up, they often participate in the terrorist attacks. israel does not even allow Palestinians to defend themselves from israeli terrorist attacks. That is not Palestinian rule.
There is a military occupation with some level of rule delegated to Palestinian authorities. Palestinian leaders and society have in general not been very supportive of many of those freedoms you mention, especially freedom of speech and freedom of press in addition to other freedoms like freedom of religion(no Jews live in Gaza or West Bank areas A/B at all for example).
> Which rights are you referring to? Do you think they all have a right to full Israeli citizenship?
Whichever rights israelis have, Palestinians also have. Whichever rights israel has, Palestine also has. If israel claims a right to safety from Palestinian attacks, then Palestine has an exactly equal right to safety from israeli attacks. If israel has a right to control their borders, Palestine does too. If israel has a right to 100% control their own trade, then Palestine does, too. This isn't that complicated.
> If one knew with a high degree of certainty that giving full voting rights to all Palestinians would result in the elimination of the Jewish population from the land...
You have this backwards: Palestinians already have rights by virtue of human beings, just like israelis. Likewise, Palestine has rights by virtue of being a country, just like israel. What comes after those rights are respected may be complicated, but is not as important as equal rights. Equal rights is most important, and an oppressor like apartheid South Africa or apartheid israel doesn't get to deny anyone their rights out of fear, or for any other reason.
> There is some level of Palestinian rule under the Oslo Accords
There is no Palestinian rule. They are ruled, dominated even, by israelis. They do not have freedom of choice, or freedom of trade, or freedom of speech, or freedom of press, or freedom of movement within their own land of Palestine, because israel denies them each and every one of those freedoms. Palestinians are frequently victims of israeli terrorist attacks in Palestine too. When the IDF shows up, they often participate in the terrorist attacks. israel does not even allow Palestinians to defend themselves from israeli terrorist attacks. That is not Palestinian rule.
> Palestinian leaders and society have in general not been very supportive of many of those freedoms you mention
Surprise surprise, israel is even less supportive, and "they did it first" isn't an excuse to deny a person or country their rights.
> I'm not sure if there have been war criminals and criminals against humanity elected
>Since [I personally believe] the claims of genocide against Israel are not supported by the evidence...
While you are no doubt a good person, reality does not depend on what you think or perceive. Luckily, the relevant authorities (international courts, scholarly institutions) seem pretty confident that israeli electees are war criminals, criminals against humanity, and genociders, so you don't need to be.
> Whichever rights israelis have, Palestinians also have.
I mean Israelis have Israeli citizenship...not Palestinian citizenship, individuals that have different citizenship in general will have different rights.
> Whichever rights israel has, Palestine also has.
If they don't have the same citizenship then they wouldn't have the same rights because they would live under different governments.
> If israel claims a right to safety from Palestinian attacks, then Palestine has an exactly equal right to safety from israeli attacks. If israel has a right to control their borders, Palestine does too. If israel has a right to 100% control their own trade, then Palestine does, too. This isn't that complicated.
It's unclear what you mean by this in practice, I would agree that if there was a peace agreement in place then this would be ideal, but there may be practical issues. For countries bordering Israel like Jordan/Egypt which have made peace agreements this is effectively the case so I don't see any reasons Israel would reject this outright. Keep in mind that since there is no peace agreement with Palestine creating established borders something like this isn't currently feasible.
> There is no Palestinian rule. They are ruled, dominated even, by israelis.
You're making it as if it's all or nothing, when in reality there's a lot more nuance here.
> They do not have freedom of choice, or freedom of trade, or freedom of speech, or freedom of press, or freedom of movement within their own land of Palestine, because israel denies them each and every one of those freedoms.
Their own leaders often deny them those freedoms, both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. They also don't have clearly defined borders in general which is a big part of the problem(i.e. the lack of a peace agreement creating mutually recognized borders).
> Palestinians are frequently victims of israeli terrorist attacks in Palestine too. When the IDF shows up, they often participate in the terrorist attacks. israel does not even allow Palestinians to defend themselves from israeli terrorist attacks. That is not Palestinian rule.
There are levels of rule below that of having a fully independent state.
> Surprise surprise, israel is even less supportive, and "they did it first" isn't an excuse to deny a person or country their rights.
Palestinians that are Israeli citizens have effectively all those rights. Israel doesn't recognize Palestine as a state due to a lack of a peace agreement, an actual peace agreement establishing a Palestinian state must be negotiated, unilateral disengagement(like Israel tried with Gaza in the past) does not work, likewise unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state will also be unlikely to work, both sides must agree on terms to end the conflict.
> Luckily, the relevant authorities (international courts, scholarly institutions) seem pretty confident that israeli electees are war criminals, criminals against humanity, and genociders, so you don't need to be.
Unfortunately many of these groups(UN and UN affiliated organizations especially) have a major credibility problem, from their outright lies[0][1], to poorly supported reports which cherry-pick data to create a false narrative[2] one certainly can't blindly trust the UN to provide accurate information due to their well documented history of extreme bias against Israel[3].
[0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-one-un-leaders-mistak...
[1] https://unwatch.org/francesca-albaneses-made-up-math-and-fal...
[2] https://govextra.gov.il/media/orumgksl/politics-disguised-as...
[3] https://unwatch.org/2024-unga-resolutions-on-israel-vs-rest-...
> always bizarre to hear this sort of doomsaying about what would befall israelis if they treated Palestinians as the equal humans they are
Treating others as equals and co-inhabiting a space with them are quite different. Israel needs to treat Palestinians with dignity. But a lot of Palestinians (and Israelies) legitimately believe in exterminating the other. That's not a stable social base for building a state on.
>it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost
Benjamin Netanyahu is still in power, his trial for corruption continually delayed as a direct consequence of the war:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Benjamin_Netanyahu
Yes, things look pretty bright for Netanyahu, and the others in the Israeli state who want to do ethnic cleansing or worse. And settlers who want to do ethnic cleansing (not everyone! a minority I presume), are happy too.
Not many mistakes made here, just others who are mistaken about the goals
A big question for me continues to be how much of Israel's behavior isn't really about best options for Israel as a state, but power politics for particular political factions internally.
but that's how every polity operates, you can't influence it more than people already try to influence it.
you can ask the same of Hamas, is theirs the policy the populace wants?
Israel does have a robust free speech democracy and you can easily learn what many of the different factions think, and like elections anywhere, you don't know till afterward how it plays out, and voters are always disappointed by the way power is exercised.
> Israel does have a robust free speech democracy
That is debated. The IDF censors thousands of articles, both domestic and abroad, every year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Censor
Yes and no - arguably most would define "pursuing negative outcomes to reinforce a fraction's power" as misoperation within governance and even 200+ years ago understanding this lead to things like Washington's warnings about factions and political parties.
Some have described what we're seeing as an impassioned overreaction to Hamas' initial strike and kidnappings. However, Netanyahu's actions appear far more deliberate. Rhetoric from his own cabinet ministers is now impossible to ignore.
The IDF has taken a very slow and careful approach. There are typically under a hundred Palestinians killed at a time, but they are killed most days with a high degree of consistency. Headlines like "50 civilians killed in Gaza overnight" no longer make it to the front page. There has clearly been careful management to ensure that the numbers don't climb high enough in a single day to upset the new "normal". Israel has banned foreign journalists and the IDF has deliberately targeted those inside of Gaza to further minimize coverage. On top of that, the IDF has targeted healthcare infrastructure and workers while carefully controlling aid to bring about famine without provoking any significant foreign response.
The big concerns now should be how quickly an incipient famine in a region whose healthcare system has been largely eliminated could cause mass deaths, and how long the fog of war Netanyahu has carefully crafted over Gaza might hide it. The remaining window of time in which intervention might prevent tragedy is rapidly closing.
Also the fact they were doing it long before Oct 7 2023 proves it wasn't caused by anything that happened on Oct 7 2023.
They're not losing the information war against Hamas, who they can easily kill if they can identify, they're losing it against those concerned with human rights in the free world. International law (in the absence of diplomatic enforcement) has nothing to do with it, and neither does the complex and detailed history that only serves as a way for people to avoid talking about the present...
I think that’s extremely incorrect tbh. Israel saw an opportunity and they took every inch of it.
They have neutered Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, and effected the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.
I don’t think Israel cares about foreign civilian opinions. Western states are largely still aligned and dependent on Israeli geopolitical presence.
Palestine is not and never was the focal point of this conflict. It was always Iran.
> In fact, it really seemed, and still seems, like no strategy at all
Since 2005, Israel has maintained a strategy for managing Gaza called "mowing the grass"[0][1] in which every few years they attack and conduct short, sharp military operations. This is in contrast to their strategy of (illegal) settlements in the West Bank. In fact, they removed 8,000 settlers in 2005 when they began this strategy.
Besides the major hostilities of 2008/9,[2] 2012,[3] 2014,[4] and 2021[5], Israel infamously tests new weapons and technology on Gaza, allowing their weapons to be labelled "battlefield tested". One of their largest export is surveillance technology (guess who's the largest customer of that), but they also test drones, air force tech, and even guns. In October 2020 an IDF sniper boasted to Israeli newspaper Haaretz about breaking the "kneecap record" after shooting 42 Palestinian kneecaps in a single day. The snipers purposefully target kneecaps to permanently disable protestors, especially younger ones and increase the burden of care for Gazan society. This is "peacetime" between Gaza and Israel.
Gaza has been called an "open air prison" and "laboratory"[6] for Israel's military industry. The point I'm making is that Israel has never stopped keeping its eye on Gaza. I find it extremely hard to believe Israel didn't know, with extreme detail, what they were getting themselves into
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mowing_the_grass
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/14/israel-gaza-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War_(2008%E2%80%932009)
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Gaza_War
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Gaza_War
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Israel%E2%80%93Palestine_...
[6] https://www.versobooks.com/products/2684-the-palestine-labor...
> I find it extremely hard to believe Israel didn't know, with extreme detail, what they were getting themselves into
I find it extremely hard to believe Israel didn't know about the Oct 7 attack in the first place, and chose to use it as a reason.
It's hard to react to something when it's in your interests not to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Benjamin_Netanyahu
Some of the allegations are 15 years old at this point and the trial is still ongoing.
Netanyahu's goal is endless war and conflict so that he'll never have to leave office and finally face criminal charges. I think Oct 7 is exactly what he wanted also.
netanyahu trial is ongoing and actually been picking up pace in past month
I thought Israel said its (strategy?) aim was to remove? Hamas so it could no longer be a threat.
Well Hamas did write they want to kill all Israel. Hamas did slaughter , rape and torture 1200 civilians , children and babies. and take at least another 200? hostage Then paraded some of them thru Gaza. Exactly what response did Hamas expect. Also Trump has said 30,000 of the cira 60000 dead are Hamas fighters.
"Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation."
Such as ?
> Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this
Israel probably came out ahead if all they lost is prestige.
They've neutered Iran and become the de facto regional security power. Their weapons and military have been validated, which makes than a desirable trading partner in an increasingly-militarising world. And they're turning into a gas exporter.
Worst case, a generational shift occurs and Israel loses its military support from America. (I don't see us sanctioning Israel any time soon, so its economic primacy will remain intact. And we only pay for like 15% of their military budget, so not a disaster.) Do you really think China and India would even hesitate to partner with Tel Aviv on defense?
> They've neutered Iran and become the de facto regional security power
How did they "neuter" Iran? Iran responded quickly and managed to heavily damage TelAviv and is now rushing to accelerate rebuilding their nuclear capabilities.
If anything, the previous operation was a disaster, it allowed to regime to entrench itself even further in IRAN and regime change that they were hoping for didn't happen.
I'm sure both Iran and Israel are gearing up for another round of heavy conflict later this year or early next year.
IRAN is still very much a threat to Israel.
> How did they "neuter" Iran? Iran responded quickly and managed to heavily damage TelAviv
Israel gained air superiority over Iran and successfully conducted military decapitation strikes. Iran sort of launched some half-assed rockets in Israel's direction.
The only damage Israel has suffered is to its intelligence faculties in Iran.
> the previous operation was a disaster, it allowed to regime to entrench itself even further in IRAN and regime change that they were hoping for didn't happen
It was a tactical failure and strategic success. Iran's proxies have been shown they're completely fucking on their own--Tehran can't defend itself.
As for regime change, Israel didn't prosecute its war in a way that suggests that was the aim. Separatism? Yes. Destabilisation? Sure. Incapacitation? Surely. But regime change? I really don't think so. Knocking out the regime would likely mean elements of the IRGC consolidating power. That isn't a win for Israel.
> I'm sure both Iran and Israel are gearing up for another round of heavy conflict later this year or early next year
Iran doesn't have the ranged capability.
> IRAN is still very much a threat to Israel
I haven't seen any credible, impartial analysis that suggests this is remotely the case.
The conflict was settling into a "war of the cities" scenario with both Israel and the US exhausting interceptors rapidly.
What happens when it turns into a contest of rocket production and absorption against a country with 10x the population and 20x the land area? Completely unwinnable for Israel. Iran doesn't need air superiority to fire rockets.
> conflict was settling into a "war of the cities" scenario with both Israel and the US exhausting interceptors rapidly
Iran was rapidly running out of launchers. Once Israel gained air supremacy, it severely reduced its launcher deployment to avoid losing them for nothing.
> What happens when it turns into a contest of rocket production and absorption against a country with 10x the population and 20x the land area? Completely unwinnable for Israel
Iranian rocket production rates aren't particularly amazing. Tehran's deterrence came from the size of their stockpile, and the fact that they could fire on Israel from four directions (Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis and Iran proper).
> Iran doesn't need air superiority to fire rockets
Where did you get this?
Iran's MRBMs are mostly liquid fuelled [1] and stored in fortified bunkers (like V2s were). This leaves them highly vulnerable during fuelling (same as V2s). With air supremacy one can take out the missiles on the pad. (Which, due to the aforementioned fortification requirements, are predictably placed.) This is one reason Iran's missile firing rate collapsed during the war [2]--Israeli intelligence combined with targeted (land-origin, it seems) strikes took out their launchers.
Iran also has a fleet of solid-fuelled missiles which can be launched on short notice, but these are also less accurate, have to carry smaller payloads and more cheaply intercepted.
Moreover, in a war of attrition (which we did not reach, both sides were burning stockpiles) production reigns supreme. You need at least air parity to fire missiles. You need a favourable air situation to run fixed factories.
[1] https://www.iranwatch.org/our-publications/weapon-program-ba...
[2] https://jinsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Iranian-Ballist...
Iranian solid-fueled MRBM production rates were estimated by Israel to be at 200 a month, and rapidly increasing. That is actually a pretty remarkable production rate - basically the yearly production rate of interceptors. And that's only the solid fueled (by now the most produced), and only in ranges that can reach Israel. There is no reason why they would be any easier to intercept - plenty of aeroballistic missiles and even HGVs are propelled by solid fueled boosters.
Iranian missiles launchers are pretty cheap, and reportedly quite plentiful - they are relatively simple modifications of domestically produced truck platforms.
The Iranian account for why the strikes slowed down, FWIW, is that it took a significant amount of time to dig out the exits of the missiles bases, not that they ran out of launchers. Given the recycling of footage from launcher destruction and the simplicity of the launchers I personally find that account significantly more plausible.
> not that they ran out of launchers
They didn't run out of launchers. The launchers just emerged from a predictable place with unfuelled rockets. That made them easy to pot from the air.
The Iranian missile arsenal and production is now focused on solid fueled missiles, so they were emerging from a predictable place, but with a fuelled rocket they could fire in minutes.
Since it took at least an hour for a cruise missile to make it's way and around 15 minutes for an ALBM to make it's way, that means that once Israeli drones started being shot down, they were able to dig out the entrances, exit and launch faster than it took for a munition to be delivered.
Of course if Israel had been able to fly manned aircraft deep into Iran and for prolonged periods of time, that would have been impossible, and they would actually have been unable to fire. But that wasn't the case and so they were able to fire, probably limited by the ability to dig out the entrances and synchronize launches between different sites.
israel was flying with manned aircrafts with refueling planes over iraq/syria.
That's all well argued, but I can't get over the asymmetries of country size and the asymmetry of missile defense vs shooting the missile.
Russia wasn't supposed to be economically capable of a war this long and yet here we are. And that's a war of choice. If Iran is being attacked, they have no choices. People will find a way to make missiles underground if they have to.
And that's all before we get into political and psychological factors. How long does Netanyahu stay in power if Tel Aviv is hit every day?
(I have to note, USA vs Iran and Israel vs Iran are very different economic comparisons. It would be impossible for Israel to sustain 24/7 suppression over a country Iran's size but maybe with enough American funding its more feasible.)
Iran has a choice - it could choose not to support Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis or any other group firing rockets on Israel. It could also choose not to enrich uranium.
israel also has a choice, to attack or not attack.
iran doesnt make israel's choices, so chances are israel is gonna attack either way for israel's own internal politics
> I can't get over the asymmetries of country size and the asymmetry of missile defense vs shooting the missile
You're referring to strategic depth. Iran has lots of it. Israel does not. Countering that, however, is power projection capability. Israel has a lot of this, through its air force and allies. Iran was thought to have a lot of it, through its proxies, but that failed.
Without its proxies, Iran's fire on Israel has to originate from its own territory. That means trading missile range against the protection offered by its strategic depth from Israeli counter-battery fire. Hence why Iran's launchers were somewhat distributed across its territory. But! If Israel has air supremacy, that strategic depth changes from a risk to a logistical cost. If Israeli jets can freely access Iranian air space, that extra distance Iran's central and eastern launchers have to fly don't trade against any defensive upside--they're still going to be blown up shortly after a pad is revealed. They just have to burn more fuel to get the same payload to the same place.
> Russia wasn't supposed to be economically capable of a war this long
There were a variety of estimates. Most of them assumed Russia's economy would crumble under sanctions and so Moscow would lose the will to fight. I don't believe any showed Russia would lose the ability.
> If Iran is being attacked, they have no choices. People will find a way to make missiles underground if they have to
Rockets, sure. Missiles? No. The Shahab-3 reaches altitudes of 400 km [1]. That's where the ISS orbits [2].
> How long does Netanyahu stay in power if Tel Aviv is hit every day?
How long does Putin stay in power if Ukraine keeps dismantling Russia's energy infrastructure? The sad truth is war-time leaders tend to be deposed after unpopular wars, not during them.
> It would be impossible for Israel to sustain 24/7 suppression over a country Iran's size
Again, they don't need to. They just need to destroy the launchers.
It's estimated Iran went from 350 to 100 launchers in the war. Once you've levelled the launchers, you're defending against unguided rockets (which everyone in between will try to pot) and drones (which are cheaper and easier to destroy and cause less damage).
> would be impossible for Israel to sustain 24/7 suppression over a country Iran's size but maybe with enough American funding its more feasible
Israel's economy is twice the size of Irans's [3][4]. Its smaller territory means it can concentrate air defences. And with 10x fewer mouths to feed, it can devote more of that economy to its war machine in a spurt.
Iran-Israel is super interesting because they don't share a border, and they sort of min-maxed their militaries and economies in very different ways. If Iran had maintained its proxies, I think your original analysis stands. Without them, when it can only fire from one direction and from far away, all while Israel can scoot up close and right on top of it, many of its advantages turn into liabilities.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahab-3
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Israel
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iran
Don't know why you're getting downvoted for a thoughtful comment.
I think you're overindexing on a prepared sneak attack with maximum ops velocity from Israel. They threw the best punch they had and it.. disrupted Iran. Didn't knock them out.
Longer term, Israel has 260 fighter-bombers and Iran is huge. Allied analysts after WW2 generally concluded that strategic bombing didn't really move the needle on German war production, and that was with 10s of thousands of bombers, although admittedly a lot less precision. Any long, flat building in Iran's gigantic, mountainous country could be building missiles. And new launcher locations won't be plotted out ahead of time for a high-tempo 72 hour operation, they'll be coming up continuously over the long haul. They don't need to be hypersonic once interceptors are exhausted.
How's Israel going to sustain that long term, especially if they take any amount of ongoing civilian losses at all? It stops being an abstract conversation about collateral damage to civilians pretty quickly once it's happening to them. 10/1 ratio is nowhere near good enough for the polity there.
> How's Israel going to sustain that long term, especially if they take any amount of ongoing civilian losses at all?
Long term, no clue. The best strategy would be a system of regional alliances, but they've screwed that pooch with Gaza. Second best is setting red lines for Iranian missile production and stockpiles and intervening when those thresholds are breached.
Being extremely hasty with setting red lines and enforcing them is what got Israel into this situation. The "mow the lawn" strategy means perpetual conflict and they have to win every single time.
What right does Israel have to govern Iran's self defense capabilities? Iran's been attacked unprovoked by USA/Israel several times in the last 6-7 years, they're not the ones starting shooting wars.
Iran's supply chain is already fully domestic thanks to sanctions. Repeated strikes on that supply chain will only serve to harden it.
A more relevant historical parallel was the Iran-Iraq war. Iraq, in the first 5 years of the war, had largely degraded Iranian air defenses and was able to carry out many thousands of airstrikes, at some points even using strategic bombers, many of them with precision weapons. That was enough to degrade Iranian industry, but not enough to destroy it, and by the late 80s Iran still won the war of attrition, and managed to develop their weapons industry.
By the end of the war Iran was using domestic surveillance drones to direct artillery, and was even experimenting with the first attack drones by fitting RPGs on their larger surveillance UAVs, had reverse engineered and started domestically producing TOW missiles, had started producing the Shahab-1 ballistic missile (a Scud clone), Silkworm-clone radar-guided antiship cruise missiles, etc..., all the while their air force was down to less than 100 hundred aircraft in various degrees of disrepair and with very few advanced munitions remaining.
The war ultimately ended in a stalemate, even after the US intervened in Praying Mantis.
> more relevant historical parallel was the Iran-Iraq war
This is a terrible analogy. Iran and Iraq share a land border. That makes armies relevant in a way they are not to Israel-Iran.
The attacks on Iranian industry had zero land attack component. Iran is a very large country and Iraq was not able to hold much Iranian territory, the distances involved mean that Iraq was just like Israel reliant on airpower for these strikes.
Iran's GDP PPP is 1.75 trillion. The capacity for Iran to produce domestic designs is far higher than Israel's. Iran's nominal GDP has fallen drastically because of sanctions, but in terms of domestically produced and domestically designed military equipment, PPP is far more accurate.
> It's estimated Iran went from 350 to 100 launchers in the war. Once you've levelled the launchers, you're defending against unguided rockets (which everyone in between will try to pot) and drones (which are cheaper and easier to destroy and cause less damage).
That's possible, although no one actually knows how many TELs Iran has, and no one knows how many have been destroyed : Israeli evidence to that effect has been very very slim. Iran's TELs are essentially a pneumatic piston and a FCS (read: Beidou GNSS receiver) bolted onto a domestically-designed 8x8 or 10x10 platform. Iran has far, far more than 400 8x8/10x10 military trucks, so it's essentially impossible to know how many of those they can or have configured as a TEL at any given moment, especially since those conversions are easily done in undergound facilities.
So the "they just need to destroy the launchers" theory is very thin, on the edge of wishcasting. The launchers being domestically produced and similar/lesser in cost to the missiles they fire suggest that even if it does work once, it's not a viable long term strategy.
Iran has a very large automotive industry - they produce over 1 million cars per year. If the main strategic hit was to destroy 200 trucks made in a country that cranks out 1 000 000 cars, I'm going to very skeptical about claims of neutering them.
You may be confusing the guidance mechanisms of early ballistic missiles, which relied entirely on on-board inertial guidance. These missiles therefore needed quite precise initial guidance and an expensive TEL with a myriad of expensive sensors in order to calibrate themselves. Modern ballistic missiles don't work like that : they have non-inertial GNSS guidance (and for the most sophisticated, some kind of active or optical guidance system in the mid course and terminal phase) to complement inertial guidance. That means that the TEL just needs to communicate an initial position, so nothing much more complicated than a GNSS receiver is needed, and to the extent that this is incorrect, the missile can correct itself.
> Rockets, sure. Missiles? No. The Shahab-3 reaches altitudes of 400 km [1]. That's where the ISS orbits [2].
What does that have to do with anything? The Shahab-3 missile has a small fraction of the dV necessary to reach orbit, and is therefore much smaller than the kind of rocket you need for that. We already know that they are stored in large numbers underground, so what's the bottleneck that prevents underground production?
In fact, in Masyaf, Syria, Iran placed the planetary mixers which are the most sensitive and expensive component underground. There is no clear reason why they wouldn't have done so at home.
The rest of the production of solid-fueled missiles is bottlenecked by casting pits. Iran has placed mant of these above ground - obviously we can't know if or how many they have placed underground, but they seem to have largely resisted Israeli airstrikes - they are not a sensitive target. See : https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1220847/guest-post-a... for an independent account of Iranian MRBM-scale solid fueled rocket motor production. The only easy target are the planetary mixers - Israel has claimed to have targeted them, but in Masyaf, Syria, they failed to destroy them using airstrikes and had to resort to a commando attack on the underground facility, so that theory is thin as well.
> Its smaller territory means it can concentrate air defences.
That's right, which is why Israel uses weapons designed to evade air defenses and exploit gaps, while Iran uses weapons that simply exhaust interceptors. The former is easier to exploit from the get go, but the latter fails catastrophically once the breaking point arrives.
> And with 10x fewer mouths to feed, it can devote more of that economy to its war machine in a spurt.
Yes, but Iran doesn't feed it's citizens in US dollars (at least not anymore), it feeds them using a PPP-adjusted basket of goods. And similarly while Israel's interceptors are in large part manufactured in the USA and paid for in USD, Iran's missiles are almost entirely manufactured domestically, with workers paid in a much cheaper basket of goods. In terms of exchaning interceptors and ballistic missiles, Iran is ahead.
The main issue Iran has is that their missiles are mostly not accurate enough to degrade Israeli force projection, and that while missile production is very high, it hasn't been for a long time and thus stockpiles are not great. That's a problem that has an expiration date, and that's why Israel attacked Iran, because the window is closing. Iran only very recently demonstrated the kind of technology that is needed to execute precision strikes using MRBMs: the first missile design they claim is able to do so is the Qassem Basir, which only entered service this year. If that works and if they can scale production, the advantage Israel has in being very concentrated and densely protected turns into a liability - Iran then has the ability to directly attack Israeli BMD radars, and then directly attack airbases. It's a serious threat, and that's exactly why the Israelis decided that they needed to attack.
> Iran's GDP PPP is 1.75 trillion
Granted. We're still talking about a 3x difference, advantage to Iran, in the face of a lot more territory to defend, population to manage and a technical deficit.
> if the main strategic hit was to destroy 200 trucks
MRBM launchers are not trucks.
> You may be confusing the guidance mechanisms of early ballistic missiles
Guided vs unguided refers to the ability to course correct en route. An unguided missile is a lobber rocket. A guided missile has reaction controls onboard.
> What does that have to do with anything?
That it's a complicated machine you can't whip up in a garagd.
> while Iran uses weapons that simply exhaust interceptors
A strategy undermined by collapsing launch rates.
> If that works and if they can scale production, the advantage Israel has in being very concentrated and densely protected turns into a liability
Absolutely. I'm not saying Israel is indefinitely invulnerable to Iran. Just that in the last war, it neutered Iran's capacity to hurt it.
> MRBM launchers are not trucks.
It's a piston mounted on top of a utility truck. It's a truck! If a semi-truck with a refrigerated trailer is a truck, then an 8x8 utility truck with a hydraulic piston is also a truck.
> Guided vs unguided refers to the ability to course correct en route. An unguided missile is a lobber rocket. A guided missile has reaction controls onboard.
That's not what I'm referring to. Early ballistic missiles only had inertial guidance, and therefore needed an accurate positional and attitude fix provided by the launcher, which made it expensive and complex. Modern ballistic missiles have absolute guidance mechanisms, so the launcher is now much simpler.
> That it's a complicated machine you can't whip up in a garagd.
Iranian UGFs aren't garages. They are called missile cities for a reason.
> A strategy undermined by collapsing launch rates.
25-35% of ballistic missile impacts on Israel occured on June 22nd. The Iranian capacity to actually hit targets in Israel did not collapse through the 12 day war.
> Absolutely. I'm not saying Israel is indefinitely invulnerable to Iran. Just that in the last war, it neutered Iran's capacity to hurt it.
Iran's ballistic missile strikes were most successful on June 22nd. In the last week of the war, there is plenty of evidence pointing towards Israeli BMD degrading faster than Iran's ability to launch ballistic missiles.
The only way to conclude that Iran's ability to launch was neutered is if you believe that, were the war to continue, Iran's ability to launch missiles would have continued to degrade. The only argument to that effect is that they'd run out of launchers - I find that implausible on the basis of the launchers being simple modifications of extremely plentiful military truck platforms.
data shows that iranian ability to launch missiles degraded significantly https://jinsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Size-and-Freque...
after first week or so iran could launch only from bases that were much further away from Israel (way east), because Israeli air control was weaker there
Iran does need actual rockets and launchers, which they were rapidly running out at a faster rate than interceptors. Whatever the response was, it certainly wasn't the "apocalyptic" attack like some doves were previously predicting.
If Israel had air superiority over Iran, Iran would not be able to bomb Tel Aviv at will.
Iran's air force is NG, can't compete with Israel:
https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/irans-air-force-is-start...
Annihilated Hezbollah, toppled the Assad regime. Those two were irans most important allies and are now gone.
Iran being neutered is propaganda that is necessary for the (failed, for now) Israeli plan of regime change.
Iran maintains the ability to build ballistic missiles in large numbers, greatly depleted Israel-US BMD reserves, continues to build even more reinforced nuclear sites. Neutering those capabilities was the main goal of the 12 day war and by most accounts, that didn't work.
Israel did not manage air superiority over the large majority of Iran, instead the majority of strikes over Iran were done using standoff weapons and drones, many flown from within Iran as an act of sabotage.
If Israel truly managed to get air superiority over Iran, the Iranian regime would have suffered the same fate as Nasrallah. But that didn't happen, because while Israel was able to execute a number of deep strikes, the capability to do so was much closer to Russia's ability over Ukraine than, say, the way the US operated over Iraq. And Iran at the same time was able to execute dozens of deep strikes within Israel, but with much less precision - without a much deeper cut to the Iranian MIC it's only a matter of time before the newer, much more precise missiles are built in sufficient numbers to become a similar threat to the Israeli airforce.
There is no reason why China would ever want to partner with Israel on defense anymore. They tried do in the 2000s, and they found that Israel was so deeply and inextricably dependent on US technology and manufacturing for it's military technology that there was almost nothing worthwhile they could get that wasn't so dependent on the US that the US would veto it. Israel's military sophistication is not endogenous to the extent it would be competitive without the US - it's entirely dependent on an extremely privileged relationship with the MIC that allows Israel to stand on the shoulder of giants and produce weapons that are far more sophisticated than would be possible for any economy of its' size otherwise.
An article came out only today on Haaretz detailing how much of the footage and imagery from Israeli strikes were deepfakes or recycled footage. That's not something you do when you've managed to neuter your opponent.
> Iran being neutered is propaganda that is necessary for the (failed, for now) Israeli plan of regime change. Iran maintains the ability to build ballistic missiles in large numbers
Iran hasn't been neutralised. It was just reduced to a non-threat during the war. Of course it maintains future capabilities that could be threatening.
> That's not something you do when you've managed to neuter your opponent
Why not? It's an information war.
> Iran hasn't been neutralised. It was just reduced to a non-threat during the war. Of course it maintains future capabilities that could be threatening.
I wouldn't call 10 ballistic missiles hits in a day a non-threat. If they were accurate that's a significant threat: enough to disable all BMD radars in a day, and over a week to disable airbases.
The most important factor that made them less threatening is the lack of pinpoint accuracy, and that is not something that changed over the course of the war.
> Why not? It's an information war.
Getting caught using fabricated imagery is inevitable within a couple days, so that's not something you'd want to do in an information war if you are looking for long term effect, unless you have to.
Israel an the US are a single entity when it comes to security matters in the middle east. It was already the de facto regional power.
> Israel an the US are a single entity when it comes to security matters in the middle east. It was already the de facto regional power
Not independently. At this point, Israel is independently a de facto regional power. The strike in Doha drove that home. (As did the attacks on Iran, which delivered a geostrategic win to Riyadh that Washington was never able to.)
You may not realize it but Israel is slowly becoming Rhodesia/Apartheid South Africa. And i don't mean the word 'apartheid' as a cudgel.
During the Rhodesian Bush War, their forces ran circles around the ZIPRA and ZANLA with multiple battles and encounters where they'd routinely record 500:1 KD ratios like Operation Dingo, etc. They had complete freedom of action to bomb any infrastructure obstructing them, reach deep into neighboring countries and slaughter guerillas copiously.
Hell, South Africa had a dozen nukes.
Once the sanctions came on, it unraveled everything they had.
Israel is in such a precarious situation right now. Their economy depends on technology exports to an extreme degree. Cutting off that source of FX would literally half the economy overnight because cash would stop sloshing around internally from its main sources.
If that happens, all the smart kids propping up the economy will move out while you're left with extremists who want war but won't fight in the army. In fact, it's ongoing right now with people leaving the country in the midst of a war they're 'winning.'
You might think sanctions are a far-off notion, but key Western powers are breaking with America on recognizing Palestine. That's a red line designed to signal to Israel that it's losing ground. People across the world are calling for sanctions and it won't be long before they materialize.
And America? Israel's main power base are American boomer evangelicals who're going the way of the dinosaur. Like I said in another comment, their kids are either not religious, don't like bombing kids, have been radicalized by the atrocities they've witnessed, or are aligned with people like Fuentes.
I hope they can smell the coffee; if anyone had told South Africa that a nuclear power could be disarmed without a gunshot, they'd never have believed it. But, look what eventually happened.
Thanks to the ongoing genocide, America's voting demographic for the next 40 years has begun to see Israel as a genocidal terrorist state. They will be voting for the next 50 years, while the boomer evangelicals die off.
> Cutting off that source of FX would literally half the economy overnight because cash would stop sloshing around internally from its main sources
My point is this isn't a realistic threat for Israel. Its exports are highly desirable to too many parties. Technology. Weapons. Energy. There is too much money to be made, too much advantage to be had.
Yes, if the war in Gaza continues for another decade, Israel will run out of goodwill. But if it wraps up within a year or two? I don't see anything happening quickly enough that they can't adapt. Apartheid was a permanent state. The war need not be.
> America's voting demographic for the next 40 years has begun to see Israel as a genocidal terrorist state. They will be voting for the next 50 years
I'd say a strategic prerogative for Israel at this point is to diversify away from America. It's unfortunate. But they screwed a golden goose.
For the aforementioned reasons, however, that isn't existential. Particularly given India and China have what they consider to be problematic Muslim populations within and around themselves, too.
Historically Israel has been very paranoid about accepting American support.
During the Cold War they played both sides: socialist but democratic.
Even now they can get the Chinese on the line in a minutes notice. I’m pretty sure the Chinese are running one of their ports.
> Even now they can get the Chinese on the line in a minutes notice. I’m pretty sure the Chinese are running one of their ports
China has actually been more arms length in this conflict, possibly due to its relations with Iran, possibly because it wants Israel to fully commit east. (Possibly because they have a moral position on occupation and genocide, though unlikely, it's not like they're handing back Tibet and Xinxiang.)
>My point is this isn't a realistic threat for Israel. Its exports are highly desirable to too many parties. Technology. Weapons. Energy.
Everything Israel makes is fungible. The middle east is a river of gas. Israel's defense technology industry can't exist without Western partners. Hell, America denying them F35 repairs/upgrades effectively kills their airforce.
>Yes, if the war in Gaza continues for another half decade, Israel will run out of goodwill. But if it wraps up within a year or two? I don't see anything happening quickly enough that they can't adapt. Apartheid was a permanent state. The war need not be.
The damage has been done. Hundreds of millions globally now voice opinions about Israel openly that they wouldn't have allowed to just a few years back. These people vote in their countries, buy products, interact in the real world. We're seeing Israeli tourists get harassed openly. Would have been unthinkable in, say, 2020.
>Yeah, I'd say a strategic prerogative for Israel at this point is to diversify away from America. For the aforementioned reasons, however, I don't see that being a problem. Particularly given India and China have what they consider to be problematic Muslim populations within and around themselves, too.
India cannot even field 4.5 generation jets. Their airforce (French Rafales) got whooped in the recent confrontation with Pakistan. In fact, after China delivers Pakistan's J35s, India would have nothing to counter it. Israel's military core is air supremacy so much so that it is state doctrine to use nukes if the IAF is ever destroyed.
And China, trying to project an image of fairness to the third-world, as an alternative power, supports a two-state solution. Unlike Western politicians, they can't be lobbied and bribed to support endless wars.
I have my gripes with the West but they're still a superpower bloc. If they sanction you, you're fucked. There's a reason even China keeps its dealings with sanctioned Russian companies plausibly deniable. To avoid contagion.
You just don't understand how dependent Israel is on the West. 53% of their exports are technology goods. If you're cut off from Western markets, not only will China not buy much from Israel, they will copy their products and compete with them.
The only country you can build a shared resistance towards Muslims is India. For now, their economy is small and irrelevant. China has their Islamist problem under control and they won't want to offend the moneybag Arabs by supporting Israel (LMAO).
> Everything Israel makes is fungible
Israeli weapons are absolutely not fungible, particularly not for non-Western buyers. And something being fungible doesn't make it less valuable.
> America denying them F35 repairs/upgrades effectively kills their airforce
Correct. I am guessing we'll see diversification here.
> India cannot even field 4.5 generation jets. Their airforce (French Rafales) got whooped in the recent confrontation with Pakistan
...and guess who makes a state-of-the-art integrated air defences? And knows how to penetrate (and thus harden) state-of-the-art Russian air defence systems?
> China, trying to project an image of fairness to the third-world, as an alternative power, supports a two-state solution
Uh, China is doing whatever it can to keep America distracted. If Israel can give China technology, China will continue calling for a two-state solution while buying what it needs. (Chinese-Israeli trade has increased throughout the war.)
> have my gripes with the West but they're still a superpower bloc. If they sanction you, you're fucked
Israel is not at material risk of blanket sanctions from the West in the next decade. And being a democracy, there is a lot of good a change of face can do.
> 53% of their exports are technology goods
Why does this have to go to America and Western Europe?
> China has their Islamist problem under control and they won't want to offend the moneybag Arabs by supporting Israel
Which of the Arab monarchies is particularly distressed with Israel? Which has even walked back its previous support and recognition? The Gulf is more than happy for Israel to fight their wars against Iran. If the war dies down, they've got more important things to worry about. (Their populations have never liked Israel. Not super relevant.)
It seems that everyone in this conflict has doomsday fantasies for their opponents. The Gazans will all shrivel up and die. Israel will poof away because young Americans decide foreign policy--not jobs or housing or the rule of law--is their single issue. These extreme outcomes are incredibly unlikely.
>Israeli weapons are absolutely not fungible, particularly not for non-Western buyers.
My claim was specifically with China in mind. Pretty much everything the Americans will let Israel sell to non-Western partners can be gotten from China, Turkey, etc. cheaper and with less headache.
>Correct. I am guessing we'll see diversification here.
Yep. Introducing my magical new fighter jet that replaces the f35!
>...and guess who makes a state-of-the-art integrated air defences? And knows how to penetrate (and thus harden) state-of-the-art Russian air defence systems?
Well, it probably didn't work great given how India fared recently, did it? They're a committed partner of Israel and collaborate on military tech.
>Uh, China is doing whatever it can to keep America distracted. If Israel can give China technology, China will continue calling for a two-state solution while buying what it needs. (Chinese-Israeli trade has increased throughout the war.)
The only thing China reliably does is single-mindedly pursue their interests. Propping Israel up doesn't achieve that. In fact they're quite chummy with the Palestinians and lots of the weapons used for the Oct. 7 raid were Chinese-made.
>Israel is not at material risk of blanket sanctions from the West in the next decade.
If you say so. The chances of the Five Eyes breaking with America on recognizing Palestine were also exactly zero just a few months ago.
>Why does this have to go to America and Western Europe?
Because they're the only ones who have the money for it. No non-Western company/country has the amount of tech demand/cash to have completed the Wiz acquisition for $32b in cash. Their software markets have no viable customers outside the West.
>Which of the Arab monarchies is particularly distressed with Israel? Which has even walked back its previous support and recognition? The Gulf is more than happy for Israel to fight their wars against Iran.
Good point.
>It seems that everyone in this conflict has doomsday fantasies for their opponents.
I have no dog in the fight. Both countries could disappear overnight and it wouldn't affect my quality of life. I'm simply a student of history and I'm trained to see patterns.
I'm curious to know what it is that India didn't fare well in the recent conflict. Based on my reading I was under the impression that original incursion was a military success for India and everything else after that was theatre on both sides. What am I missing?
> curious to know what it is that India didn't fare well in the recent conflict
Pakistan shot down Indian plane(s). India didn't return the favour. Worse, Pakistan's integrated air defence systems had situational awareness; it's clear Indian Rafale pilots didn't even see the shots coming.
It's not a victory for one side or the other, overall. But in the air battle, Pakistan gained tactical supremacy.
The Indian government claims to have shit down Pakistani jets as well and Pakistan denied it. Pakistan claims to have shit down six jets and India says it's 3. So there is that
> Indian government claims to have shit down Pakistani jets as well and Pakistan denied it
A lot of folks have looked at a lot of OSINT. There is no evidence of any Indian kills. The best we can say is we have zero confirmed kills by India on Pakistan. For what it's worth, New Delhi seems to have backed off repeating its claims of kills internationally.
> Pakistan claims to have shit down six jets and India says it's 3
India claims three jets crashed for unknown reasons [1]. French and US officials have indirectly confirmed those kills [2][3]. Internationally, it's being treated as three confirmed kills by Pakistan.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/three-fighter-jet...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/pakistans-chinese-made-jet-bro...
[3] https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/india-pakistan-attac...
> Introducing my magical new fighter jet that replaces the f35
You really think the French, Swedes, Russians or Chinese won't sell them planes? They're seeking to be a regional power. They don't need F-35s. (Though they're certainly handy.)
> probably didn't work great given how India fared recently, did it?
India doesn't field Israeli air defences...
> only thing China reliably does is single-mindedly pursue their interests. Propping Israel up doesn't achieve that
I'll grant that China has been the most consistent on Israel and Palestine. Nevertheless, Israeli-Chinese trade keeps growing.
> If you say so. The chances of the Five Eyes breaking with America on recognizing Palestine were also exactly zero just a few months ago
Really? According to whom? I haven't been in the UN for a while, but everyone I knew was asking when, not if. It clearly works for domestic politics, doubly following the recent trade concessions.
Netherlands (not Five Eyes) was 1 in 3 [1]. Canada and France were making motions for a while; Japan and Italy were like 50% going back two months.
> they're the only ones who have the money for it
The U.S. funds about 15% of Israel's defence budget. We allow them to splurge in a way they can't alone. But that just means they can't defeat Hezbollah and Iran and Hamas at the same time without us.
[1] https://kalshi.com/markets/kxrecogpalestine/palestine-recogn...
>You really think the French, Swedes, Russians or Chinese won't sell them planes? They're seeking to be a regional power. They don't need F-35s. (Though they're certainly handy.)
The fact we're even having this conversation is the point. Top-end equipment was always guaranteed. The fact you're shopping around mentally for second-best points to that.
>I'll grant that China has been the most consistent on Israel and Palestine. Nevertheless, Israeli-Chinese trade keeps growing.
Well, there's a reason why they've been consistent on it so far. If Israel's trade comes to depend significantly on them, they can use it as leverage against them.
>Really? According to whom? I haven't been in the UN for a while, but everyone I knew was asking when, not if. It clearly works for domestic politics, doubly following the recent trade concessions.
I should have been more specific than a few months ago. Here's what I meant. Many of these countries have no issues against Palestine, but wouldn't break openly with the US position because of how dependent they are. That happening is a vibe shift.
>The U.S. funds about 15% of Israel's defence budget. We allow them to splurge in a way they can't alone. But that just means they can't defeat Hezbollah and Iran and Hamas at the same time without us.
You keep taking my statements out of context, attacking a point I didn't make and then claiming victory. I'm not even addressing US aid to Israel, which is extensive. I'm talking about their economy! Without that trade, the economy will shrink by a lot. The technologists bringing in that FX will move away in large numbers. Spending will have to reduce by half or more, especially given Israel already has a high tax-to-gdp-ratio. The country won't survive it. More high earners will leave and you'll go into a death spiral.
Dozens of UN resolutions have been issued against Israel and vetoed by the US. If it happens without American support, they'll be placed under an intl. embargo until they comply. Ask Iran what intl. embargoes have done to crush their economy before you wave it off. What America offers Israel is both a large export market they don't have internally, and protection from consequences.
Israel is too integrated with the West, going as far as competing in Eurovision, UEFA, etc. If they break with the West, they can't survive it. I cite Rhodesia as an example repeatedly because that's where they slowly but surely ended up.
If you end up with Western sanctions, no matter your country's size, you're fucked. USSR and Maoist China can give you any lectures you want.
The 'chosen people' delusion can make it seem economic realities don't apply, but the earlier Israel can get to a lasting peace while conditions are favorable, the better.
> fact we're even having this conversation is the point. Top-end equipment was always guaranteed. The fact you're shopping around mentally for second-best points to that
I've literally not thought about this until you brought it up. My point is there is an extensive list of eager jet sellers who would step up to the plate.
> If Israel's trade comes to depend significantly on them, they can use it as leverage against them
Sure? Same as America can now. This defeats the argument that Israel is being economically isolated, or faces devastation from losing America as a close ally in decades.
> Many of these countries have no issues against Palestine, but wouldn't break openly with the US position because of how dependent they are. That happening is a vibe shift
It's been months in the making. Not paying attention doesn't make something surprising. It would have been extremely surprising if Canada, the UK and France didn't recognise Palestine, and I'm saying this going back half a year.
> I'm talking about their economy! Without that trade, the economy will shrink by a lot
But going back to the top, there are plenty of other trading partners America's third of exports could be replaced with. Not entirely. Not on as great terms. But close enough to keep Israel reigning as a regional hegemony.
> technologists bringing in that FX will move away in large numbers
Where are you getting this notion that tech exports are a major source of FX for Israel? Or that Israel would stop being a tech centre if America turned its back on it? (And again, major emerging gas exporter.)
> you'll go into a death spiral
I'm not Israeli. I've never been to Israel.
> Dozens of UN resolutions have been issued against Israel and vetoed by the US. If it happens without American support, they'll be placed under an intl. embargo until they comply
Look at the list of UNSC sanctioned countries [1]. They're symbolic. The point is to cause members to enact follow-on sanctions [2]. When that doesn't happen, they're ineffective.
> Ask Iran what intl. embargoes have done to crush their economy
They're...still around. You also missed Angola, Yemen, North Korea...
> Israel is too integrated with the West, going as far as competing in Eurovision, UEFA, etc. If they break with the West, they can't survive it. I cite Rhodesia as an example repeatedly because that's where they slowly but surely ended up
I get this is your hypothesis. It simply isn't sustained. This is before we get to the point that if a couple Western countries sanction Israel for shits and giggles, there is a lot of money to be made by someone defecting and acting 'neutrally'.
(Also, in any world where Israel is sanctioned, Palestine gets devastated. That's simply the nature of having an economic basket case as a neighbour.)
Again, there seem to be folks who like to see patterns that sustain extreme outcomes that support a moral view of the world. You're having to go so deep into hypotheticals while being able to surface zero sources because the precedented outcome for this war--like most others that caused moral outrage in the West--is that we forget about it and move on and then everyone goes back to making money again.
(The only note I'd add is that if this rhetoric becomes commonplace, that America is destined to abondon Israel, it incentivises one outcome and one outcome only: destroying Palestine today, quickly and decisively. Nobody talks about that because nobody really buys the pitch you're making outside pro-Palestinian activist circles. I'm also not criticising you personally. Ukraine was my pet war. I absolutely bought into all sorts of conspiracies about Russia getting sidelined and partitioned up. We all want to see patterns that sustain the illusion of a just world.)
[1] https://main.un.org/securitycouncil/en/sanctions/information
[2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26296655
>Where are you getting this notion that tech exports are a major source of FX for Israel? Or that Israel would stop being a tech centre if America turned its back on it? (And again, major emerging gas exporter.)
From their own economic publications. Tech exports are 53% of their export output. Gas is a laughable non-issue. Like I said earlier, the middle east is full of it. It's not a significant source of leverage since every third country has it.
>UN sanctions are way less biting than American secondary sanctions alone.
You can always tunnel around sanctions, but it kills a lot of your open-market economy. You have to sell for a lower, discounted price. Acquisitions and mergers are effectively over. Sales shrink by a lot. Your largest companies move away to avoid contagion. I mean, have you ever read about the sanctions on Rhodesia & south Africa?
>They're...still around. And they never had a weapons sector like Israel's.
They're severely, terribly weakened. Even China won't sell them any modern airframes. That should tell you something.
>I get this is your hypothesis. It simply isn't sustained. This is before we get to the point that if a couple Western countries sanction Israel for shits and giggles, there is a lot of money to be made by someone defecting and acting 'neutrally'.
I have evidence of Western & non-western countries banding together to sanction consistent bad actors, despite being even more Western than Israel will ever be. Do you have any evidence of any country surviving sanctions without severe economic damage? Please share; my viewpoint has abundant proof. I'm just supposed to believe yours.
>Again, there seem to be folks who like to see patterns that sustain extreme outcomes that support a moral view of the world. You're having to go three levels deep for every turn because the most precedented outcome here is everyone forgets and moves on.
I don't have a dog in the fight. Both countries could die to the last man and I'd still go on my merry way, whistling. I'm simply projecting based on history, which is why I cite precedent that you refuse to admit.
> tech exports are 53% of their export output
Sure. Where are you getting that these are a critical source of FX?
> Gas is a laughable non-issue
To FX? Seriously?
> have you ever read about the sanctions on Rhodesia & south Africa?
Yes. Zimbabwe is still sanctioned. South Africa had preëxisting power-sharing negotiations.
> Even China won't sell them any modern airframes. That should tell you something
...that Beijing isn't drunk? Why do you think Washington got pissed off when Turkey bought Russian air defences and let them paint our fighter fleet?
> have evidence of Western & non-western countries banding together to sanction consistent bad actors
One, during a unipolar world. Someone else commented on this, but in a multipolar world, that is a luxury that simply doesn't emerge. (Even the bilateral world of the Cold War very rarely saw international sanctions regimes effected. That was just a nudge for someone to switch from one system of alliances to another.)
> Do you have any evidence of any country surviving sanctions without severe economic damage?
Yes [2]. In the short term, they cause damage. ("Severe" needs to be quantified, however--when regime change is targeted, it's only successful about a third of the time.) In the long term, they're less effective. Economies go into cockroach mode.
If you want a list, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Belarus, Burma and Venezuela are each heavily sanctioned and pretty much setting themselves up to permanently be so. (Pyongyang and Minsk having practically turned it into an art.)
> I'm simply projecting based on history, which is why I cite precedent
You haven't cited anything! Based on history, Israel is highly unlikely to get sanctioned by anyone, let alone America, and if it were, it's likely to be fine.
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01475...
China and India have problematic local Muslim populations. That doesn’t extend to supporting Israel.
And they clearly don’t. China actively talks against it (because it builds global goodwill on the diplomatic stage) and India only plays lip service (they have more to gain from the Gulf than Israel).
> And they clearly don’t. China actively talks against it
They've both deepened trade ties with Israel throughout the war. India is literally selling Israel weapons [1].
[1] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-on-gaza-indian-made-i...
They're opportunistically buying/selling what they want. None of these are an ideological commitment to Israel's status quo. If the wind direction changes, they'll change with it.
> They're opportunistically buying/selling what they want. None of these are an ideological commitment to Israel's status quo. If the wind direction changes, they'll change with it
Yes. That's trade. It's true for most international relationships.
Yes. That's trade. It's true for most international relationships.
You don’t get to have your cake and eat it too. China and India don’t have an ideological relationship with Israel. So Israel is never going to “diversify” (your words) their relationship to the point that China is shooting down cruise missiles flying over Tel Aviv on their behalf.
America is a perfect ally to Israel. I’m not arguing they’ll replace us 1:1. Just more than adequately, certainly enough to maintain a regional hegemony if not fight for it anew.
> India don’t have an ideological relationship with Israel
Right-wing Indians and Israelis actually have quite a bit in common. I don’t think it’s enough to sustain a long-term alliance. And New Delhi is no Washington. (It’s also a buyer of Iranian oil.)
But there are outright exterminationist wings in both countries, and their enemies share the same faith.
>America's voting demographic for the next 40 years has begun to see Israel as a genocidal terrorist state. They will be voting for the next 50 years, while the boomer evangelicals die off.
The pro-palestine progressives are rapidly loosing political power, if not being targeted right now by the Trumpian administration. The National Conservatives may be isolationist regarding free funding, but they certainly aren't going to sanctioning Israel or ending arms sales, while Pro-Palestine is pretty much a useful proxy as is for them to signify "un-americans".
Furthermore, the sanctions on South Africa occurred within the context of the Liberal International Era where one could afford to alienate a state in a region with little importance. But it's posters like you that have been calling for the so-called multipolar world, which is where NGOs and Human Rights will be sidelined in favour of a Westphalian-Type Sovereignity whereby hard interests decide foreign policy, not human rights concerns. In that Realist context, it is virtually within complete interests for the Gulf States and other actors to align with Israel over Iran, the former which has proven itself militairly and acts accordingly to economic interest, whereas the latter is bordering on a failed state still motivated by irrational hegemonic concerns. In the same context, a Palestinian states that takes over Israel basically will likely be detrimental to the other actors.
> a Westphalian-Type Sovereignity whereby hard interests decide foreign policy, not human rights concerns
Westphalian sovereignty refers to "a principle in international law that each state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory" [1]. It doesn't support realpolitik nor negate human rights. The only degree to which it intersects with the latter is in arguing against foreign intervention. (Which realpolitik encourages.) It's a concept that was promulgated to integrate previously-independent city states into the larger nation-states and empires of the time.
It's also quite idiotically named, given the actual Peace of Westphalia dealt with foreign powers deciding what to do with the Holy Roman Empire at the end of the Thirty Years' War, with France and Sweden being "recognised as guarantors of the imperial constitution with a right to intercede" [2], sort of the opposite of inviolable sovereignty.
Today, it tends to be something Putin brings up, again, quite idiotically, given he's constantly fucking around in other countries' affairs.
(You're broadly correct that in a Realist international framework the morality of Israel's actions are irrelevant. And that everyone advocating for a multipolar world shifts us in the Realist direction. Practically, however, these are models, not theories, and they coëxist with each other.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_system
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia
I’m one of the folks whose opinion of Israel has shifted. I don’t see them as a “genocidal terrorist state.” I see them as “just another middle eastern country.”
While it’s bad what’s happening, it’s still nowhere near Syrian or Yemeni levels, although that may change.
The best analogy I can think of is the Allied conduct in Germany at the end of WWII. WWII was a just and defensive war. But the bombing of Dresden and atrocities by the Soviet Army were unnecessary and dishonorable.
Israel is now engaged in unnecessary and dishonorable conduct. They’ve been demoted from impressive to embarrassing.
But they’re still a legitimate country, just like, say, Saudi Arabia.
>I’m one of the folks whose opinion of Israel has shifted. I don’t see them as a “genocidal terrorist state.” I see them as “just another middle eastern country.”
Okay. Opinions are on a spectrum. just like you, hundreds of millions of people who used to be pretty neutral on Israel now have strong opinions on the country. As a country, you generally want to blend in like Singapore/Switzerland and just not attract attention. Israel is attracting that attention, and for very bad reasons.
Western voters are childlike and emotional. They hate seeing blood on screen, children crying, starving, dying, being squeezed in queues for food. For any reason at all. Israel might seem like just another middle eastern country to you, but when you aggregate across 8 billion people, the average vibe has shifted negatively. By a lot.
>While it’s bad what’s happening, it’s still nowhere near Syrian or Yemeni levels
Tell that to Western voters who will be voting for 50 years. No one cares. just make it stop.
>But they’re still a legitimate country, just like, say, Saudi Arabia.
You're being nuanced. Cool. But the average human is not. Good luck beaming that moderate position into everyone's minds.
> Western voters are childlike and emotional. They hate seeing blood on screen, children crying, starving, dying, being squeezed in queues for food
There are like half a dozen wars of extermination currently occuring with lots of disturbing footage. Nobody really cares. Israel is close to home because it's an ally and we styled it as a Western-style democracy (versus something closer to the Middle Eastern democracy it is.)
> Tell that to Western voters who will be voting for 50 years. No one cares. just make it stop
There are precisely zero foreign policy issues that have survived this long on the back of vibes alone.
>There are precisely zero foreign policy issues that have survived this long on the back of vibes alone.
Christian Zionist support for Israel is 100% based off vibes. Hitler's plan to invade Russia & exterminate its people for living space was based off Master Race vibes. America's Manifest destiny was based off vibes. Anti-communist domino theory was based off vibes and 58k young American kids died in Vietnam for it, not counting the 153k maimed and injured. Japan's imperial delusions that got them nuked was based off vibes.
Want me to go on?
>There are like half a dozen wars of extermination currently occurring with lots of disturbing footage. Nobody really cares. Israel is close to home because it's an ally and we styled it as a Western-style democracy (versus something closer to the Middle Eastern democracy it is.)
Would you kindly name them, good sir? Off the top of my head, I think Sudan. But, no Westerner really cares about Sudan. Israel they do care about because of the media onslaught and their countries' stance on the issue. It's one of those conflicts you just can't unsee.
> Anti-communist domino theory was based off vibes
Couldn't possibly be that in the post-colonial world there was a burst of new countries, the superpowers were constrained militarily by MAD, and thus both engaged on a worldwide game of attracting potential military allies and trading partners into their respective spheres of influence while denying the other the same wherever possible?
> Would you kindly name them, good sir? Off the top of my head, I think Sudan. But, no Westerner really cares about Sudan
Sudan. Burma. Tigray. (Ukraine. Uyghurs, technically, too, but we don't have footage because China's gotten good at this since Tibet.)
> Israel they do care about because of the media onslaught and their countries' stance on the issue. It's one of those conflicts you just can't unsee
One. Among many.
Uniquely capturing American attention. But so was Darfur once. And #StopKony before that. Barring Israel literally continuing this war for another twenty years, chances are, it too will be forgotten. There really is just that much horribleness constantly happening in the world. I cannot imagine the 2030s will be so blissfully peaceful as to allow us to continue to fixate on the crimes of decades past.
>Christian Zionist support for Israel is 100% based off vibes. Hitler's plan to invade Russia & exterminate its people for living space was based off Master Race vibes. America's Manifest destiny was based off vibes. Anti-communist domino theory was based off vibes and 58k young American kids died in Vietnam for it, not counting the 153k maimed and injured. Japan's imperial delusions that got them nuked was based off vibes.
This is totally serious analysis that is reflective of mainstream analysis and not just the projection of highly partisan political views. Foreign Policy Analysts certainly will be going to be making decisions based on views like this!
You didn't debunk any claim I made in my comment. All the historical episodes I referred to were deluded people coming up with nice-sounding theories on why they deserved to take other people's stuff or force their compliance by force. Each last one ended badly.
>All the historical episodes I referred to were deluded people coming up with nice-sounding theories on why they deserved to take other people's stuff or force their compliance by force.
There's no need to debunk a gish-gallop. I'd simply make the claim that this poster's views are not reflected by the overwhelming majority of academic historians and foreign policy analysts in any country, certainly not in reductively reducing things to "deluded people". That's more of sign of unserious polemics.
They haven't "neutered" Iran, all they've proven is that they're actually quite ineffective against Iran and Yemen. They've also become the most hated country in all of the world. Their citizens have to hide their citizenship when they travel back to Europe. Israel won't last another 10 years.
The article says on a low period they found people were eating 1400 calories a day at one point. If there was more than that they would have listed it. Israel targets a higher number but that is what it got to in the worst situation the article could find to list.
The United States Red Cross sets as a floor 1500 calories a day for people in distress. Is the Red Cross trying to starve Americans in distress?
https://emergency.lacity.gov/sites/g/files/wph1791/files/202...
The UN just cut food aid in Kenya for 800,000 refugees from the war in Sudan in half to 588 calories per day, yet the UN says it is willing and able to provide significantly higher amounts of food (and to not do so would be criminal) to the 2 million people of Gaza. Is the UN criminal/genocidal against Kenyan/Sudanese for offering starvation level assistance to one group but significantly more to another? The UN says they are ready and able to provide assistance to one group at the very same time the cut in half/say they can't provide aid that meets the level they say Gaza must receive when it is people in Kenya that need aid. Kenyan war refugees are receiving significantly less per person than that 1400 calorie at 588.
https://allafrica.com/stories/202505230270.html
Agreeing with the other sibling comments. I think in part it was following the same vision that the current Israeli government had been following already before Oct. 7 - they had annexation of the West Bank listed as one of the official goals of their coalition since they were elected.
Another part stemmed from the extreme dehumanization of Palestinians that was already established in Israeli society long before (and to a lesser extent also in other western countries). The overton window had already been shifted so far that this kind of response was seen as mostly normal.
I found the standard justifications of "eh, war is always cruel" and "when their kids grow up, they will just become the next generation of terrorists" pretty telling.
In all this description, with which I agree to a large extent except in believing the "lashing out" to have been very much deliberate, except simply murderous and grossly inept, it's worth mentioning the specific name of that murderous war criminal Netanyahu who is responsible for the majority of the decision making and impetus.
> the US is slowly distancing itself.
Public opinion in the US has turned against Israel, yes. Trump doesn't care about public opinion. He'll be buddy-buddy to Netanyahu other than symbolic acts of distancing / reprimanding.
I think that's mostly accurate, but to be fair he did recently sign an executive order guaranteeing military defense of Qatar, which was clearly a message to Israel that they better not mess with them. It's far from a backpedal on his support for Israel, but it does show he won't let them do anything they want (at least if he is speaking honestly)
> Trump doesn't care about public opinion
Of course he does. But he's currently most sensitive to Republican voters' opinions, and they're still at 64% net sympathy for Israel and 9% for Palestine. (55% of Trump voters say "Israel should continue its military campaign until Hamas is fully eliminated, even if it means the civilian casualties in Gaza might continue," while only 29% say "Israel should stop its military campaign in order to protect against civilian casualties, even if Hamas has not been fully eliminated" [1].)
As the midterms come closer, that 26% independent net support for Israel becomes more pertinent, as do the 67% of independents who want Israel to stop its campaign.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/02/polls/times-s...
Trump is also "buddy-buddy" with a lot of the Gulf States, in fact, he probably likes them more because they have more money to give him. If Israel does something they don't like, such as bomb Qatar, Trump can swing against Israel.
Trump turns on his friends the moment it's convenient to do so.
Look at the situation on October 7. 6000 armed terrorists swarmed across the border of gaza, commiting atrocities the like of which were not even thought to be possible in todays day and age among civilised people. I was never under any illusion of what hamas was and i was still shocked. The political climate in Israel up until that day was trying to help gazas economy and assuming hamas were pragmatic enough not to seek a war.
But it became clear that not only did they spend their main efforts in the previous few years planning this massacre, but they had embedded themselves as deeply as possible in every single part of gaza as possible. Their tunnel network is more extensive then the London underground. Their bases are in hospitals and schools. Undeniable facts except to the most cynical and dishonest people out there.
But what dismayed me the most was the response of the average palestinian on the street. Ecstatic celebration, i saw videos of crowds literally shrieking and crying for joy, at the single most shameful crime against humanity that was ever committed in their name.
No other country in the world would do anything different in Israels place. Most would go much further. You can express disgust at their actions from your place where you would never have to confront such barbarity. Hamas planned and created the entire situation you just described and left no other course of action for Israel to take. What else should they have done? Don't tell me some stupid idea like make peace with them and stop the settlements etc. Those are grievences entirely made up of anti israel people and does not address the reality of who hamas and far too many palestinians are.
War is horrible. I don't want it. No one wants it. This one is just and necessary. The world can sit and wait or they can help meaningfully.
If you want to argue explain to me how Israelis and any human being should view and respond to the scenes of joy and celebration they saw on and after Oct 7. Even today there is very little remorse or even regret.
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> It's a natural, forgivable response. On par with the folks who cheered on Charlie Kirk's death.
Neither of those are natural or forgivable, and I've never listened to a damn word Kirk said in my life.
> Neither of those are natural or forgivable, and I've never listened to a damn word Kirk said in my life
I haven't either. That's probably why I don't have an emotional reaction here. A guy was brutally murdered in public, and that's all I had to respond to.
Finding someone having mean thoughts--not actions, just thoughts and words--unforgiveable is, well, it's how you get entrenched, hateful, multigenerational conflicts like the one we're discussing.
I don't think killing Sinwar means much. Israel definitely wanted him dead but, to their national security, it doesn't mean anything. Sinwar isn't unique and he'd just be replaced by the next guy who wants to do the same thing and also doesn't care if he's made a martyr in the process.
Strategically, they have to destroy the entirety of Hamas and hope the Palestinians are allowed to and do elect better leadership. Anything less is accepting the status quo that led to Oct 7.
> don't think killing Sinwar means much. Israel definitely wanted him dead but, to their national security, it doesn't mean anything
You don't think the next jackass who pitches an October 7th attack won't get second thoughts from his lieutenants when they consider that all of them will be killed, their friends and families--best case--rendered homeless, their cause set back decades, all while Israel suffers fewer deaths from the entire operation than Hamas was able to notch on its one day of glory?
If they were able to repeat Oct 7, I think they'd gladly be martyred for that.
I think Sinwar would have loved to stay alive and recommit his attrocities but martyrdom is a nice consolation prize. The next in line should be so lucky.
> If they were able to repeat Oct 7, I think they'd gladly be martyred for that
I'd love to see firm evidence for this. It seems a little too fatalistic, and convenient for arguing for the permanent subjugation of a people, to suggest that two million people can't be left to their own devices without obsessively committing to destroying themselves against their neighbors.
for context about hamas thinking in general [0] (quote from article)
"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"
, and good chunks of population specifically [1]
[0] https://judaic.arizona.edu/sites/judaic.arizona.edu/files/20...
[1] https://xcancel.com/thehonestlypod/status/197304563042865597...
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> Good of you to expose yourself to everyone
As someone who can forgive schadenfreude? Yes, absolutely. If there is one takeaway from the Gaza crisis, it's the cost of being above forgiveness.
Your metrics are yours alone. Ask Hamas if they won? If they stay in power in Gaza, trust me, they won. Same as if the Nazis were still in control of Germany, Stalin in charge of Russia, ISIS in charge of Iraq and Syria and the Khmer Rouge in charge of Cambodia…
Your suggestion that Israel stop fighting in contrast to Trump’s direct words stating that he will back Israel fully in defeating Hamas if Hamas does not accept his deal which involves them fully disarming, is essentially suggesting that Israel should accept defeat even when it has the backing of the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Now either you are ignorant or you are intentionally malevolent in your suggestion… take your pick
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> Their strategy is and has been for decades to kill as many Palestinians as possible.
This is just obviously false, Israel obviously has the military capability to kill effectively every Palestinian in Gaza, and yet they make significant efforts to prevent civilian casualties there.
It's more accurate to say "as many Palestinians as they thought the US would let them get away with". This is why each new kind of atrocity was first messaged and checked with the US before proceeding. Without cover in the UN and unlimited bombs from the US Israel's actions in Gaza would not have been possible.
Folks may remember when Israel thought they had to cook up a bunch of fancy 3D renders of a "Hamas command center" and do a multi-week propaganda blitz before attacking Al Shifa hospital. Then they eventually realized that the Biden administration didn't care, nor did they care about the lack of evidence for this supposed massive complex [1] after the fact. So they could bomb hospitals with just a generic justification after the fact.
It was the same with every escalation, from murdering UN aid workers to dropping 2,000lb bombs on tents to completely flattening cities they had designated as "safe zones".
Israel would push the envelope a bit, see that their key patron didn't care, and push it further. What was once a line they feared to cross became the new normal.
[1] It turned out to just be a couple hospital rooms that a former Israeli PM admitted they themselves had built.
https://www.newsweek.com/israel-built-bunker-shifa-hospital-...
> It's more accurate to say "as many Palestinians as they thought the US would let them get away with". This is why each new kind of atrocity was first messaged and checked with the US before proceeding. Without cover in the UN and unlimited bombs from the US Israel's actions in Gaza would not have been possible.
Israel makes far more efforts than even the US when it comes to trying to prevent civilian casualties.
> Folks may remember when Israel thought they had to cook up a bunch of fancy 3D renders of a "Hamas command center" and do a multi-week propaganda blitz before attacking Al Shifa hospital. Then they eventually realized that the Biden administration didn't care, nor did they care about the lack of evidence for this supposed massive complex [1] after the fact. So they could bomb hospitals with just a generic justification after the fact.
There's plenty of evidence Hamas used Al Shifa for military purposes, although it's maybe somewhat unclear to what extent exactly. Also from my understanding Israel didn't bomb Al Shifa, they raided it instead.
> It was the same with every escalation, from murdering UN aid workers to dropping 2,000lb bombs on tents to completely flattening cities they had designated as "safe zones".
The entire Gaza strip is a war zone, Israel largely tries to avoid combat operations in the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone but that doesn't mean Hamas has complete immunity there[0].
> [1] It turned out to just be a couple hospital rooms that a former Israeli PM admitted they themselves had built.
Regardless of who built the bunker under the hospital if Hamas uses it for military purposes that makes the hospital a valid military target. I'm not sure how a bunker having been built by Israel decades ago would make a difference in regards to it being a valid military target or not.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13_July_2024_al-Mawasi_attack
> …and yet they make significant efforts to prevent civilian casualties there.
This is just obviously false. All you have to do is look at how many children they’ve killed. Those aren’t the number of someone going out of their way to prevent civilian casualties.
It’s 50,000 children by the way. https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/more-50000-children-killed...
lol... bots are up in arm. No one with two brain cells believes this, anymore. The only reason they are not just straight nuking the places (both gaza and west bank), because of external pressures. They would if they could.
> The only reason they are not just straight nuking the places (both gaza and west bank), because of external pressures. They would if they could.
They clearly would not, there are significant domestic political pressures to minimize civilian casualties regardless of external pressures.
The level of mental gymnastics to believe the state of Israel has done anything but active genocide for decades is astounding.
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- De-escalate. Disproportionate violence legitimizes Gaza's resistance, reinforces domestic support for retaliation and signals to third-parties like China and Russia that they need to have a stakeholder in this fight. It also weakens American support for Israeli right-to-defense.
- Negotiate a release of all illegally held hostages and fair international trial for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detainment. Hamas should have no illegal captives, but neither should Israel. Without a solid and agreeable plan towards releasing these captives in a timely matter, neither side has an incentive to stop fighting.
- Establish a good-faith interrim government to rebuild trust with the international community. Defer some power back to the UN as a gesture of goodwill, draw-back from annexed Gaza but draw the line firmly on pre-October 7th borders. Give up on the idea of annexing anything else. In a perfect world they also give Mount Hebron back to Syria, they'll be asking for it soon.
> De-escalate.
That's easy -- releasing all hostages would de-escalate immediately. Imagine a situation when there was no Oct 7, so Israel would have no reason to de-escalate.
> Negotiate
How to negotiate with one side pre-condition that the other side is all dead and their country does not exist. Now it starts to change, but not because of negotiations, sadly.
> Establish a good-faith interrim government
Sorry don't understand -- Gaza already has the official government -- HAMAS. Since 2007 there was no Israeli forces on Gaza territory (until Oct 7).
Or you mean Israel should've established a different goverment in Gaza? Well taking down governments is already a military objective.
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No, what's happening is that you are describing pro-Palestinian protests as pro-Hamas and then acting confused. You only confused yourself!
Hamas is absolutely a terrorist organization but Israel has revealed itself as a terrorist state. I hold one to a higher bar because I pay for the bombs that one side drops.
A terrorist state does not need to be "baited" to attack.
It is absolutely correct to hold the state to higher standards, regardless of what you pay for. But it is not correct to refuse state's right to defend itself, when it is attacked by a terrorist semi-state that not only does not care about its people, but actively using them as bait. This only incentivizing Hamas to keep using Palestinians as bait, and to turn more of them into "martyrs".
Actually it's quite possible that a state exists with Dominant Political Regime A at one point in time, then after an event, they transition to Dominant Political Regime B.
In fact this is what did happen, as is plainly obvious. October 7th effectively stripped the moderating forces in Israeli politics of their power.
Agreed the incentives are fucked up in every direction. For example, giving Israel impunity to respond to such attacks with extremely aggressive pursuit of related and unrelated geopolitical objectives actually creates an incentive for Israel to sustain such attacks from time to time.
This was actually Netanyahu's explicit strategy: allow Hamas to take power in Gaza so no credible government could achieve a second state in the region.
> “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Netanyahu told his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy"
Creating such perverse incentives is sort of the entire point of terrorism.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/mossad-chief-top-general-visit...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/netanyahu-israel-gaza-hamas...
https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-09/ty-article/.p...
So what would you do if you're Israel? Suck it up? Leave the hostages to rot in Gaza? Wait until the next coordinated attack from Iran, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza? Israel's enemies want it destroyed- that's what's at stake here. If Hamas had a chance it would keep going and murder all Israelis, not just the ones they managed to before they were repelled.
What sort of adaptation are you proposing?
I do agree Israel is taking a hit on the world stage. This is part of the war and Israel has a hard time defending itself against enemies with vast resources. Those enemies are also more than happy to distract and splinter the western nations with this topic. Russia has a better standing in the world with its war of aggression on Ukraine amongst many other problems. Most western countries who were/are happy to abandon Israel would (and have) respond with significantly more force to a similar attack on themselves.
It remains to be seen what are the longer term consequences here. Not just on Israel.
What we have seen throughout this is not criticism. It is hate. It is often directed at Jews, not just at the Israeli government. Not 100% but a large percentage. It's not that Israel's response has no problems - it has many problems. But the discourse on this is not rational and not fact based. The media and the various actors are pushing agenda and ideology. This isn't unique to Israel here, we see this on political issues, a discourse that is tribal, not rational but rather emotional, manipulated by the media (social and otherwise). CNN here is treating Israel basically as it treats Trump and the republicans. CNN is not in the news business, it is in the shaping political opinion business.
Would you say the west's response to ISIL/ISIS chopping the heads off a few westerners, a couple of random terrorist attacks in the west, and burning a Jordanian pilot alive would also be characterized as "extreme actions against a weak opponent"? How did CNN cover that conflict?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_against_the_Islamic_State
- >83k militants killed.
- 10's of thousands civilians killed. (IMO vastly underestimated, one source claims 40k killed just in the battle for Mosul: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mosul_(2016%E2%80%93... )
- millions displaced.
So criticism is hate? I'm Jewish does that mean I am hateful when I am critical of the actions of the Israeli government? Are you claiming none of the critism is legitimate and its all hate? Is criticism of Israel antisemetic? Because last I checked Israel is not a religion.
Just like in the US people will call you anti-American if you disagree with the policies of the government.
My other reply got flagged, please read it. But to add:
This specific article is not "criticism". The headline claims Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza. The title, and the article, completely ignores other actors like the government of Gaza (aka Hamas).
"How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized" -> is basically a lie. The truth is that Israeli actions contributed to the food situation in the Gaza strip. The cause is obviously the war. The cause of the war is obviously Hamas. The entire article rests solely on a report by a UN organization. The UN is not unbiased. It is openly anti-Israel.
The reporting is completely one sided. It is not news. It is agenda. CNN's agenda is anti-Israel. There is no mention of the UN leaving food on the border to rot and not deliver it. There is little to no mention of the UN's refusal to cooperate with Israeli initiatives to distribute food (and generally refuse to cooperate with Israel on anything).
At best the authors don't understand the idea that correlation doesn't equal causation. I would say the authors and CNN's goal is simply to attack Israel for political reasons.
I think Israel's decision to block aid around the end of February was stupid and a mistake. It is far from clear that decision is a war crime. Israel claims there was plenty of food in Gaza that was delivered during the ceasefire and ofcourse also claims that Hamas has plenty of food in its tunnels. Egypt also at times contributed to the condition in the Gaza strip by blocking aid and preventing refugees from leaving. The actual responsibility for the well being of Palestinian citizens in Palestinian controlled areas (which Gaza city still is) is on their government. That government has a choice to stop the war, it has a choice to distribute the food it controls to its citizens. Ignoring that in any article basically tells us what we need to know. Israel does have responsibilities under international law but is being held to impossible standards that are not applied to any other country. The media intentionally creates an artificial separation between "Hamas" and "Palestinians" where in fact we are talking about combatants and non-combatants of the same non-state or state-like actor (Gaza). Israel is responsible, to the same degree any other country would be, to take steps to allow non-combatants to leave battle areas and to not target them. Israel has asked all non-combatant population to evict the Northern Gaza strip a long time ago. The food situation is worse in that area. So Israel arguably has done what international law requires it to do with respect to non-combatants. Is Israel perfect? no. Is it worse than most western countries? I don't think so, and there's plenty of comparisons we can make. Can we criticize Israel? Definitely!
In terms of contribution to antisemitism, there is a large number of people who will read the title as "How Jew actions caused famine in Gaza". That is literally the conversation on some social media. Just because you haven't seen that doesn't change it. This means there should be more sensitivity and better accuracy and context.
Being Jewish is also not a religion by the way. It's an ethnicity as well. I'm sure you know this but just to remind others. The Jewish people are also known as Israelites and the word Israel is sometimes used as a synonym for Jewish.
> The cause of the war is obviously Hamas
This is the biggest lie of all.
Israel started this war long before October 9, and Israel will never end it.
A Zionist Israel can not allow the Palestinian people to exist. Every member of every government that Israel ever had 100% believed this.
This war is part of Israel's DNA, and the total security Israel demands can never be achieved, so the war can never end.
Until significant portions of the political right in Israel are outlawed, and until the entire Jewish population of Israel undergoes deradicalization, we will keep fighting.
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> what would you do if you're Israel?
Let in the food. Flood Gaza with food, actually, so it stops being a recruitment tool for militants.
If that solved the problem I would endorse it. I don't see how it does or how you do it.
How do you get food to all of Gaza while there is raging fighting? The biggest problem is in Gaza city where there is intense fighting. The southern areas have a lot more food. How do we flood Gaza city with food? Ceasefire? We had one. Then what?
Let's plan this in more detail. Who is going to distribute the food in Gaza? Who in Gaza has weapons and control? How is the hostage problem resolved? How do we get Hamas to not rule over Gaza any more?
> How do you get food to all of Gaza while there is raging fighting?
Berlin airdrop and pile it up at the borders from trucks for starters.
> southern areas have a lot more food
But not enough. Start there. Also, if you make food plentiful enough in the south, it will find its way north. The point, again, isn't just to starve the famine. It's also to reduce the value of food as a recruiting tool.
> How is the hostage problem resolved? How do we get Hamas to not rule over Gaza any more?
Not relevant to not starving people!
Israel has piled it up on the border many times during the conflict.
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/middle-east/gaza-food-starvati...
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/07/24/un-refuses-to-cooper...
It's true that it's objectively hard to get the food from the border into e.g. Gaza city while a war is raging on. Israel has asked all civilians to evict Gaza city (basically for the entire duration of the war). Many people returned to Gaza city during the last ceasefire despite no green light from Israel. There is more food in the south and it's easier to get food into there.
There is an effort to get even more food into the south. For example World Central Kitchen is scaling up their operations there right now (with Israel's support). The GHF effort was also mostly focused on the south.
Air drops can't move in enough food. They're also dangerous.
> There is more food in the south and it's easier to get food into there
Yet there are still credible claims of famine in the south.
> Air drops can't move in enough food
This is nonsense. West Berlin had a civilian population of about 2.5mm [1]. Gaza is smaller. Our planes are better. We've solved this problem, but harder, before.
> They're also dangerous
What's the threat model? Initially, you'd literally air drop--no landings. Gaza isn't fielding air-defence systems.
Once you're reduced the desperation, you'd secure a couple airfields and make unsupervised drops. (This is cheaper.) You wouldn't even bother handling distribution. Again, the point is the flood the zone with so much food that it starts to become sort of worthless.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/bomb-bl...
Feeding people is a good of its own. "We have to blockade food because distribution is logistically challenging" is ridiculous.
in this case they divert more desirable goods that they sell and make aid agencies pay protection money for "securing shipments".
as example, there was a story on Israeli news a couple of months ago, about some NGO that setup a new aid distribution network. One day they got some of their people killed in Gaza and received a phone call demanding payment "or else"
> there was a story on Israeli news
Was it credible? Who made the phone call?
story credible. channel 12 news is very solid organization and their investigations resulted in a bunch of criminal cases.
essentially ngo established this summer (july/august) new aid distribution network, I think it was at south with it's own drivers, distribution points, etc. during the time when supposedly was impossible to bring aid in gaza, but in reality it was going in.
"local interests" in gaza didn't like it, as NGO wasn't paying protection fees so they killed some of people who helped ngo in gaza and made threatening calls to person who runs NGO demanding payments or that this person will be harmed and distribution will be stopped.
not sure how it all ended. my guess it was "public" ask from military or security services to get involved in some way
If it's the events that I'm thinking of, one of the drivers killed was a Bedouin from the Tarabin family. They literally gathered hundreds of family members to record a cellphone message to the perpetrators, who were mentioned by name. In the video, dozens of illegal weapons - mostly M-16 variants - were paraded and fired in the air. Tarabin is a well-known dangerous and hostile family, the Israeli police don't interfere with them (that's why they have all the illegal weapons).
I know of other Bedouins families that have rewards for the heads of other Hamas members.
not sure. channel 12 evening news month ago or so. they talked with some women who organized ngo.
always with the emotional manipulation, and when that doesn’t work go Samson on people
your entire narrative screams “I’m the victim here, please validate my aggressions, abuses and violence”.
the state of Israel has not been respectful since day one of it’s inception (violating the defined borders) neither truly wants a two state solution.
this outcome is the product of what escalated from that.
at least you understand the correlation between a figure like Trump and the state of Israel, that’s exactly on point.
it’s ok when one side violates borders and even settles on foreign land but when reactionary action (you’ve helped shape) takes place, you’re now the victim…
The state of Israel offered Palestinians a two state solutions multiple times starting at its inception (and it also offered them a one state solution at its inception with them being equal citizens in a free democratic country). Maybe it wasn't the best the Palestinians were looking for but it wasn't unreasonable and it was very close to what everyone (other than the Palestinians) says when they say "two state solution". Where we are today is the result of them rejecting it and instead opting for the "one day we'll send all the Jews back to Europe" solution (despite more than half Israeli Jews being from the middle east and generally no place for Jews to go). This is still their plan today, they say it out loud, you just need to listen.
EDIT: I'd also challenge you to tell me why these two states weren't created when Egypt ruled over Gaza and Jordan over the West Bank and Jerusalem up till 1967 (the six day war) when Israel took those areas. Where were all those supporters of the two state solution then? Why didn't they recognize the state of Palestine then over those territories that Israel didn't control?
Before 1948 the Palestinians were peasants living under foreign rule. But at least they were alive. When Zionist interests moved in, backed by English and American militancy to enforce land purchase contracts, the Palestinians were not a centrally organized collective. You cannot “offer” to people who are not organized, and that’s what Israel has exploited. Jews went on a 2,000 year holiday in Europe, then came back and expected they could relive the glory days of a kingdom from over 2,000 years ago. The issue has been the presumption that you can “offer” to people who have occupied the land consistently for thousands of years. Their lack of central government as peasants does not negate their humanity. Except in the Israeli government’s expansionist eyes.
> So what would you do if you're Israel? Suck it up? Leave the hostages to rot in Gaza?
What they're doing doesn't seem to be working, so maybe something else.
This is just armchair military philosophizing, but after the October attack, go ahead and do some big disproportionate response stuff for 30-90 days, then a ceasefire and prisoner exchange (this happened). But if the ceasefire doesn't work out, you can't go back to disproportionate response on the October attack; that doesn't look reasonable. Cat and mouse strikes on leadership until the hostages are released (edit: but not while leaders are gathered for peace negotiations!). You can still do proportionate response for any tit-for-tat kind of attacks in the occupied zone.
A war of occupation is a PR thing. You need to convince outside observers you're occupation is reasonable --- two years of disproportionate response doesn't do that. You also want to convince the occupied people not to support armed resistance; disproportionate response can work for that, but IMHO not over a long period of time; in the short term, it can get people to demand a stop to fighting, but after two years, again IMHO it just breeds more desire to fight.
You also need some sort of plan for after the hostilities end. How do you set the conditions so this is less likely to happen in the future. Really, the best way to have peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine as two states is for Israel and Palestine to both be prosperous; Israel needs to help make that happen, because it's in Israel's interests --- even if maybe it doesn't feel like it; a prosperous Palestine will be incentivized to be peaceful because prosperity is tenuous; a destitute Palestine has no need to be peaceful, because it has nothing to lose.
There's a lot of talk about ending Hamas; maybe that would do it, but if Hamas disbands today, you need something to replace the government services they provide. What's the plan for that? What would the interim system look like between now and that; can you enforce the interim system now as a way to push Hamas out?
Alternately, big problems require big solutions. Forcibly return Gaza to Egyptian control, as it was before the Six Day War, and encourage Egypt to deal with Hamas through diplomacy and response to future attacks from within Gaza as if they were from Egypt.
Perhaps return the West Bank to Jordan ... maybe do the return of the West Bank first as a show of 'if y'all give us the hostages, we'll end the occupation' Returning the West Bank is hard, because you've got to figure out what to do with the settlers, which is probably a lot of tricky negotiations over which settlements can be kept with a land swap and which have to be abandoned, so it probably can't be done super fast.
Egypt doesn't want Gaza and Jordan doesn't want the West Bank. That's a total non starter.
So after 90 days we have the bulk of hostages still in Gaza. Hamas in total control of all of Gaza. Hamas doesn't want to exchange all the hostages, we've been there after the first ceasefire (24 November 2023 to 30 November 2023).
Look at Hamas' calculus. Surviving in any shape and form while holding hostages is a clear win. Increasing Israel's isolation is a win. Anything else is mostly a don't care. They have no intention of giving up control in Gaza or in ceasing future hostilities against Israel. They would love nothing more than to go back to the tit for tat where they make and fire rockets and mortars at Israel all day and Israel has some limited retaliation.
Ask Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers about whether force works or not. Or the Turkish and the Kurds. Or anyone who thought they could go against China. That's not to say that should be the default or the preferred solution, but more force works in situations where you have the power and the other side won't yield.
There is a somewhat stupid/joke saying in Hebrew. What doesn't work with force will work with more force. That's sort of where Israel is right now. Many Israelis don't think this can solve the problem but the government does. I think pretty much everyone would prefer a better/easier way out of this that includes security guarantees and the release of the hostages. There just doesn't seem to be one. It's a problem when fighting an enemy where their loss is their win. There's no leverage. Though in theory Hezbollah was also like that, until it surrendered. The difference in Lebanon/Hezbollah is no hostages and less mix of combatants and civilians.
> Alternately, big problems require big solutions. Forcibly return Gaza to Egyptian control, as it was before the Six Day War, and encourage Egypt to deal with Hamas through diplomacy and response to future attacks from within Gaza as if they were from Egypt.
This sounds kind of like the proposed peace plan, no? They’re supposedly going to put an Arab force in charge of Gaza.
I don't know what the proposed peace plan is? I saw a lot of articles declaring there was one, but I couldn't find it published anywhere?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70155nked7o
I would never be in Israel's position because I don't believe in genocide or land theft, thus would not have created this fake state in the first place.
"What we have seen throughout this is not criticism. It is hate. It is often directed at Jews, not just at the Israeli government. Not 100% but a large percentage."
This is exactly the blackpill. I live in a Muslim-majority country. Jews and Muslims have been allies since the start of Islamic history. Yes, there was some hate for Jews 20 years ago, but it has been gradually displaced into Zionist hate.
The recent analogy is Imperial Japan. The Japanese killed, raped, starved our people. But it was specifically the Imperial Japanese, not the citizens. Firebombing citizens didn't make anything better and it only slowed the process of post-war healing. We have great relationships with Germans and Japanese today despite their past. Moving on is an option.
Some of it is because we see the same pattern. Nationalist politics will always say, "Everyone hates you. We are the only ones who will protect you." For the former British territories, it was the playbook.
I do believe the only way to break from this cycle is to break this hold. Internally: don't keep genocidal leaders in power. Externally: avoid all this racist shit that gives fascists their power base.
I'm not sure where you get "Jews and Muslims have been allies since the start of Islamic history" and then you pivot to hate for Jews 20 years ago.
Antisemitism is alive and kicking. Hate to Jews has not been "displaced into Zionist hate". It's just s/Jews/Zionists/ the hate is the same hate. The blood libels are the same blood libels. The stereotypes the same stereotypes.
If you are talking about how Jews have been treated in Muslim countries it ranged between second rate citizens (dhimmi) to outright massacre. Yes, there have been a handful of examples, in a handful of countries, where Jews managed to thrive despite the discrimination but it was the exception that proved the rule.
I would love to see Israel's government gone and the Palestinian government of Hamas gone. I'm not seeing any analogy to Japan.
That's not true; I have seen many members in the Satmar community here in NYC that join pro palestinian protests, and are met with absolute love. They're spat on by the Israeli side at said protests. I think people here at least separate the two very well and it's not a s/Jews/Zionists/g at all.
This is the equivalent of "some of my best friends are Jews".
So the Satmar anti-Zionist Jews are ok? But the other Jews? Also met with love? Do you love the Jews that have opinions that differ than yours on this conflict? Why do Palestinian protests where I live (Canada) target Synagogues, Jewish owned businesses, Jewish neighborhoods?
Do Zionists control the US? The Media? Not Jews... nono. "Zionists".
I'm not necessarily talking about you specifically. But it is a fact that antisemites use this technique and this is being normalized. Why does it matter than you have a token Jewish person in your protest at all? Who cares if someone in your protest is a Satmar Jew or an Iranian Bhaii?
As a jew, I have never felt more targeted by anti-semitism than I have following israel's genocide of Palestinians. israel is making jews like me look bad by association, even though that association is false.
The worst part is, most of that antisemitism comes from zionists. Zealots making posts not unlike yours, frequently accuse me and my kind of being 'self-hating jews' for being insufficiently zionist. It really sucks.
As a side note, please stop repeatedly, unsuccessfully trying to conflate jews with zionists. We are not the same thing, and it is hurtful to hear you insult jews like that. It is somewhat akin to conflating all South Africans with apartheid supporters, or all Germans with nazis, except you are stereotyping based on religion, rather than national origin.
That conflation was made by antisemites first, many decades ago. That is simply historical fact, whether people know it or not. In that time and place antizionism was a barely concealed excuse for straight antisemitism; it didn't actually matter what their targets believed.
And yet, you are the one making the antisemitic conflation here and now. The fact that you're repeating the words of people you believe to be antisemetic should be a clue that the words you're repeating are antisemetic. Just because an antisemite says something doesn't mean you should agree and reshare their post.
So maybe don't? Next time you see an antisemite saying that, rather than parroting their talking points to others, you can tell them the same thing: zionists and jews aren't the same thing, and many jews are members of the global consensus in opposing the ongoing israeli genocide of Palestinians. Or don't, maybe it won't make a difference, and it's your choice.
In the meantime, please stop repeating hurtful antisemetic tropes by conflating us jews with zionists. We are not the same. Criticism of zionism and the israeli genocide of Palestinians is totally legitimate. Propagating antisemetic language is antisemetic. That means smarmy posts I've seen around saying things to the effect of, 'zionists... you mean jews??? [*wink wink*]'
Then why is it that self-proclaimed "anti-zionists" use the exact same talking point as those antisemites back then? It is difficult to ever unsee that what you call "the global consensus" was invented decades ago in the halls of the Kremlin.
I simply informed you of the historical precedent; why do you immediately include me in those you say are conflating the two?
If criticism of Israel sounded more like the criticism of America's War on Terror instead of a Kremlin anti-West propaganda manual, then maybe it would be worth thinking about.
Why are you still defending your antisemetic language? Repeating that you think your antisemetic language is ok if other antisemites said it first?
Just don't say it. I'm not even asking you for an apology for your hurtful, antisemetic words. Just recognize that your spreading of antisemitic tropes is bad, and please stop. Are you seriously so dead-set on repeating antisemetic tropes that you refuse to do even that?
I start talking about historical Kremlin propaganda campaigns, and you accuse me of antisemitic language. Interesting. Did you have anything to say on the actual points I raised?
I explicitly ignored the weird distraction about the kremlin or whatever, because the kremlin didn't force you to repeat antisemitic tropes. You chose to repeat antisemitic tropes, and still haven't even been able to acknowledge that your repetition of antisemitic tropes was bad.
Remember, the topic isn't bibi's fellow war criminals, it is antisemitism, with you, yes YOU, contributing to it. This is what I meant when I said that most antisemitism I've seen and felt as a jew lately, is coming from zionists.
So, back on topic: Do you have anything to say on the actual points I raised even earlier?:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45461783
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45463604
For a century, Israel has been telling the world that they represented Jews, and Nakba was what the Jews wanted and it was their right. So for a century, the world hated Jews because of this narrative. And only recently people are learning the truth.
There's a lot to unpack in the last 1400 years, but basically everyone cherry picks what they want to see.
Medina, the first actual Islamic state, was established on an alliance between the Muslims and Jewish tribes. When the Muslims took Jerusalem, they welcomed the Jewish back. There's a few of these right up until Ottoman times. Dhimmi literally meant "protected person" - they can't be attacked or looted by Muslims and were not conscripted. Alliances aren't necessarily friendships, and a lot of these were built on mutual protection vs a common enemy rather than brotherhood.
Even in recent times, there's common grounds, especially in terms of religion. It's a kind of cousinhood. Notably all kosher food is halal, though not vice versa. In countries with both, it's popular to have a Jewish/Muslim district and Muslims often join Jewish student accommodations.
Of course there's plenty of bad history, but I find that the people who are pro-genocide will bring up massacres by Muslims. The people who advocate for treating Israeli Arabs as second-rate citizens will bring up dhimmis.
In the end, we pick the history we want to repeat.
well put.
but that takes a level of humanism, and effort, abusive leaders don’t have and unfortunately people are too brainwashed to see (and lack the knowledge to understand?).
> Their strategy was, I think, as bad as it could possibly be.
After the October 7 attacks it was critical that Israel re-establish deterrence, not doing so would be inviting more attacks.
> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response that killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, which played directly into the dynamics of guerrilla warfare where a strong state's extreme actions against a weak opponent undermine its legitimacy.
It turns out a disproportionate response is a rather effective strategy at deterring ones enemies from attacking, it worked quite well with Hezbollah which was considered by Israel to be a much more serious threat to Israel than Hamas was.
> Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation.
What other option did they have realistically? The middle east isn't a region where pacifism tends to work out well.
> Yet, rather than adapting, Israel's network doubled down with censorship campaigns, crackdowns on protests, and weaponizing "anti-semitism" accusations to silence critics -- actions that have all backfired. Now international support is collapsing, the EU is pushing sanctions, and the US is slowly distancing itself. Israel's best option right now is to end the war as quickly as possible, and devote all of its efforts to repairing damaged relationships and mitigating the war's effects, before isolation accelerates to the level of sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa.
Keep in mind that statements politicians make publicly about Israel are often rather different from what they really think, politicians placating various activist groups for domestic political reasons doesn't often translate into meaningful adverse actions against Israel. The Israeli stock market is at all time highs right now despite everything that has happened.
I agree Israel has been way too slow at ending the war, their reluctance to take actions to finish off Hamas(or force their capitulation/surrender) and end the war is not helping either the Palestinian people or Israelis.
> I'll also note that it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost. Hamas lost the shooting war, the people of Gaza have lost lives and livelihoods which may take more than a decade to rebuild, and Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this.
Israel losing the media war was probably somewhat inevitable, the extreme disparity between worldwide Muslim population sizes and Jewish population sizes being a big factor, but that isn't really an entirely new issue either.
Despite all this Israel has largely re-established military deterrence in the Middle East and is on a path to normalize relations with countries like Saudi Arabia once Hamas is either forced to surrender or degraded enough that they lose their ability to govern Gaza.
A country loses its right to "re-establish deterrence" when the population it's "deterring" is born inside its own de-facto borders, and when the only reason it needs to deter so many of them is that they would (rightly) like one of a) sovereignty or b) voting rights inside the federal system that controls their borders and can kick down the doors of the houses they were born in.
If Israel would like to give Gaza full sovereignty, or Palestinians born inside the occupied territories the right to vote in the federal systems that determine their law enforcement environment, we can talk about deterrence and law enforcement respectively.
Israel has unilateral control of who it recognizes as its citizens, and what sovereign states it recognizes. No complaint about current or past bad behavior by the Palestinians excuses its failure to grant sovereignty or voting rights to people under its territorial control.
> A country loses its right to "re-establish deterrence" when the population it's "deterring" is born inside its own de-facto borders, and when the only reason it needs to deter so many of them is that they would (rightly) like one of a) sovereignty or b) voting rights inside the federal system that controls their borders and can kick down the doors of the houses they were born in.
It's not just Palestinians they needed to deter, by the way most Israelis were also born within the borders as well. Israel has in the past made efforts to give more sovereignty to Palestinians but those efforts have largely backfired. I think initial efforts really need to focus on de-radicalization of Palestinians first before there's any reasonable chance another attempt at giving them more sovereignty will be more successful.
> If Israel would like to give Gaza full sovereignty, or Palestinians born inside the occupied territories the right to vote in the federal systems that determine their law enforcement environment, we can talk about deterrence and law enforcement respectively.
They already tried that[0], it didn't work out and arguably made the situation worse as they voted for Hamas[1] which quite openly advocates for the destruction of Israel.
> Israel has unilateral control of who it recognizes as its citizens, and what sovereign states it recognizes. No complaint about current or past bad behavior by the Palestinians excuses its failure to grant sovereignty or voting rights to people under its territorial control.
Are you seriously suggesting Israel can just give citizenship/voting rights to all Palestinians and make a group that largely wants their destruction a voting majority? There's a reason this will basically never happen, and that reason is that it would effectively be suicidal for Israelis. This sort of one-state solution is completely unrealistic. Some variation of a two-state solution is probably the most realistic, but I think we're a long way off from that being viable due to a lack of Palestinian desire for peaceful coexistence.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_the...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...
> Are you seriously suggesting Israel can just give citizenship/voting rights to all Palestinians and make a group that largely wants their destruction a voting majority?
Can you think of any reason why Palestinians might feel this way? Does anything come to mind?
> Can you think of any reason why Palestinians might feel this way?
There are multiple factors, radicalization has long been a major issue in Palestinian schools[0].
[0] https://unwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Schools-in-th...
Being forced into a never ending apartheid situation may also be the reason. Give them voting rights or give them a state, it's pretty simple.
Since the 1990s Israel has been trying to give them a state, to varying degrees. They got civil and security autonomy in Areas A of the West Bank, for example. And Israel pulled her citizens out of the Gaza strip in 2005.
The problem is that the PA, who rules the West Bank are extremely corrupt, and Hamas is committed to Israel's destruction. Neither side has been actually performing all the functions of state, UNRWA has been doing that.
The PM of Israel has stated: The Palestinians will NEVER have a state.
What part of that statement did I misunderstand? Israel's stated policy is this: No State for the Palestinians, no Civil Rights. This is clear.
The leaders of Hamas have stated the the Jewish state is to destroyed and the Jewish residents exterminated.
The PA leaders have stated that the German genocide of Jews never occurred.
And Egyptian, Jordanian, Palestinian, Libyan, and Iraqi leaders have all stated the the idea of a Palestinian People was invented in the 1960s. No joke.
If you want to start pulling out quotes to judge merit in the Middle East, there's enough material to hang anybody.
The leaders of Israel have not just spoken about it, they have actually destroyed the Palestinian State in the last few months. They have killed tens of thousands of kids.
Should they be deradicalised?
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Israel killed 50 people yesterday. Every single day, they have killed between 50 and 100 Palestinians for TWO YEARS.
This is not a war, it's a massacre. Nobody is shooting back, Israel is just killing people trapped in the Gaza strip.
All this just so that the apartheid can continue without the Palestinians rebelling.
You are invited to check that those rockets were fired from the Gaza strip. I know, I live walking distance from the strip. And you should then realize that the sources who tell you that Hamas is not shooting at Israel are using the tactic of Lies of Omission to influence your opinion.
Ooh now try and name all the Palestinian children that have been murdered by Israel!
I won't dispute that 50 people were killed yesterday, I have no idea, and I don't know how many of them were killed by Hamas and how many of them were killed by Israel. The Arab media reports all of them as being martyrs because that is their culture. The Western media just translates with the Arab media says. I do know that yesterday, Yom Kippur or the Jew's holiest day of the year, Hamas shot barrages of rockets at Israeli cities and towns. I don't know how many of those rockets fell back into the Gaza strip, typically a third of them do. So go figure how many of the 50 Gazans were killed by Hamas own rockets. In any case, when the Gazans decide that they've suffered too much then they are invited and welcomed to return the hostages. The war will be over that minute.
It is very telling that the side which has the ability to end the suffering now, by returning the hostages, chooses not to do that.
So the photos of flattened buildings are all "hamas"? You came in, blew up everything, and now you are saying "they did it to themselves, that wasn't us". Their dead kids - oh they did that? The occupation? Oh, that's their fault! If only they would start being nice, so we can stop killing them and give them a city! Ah let me build a settlement in their land - but it's THEIR fault!
You give me a lot of material to address.
No, if buildings are flattened then that's not Hamas. Israel uses HE explosive, Hamas uses FA. HE is the one that levels buildings, FA is the one that leaves burn marks. Just like we saw at the AlAhli hospital where 500 people were killed - burn marks. Flattened buildings are Israeli munitions. Often, yes. This is not disputed among Gazans. By their culture, no matter which side had the hand in killing you, you are a martyr and afforded the rewards of heaven.I suggest you go open the guys and Telegram channels. There's a photograph being shared right now of half a dozen Gazans that were killed by other Gazan's hands. All piled up on a blanket.
There's no dispute that the beginning of the occupation is squarely on the Arabs, the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank lasted 19 years. That said, both sides are responsible for it having been dragged out for an additional 60 years. Various Israeli governments have had different levels of intentions of giving or not giving the Palestinians certain autonomies and land. But no matter what the intentions of any specific Israeli government, the Palestinians have rejected every single offer. At some point one has to be content with what they've gotten, and realize that they can't destroy the other side completely and those people need some place to live. We, the jews, watched the British give over three quarters of the land of Palestine to the Hashemite kingdom, and left us less than 25%. And we were content with that. Then the UN came in and gave half of that to an Arab state and half of that to a Jewish state. And we were content with that. But then seven Arab nations invaded us to slaughter us. The Jews were ethically cleansed during that war from the West Bank and other places. Just as the Jews were content with what we were offered when we were weak, so should one reasonably expect the Arabs to be content and realize that we're not going anywhere and we need a safe place to live as well. Yes, generally in Western culture it is expected that when you want something from somebody, you treat them nicely. Especially if what you want is to live next door to them. Their land? Are you pulling the Arab Land card? How would you respond to British who reject Arab immigration to Great Britain on the basis of GB being White Land? The Jews have 3000 continuous years of history in the West Bank, broken only for 19 years when Jordan ethnically cleansed the West Bank of Jews. Even Israel didn't ethnically cleanse the land she won, Israel was (and remains) 20% Arab. If you support ideas of one-race-only Land and ethnic cleansing, then you and I will never agree.Then give the inhabitants of the land citizenship and the right to vote! It's simple. Stop the apartheid, give people civil rights.
> Then give the inhabitants of the land citizenship and the right to vote! It's simple.
Effectively saying Israel should have over control of their government to a majority voting block that will likely elect terrorists again just isn't something that's ever going to happen. There's a reason the international community largely regards a one-state solution as entirely non-viable.
Either you know what the consequence of that would be, and you therefore seek to destroy the Jewish state. Or you do not know what the consequence of that would be, and you therefore should not be talking about a subject that you know little about.
Israel is currently providing the strongest known case for secular administration of the Levant.
Are you agreeing that Israel has by far the most secular government in the Levant?
Zionism(especially early parts of the movement) has deeply secular roots.
On that point you and I agree completely.
However, there are no groups vying for government in the Levant which are secular in nature other than the Jewish leftist groups. And none of the other groups have a culture compatible with those Jewish leftist values.
> It is very telling that the side which has the ability to end the suffering now, by returning the hostages, chooses not to do that.
Palestinian suffering at the hand of Israel did not start on October 10th, so this is an obvious lie which no Palestinian can believe.
What I can't unsee is your argument depends on Palestinians having no agency. And thus blameless.
As soon as one assumes they do then ones sympathy is very limited indeed. Bookends for me are Munich and finally 10/7. And I'm just done with that group of people. They'd be way better off if everyone abandoned them.
> And I'm just done with that group of people.
You can pack your bags and leave. Passionate bigotry didn't save anyone at the Nuremberg trials last I checked.
> Hamas is killing children. Trying to pin the blame on Israel just kills more children.
Young Jewish Israeli soldiers are killing uninvolved, unarmed, defenseless babies, children, women and men, in cold blood, daily.
They face no consequences for their actions. Zero consequences.
Trying to deny this fact, to equivocate, to shift the blame -- to my mind, that is explicit support of genocide.
Discussing this topic with you is impossible because you have committed to spreading Israeli state propaganda regardless of what the actual facts of the situation are. If you are unmoved by the children being savagely blown apart by Israeli rockets because you equate that with some Arab states bad-mouthing Israel then I fear nothing will ever convince you that Palestinians are human. Have a good day and if you have kids, give them a hug and be glad they don't live in Gaza.
> then I fear nothing will ever convince you that Palestinians are human.
How many Palestines in Palestine have you talked to in the recent past? I talk with them almost weekly: face to face, and online. In English, in Arabic, and in Hebrew, in their own towns. You'll see in my past posts that I quote them often, both in defence and in opposition to the state of Israel, and both in defence and in opposition to the Palestinian cause.
Thank you, I hug my children and like you said, I am glad that they don't live in the Gaza strip.> They got
First problem: not Israel's to give.
> The problem is that the PA, who rules the West Bank are extremely corrupt, and Hamas is committed to Israel's destruction.
The Ministry of Strategic Affairs couldn't have put it better...
> Being forced into a never ending apartheid situation may also be the reason.
An occupation is not apartheid.
> Give them voting rights
Israel tried that...Palestinians straight up voted for Hamas terrorists[0] who promptly eliminated voting rights(although based on opinion polling Hamas would likely be elected again).
> give them a state
Israel tried moving towards that in Gaza[1], it backfired spectacularly leading to the current conflict.
Any other ideas on how to move towards peaceful coexistence? I think the first step is some sort of de-radicalization program, but not sure how one would implement that.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_the...
Israel has said: The Palestinians will never have a state. They have also said - the Palestinians will never vote in Israel. Is this not apartheid?
> Is this not apartheid?
Apartheid by definition means race based discrimination, which is different from citizenship based discrimination(which basically all countries have to various degrees).
Anyone in the world who has one race can freely move there. People of other races cannot. Rights are awarded based on race. Nothing to do with citizenship.
Apartheid.
> Anyone in the world who has one race can freely move there. People of other races cannot. Rights are awarded based on race. Nothing to do with citizenship.
You're obviously referring to a Israeli citizenship law[0] here. Your claim that it has nothing to do with citizenship makes no sense.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Return
Perhaps also the illegal occupation, illegal blockades, the bombing, and the genocide. Maybe those things don't matter to you, though.
So eternal apartheid? That's what will make the Palestinians happy? When the Tamil Tigers were defeated, they were able to vote in their country. The separatists in Spain get to vote in Spain. The kurds get to vote in Turkey.
Israel is the only country that says: do not separate and create your own state, but at the same time if you stay here, we will NOT give you civil rights.
> So eternal apartheid? That's what will make the Palestinians happy? When the Tamil Tigers were defeated, they were able to vote in their country. The separatists in Spain get to vote in Spain. The kurds get to vote in Turkey.
A military occupation is not an apartheid, apartheid is race based discrimination, the occupation here is citizenship based discrimination(which basically all countries have in various forms). I'm not really sure what the best solution here is, but it's probably going to need to involve some serious de-radicalization on the part of the Palestinian people and then some form of a two-state solution.
> Israel is the only country that says: do not separate and create your own state, but at the same time if you stay here, we will NOT give you civil rights.
They tried that approach already with Gaza, it backfired massively. It's pretty obvious giving the people who elected terrorists(and based on Palestinian opinion polling they would likely elect Hamas again) the right to vote in Israeli elections isn't going to lead to a peaceful coexistence.
An eternal military occupation, where the GOVERNMENT says - you will NEVER get a country, and you will NEVER be part of our country IS apartheid.
These are direct, unambiguous statements from the Prime Minister and all members of the cabinet. They have said that the Palestinians will NEVER get a state.
So what are you saying then about Israel wanting a two state solution? They have said there will be no state, and they have said they will not give civil rights.
This is apartheid.
> An eternal military occupation, where the GOVERNMENT says - you will NEVER get a country, and you will NEVER be part of our country IS apartheid.
That's not apartheid, apartheid means race based discrimination which is simply not an accurate characterization of what is going on here.
> These are direct, unambiguous statements from the Prime Minister and all members of the cabinet. They have said that the Palestinians will NEVER get a state.
Israel isn't a dictatorship and these things can change over time, I'm certainly no fan of Netanyahu in general, right now there is very little support for a two state solution amongst Israelis because they largely don't believe the Palestinians currently have a desire to live in peace with Israeli Jews. Unfortunately they appear to be correct for the time being but if those viewpoints were to change on the Palestinian side I would expect Israeli opinions to change as well. I'm just not sure how you de-radicalize a population like the Palestinians.
> So what are you saying then about Israel wanting a two state solution? They have said there will be no state, and they have said they will not give civil rights.
My point is that Israelis in the past have supported a two state solution, obviously there is currently a war going on right now so a two state solution is not going to happen any time soon.
> This is apartheid.
That's still not apartheid, it's an occupation, there's a difference.
> Israel isn't a dictatorship and these things can change over time
Indeed, Israel is a democracy, and things have in fact changed over time. These changes in Israeli public opinion have been based largely on the actions of the Palestinians.
There was optimism about peace in 2007, after the withdrawal from Gaza: 70% of Israelis supported the two-state solution. After the Hamas massacres in 2023, there was 70% opposition to the two-state solution.
It is race based because if there was a jewish person living in Palestine, they could apply for and get the right to vote. A muslim person cannot.
The Israeli PM has said: There will never be a Palestinian state. If you plan to eternally occupy and dominate a people, what is the difference to Apartheid?
> It is race based because if there was a jewish person living in Palestine, they could apply for and get the right to vote. A muslim person cannot.
Jews are not allowed to live in Palestine controlled territories at all(i.e. Gaza and West Bank areas A/B). This still wouldn't be race based discrimination however. Apartheid is a form of discrimination among citizens, immigration law is a somewhat separate issue. Many countries take factors into account when it comes to immigration laws that wouldn't be applied with regards to those who are already citizens. You don't see those cases of immigration law preferences being called Apartheid in general.
> The Israeli PM has said: There will never be a Palestinian state.
Israel has elections and things can change.
> If you plan to eternally occupy and dominate a people, what is the difference to Apartheid?
That's still not race based discrimination so not Apartheid.
Israel was formed atop the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians (not to mention massacring of >5000). There were no Israeli citizens before it was formed, this was purely racial discrimination.
Palestinians under Israeli occupation generally have no pathway to Israeli citizenship, with the exception of those in East Jerusalem, which is occupied under international law but is considered part of Israel by Israel; in the West Bank there is a process to apply for Israeli citizenship, but only a small percentage of Palestinians in East Jerusalem can become citizens every year (I believe I read it was <5% of those who applied).
People who are not Palestinian, anywhere in the world, can convert to Judaism and make Aliyah. This pathway is denied to Palestinians, especially those under occupation.
So I don't know how you can claim this is not race based discrimination.
> It's pretty obvious giving the people who elected terrorists
8% or fewer of the people in Gaza today actually voted for Hamas. Most of them were not even born at the time of the last election, and combined with those who were under 18 at the last election and those who voted for other parties, 92% of people alive in Gaza today had no part in Hamas coming to power.
> Israel was formed atop the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians (not to mention massacring of >5000).
There were various push and pull factors involved, it's not entirely accurate to say they were all forcibly expelled(there were many that were not expelled as well).
> There were no Israeli citizens before it was formed, this was purely racial discrimination.
Palestinians that remained were given Israeli citizenship however.
> only a small percentage of Palestinians in East Jerusalem can become citizens every year (I believe I read it was <5% of those who applied).
It's around 5% that have Israeli citizenship I think, about a third that apply have been approved with the remaining being rejected or postponed looks like. The majority do not apply for Israeli citizenship for various reasons.[0]
> People who are not Palestinian, anywhere in the world, can convert to Judaism and make Aliyah. This pathway is denied to Palestinians, especially those under occupation.
There being no Jews allowed to live in Palestinian controlled territories(i.e. Gaza and West Bank areas A/B) may make converting a bit uncommon/difficult(converting in general is rather difficult AFAIU), but I don't think there's any outright prohibition on accepting Palestinian conversions for the purposes of citizenship(even though in practice it may be extremely rare).
> So I don't know how you can claim this is not race based discrimination.
I'm not claiming there's no race based discrimination when it comes to Israels immigration policy. Apartheid would be considered racial discrimination between those that are already citizens however, which is a different issue. Many countries have immigration laws that have various forms of racial discrimination and you don't normally see those cases described as apartheid either. I am not a citizen of the country I was born in due to these sort of policies.
> 8% or fewer of the people in Gaza today actually voted for Hamas. Most of them were not even born at the time of the last election, and combined with those who were under 18 at the last election and those who voted for other parties, 92% of people alive in Gaza today had no part in Hamas coming to power.
That may be true but keep in mind Palestinian opinion polling does indicate Hamas would still likely win elections if they were in fact held today.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Jerusalem#Residency_and_c...
> After the October 7 attacks it was critical that Israel re-establish deterrence, not doing so would be inviting more attacks
Sure. They did that when they killed Sinwar. After that, they could have just continued to Mossad individual leaders in Hamas.
> Israel losing the media war was probably somewhat inevitable, the extreme disparity between worldwide Muslim population sizes and Jewish population sizes being a big factor
Not relevant to America.
> Sure. They did that when they killed Sinwar. After that, they could have just continued to Mossad individual leaders in Hamas.
Killing one enemy leader is insufficient to re-establish deterrence, with how severe the October 7 attacks were I don't think Israel can possibly accept any outcome that doesn't effectively remove Hamas from power in Gaza.
> Not relevant to America.
It still has some effect in America, but less so than other parts of the world.
> Killing one enemy leader is insufficient to re-establish deterrence
They'd killed more than one at that point. Like, Hezbollah got the message pretty clearly.
> They'd killed more than one at that point.
However Hamas has yet to capitulate/surrender, Israel basically has no choice but to finish Hamas off if they won't surrender, not doing so would significantly weaken their deterrence capabilities and allow Hamas to rebuild. There are potential consequences to ceasefire agreements where an enemies leadership retains power[0] historically.
> Like, Hezbollah got the message pretty clearly.
They eventually got the message after Israel essentially eliminated the entirety of their leadership chart multiple levels deep and crushed Hezbollah's will to fight, the ceasefire Hezbollah eventually agreed to was effectively a surrender agreement.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles
> Israel basically has no choice but to finish Hamas off
Sure. Doesn't require starving civilians.
> after Israel essentially eliminated the entirety of their leadership chart multiple levels deep
Yeah. Do this.
> Sure. Doesn't require starving civilians.
Sure, and I don't see credible evidence that they are[0]. Just more of the same false narratives pushed by the all too common antisemitic UN officials[1].
[0] https://unwatch.org/hillel-neuer-on-sky-news-fabricated-u-n-...
[1] https://unwatch.org/legal-analysis-of-un-food-rapporteur-mic...
> don't see credible evidence that they are
An NGO "Agence France-Presse has described...as 'a lobby group with strong ties to Israel'" [1] is not a credible source for disputing two separate groups at the UN, the IPF and--at this point--more than a few independent investigations.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Watch#cite_note-GazaAFP-5
> An NGO "Agence France-Presse has described...as 'a lobby group with strong ties to Israel'" [1] is not a credible source for disputing two separate groups at the UN, the IPF and--at this point--more than a few independent investigations.
This doesn't make the information they are putting out false, the UN bias against Israel is well documented by many sources.
> This doesn't make the information they are putting out false
It makes it unreliable. If you’re claiming the IPC is an unreliable source, you need a reliable source to back you up on that. (And neither article actually cites any data that would undermine the IPC’s case.)
I’m genuinely open to being convinced. Another comment raised the issue of insufficient CDRs for IPC 5 status, which may or may not be relevant. But these UN Watch interviews are rally the base stuff, not argument.
> If you’re claiming the IPC is an unreliable source, you need a reliable source to back you up on that. (And neither article actually cites any data that would undermine the IPC’s case.)
I think the most detailed rebuttal to the recent IPC claims is this one[0] backed by the COGAT[1] published aid data. There are other responses to prior IPC reports that go into more methodological details[2] as well. The impression I get overall is that the IPC is largely just cherry picking incomplete data to create a false narrative[3]. IPC forecasts also basically never end up being accurate historically either.
[0] https://govextra.gov.il/media/orumgksl/politics-disguised-as...
[1] https://gaza-aid-data.gov.il/main/#AidData
[2] https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/generalpage/transparency-and-m...
[3] https://govextra.gov.il/media/sftjdsg2/cogat-humanitarian-ef...
Thank you!
This study came out June 1 2025 so it doesn’t cover more recent developments, but it’s fairly comprehensive in its treatment of the issue during prior timeframe: https://besacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/213-2.9.20...
Specifically pages 10-14 for an intermediate summary, or pages 29-30 for a shorter one, with chapter 1 providing the full details.
Curious to hear your thoughts if any
What Israel is doing is essentially sowing the seeds for a new crop of leaders hell-bent on destroying Israel. Children who saw ghe carnage Israel is inflicting will grow up to join Hamas and Hezbollah, and the cycle repeats.
> What Israel is doing is essentially sowing the seeds for a new crop of leaders hell-bent on destroying Israel
This isn't necessary! Plenty of peoples have overcome cycles of revenge. There isn't something inherent to Israelis and Gazans that requires they metabolise past trauma into future violence.
Overcoming this cycle requires the cooperation of both sides, or at the very least that both sides stop fucking with one another.
Israel, the stronger entity, should've been the one to abstain first and attempt to understand and forgive, instead they kept building illegal settlements and driving more and more people out there homes. Israel made sure the embers stayed hot, and I can't think of any reason for that aside from hoping those hot embers produce a flame that justifies genocide and completely eradicating the Palestinian population.
> What Israel is doing is essentially sowing the seeds for a new crop of leaders hell-bent on destroying Israel.
The current leaders have largely been hell-bent on destroying Israel already...
Yes, the current leaders are the result of Natenyahu's previous harvest.
There is no shortage of articles on the internet detailing how Israel is the one responsible for propping up Hamas.
And the current leaders of Iran are the fruits of what the USA/CIA sowed by toppling a popular democracy and replacing it with a despotic monarchy.
> Despite all this Israel has largely re-established military deterrence in the Middle East and is on a path to normalize relations with countries like Saudi Arabia once Hamas is either forced to surrender or degraded enough that they lose their ability to govern Gaza.
Citizens in the Gulf feel very differently on a large number of issues than their leaders.
> Citizens in the Gulf feel very differently on a large number of issues than their leaders.
Yeah, this is a common pattern, in general most Muslim counties have leadership which is far more moderate than their populations overall, with Iran being a notable exception.
Is there any way to starve people deliberately, and win a media war ? I’m not sure this has anything to do with Muslim vs Jewish population sizes.
> Is there any way to starve people deliberately, and win a media war ?
I guess by doing what Hamas does[0]?
> I’m not sure this has anything to do with Muslim vs Jewish population sizes.
Mostly it's just an issue of Muslims being largely supportive of the Palestinian cause for religious reasons and having much larger populations.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crr2dwn7q40o
This is disturbing. You seem to imply that there are legitimate reasons to starve an entire population, which is to me so repulsive that you’re not even allowed to consider entering that territory.Under that reading, once you’ve crossed that line, how can you actually win a media war ?
> You seem to imply that there are legitimate reasons to starve an entire population, which is to me so repulsive that you’re not even allowed to consider entering that territory.
No, I'm not saying that, I'm saying that the claims of starvation are simply not accurate.[0] They also tend to be pushed by antisemitic individuals[1].
[0] https://unwatch.org/hillel-neuer-on-sky-news-fabricated-u-n-...
[1] https://unwatch.org/legal-analysis-of-un-food-rapporteur-mic...
You’re really saying that there is no starvation , and plenty to eat in Gaza ? ( I won’t debate the technical meaning and definition of the word famine, which I didn’t use ) There are enough Israelis who confirm this , and they’re hardly antisemitic.
> You’re really saying that there is no starvation , and plenty to eat in Gaza ?
I'm saying there are varying degrees of food insecurity but not to the levels one would typically call famine/starvation. I'm saying there is sufficient food availability to prevent starvation/famine, I'm not sure I would neccesarially characterize that as being the same thing as there being "plenty to eat" however.
Also the repulsive and evil actions of Israel. That is also why people support Palestinians.
> killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands
Article says 400 people died.
That's from starvation.
What response would you suggest for Israel?
My understanding is their civilian vs combatant ratio is lower than comparable urban conflicts. So it’s hard to respond “softer”.
Population adjusted, 10/7 was 10x+ worse than 9/11. Challenging to expect zero response.
So what else is there?
The layman's understanding of war is less guided by international law and more around ideas like "tit for tat". Eg if Hamas kills 1000 Israeli civilians, Israel is entitled to kill 1000 Palestinian civilians, but should stop after that.
Is it the better response under international law? Not necessarily, but it would be better PR.
How come Israel is supposed to respond to Palestinian actions but Palestine isn't supposed to respond to Israeli actions?
this is like asking why democrats have to play by the rules when republicans don't
Would you happen to have sources for this?
One interesting comparison I saw is the Siege of Mariupol. The fighting there had very high rates of civilian deaths (per day, and also vs combatant deaths), but:
* a large portion of civilians (and thus civilian casualties) in Mariupol actually identify as ethnic Russians, so it seems unlikely Russia targeted them intentionally
* nobody has filed a genocide case against Russia on the basis of the large number of civilian deaths in Mariupol
> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response
Was Hamas' response proportionate to Israeli actions? What actions specifically.
Before you answer wildly, note that you're talking to someone who knows a dozen hostages and ex-hostages personally. Someone who knows two women whose babies were burned to death. Some whose daughter lost a close friend (that friend was slaughtered in his home along with both siblings and both parents, in their pajamas). Someone whose son's camp counselor was dragged to Gaza and murdered. I could go on. What was Hamas' actions a proportionate respond to?
Israel has tried responding to attacks by not killing hundreds of thousands of people, and that approach led to October 7th.
It’s been way too short a time to tell if this will work, but responding in a softer manner has proven to not. Might work is better than won’t work.
>It’s been way too short a time to tell if this will work, but responding in a softer manner has proven to not. Might work is better than won’t work.
Absolutely! As R.A. Lafferty correctly posited[0]:
Yes. It's up to those dead Palestinians to now make peace. And the more dead Palestinians there are, there are more who are on the hook to do so. In fact, if we kill them all, they'll be in the perfect spot to make peace, amirite?[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11072354-when-you-have-shot...
> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response
Is it disproportionate? Why do we talk about proportions when it comes to Jewish people defending their security but don’t bring it up in other conflicts? There was no talk of proportionate response after 9/11, for example. Virtually all nations who participated in the global war on terror didn’t care.
Proportionality is also not relevant when you’re talking about terrorists who are hiding among civilians on purpose. Why should Israel have to sacrifice the security of its residents to limit collateral damage among the very people who voted for Hamas and still support Hamas, as polls show.
> There was no talk of proportionate response after 9/11
I guess it depends on where you were, but for me in Australia at the time, yes - there was plenty.
Some of America's most famous writers weighed in at the time. Here's Hunter S. Thompson warning about how 9/11's narrative will be used to warp the perception of empire:
https://www.espn.com/page2/s/thompson/010918.html
I've lived in the US since around 9/11; there was lots of discussion around the responses to Iraq, and Afghanistan. It went on to Yemen, and Libya. There was always criticism and utter disappointment with Obama in many circles over this. Many US soldiers came forward and condemned the Iraq war.
Also, the people who voted for Hamas over 20 years ago? Considering how young the population is, I doubt many were alive then. Hamas won 74 of the 132 seats back then. It's very dangerous rhetoric to say collateral damage should not be limited. Did the babies and the many women who were slaughtered in endless bombing campaigns vote for Hamas to deserve their very end? This rhetoric is exactly why the world has turned their back on Israel. In the US, huge majority of under 35s do not support the state, for example.
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We can talk endlessly about strategy and long term implications (for example, the destruction of the Iranian "ring of fire" network of proxies, the permanent changes in Syria and Lebanon, etc), but consider something much more basic: Israelis around Gaza can finally live securely. There are no rockets coming from Gaza, no mortars, no chance of another October 7th or smaller incursions as long as the Israeli military is there. Israelis have peace. No Gazan rocket can disturb the life in Tel Aviv or Ashdod.
This couldn't and shouldn't have been a re-run of the countless previous clashes with Hamas. Israel needed to go all out to change the security situation, permanently.
I'm pretty sure people said the same thing after operation Cast Lead and other previous crackdowns. A country making itself into an international pariah while pursuing local security from an antagonist it nurtured in the first place is extremely myopic. As this conflict has dragged on, it has become more and more apparent that a great many Israelis (including in government) view their strategic situation through the lens of ancient historical conflicts from >2000 years ago and fantasize about resorting to the triumphant excesses of legend. Mass psychosis is not a good basis for long-term security.
Israel has seen more rockets and daily attacks than probably in its entire existance since they commenced the Gaza genocide what are you talking about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_...
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this? The claim is that there are less rockets now, but that article doesn't show anything for 2024 or 2025. There is an article specifically for 2024 that is linked but only shows attacks up till May. Whether that means rockets have stopped, as is the claim, or that they simply haven't been recorded in the Wiki is unknown.
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It’s a very high hill to die on, expecting Israeli civilians to prioritize the lives of enemies over their own. Any historical precedent, or are we entering into the fuzzy realm of uncharted morality?
The war in Gaza did not save a single Israeli’s life. Hundreds of Israeli are dead because of it though, many through accidents and friendly fire.
So it’s not about prioritizing lives, it’s about prioritizing ideologies.
And the pervasive ideology in Israel is that Palestinians are not people, and therefore our children, the IDF soldiers who daily target them, are not war criminals.
Deferring this war is what placed Hamas in a position to attack on October 7th. Never again.
It's a neat little trick to just say any child you shoot in the head is Hamas. Or any women a children you starve was actually Hamas. Or every hospital you blow up was because Hamas was hiding in there. Or just pretend that October 2023 was the start of the conflict ignoring the decades of death, apartheid, and brutality preceding it.
I'm just glad people like you are willing to publish stuff like this to the internet so we can look back and understand why genocides are allowed to happen.
>> It's a neat little trick to just say any child you shoot in the head is Hamas. Or any women a children you starve was actually Hamas.
Your words; not mine. I am supporting the military campaign against Gaza, and I also reject the separation between "Gaza" and "Hamas" as entirely artificial and serving an agenda.
Hamas is the elected government of Gaza, they administrate Gaza, they pay salaries and they're the ones you negotiate with regarding Gaza. When your hear casualties numbers coming from the "Gaza Health Ministry", they're provided by Hamas.
In October 7th 2023 it's Gaza, not Hamas, who started a war with Israel (not with the Israeli Defense Forces). It's a war between populations that for various reasons will not coexist on the same piece of land. Back in WWII, USA fought Japan, not the "Imperial Japanese Armed Forces".
This is a war between nations.
The things people are willing to publish.
The "Hamas is the elected government therefore women and children deserve to die" is Israeli propaganda.
It was a single election 20 years ago for a party running on change, not what Hamas stands for now. It was a protest vote. Palestinians have been experiencing genocide for decades.
Your seething hate for brown people is apart though. I'm glad you're willing to share it for the world to see.
>> Hamas is the elected government therefore women and children deserve to die
It's your own propaganda. Not mine, nor the Israeli government.
If your concern was with saving "brown people" lives, the most effective way to do so was to advocate for Hamas to release the remaining Israeli hostages and surrender. As it is, you're advocating for an Israeli surrender.
As it is, I openly and proudly call for Israel to win this war, decisively, with a surrender of their enemy.
P.S. Israelis are "brown people", given that most of the Israelis are of Arab origin (Jews, Christian and Muslim), about 70% or so.
An actual white supremacist right here on good ol hacker news.
His point of view represents the political norm in Israel. The same language is used by most members of government.
Too bad you weren't around in WWII to throw insults at those who are looking to win.
Ah it all makes sense. You exclusively post pro-Israeli comments on a thirteen year old account. How much do they pay you?
"the only reasonable explanation for disagreeing with me is that he's paid" :)
If I remember correctly, the side holding people in concentration camps and shooting children in their heads weren't the good guys. It's not surprising that someone like you is making themselves the hero for supporting genocide though.
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No, they are not. They're explaining the actual benefits Israeli citizens have gained from the war. That's valid to note.
“Israel has built the most efficient starvation machine you can imagine.”
There's political opposition to this within Israel. Here's what happened to an elected member of the Knesset who spoke out against the cruelty in Gaza.[1] He was forcibly removed from the podium of the Knesset.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzDxV7jnAos
People sometimes forget how bitterly divided Israel was before October 7th, with hundreds of thousands of people protesting in the streets. The war put some of the infighting on hold for a while, but all the former problems still exist, and the stakes are higher.
The division is not about the starvation of Gaza. All Zionist parties in the Israeli parliament support the military campaign in Gaza. Apart from some lip-service from left-wing leaders, to my knowledge no Jewish leader has spoken against the starvation. Israeli media (except for Haaretz) have largely denied that there is a famine, and have called it a "propaganda campaign" by the Hamas.
Some Orthodox Jews are very active against it, on very sound religious grounds.
They're a very tiny minority, and unfortunately they also get harrassed by Zionist Israelis
About 22% of Israel is orthodox and about 13% can be called "ultra-orthodox".
They play a major role in politics. Most prominently and recently, the 8-decade long exemption from the draft for Haredi Jewish people was ended causing a major crisis in Israel's government. All Haredi representatives of the Knesset withdrew leaving Netanyahu's party's majority with a razor thin margin of 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset
You mean the really small minority of orthodox Jews who live outside Israel and oppose Zionism because they believe the coming of the Messiah should not be driven by humans (or something like that)? Or the ones who oppose the current Gaza conflict because of the recent push to conscript them into the armed forces, when they previously enjoyed the exemption?
Trust me, no orthodox Jews are opposing the Gaza conflict on humanitarian grounds. On the contrary, there is a STRONG orthodox faction in Netanyahu's government (of which Smotrich is a member).
Pretty sure there's some commandment about this.
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No religious flamewar, please, no matter how many flames are burning already.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
My understanding is the defense made by Zionist parties is more that Hamas has culpability in the starvation. I haven't seen this claim verified or debunked sufficiently to have a strong opinion about it but it at least seems within reason to me that Hamas is acting in bad faith and is weaponizing starvation of Gaza residents.
Perhaps the fact that the Israeli state are the only ones making this claim, and many multiple experts, humanitarians, countries, leaders, are saying the exact opposite should be sufficient enough to debunk the claim.
The Israeli military itself debunked it I think . The us said the same thing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/world/middleeast/hamas-un...
> Hamas has culpability in the starvation
I mean, sure? Like, I'm sure Hamas stole like some food. At least once. Non-zero culpability.
Sort of irrelevant to the fact that most of the culpability lies with the guys withholding food from starving people.
Utter genocidal nonsense. Israel kills and maims deliberately civilians and children daily, starves deliberately millions, but it is Hamas who is to blame? Shameful.
Honest question from someone whose knowledge of Israel's government isn't deep: does "Zionist parties" mean anything other than the parties which are not Arab parties? (are members of the Arab parties free to advocate against Zionism and Israel's status as a Jewish state?)
All parties except for the Arabs and ultra religious are Zionist. The ultra religious have their own relationship with Zionism, but are members of the government.
While Arab MKs do enjoy freedom of speech, they are ostracized and delegitimized by the majority of Jewish MKs.
> they are ostracized and delegitimized by the majority of Jewish MKs
Not exactly.
A conservative Arab party was part of the ruling government coalition in 2021. They joined with a wide spectrum of political parties seeking to defeat the Likud Prime Minister Netanyahu.
That was an exceptional event, that was deeply unpopular within said coalition, and only possible because Netanyahu was widely hated.
From what I read, none of the Jewish parties are interested in renewing the experience.
> All Zionist parties in the Israeli parliament support the military campaign in Gaza
Source?
If you watch Peter Beinart's channel, he has had Ehud Olmert and Avraham Berg on. IDK if they touched upon starvation specifically, but it seemed like they were not in denial about Israel's actions, especially the latter (I think Beinart lightly pressed Olmert on whether Israel's actions constitute genocide, and Olmert disagreed, and I don't know that I begrudge him that, given his position).
Neither of these former politicians are current leaders, of course.
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"Starvation campaign"
> reputable news outlet such as TikTok
/s?
> how bitterly divided Israel was before October 7th ... people protesting in the streets. The war put some of the infighting on hold ... the stakes are higher
- Shulamit Volkov (afterword to "The Story of a German" by Sebastian Huffner).Huffner is Haffner:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Haffner
Which is probably one of the reasons, why they escalated the conflict out of proportion in the first place.
Even Charlie Kirk, of all people, was talking about this (ignore the clickbait video title): https://youtu.be/3wUq3t9f6ug?si=nV_NukcsjHZgj0MT
Of all people?
I don't know much about Charlie Kirk except what I've read recently. But he does/did seem to be part of a growing element of the right in the USA who stand against Israel and Netanyahu specifically. And while I support that, I don't think it's necessarily to support Palestinians, but more as an America First policy.
In that context, "of all people" makes sense to me. I too have been surprised by the move, of some on the right, against Israel, considering their almost unanimous support previously.
> I too have been surprised by the move, of some on the right, against Israel, considering their almost unanimous support previously
The right is not a monolith. Various elements on the right have always been anti-Israel, from the non-interventionists to the straight-up racists. Kirk was one of the former.
Kirk is on video making a joke about how he used to tell leftists, "they would throw you off a tall building in Gaza," but now there are no tall buildings in Gaza (hyuk hyuk), because of those "stupid Muslims attacking Jews."
As the genocide has become more and more indefensible, many right wing water carriers (also including Tucker Carlson) have been peeling off and voicing occasional (but essentially harmless) criticisms of the relationship. It's more cynicism than principle.
Yes, I tend to agree. I get the feeling of an undertone of antisemitism and America First rather than any sympathy for the Palestinian people.
And the more I've read into Kirk, the more disgusted I've been.
Obviously, that doesn't justify what happened to him, but he definitely isn't some kind of saviour and hero he's been made out to be after his death.
Watching him effectively being made into a saint has been mildly nauseating.
You be aware of this study indicating more diversity of opinion on the right vs left.
https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjso....
For context these are the questions asked since obviously this claim will change a lot based on questions. I wouldn't say it's terribly surprising based on my experiences, I've met Republicans against a lot of these things. I'm also wondering a bit how they got their sample since they had way more Democrats than Republicans and how representative it is (it also didn't close to match the racial makeup of the US). Not hating on the study, I didn't spend enough time reading it to know it's effectiveness, mainly the actual questions seemed important.
Item 1) Abortion should be illegal.
Item 2) The government should take steps to make incomes more equal.
Item 3) All unauthorized immigrants should be sent back to their home country.
Item 4) The federal budget for welfare programs should be increased.
Item 5) Lesbian, gay and trans couples should be allowed to legally marry.
Item 6) The government should regulate business to protect the environment.
Item 7) The federal government should make it more difficult to buy a gun.
Item 8) The federal government should make a concerted effort to improve social and economic conditions for African Americans.
Edit: to be clear I read the study and they used Prolific (https://www.prolific.com/) to get the participants but that means nothing to me.
I just googled this: https://www.scribd.com/document/924955773/Kirk-Letter
Yes
https://youtube.com/shorts/nNfDr18C6H4?si=CKalCaG0DMUP3rZZ
This and my original comment apparently struck a nerve for some people, but I’m just sharing what I observe from the links I’ve included. I’d love to see some actual response to the content of these videos given Kirk’s apparent change of heart on Israel (especially if I’m off-base) as opposed to just downvotes with substance-free responses
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I wrote the comment you're responding to, and I wasn't making an "argument," certainly not the one you seem to think I was making.
> So I guess USA is now gonna make war against Mexico/Canada, because they are divided?
Don't give them ideas. Once they are finished with Portland, LA and NYC, Canada is just next door
Forgot chicago
The US was the victim of a terror attack at 9/11. It became the bad guy by invading Afghanistan and Iraq for 20 years using one terrorist attack as the justification.
You could argue Israel's right to strike back on Oct 8th, 15th, 31. That justification has vanished as the onslaught has continued. 2 years later.
Yes, Israel is the bad guy for committing genocide. Being the target of a terrorist attack doesn't give a country the right to wage war on civilians.
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USA tried to establish themselves in those lands also to prevent future terror attacks, which I think they did. It's questionable if it was worth it or the right thing to do, but in the meantime, you guys in the USA didn't have a single terror attack afterwards, or? (I can't remember to be honest)
What would a single Israel's strike on the 8th of October etc have done? They got 100+ hostages, some are still there btw after 2 years, and there is proof that the civilians knew about it and actually supported it.
People still support Hamas and still believe they will win. Without mentioning that those people (the civilians, yes) supported that s** that "Hamas" had done on the 7th of October - there is plenty of evidence for it.
Interesting link: https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/997
> which I think they did.
They did not. ISIS was a direct consequence of the US invasion of Iraq. Instead of stomping out terrorists, they created a whole bunch of new terrorist cells and inspired the arab spring uprisings.
Speaking of the US invasion of Iraq.. Here is Netanyahu advising the US to do it:
https://www.c-span.org/clip/house-committee/user-clip-netany...
And more for Israel itself "Israeli intelligence officials had new evidence that Iraq was speeding up efforts to produce biological and chemical weapons"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/aug/17/iraq.israel1
> People still support Hamas and still believe they will win
These people are monsters and idiots. (Not necessarily both.)
Most people seeking peace in Palestine aren't pro-Hamas.
You're going to have to define "peace".
All I ever hear are calls for "ceasefire now" as long as Israel is winning, and those calls are silent whenever there's an offer to exchange hostages for a ceasefire. It does not seem to me that the peace these people are calling for are what you or I would call peace.
> You're going to have to define "peace". All I ever hear are calls for "ceasefire now"
Yup. Ceasefire, hostage return, Israel swears off bombing Hamas for like a year.
> those calls are silent whenever there's an offer to exchange hostages for a ceasefire
Where do you see anyone arguing Hamas shouldn't return hostages?
I see the "ceasefire now" people, who are usually very vocal, quiet every time there is a serious ceasefire proposal.
Furthermore, I see very little international pressure on Hamas to release the hostages, other than from the US. Quite the opposite, the Europeans pressure Israel, not Hamas.
Hamas today has announced they will release all hostages and turn over the government to a 3rd party Palestinian government for a withdrawl.
most recent palestinian poll.
When asked whether it supports or opposes the disarmament of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in order to stop the war on the Gaza Strip, an overwhelming majority (85% in the West Bank and 64% in the Gaza Strip) said it is opposed to that; only 18% support it.
When asked whether it supports or opposed the eviction of some Hamas military leaders from the Gaza Strip if that was a condition for stopping the war, 65% said they oppose it and 31% support it. Support for this step stands at 47% in the Gaza Strip and only 20% in the West Bank.
You really need to cite a source for something like this to be taken credibly.
https://pcpsr.org/en/node/997
a lot of interesting things in there
This is very much one sided. Other side of the argument, in civillians supporting horrible violence, doesn't do any favors dor Israel. Most of the world is appalled in the delusional civil society.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-64929563
Thanks for responding, but... is that guy a bot or something?
A Pew poll in 2022 found that about half (48%) of Israeli Jews agree that Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel. Horrifying statistic.
Now do Arab polls.
Seriously, you can't apply western standards to middle eastern coumtry, even more so, single out one ME country to apply them to.
Being against genocide isn’t a western standard.
1) Not a genocide
2) If forces were reversed, it would be one for sure.
--
Anyhow, war and terror is on the rise in Europe right now, cue immediate swing to far right in the polls, so good luck!
He is not political opposition. He is Arab mk, which is allowed to be elected in free democratic elections, something many Arab countries don't allow. He was removed after being called to order 3 times by the chairman, and removed when he didn't oblige to continues his speech in a normal way. This is a very small portion cut from a very long speech, and the only reason is to flame The Guardian readers against Jews.
The man speaking is Ayman Odeh [1], an Arab Israeli MK and chairman of Hadash, a left-wing Arab Israeli party. Arab Israelis and their political leaders are marginalized in Israeli society. Arab Israeli parties are largely considered illegitimate by a majority of Jewish Israelis.
Political opposition to the starvation of Gaza is still marginal, especially in Jewish society. Protests in Arab cities against the starvation and the genocide are being curbed and prevented by the police. the Jewish majority is still largely silent on these issues, if not outright supportive of the government policy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayman_Odeh
Israel is where we in the west get shown a mirror in front of our faces. A country led by religious fanatics, who don't respect other religions and for the most part feel no remorse when people of other faith suffer due to their actions or inaction. A genocidal military, that continues its deeds, seemingly aiming to reach ISIS level of despicability. But we have tons of people here, who don't want to see anything wrong with Israel and how it acts. That really shows us our double standards. Religious fanatics are OK for us, as long as they are not against us. Crimes against humanity are OK, as long as they are inflicted upon a group, that is not seen by the mainstream as "us".
We have really lost the plot when it comes to ethics. Not all of us, but many, and especially in our leaderships and governments.
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Just to be fair, Israel itself is considered illegitimate by those parties. I doubt most democracies would let parties that are staunchly anti-state run, but Israel, for some reason, does.
Canada has a federal party since 1991, the Bloc Québécois, "devoted to Quebecois nationalism, social democracy, and the promotion of Quebecois sovereignty."[0] They're explicitly separatist by policy. Quebec's last attempt at attaining sovereignty was a provincial referendum in 1995 that lost by 0.5%. Had it succeeded, the provincial gov't was prepared to declare full independence the next day.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloc_Qu%C3%A9b%C3%A9cois
As a Canadian I'd also say that having such a party is a huge boon to the country. Separatists are going to separatist - your choice, as a nation, is whether to allow them to organize and have their voices heard within the system of politics or whether to force them to resort to violence and underground organization. Those underground separatist groups will always exist but giving formal political representation to the desire for separation (even if it isn't granted) can help defuse extremism and provide better methods for airing grievances.
The modern BQ is much more tame than the BQ of thirty years prior - they've mainly morphed into a party focused on franophone rights within Canada and the maintenance of QC labor rights. So while they specifically no longer represent that separatist movement as directly there are other groups focused on prairie separatism that are a better modern parallel.
Do any of the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru or Sinn Féin count? I have no doubt there are similar elsewhere...
Hadash is not an anti-state party. For instance it explicitly supports a two state solution.
Hadash is a communist party, first and foremost. But the Arab parties - Balad, Raam, Taal - they are advocating for Palestinian "right of return" and turning Israel into a bi-national state, therefore ending what we know as Israel today.
Being against Israel's status as an ethnostate is hardly "anti-state".
> Being against Israel's status as an ethnostate is hardly "anti-state"
But it is tantamount to the destruction of Israel.
That's absurd. It would be a major change, but hardly in the way that could be described as the destruction of the state.
Abolishing Jim Crow in the south hardly destroyed the south, despite the gloom and doom of the racists of the time.
> hardly in the way that could be described as the destruction of the state
It would be a destruction of the nation-state of Israel as a state for the Israeli, predeominantly Jewish, nation.
> Abolishing Jim Crow in the south hardly destroyed the south
It certainly felt that way to them! Strongly enough that they fought a war over it. (EDIT: Nobody went to war over Jim Crow. They did over slavery. Jim Crow was basically an attempt to regain part of what was lost in the war. Put another way, even a war--alone--is not enough.)
That's the point. The single-state solution, practically, would require a war. I know we pulled out of Afghanistan. But I thought we'd have a bigger gap before another group of Westerners decided they like drawing borders in the Middle East, and that anyone who disagrees with them--including the people on the ground--should be violently forced to comply.
> It would be a destruction of the nation of Israel as the people of Israel see it.
Just like the people in my home states of Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee thought that ending Jim Crow would destroy them. They were wrong, just as the people of Israel would be wrong.
> It certainly felt that way to them! Strongly enough that they fought a war over it.
No war was fought over the end of Jim Crow.
> That's the point. The single-state solution, practically, would require a war. I know we pulled out of Afghanistan.
At the moment, probably. That can change.
> But I thought we'd have a bigger gap before another group of Westerners decided they like drawing borders in the Middle East, and that anyone who disagrees with them--including the people on the ground--should be violently forced to comply.
Those Knesset members are not asking western intervention to end their ethnostate.
> They were wrong, just as the people of Israel would be wrong.
They may be. Maybe India and Pakistan could peacefully reünify, too. I'm doubtful. But that matters less than the people there being very much more doubtful.
> No war was fought over the end of Jim Crow
Sorry, fair enough. Ending Jim Crow wasn't a credible threat to the South at that time. The war had already been fought.
> At the moment, probably. That can change
Sure. But sentiment has to shift before one can peacefully move borders.
> Those Knesset members are not asking western intervention to end their ethnostate
I've lost your argument. (Also, ethnostate and nation-state are practically synonymous.)
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The war for a single state is already happening mind you, and westerners are already involved and influential in it. i disagree that there is now an option to decide now that we dont want to draw borders, only whether we're satisfied with the new borders or not.
How so? There are so many multinational states in the world that manage to exist, somehow.
> there are so many multinational states in the world that manage to exist
Not many with that sort of history. It's barely working in the EU, and that's because America took away the toys for a while.
You don’t seem to be a particularly reliable narrator of history in this thread, so I’ll take your uncited assertions with a grain of salt.
Not a real argument, but I don't think I can come up with a real argument for your case, so fair enough.
Show me a single case where previously-warring nations peacefully unified (i.e. not through conquest or subjugation)? Poland-Lithuania and England-Scotland are the only two I can think of.
Because the counterexample--multiethnic nations that split along national-identity lines--is far more frequent since the age of conquest. Former Yugoslavia. Pre-Partition India. Sudan. Ethiopia. Algeria.
Multiethnicisim is hard. Where it works, it happened through immigration. Combining previously-warring nations under one roof is basically just assisted civil war.
Mostly the ones where multinationality has been reduced to a different set of cuisines. If you look around the Middle East region, then every multiethnic state there has had civil wars recently.
"Israel should be different" is not the same as "Israel shouldn't exist". Calling them anti-state is nonsense.
A bi-national state will differ in anthem, in symbols, in government, in military, in beliefs and in values. What of Israel would remain?
A democracy. A government supported by the people it governs is the primary factor in determining whether a state is legitimate.
> A government supported by the people it governs is the primary factor in determining whether a state is legitimate
Not really seeing who in the region would want to support that narrative.
the new syrian government is trying to sell that narrative. see this recent conversation at the CFR: https://youtu.be/-CGM6aSontQ?si=CzIWJuZiCb7XRXL-
It’s borderline bigoted to force your values onto a completely different population that’s Islamist, tribal and radicalized. After Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza people thought it would be a good idea to hold elections there. Hamas, the Palestinian equivalent of ISIS, won. There haven’t been elections since. In the West Bank, no PA elections since 2005 because the PLO feared Hamas would win there too.
So what democracy are you talking about?
> Hamas, the Palestinian equivalent of ISIS, won. There haven’t been elections since
To be fair, we tried to depose them. That tends to make one paranoid.
That doesn't make Hamas's despotism and terrorism our fault. But it's also unfair to use that as an example for why democracy can't work in Gaza.
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> name all the democratic states which have Arab culture
This is a genuine pro-Israeli argument. It’s not a valid anti-Arab one.
How many extraction-economy former colonies have successfully democratised? (Extraction being the sole or overwhelming economic sector.) Because that’s the common link between e.g. Central Asia and the Arab world.
I'm not anti-Arab. I'm pro-Israel. I actually speak Arabic (and Hebrew) and I speak regularly with people in the Gaza strip and in the West Bank.
Sorry, I meant to just characterise the argument, not its speaker. The absence of Arab democracies doesn't have a well-established predictive mechanism that would allow us to predict a Gazan democracy should fail. It does highlight a unique aspect of Israel in its region.
For rule of the people (democracy) to work, certain base values and education are necessary. I implore you to research this, it is discussed often by both Arabs (who understand Arab culture) and Westerner scholars (who do not).
> certain base values and education are necessary. I implore you to research this
This is an empty comment without any citations.
Sure, no problem, I actually had this conversation with somebody a few months ago. He's an Israeli Arab, not a Gazan Arab, but they are both Sunni Muslims. The conversation was in Hebrew, though I often speak with Arabs in Arabic as well. I spend much time interested in their culture and language - Israelis and Westerners know almost nothing about them.
Firstly, legal authority lies only with God. Not with man, as in Jewish and Christian societies (his comparison, not mine, and yes he mentioned Christians for some reason even though his town does not have Christians). There is no decision of man about what is permitted and what is not - even if the majority in a democracy want it. Allah has revealed what is good and just for man, even though he emboldened man with other desires and temptations.
Another problem with democracy in Arab society (not Muslim society as the previous paragraph dealt with) is how would voting even work. Two women's votes would be needed for every man's votes. He specifically said that this is an Arab problem, not a Muslim problem. And he says that women should not vote anyway, nor should children whose father is still alive, because they can only vote for who the father or husband says. Secret voting does not change that.
Another problem is Jews will manipulate the voting, or the results. Or any voting results the party doesn't like, will be blamed on Jewish intervention. I think he means Israeli intervention but those are his words.
That's just from some store owner I was talking to. You can choose to decide that he doesn't represent anybody. But he is a Sunni Muslim who lives a half hour drive from Gaza city.
I understand all this very well. What I don't agree with is that the solution to this problem is to not give them any say in their government. The solution is education, and that doesn't happen when they're starved and bombed. Analogously, the slaves freed in the US Civil War were mostly illiterate and had been kept so by law. It is very difficult to run a democracy with an illiterate electorate, but nobody would suggest that we just throw up our hands and give up on having the government represent the will of the people.
hamas killed or tortured into submission all opposition in gaza.
palestinian authority stopped having elections as well. because hamas will win. latest polling (in link that i sent you in other thread) shows hamas polling at 40+%
> latest polling (in link that i sent you in other thread) shows hamas polling at 40+%
Not a majority? Also, can you provide the link? Super curious about polling methods in a war zone.
got mistaken with previous polls. hamas not 40+ but 30+. 10 points higher than fatah and in case those that don't know who they vote for, won't vote - i guess hamas gets majority.
But PA promised to France/UK/Canada/Australia that Hamas wouldn't be allowed to participate in elections, so...
https://pcpsr.org/en/node/997
they have people that interview people in gaza (mentioned on front page)
Thank you. I don't have a sense for the credibility of the poll.
But taking their numbers at face value, we have 58% of Gaza residents saying Hamas was incorrect to launch its 7 October offensive. (Surprisingly, 59% in the West Bank say it was correct. That's problematic.)
Problematically, too, is the 2/3rds of respondents in Gaza who oppose Hamas disarming. Based on this survey, which again, I have zero ability to judge in terms of accuracy, there would need to be a long civic transition to democratic self-rule while new political parties are given a safe space to form and grow.
west bank population more radical because they don't feel the consequences of the hamas actions in gaza
how long civic transition given those:
https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/UNRWA-Education...
https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/Review-of-2023-...
https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/Gazas-Education...
The same part of israel that is similar to the one from 2000 years ago.
Is Israel so perfect today that it should be frozen in amber and never allowed to become something different?
Seeing that Israel has done very little good around itself ever, maybe changing the character of it would be a good thing. It's not working well.
They are not parties considering Israel illegitimate nor are they calling for the destruction of Israel. They are parties calling for a two-state solution, and consider the globally-recognized-as-illegal settlements as illegitimate i.e. they call the ever expanding borders of Israel as illegitimate.
If you were to make them illegal, you're basically legally disenfranchising 25% of Israel's population.
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Is there any direct source for the questionability which does not come from Israel, or from entities backed by Israel? Because nowadays, all of these “sources” which I’ve seen to be shared were clearly lying propaganda, like “they lied about what the link said” obvious lies, or shared links which were said by Israel basically. The funniest was the account whose only purpose was to show that Palestine was rich in reality, and tried to show that shops are still full with stuffs there, while clearly tried to disguise from where or when the information came. And it does only that, nothing else.
The US vetoes most resolutions related to Israel because they are anti-Israel.
https://globalaffairs.org/commentary-and-analysis/blogs/how-...
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Do you have something to counter the logical narrative or just an eye brow raise? If that's all you have to offer I'll raise you two eye brow raises.
I don't know what you mean by "logical" narrative. There is no logic here. Israel facilitates the entry of virtually all the food going into Gaza. They monitored the food prices and when they spiked, they took action, bringing them back down.
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Considering factors like different countries having different populations, "most efficient" has very little to do with the raw number of people starving.
Oh ok then? Is that it?
There is simply no excuse for blocking the entry of food into a region wholesale. For that alone they should, at the very least, be an outcast in the international community. But here we are.
That they have the backing and blessing of the US government is the counter-argument to this. The US can almost unilaterally end this war if they want to.
How is that a counter-argument?
US has a lot of both soft and hard power globally. If you don't treat their puppet state with deference (and do treat it as an outcast), you can face consequences. The current US admin is using this as a stick against its own citizens, even.
OK, but I still don't see how that's a counterargument to the proposition that "There is simply no excuse for blocking the entry of food into a region wholesale."
Oh, I reacted to GP's entire comment, not just the first sentence.
> US can almost unilaterally end this war if they want to
Almost but not quite.
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> Israel fully controls USA (especially this administration)
This is the political equivalent of Flat Eartherism.
The 'Earth is a perfect sphere' take would be that there are significant numbers of Americans for whom Israel is a single-issue item, and significantly more for whom it's a top three. These voters can swing elections in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and possibly Michigan, and so are given a lot of deference by the Congress and President.
yea, lets go with that, definitely we are involved in a genocide because of 7 voters in arizona.
additionally, neither party’s candidate can dare be “anti” israel so this is an election issue as much as … don’t even have a witty comparison for this :)
> neither party’s candidate can dare be “anti” israel
Plenty do. They lost their primaries because most Americans don't want to be lectured on foreign policy while their grocery bills are going up.
Most Americans won't rank any foreign policy as a top-10 issue. Out of those that do, until very recently, most of them were passionately anti-China or Russia, pro-Israel or anti-Cuba. So those become electorally-salient divides.
You're now seeing, in Democratic politics, the winds sort of change. Hence less explicit pro-Israeli rhetoric from some electeds. But that still doesn't mean the median American voter cares about a war in Gaza more than they do their personal finances.
The claim I've heard them make is that the food aid is making it in, but being stolen by Hamas so that it can be resold at markup. How do you convince people that believe this that it isn't true (or is irrelevant)?
Would reporting from the NYT citing Israeli military officials saying that this didn't happen on any notable scale help convince people?
No Proof Hamas Routinely Stole U.N. Aid, Israeli Military Officials Say
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/world/middleeast/hamas-un...
The UN's own data (https://app.un2720.org/tracking) shows 86,531 pallets were intercepted, while only 26,772 pallets arrived at their intended destination.
We don't know many of the interceptions Hamas was behind, but that isn't really important.
> We don't know much many of the interceptions Hamas was behind, but that isn't really important.
Sure it is when Israel is funding other groups that are known for stealing aid. It changes the entire narrative.
Israel backs an anti-Hamas armed group known for looting aid in Gaza. Here’s what we know
https://apnews.com/article/gaza-armed-groups-hamas-israel-lo...
Is 0 better than 26,772 pallets?
Who is suggesting making it 0?
The Israeli government in March of this year. And it wasn't a suggestion, it was an implemented policy.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/02/middleeast/israel-halts-gaza-...
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Yes, I see Israeli terrorists who have been committing mass murder for decades.
Either side of the conflict could say this and be 100% justified in their accusation. That's what people "see with their own eyes" if you needed some perspective.
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First of all your own link clearly states "Intercepted: Either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors, during transit in Gaza".
Secondly, nobody can tell who intercepted what, it could very well be that the IDF is intercepting them covertly.
That's just spin; there's no way to peacefully intercept the vehicles. The drivers don't stop because a hungry person asked politely.
> it could very well be that the IDF is intercepting them covertly
This seems like a pretty farfetched conspiracy theory. There are smart phones and other cameras all over Gaza, and zero evidence of this.
> That's just spin
No it's not. Driving trucks full of food through hungry crowds will absolutely result in "shrinkage." That doesn't mean they're all Hamas.
These are interceptions of trucks, not people grabbing a few items as a truck passes by.
I didn't say they're all Hamas; again the relevant thing is that they're being intercepted and not making it to ordinary civilians.
Top comment: "The claim I've heard them make is that the food aid is making it in, but being stolen by Hamas so that it can be resold at markup."
> the relevant thing is that they're being intercepted and not making it to ordinary civilians
Hell of a straw man. People care that the aid is getting to militants. Israel said it was getting to Hamas. That's the justification for limiting aid. If it's not getting to people who are shooting at Israeli troops, then it's not a security risk to provide more aid.
The strawman is that Hamas is intercepting all the aid. Sure people occasionally say that, but you're attacking an oversimplification of the real underlying points, which are that
- Groups of men with rifles tend to be belligerents in the conflict, even if we can't say definitively if they're with Hamas, PIJ or some smaller gang. Israel doesn't want an aid program where the bulk of the aid goes to their literal war enemies.
- Even if some of them are "civilian armed gangs" and not actual belligerents, the aid they steal still isn't getting to civilians (except when it's sold at extortionate prices). Hence the shift to GHF which, while it has its own problems, does actually deliver most aid to ordinary civilians for free.
> Groups of men with rifles tend to be belligerents in the conflict, even if we can't say definitively if they're with Hamas, PIJ or some smaller gang
Granted.
> Even if some of them are "civilian armed gangs" and not actual belligerents, the aid they steal still isn't getting to civilians
Sure. Now where is the evidence that most of the aid is being pilfered by armed anyones?
There’s no “proof” but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. The pallets that never made it to people in need didn’t magically disappear. There is also a history of Hamas stealing aid that goes back MUCH longer than the post-October-7 conflict:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip#Feb...
I have no idea. I've heard a lot of "just because a minister says it it isn't true, do you believe everything Trump or congresspeople say?" in response to what ministers say. That, and the usual "the media (particularly mainstream, like NYT) is lying/anti-semitic/etc." So I imagine the reply would be the same.
> How do you convince people that believe this that it isn't true
It's not like the Gazans have any money to speak of.
> (or is irrelevant)?
If the way to prevent starvation is to flood the zone with food shipments, it's a moral imperative to do that. That it will also help keep the enemy fed is entirely beside the point, since causing starvation is not a legal or ethical form of warfare.
> It's not like the Gazans have any money to speak of.
This is more of an argument in favor of the other side. It immediately becomes clear why they don't have the money.
20 years of economic warfare where all exports were banned as a mechanism for destroying their economy being a primary reason.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100612001046/http://www.mcclat...
un data showing hundreds of trucks exporting goods from gaza every month:
https://www.ochaopt.org/data/crossings
> stolen by Hamas
And/or the Israel-backed ISIS groups[1][2].
[1]: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sytu2q1mel
[2]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-netanyahu-armi...
Hamas actually cleaned house of a couple of the leaders of these gangs recently.
If that was true, wouldn’t the best course of action be to let as much aid as possible into Gaza to flood the market rather than restricting the flow (therefore increasing prices) like Israel has been doing?
Exactly. The solutions can be as simple as this. Israel has the power to fix this, they choose to do the opposite
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Then Israel severely limiting the amount of food is helping Hamas by artificially, and cruelly, limiting supply. People want to feed their families and will go to great lengths: sell their valuables, harm others, or wait in line at a Gaza Health Ministry site with the knowledge the IDF might fire into the crowd.
If they flooded Gaza with food then Hamas would benefit less from the supposed stealing/reselling.
It is irrelevant. Israel shouldn't block other countries from sending whatever aid, obviously making sure there's no arms.
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>it allowed the US to build a pier for food delivery
You mean the one that Israel was caught on camera using to help carry out a raid (the Nuseirat refugee camp massacre) that killed 276 civilians and injured over 600? And then promptly disintegrated after spending only 20 days distributing 1/5 of the aid actually needed?
How magnanimous of them. Why don't we send them another billion off our paychecks to fund their free healthcare to thank them?
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Have Israelis also decided their hostages were the price they wanted to pay for occupying Palestine?
The sheer blatant disregard for human life you exhbit is staggering.
The sheer blatant disregard for human life that Hamas exhibits is staggering. They could end the suffering today by returning the hostages. The fact that they do not, tells you all you need to know about the society that UNRWA education enabled.
Israel doesn't understand "human" life and never will.
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Hamas wanted to negotiate the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel, that it why they took the hostages. Israel decided that their citizens were not worth the price and Zionists used the opportunity to expedite the genocide.
There is currently a deal on the table to get thousands of those prisoners released in exchange for the ~30 hostages and Hamas has refused. Hamas' by far largest goal is pressuring Israel, not saving civilians.
> Hamas wanted to negotiate the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel
No it didn't. The hostages are leverage only for Hamas, not the Palestinians. Unilaterally cede the hostages and Israel would be put into a really tough spot.
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Great. So why did Gazans elect Hamas to power in 2006? Their charter includes things like eliminating Israel, people of all other religions, subjugating women, etc. It doesn’t seem like they wanted to decide who is to live or die. And by “they” I don’t just mean Hamas but the population that put them into power and still supports them today. Hamas is the one who attacked Israel with rockets for more than a decade. Their actions caused numerous intermittent blockades that affected residents of the area. It seems like they are content deciding who gets to live or die both in Israel and in the Gaza Strip. But somehow the comments here don’t seem to acknowledge this.
Remember, there have been several two state solution offers in the past. None were accepted by the Islamic Arabs who now call themselves “Palestinian”. Because they aren’t content with coexisting. They want to eliminate Israel and take over the entire region of historical Palestine. That’s what “from the river to the sea” means.
Netanyahu supported Hamas, classic divide and conquer strategy. "Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
Hamas changed their charter in 2017 and supported the 1967 borders. Israel does not.
This entire situation has been engineered from the start by Zionists to take over and ethnically cleanse the area. This plan goes back to Ben Gurion.
> "Anyone who wants to thwart ..."
That's an unverified quote which Netanyahu denied saying.
> Hamas changed their charter in 2017 and supported the 1967 borders.
First it's only certain Westerns who like to frame it as a new charter, while Hamas never used such language and never recanted their original charter.
More to the point, Hamas' 2017 document accepts the concept of a state along 1967 borders, presumably as a stepping stone, "without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity", i.e. while still demanding "the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea".
> Israel does not.
There's nothing sacred about the 1967 armistice line in particular, but the 2ss offers Israel made in 2000 and 2008 would have been pretty close.
Why did Gazans elect Hamas to power in 2006?
Great question because Hamas was funded by Benjamin Netanyahu in the 90s because he feared the peaceful PLO would become too powerful and result in a two state solution.
Knowing this does this change your position or have you decided on a viewpoint that you will push regardless.
If what I just said was true (and it is) Benjamin Netanyahu put them in power. Doesn't that change everything for you?
Debating that two state solutions were offered and other Arab states not supporting a two state solution because they wanted everything restored to before the world wars victors carved up the world and took away their piece is worth debating. But that's not why Hamas exists.
Benjamin Netanyahu disparate needed an enemy a group violent and extreme. Benjamin Netanyahu setup a strawman.
Hitler's Nazi party in the begining use to send men in to attack an area create chaos then use that justification to take over that area to protect them. Scared people obey.
Jews are the indigenous people of Israel. The archaeological records and excavations is clear on that. The leftist and white guilt that ignores that and subverting the definition of Zionism is disgusting.
They are not. They were banished centuries BC by their own God per their own scripture. The Palestinian people are the indigenous ones fighting against waves of Eastern Euro trash immigrants fleeing Europe during the 20th century.
> Jews are the indigenous people of Israel
Literally doesn't matter. Dead people don't get a vote on where who can live. The people alive today live where they do and will fight to keep from getting displaced. The sooner folks can understand that the sooner we might see peace.
It's you people that's using the terms "colonizers." Of course it matters. Changing definitions willy nilly in the face of evidence is how authoritarianism starts. Very hypocritical of your kind.
> you people that's using the terms "colonizers.”
Who people?
The late Harlan Ellison contested this narrative throughout his lifetime: https://youtu.be/P6gtHQGbXmM?t=194
He was also a pedophile.
Everyone on this fucking planet lives on stolen land. Nobody wants to hear it anymore. Go build a productive society in where you find yourself.
They stole this land within a century using the first cases of modern terrorism against the British and then eventually the Arabs. They're old enough to be forced to not only give it back but work hard labor to rebuild it for its original inhabitants.
This particular piece of land was stolen, using terrorism and forced displacement among other colonial techniques, as recently as 1948, and some of the beneficiaries and victims are still alive.
You need to hear “it”, again because “it” is the foundation of civilized coexistence.
if you could press a button that would return all hostages but at the cost of 276 Palestinian civilians per hostage recovered, you would do it.
Just pointed it out for the normal folks here. Israelis are pretty radicalized.
If your daughter was held captive by Gazans, would you not sacrifice 276 of those who vow to eradicate you, in order to save your own daughter?
That's why you are subhuman and not fit for modern society. You are literally posting Nazi opinions about favoring the complete eradication over other races as preferable to a risk to your race.
Remember that the editor of Der Sturmer was hanged at the Hague!!!
> For example it allowed the US to build a pier for food delivery
"allowed"
The pier was never going to work. Israel should just allow aid in via the normal ways. Notice that Israel controls all the borders of Gaza and they're the ones preventing food from coming in. Not to mention destroying all the farmland in Gaza too.
> Not to mention destroying all the farmland in Gaza too.
There's a report by forensic-architecture on that: https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/ecocide-in-g...
Thank you.
I'm glad to see you use "most of this war", acknowledging that Israel has at times totally blockaded all food and medicine from Gaza (and not for logistic or military reasons, but as a pure pressure tactic as stated by Israeli officials).
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/02/middleeast/israel-halts-gaza-...
And it's true, Israel is not required to accept aid from other countries for Gaza. They could instead provide the full required resources for civilians in the occupied areas themselves.
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No it cant because israel controls the borders and isnt letting any arms in. It can be used to pay terrorists but Israel just has to live with that. If they are confident aid is being used to pay terrorists the correct move is not cutting off aid its defending the aid
Who is in Gaza right now selling arms?
> Who is in Gaza right now selling arms?
Aid can be used to pay fighters. That doesn't justify blocking aid. Just that there are military reasons to be careful about how it's distributed.
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even if it was true, and the charities say it is not, would that make it OK to starve the people of Gaza?
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Distribution points are hours of walking away from the majority of Gazans. Then you have armed forces shooting people seeking food.
From the article: https://imgur.com/a/rqW5m3w
And the GHF isn't even a real aid distribution NGO. Those exist! They're experts at this. Let them in.
Ethnic cleansing is deeply wrong, starvation as a tactic of war is horribly wrong, we all know what's happening, please have some respect for peoples' intelligence.
Ethnic cleansing is deeply wrong. Starvation as a tactic of war is horrible and evil. But it doesn't sound like people here do know what is happening.
The CNN article gives the low calorie consumption amount as 1400. 1400 was a specific time/event and the worst case CNN listed.
The US, in post war Germany, doing it 'the right way' according to history, targeted (so many received lower) 1500 calories a day. Or 1000 a day when airdropped.
According to the CNN article, Israel's action during an ongoing conflict is about par with how the US did it for years in post war Germany. And remember Germany is much larger than Gaza, so people had much larger distances to cover. Those that couldn't be reached received airlifts that only targeted 1000 calories per day.
War sucks. It sucks that the government of Gaza chose to start a war. What we are seeing is the impacts of that. And it is awful. But it's also in line with the conditions in post WW2 Germany, arguable one of the best historical treatments of an aggressor by victors over it.
Germany isn't referred to as a starvation, but as a successful reconstruction. It is the 'norm' to which people speak when they speak of how to treat an aggressor population when they lose to victors. It is the literal 'norm' that people are calling for in Gaza. I only looked into it because people here were pointing to it as how Israel should be acting in Gaza on last weeks Gaza story. And I was surprised to find that Israel is acting within that established norm that people here were calling for just last week (until I looked up what the norm/numbers were and brought those facts into the discussion).
I'm not sure why this is important to the discussion. The important question is: are people in Gaza starving or not? If they are, I couldn't care less what we did during WW2.
Secondarily, just because there was a guideline during WW2 that was deemed "the right way", it's the result that counts. Were people starving in Germany post WW2? If so that was wrong then too.
The Red Cross sets a floor of 1500 calories within the USA, lower than the floor Israel sets for Gaza. Does the Red Cross starve American's/use food as a weapon?
https://emergency.lacity.gov/sites/g/files/wph1791/files/202...
The UN itself has cut food distribution/caloric intake in Kenya (in need in huge part because of war refugees from Sudan) in half, is the UN using food as a weapon? The UN is saying it wants to provide aid at a much higher level to the people of Gaza than it provides to the people in Kenya.
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> Starvation as a tactic of war is horrible and evil. But it doesn't sound like people here do know what is happening.
The problem for your argument is that Israeli leaders have publicly said over and over again that they are intentionally starving the Palestinians in Gaza.
> 1400 was a specific time/event and the worst case CNN listed.
Israel let in 0 calories for months on end. They have blocked the UN from providing food aid, and have attempted to completely destroy the main UN agency providing food in Gaza. When Israel does let food in, it is only in response to international pressure. If the Israeli government thought it could get away with killing every last Palestinian in Gaza, it would.
> Israeli leaders have publicly said over and over again that they are intentionally starving the Palestinians in Gaza
To be fair, Israeli leaders can be quoted saying just about anything, same as in pretty much any democracy. What matters is which leaders are saying what, what authority they have, and what's happening on the ground.
The Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister are not just random, low-level people with no authority who are shooting the breeze.
Nobody who has followed the news over the last two years can seriously claim that this isn't Israeli policy. Did Israel block all aid shipments for months earlier this year by accident?
Sorry, didn't realise it was attributed to their comments.
> Nobody who has followed the news over the last two years can seriously claim that this isn't Israeli policy
Eh, it's fair to say there isn't an Israeli policy. Same as there isn't a Palestinian one. We have a black box in Hamas and around Netanyahu.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: "We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals, and we are acting accordingly."[0]
CNN: "Israel says it will block Gaza humanitarian aid until Hamas agrees to new conditions"[1]. This official announcement came directly from Netanyahu's office. After this announcement, Israel blocked all humanitarian aid to Gaza for nearly 3 months. What's particularly remarkable is that this came after Hamas agreed to a ceasefire and hostage exchange. Netanyahu exchanged the first few batches of hostages, and then refused to continue as previously agreed. He demanded that the entire deal - which both sides had already agreed to - be renegotiated, and blocked humanitarian aid as a means of applying pressure.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalael Smotrich: "No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages."[2]
I could go on, but you get the point. You can't possibly claim that this isn't Israeli government policy or that we have no way of knowing what the top Israeli leaders think about the matter.
0. https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2023/10/9/israeli-d...
1. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/02/middleeast/israel-halts-g...
2. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/08/israel...
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All the more reason they shouldn't support doing it to others, and yet many do.
And population growth looks the same everywhere in the world: the poorer the country, with less access to health care, less job security, independence and opportunities for women, the higher the birth rate.
Palestinian children are not paragliding in and murdering people.
Even if they could, they're too malnourished to do so.
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Fortunately the world has woken up and the coming generation sees the truth.
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1. The "war" did not start on Oct 7.
2. Even if a country's government starts a war, that doesn't not justify war crimes. This is why they're called war crimes.
3. Pointing to what allies did 70+ years ago doesn't mean anything.
The source of the food scarcity being discussed started on Oct 7th though when the government of Gaza chose to kill over 1000 people, maim/injure/torture/rape thousands more, and kidnap many (including the approx. 6 year old girl they posted videos on the internet of themselves kidnapping from her house, they were so proud they posted video of kidnapping a little girl from her home). That all happened starting Oct 7th.
The Allied occupying powers tried as hard as they could to get food into Germany. Israel is intentionally blocking food from getting onto Gaza. There's a massive difference.
> War sucks.
That's an awfully glib way of justifying deliberately starving a civilian population. Saying "war sucks" doesn't make it okay to commit war crimes.
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The allies did not consider 1000 calories an acceptable dietary intake post-war. Here's a report from the Berlin blockade:
https://doi.org/10.2307/4588157
Quote:
Where "bare minimum" refers to a community with high numbers of women and children doing little exercise or labor. They observed malnutrition in people consuming 1800 calories daily and recommended substantially more than 2000 calories for people doing hard labor.[dead]
If you had read literally the first line of the article, you would see that it discusses the 1948-1949 years of the blockade. The wikipedia article you're citing covers the 10 years after 1945, which includes those years. Even if the years didn't overlap, human nutritional needs obviously didn't double in 6 years.
Of course, if you had read the wikipedia article you would have seen these lines:
So they didn't set the number to 1000 out of a principled stances about nutritional needs, it was what they could manage actually deliver given the enormous logistical and infrastructure limitations of the blockade.The LA city (not Red Cross) document is much the same. Again, you've failed to read literally the next line in a document because the Red Cross is cited with the proper figure immediately after the "1500 calorie" figure:
You can also look at virtually any paper ever published on human caloric needs. A population average of 1400 calories/day is famine. For context, in 2021 they had 1800 calories/day available (https://www.gisha.org/UserFiles/File/publications/redlines/r...), which is less than Somalia or South Sudan in the same period according to the latest numbers (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-...).I don't quite understand why you keep pointing to post WW2 as a justification.
For 1 we should be looking at results and the situation on the ground, not the guidelines for what's "the proper way to do things". Were people in Germany starving or not, are people in Gaza starving or not? If the answer to either is yes, then it is / was a problem.
Secondly, what we consider ok changes over time. Go back far enough and killing prisoners, taking civilians as slaves etc were all considered ok. We frown on those now.
The Gaza thread on HN last week was talking about how Israel needed to fit to norms. That Israel needed to be like the US in Germany. Which is what got me looking into numbers. I think it's relevant as the Allies in Germany are where the current norms come from.
The Red Cross considers 1500 the floor for the US: https://emergency.lacity.gov/sites/g/files/wph1791/files/202...
not that much to the minimal amount of 1400 the CNN article found occurring. Horrible I agree, but not that far off from the Red Cross floor for aid distribution with the USA.
The UN provides much less calories (currently 552 to refugees from Sudan's war) yet says it can provide more than Israel in aid Gaza. Is the UN anti Sudanese/Kenyans because it claims to have food for 2 million on hand yet won't feed the starving 800,000 in Kenya? If it has food for Gaza's 2 million that is isn't giving out, how can it justify not giving at least part of that to the smaller 800,000 war refugees in Kenya? The UN itself says it's a crime not to give out food in those higher quantities if there are stocks of it. The UN has stocks. The UN does not give those stocks out to those in need, only giving 552 calories.
Maybe you should take a look at the IPC report, which details exactly how they know that Gaza is in the middle of a deliberately created, man-made famine.
Kenya has the ability to grow food. Gaza doesn't. Israel has destroyed 100% of the farmland and shoots anyone who walks around freely outside of a tiny fraction of the Gaza Strip.
The allies' crimes were 80 years ago. Israel's crimes are ongoing.
If that's true, they are doing their best to ensure it's not working. Maybe Israel should airlift it over populated areas.
The USA only target 1000 calories per day for airlifted populations in post war Germany. The CNN article lists 1400 as the low calories intake. So Gaza is still 400 calories a day above 'doing it the right way' post war German reconstruction numbers for hard to reach areas.
According to the article 1400 calories are the number people are actually consuming, not unavailable to them. It is in the CNN article all this discussion is about.
Those are just published numbers. Doesn't matter if they're placed where they can't be gotten.
In conditions of desperation, aren’t the strong people with the guns always the last to starve?
See this Tucker Carlson interview with a former US special forces colonel who worked distributing aid in Gaza https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QRjEMbHXM4Q
the one that was fired for misconduct, begged to get his job back and threatened that he will become their nightmare in case they don't rehire him ? sounds very reliable.
https://ghf.org/press-briefing-ghf-addresses-personnel-matte...
That's what the GHF claims, yes. To be clear, they haven't shown any documentation showing that he was fired, while Aguilar did show letters and messages sent by GHF hailing him as a great colleague and saying they were sad to see him go.
The only material evidence GHF has shown are small chunks of SMS conversations that are perfectly compatible with the "Aguilar was trying to convince GHF leadership to change policies" hypothesis, and WhatsApp broadcast of Aguilar telling his staff they were doing a great job.
Meanwhile, Aguilar has multiple photos and videos showing the conditions aid was distributed in which you can see right now on Youtube, testimony of seeing the GHF security contractors firing into crowds (to which the GHF replied by saying its contractors only fired above crowds, still a Geneva Convention violation), statistics that showed that people got shot during every single GHF distribution, matching testimony from Palestinian doctors and journalists and IDF whistleblowers, etc.
The evidence is overwhelming unless your curiosity cuts off as soon as you read the GHF damage control statements.
ain't it comfortable that there are 2 sets of videos.
given that there is "statistics" (comfortable provided by hamas) of people getting shot during every single distribution, do you find it strange that there is not even 1 video of people actually getting shot en masse ? surely someone would have thought that it will be amazing video evidence that will be easy to make, as it happens daily, and a way to make israel look real bad, yet - nothing. the only video that comes close to it is when bullets very precisely hitting absolutely nothing few meters away from people.
with regards to " IDF whistleblowers", in case you missed the memo, the famous haaretz article with whistleblowers was mistranslated from hebrew. in hebew was used expression with meaning of "shooting at air/ground to prevent advancement". it was translated to english as "shooting at people". haaretz got it's 13 pieces for this
GHF trying to wreck his reputation seems like a textbook move.
so they fabricated all his email/messaging exchanges, etc but everything that he says is completely credible ? right ?
What's the best way of reducing this markup if it were true? Not sending in aid (no supply = lots of demand) or flooding the area with aid?
Seems to me, if the claim is true, Israel is trying to give Hamas more power, not less.
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How could it be irrelevant?
Honest question, why can it not just go through the 14 km border with Egypt? Is Egypt also blocking access for food and aid?
Because the Rafah crossing is currently controlled by the Israeli army. Egypt can allow all the aid it wants, it’ll still get stopped by the Israelis.
And even before then, Egypt's peace with Israel (and Egypt's subsequent ~$1B/yr in defense aid from the US) depends on playing nice with Israel in several respects, including deferring to Israeli policy on the Gaza border.
There's also the fact that Israel has been bombing aid trucks and killing aid workers and burying them alive.
Before May 2024, Egypt was the primary route for aid to get it, but getting from Southern Gaza to northern Gaza was incredibly dangerous.
according to UN data egypt was primary route only for a few months following october 7th, as all of Israeli border was an active war zone:
https://www.ochaopt.org/data/crossings
Not that it's ever prevented smuggling. Curious where all of hamas weapons are coming from.
There has been smuggling of course, but (perhaps unintentionally) Israel gives them most of what they use.
> But recent intelligence has shown the extent to which Hamas has been able to build many of its rockets and anti-tank weaponry out of the thousands of munitions that failed to detonate when Israel lobbed them into Gaza, according to weapons experts and Israeli and Western intelligence officials. Hamas is also arming its fighters with weapons stolen from Israeli military bases.
> “Unexploded ordnance is a main source of explosives for Hamas,” said Michael Cardash, the former deputy head of the Israeli National Police Bomb Disposal Division and an Israeli police consultant. “They are cutting open bombs from Israel, artillery bombs from Israel, and a lot of them are being used, of course, and repurposed for their explosives and rockets.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/28/world/middleeast/israel-h...
Also repurposed infrastructure like water pipes and lamposts. But they had plenty of weapons and explosives pre war, before egypt sealed their border to gaza.
The explosives are the part that obviously should be given the main focus.
And quite a bit of what's being talked about wrt to re-manufacturing Israeli unexploded ordance was stockpiled prior to Oct 7th. Israel did not start bombing Gaza only after Oct 7th (and in fact had been bombing Gaza as late as Sept 23, 2023).
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Well documented that Hamas has people dig up pipes to make rocket/mortar systems.
Otherwise the answer is largely tunnels.
> Not that it's ever prevented smuggling. Curious where all of hamas weapons are coming from.
Gaza is on the ocean: they could have been brought in via boat.
To be fair, Israel has had a complete naval blockade of Gaza for some 20 years, and is probably the more effective part of their blockade.
Egypt has made it fairly clear they want nothing to do with Gaza and Palenstine. I don't believe they would send aid or allow crossings anyway.
"What interest they have to come to such place"
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These articles are from over a year ago and they all say that Israel took control of the Rafah border.
"On May 7, Israeli forces seized the main border crossing at Rafah, closing a vital route for aid into the besieged enclave."
Understandably, the Egyptian government does not want to coordinate with the Israeli government after seeing how the Israeli-organized aid sites have been going.
It is both.
That being said Egypt being complicit doesn't make any of this better.
Are you implying that aid would otherwise be allowed by israel via Rafah?
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Why did Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Europe, Canada etc. take Syrians during the war in Syria but Egypt (and everyone else) refuses to allow civilian Gazans to escape to safety?
My country hosted the PLO in the 80s and was almost outcast by the rest of the Arab world.
Harboring them was seen by some people as an indirect support to Israeli efforts to push Palestinians out and take over their land.
To this day, any talk about allowing Palestinians to move en masse out of their territory, even as refugees, is at best a very controversial move.
> Why did Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Europe, Canada etc. take Syrians during the war in Syria but Egypt (and everyone else) refuses to allow civilian Gazans to escape to safety?
Spitballing here, but it might be continued unease about Arafat. He weaponised the Palestinian population in Lebanon [1] and Jordan [2] in ways that would make it politically untenable for them to accept Palestinian refugees.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_insurgency_in_Sout...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September
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Distinguish between Israelis and Jews. Otherwise you will tarnish both. And Jews in the US are not as supportive of the genocide as Israelis are.
Reread my comment. I was being sarcastic against anti-semites.
Israel controls that border.
And this didn't start in 2023. Gaza has been under Israeli blockade for decades.
> And this didn't start in 2023. Gaza has been under Israeli blockade for decades.
The blockade was also imposed by Egypt[0] and Hamas certainly provided no shortage of security related justifications for the blockade. Unfortunately those security concerns turned out to be accurate[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_7_attacks
Unfortunately Netanyahu actively encouraged Qatar to send cash to Hamas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas
> In February 2020, former Mossad Director Yossi Cohen and Israeli general Herzi Halevi, under Netanyahu's orders, went to Qatar to plead Qatari officials to continue the payments for Hamas.[8] Later, in September 2023, David Barnea, the Director of Mossad since 2021, went to Qatar to meet Qatari officials to discuss about the payments for Hamas.[10][44]
(...)
> Israeli intelligence officials believe that the money had a role in the success of 2023 Hamas-led attack.[10]
It wasn't just him, all the governments for the last decade tried to keep the peace while enforcing the blockage but allowing cash for salaries, humanitarian aid etc which made Gaza flourish with hotels, restaurants, beach resorts and high end shopping (see the videos). All no longer :(
A few months prior to October 7th, Natenyahu had allowed the highest number of work visas for Gazans to work in Israel proper. They genuinely thought economic prosperity would bring an slowdown and eventual end to terrorism. Now try and find Israelis who support the idea of 10s of 1000s Palestinians cruising the borders for work each day - thanks to Oct 7th.
Doesn't quite fit the narrative you want to portray, does it?
> Gaza flourish with hotels, restaurants, beach resorts and high end shopping (see the videos)
What videos?
Not OP, but there were many videos posted, (especially early on in this conflict,) depicting very nice neighborhoods and commercial districts in Gaza (some of which were in the process of being destroyed or abandoned).
I guess “generalized ban on travel” a.k.a. “open air prison” fits better.
> Unfortunately Netanyahu actively encouraged Qatar to send cash to Hamas.
Yeah, Benjamin Netanyahu certainly got complacent thinking he could keep a genocidal terrorist group like Hamas under control with that strategy. Qatar and their support for terrorists has long been a problem as well.
> Unfortunately those security concerns turned out to be accurate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy
The October 7 attacks only succeeded because Netanyahu opened the military border to let them in.
> The October 7 attacks only succeeded because Netanyahu opened the military border to let them in.
Do you also believe 9/11 was an inside job? Both claims are IMO equally unrealistic.
It’s not been under a “blockade” for even a year continuously. Literally earlier this year, hundreds of trucks carrying aid were allowed in per day. That was during the ceasefire that didn’t last. If you go back to the history of blockades of Gaza you’ll see it was very intermittent. And when things were tightened, it was in response to incidents like Hamas rocket attacks.
The requirement is about five hundred trucks per day of food (so each truck feeding about four thousand people). The fact that on rare occasions they'd let in about half that isn't really a point in your favor.
Untrue. Your quoting total imports (eg concrete that was largely misappropriated to build Hamas tunnels). The amount of food delivery on average is comparable to before the war.
I am not.
Before the war Gaza had the ability to produce much of its own food. To subsist totally on imports, about 500 trucks a day is what's needed.
un own statistics site https://www.ochaopt.org/data/crossings
food tracks fluctuate between 2000 and 3000 a month prior to oct 7th. a few more dozens of of tracks with "non-edible consumables" and "medical supplies". rest of tracks are construction materials
Gaza at the time had farms as well as a small fishing industry, and thus needed fewer imports to feed the population.
iirc, gaza farms and fishing provided less than 10% of calories to population. animal farms were dependent upon imported animal feed.
ps. good chunk of farms were actually not for gaza consumption but for export (to israel and other places). stuff like strawberries, some leafy greens, etc. but in general farming in region is hard. there is no water. droughts been severe. Israel survives by desalinating majority (80%) of potable water (and supplying it to jordan, west bank, gaza) and recycling 90% of waste water for use in agriculture.
The level of blockade now is on a whole other level.
Not to mention that the blockade was enforced by Egypt as well.
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> killing a ton of their own people on Oct 7
This is how ridiculous things have gotten. HN has quite civilized discussions, and even here people are blaming Jews for Oct 7 and getting upvoted for it.
I wouldn't be surprised if in a few more decades there will be another Holocaust in the West.
They are literally on camera killing their "people", and they buried a ton of evidence to hide it. They also have documented execution of Hannibal Directive. This is all objectively documented. You don't have to launch into nebbish histrionics about literal facts.
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Anyone who characterizes a whole population as “evil” (including around a million children) automatically disqualifies themselves.
Do zionists really view the Palestinians as the party which is the most analogous to the Nazis in this situation? Fucking wild.
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It's wild to me how many people here use the "it's war, bad things happen" to justify the situation. Weird that it needs to be said, but this is why war crimes are a thing. Just because it's an armed conflict, doesn't mean anything goes.
> wild to me how many people here use the "it's war, bad things happen" to justify the situation
The point is to distinguish this war from how others have been fought. A lot of accusations against the IDF's conduct have been baseless. Not wrong in that they're factually incorrect. Just wrong in that it's how everyone else fights wars when they go to war.
This is different. America didn't trigger a famine in Iraq or Afghanistan, and it's not like we fought those wars honorably. That is where it's worth answering the question, is this just war or is this worse.
The US-led sanctions regime against Iraq in the 90s did lead to high rates of malnutrition and excess deaths, with Madeleine Albright publicly insisting that half a million dead children would be 'worth it'.
Two things: She wrote, "I had fallen into a trap and said something I did not mean", in her memoir. https://archive.org/details/madamsecretary00albr_0 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright#Sanctions_a...
Tangentially related: On the other hand, several later surveys conducted during the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq (2003–2011) "all put the U5MR in Iraq during 1995–2000 in the vicinity of 40 per 1000," suggesting that "there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after 1990 and during the period of the sanctions." from same link above.
She made a mistake by saying it, but she meant it for sure. "Saddam Hussein could have prevented any child from suffering simply by meeting his obligations."
I struggle to believe that cessation of food imports, medicines, medical equipment etc would have no impact on a country reliant on them, and can't see why these sanctions would be enacted in the first place if they were thought to have no effect.
I see no moral justification for using food as a weapon.
Not really. Very very early on we knew (verifiable objective fact) that Israel used very different math on combatant:civilian casualty ratios than coalition forces in OEF and OIF.
This isn't "they're waging a more intense war and accidentally killing more people" -- it is that their actual decision framework was to authorize killings with several multiples higher ratios of civilian deaths than the US authorized in the Middle East.
The US military math for calculating combatant:civilian casualty ratios was, to quote:
every boy 15 and over killed in drone strikes now is automatically listed as an enemy combatant
This math is why the civilian casualty numbers from US military shows almost zero deaths for drone strikes.
The New York Times reported in the 29 May 2012 article Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will:
By the Obama administration's counting, they killed 64 to 117 civillians in airstrikes. Independent estimates, which do not use the "any military age male" definition, put the number at 380 to 801. These higher, independent estimates still put the fraction of civillian or unknown casualties at around 15%. That is what a military that wants to avoid civilian casualties but sometimes makes mistakes looks like.
For comparison, the Israeli government claims that a mere 53% of fatalities are civilians, substantially below independent estimates.
No, a lot of the accusations were not baseless; you’re using a different definition.
The accusations of them deliberately shooting children in the head and targeting journalists have been proven unfortunately accurate time and time again.
We must be precise in our language when describing war crimes. No wiggle room.
You're asking for certitude when there can never be certitude.
Just as an example, if a Hamas soldier dons a PRESS vest, is he automatically immune?
I’m not sure if the logic on that statement checks out - there are already proven cases of what I’m describing (affirming the consequent here maybe?).
In other words, so what if Hamas dons a press vest? We know the IDF have committed war crimes. They seem aware of it, too -
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-army-set-hide-sol...
> It's wild to me how many people here use the "it's war, bad things happen" to justify the situation
Keep in mind that there is a lot of money to be made by defending Israel. Some people will take that money. Just a few citations below:
- Certain social media influencers being paid up to $7000 per post [1]
- Israel boosts propaganda funding by $150m to sway global opinion against genocide [2] [3]
- "[...] a firm called Bridges Partners LLC has been hired to manage an influencer network under a project code-named the “Esther Project.” " [4]
[1] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/israel-influencers-netanya...
[2] https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/isr...
[3] https://jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com/israel-has-spent-m...
[4] https://www.jta.org/2025/09/30/united-states/israels-secret-...
This is a typical line used by those committing a genocide, it's not unique to this one. Turkey claims the same thing about the Armenian genocide.
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This is just a variant of "it's war, bad things happen", with the addition of "they started it".
Putting the debate of who started what aside, does someone starting a war justify war crimes against them?
- who started what
- specific conditions to end things
- who agrees to what
All of these are distractions. The core issues are, are there war crimes being committed or not? Is the population of Gaza starving or not? If so, is Israel actively contributing or deliberately causing the situation or not?
EDIT: this is a good example of how collective punishment is being justified, to blame the population of Gaza for the actions (or inaction) of Hamas. "Well, if they just do X, then they wouldn't have to starve".
> It's war initiated by Hamas
Takes two to tango. Hamas started the war. Israel has continued it way past where it made sense. (No later than after Sinwar was killed.)
Gaza has been under blockade since 2007, and the roots of the conflict date back to the founding of the Zionist Organization by Theodor Herzl in 1897 with the purpose to facilitate the escape of Jews from persecution in Eastern Europe by establishing a colony in Palestine. Israel has persecuted the indigenous people of Palestine ever since.
> the roots of the conflict date back to the founding of the Zionist Organization by Theodor Herzl in 1897 with the purpose to facilitate the escape of Jews from persecution in Eastern Europe by establishing a colony in Palestine
Please, the roots of this conflict go back millenia. Nothing done in the last hundred years have helped it. And the Palestinian people keep getting fucked by outside powers using them for their own ends, whether it be the Arab countries invading Israel or Iran having their sock puppets invite bombs. But it's a bit silly to imagine that if we poofed Israel and turned Israel & Palestine into a democracy that we wouldn't, within like two minutes, start seeing missiles flying.
> within like two minutes, start seeing missiles flying.
And that’s worse than the current situation how exactly?
In fact, it would be objectively better because there would be justice: no apartheid, no occupation, no tiered citizenship, and no blockade.
> that’s worse than the current situation how exactly?
Uh, look at the civil wars in Sudan, Ethiopia and Burma.
> it would be objectively better because there would be justice: no apartheid, no occupation, no tiered citizenship, and no blockade
What? Why do you think changing borders on paper has any effect on how the people actually on the ground feel about and treat each other?
We're not half a decade out from our withdrawal from Afghanistan and we're back to the notion that remote powers drawing lines on a map somehow dictatates reality in the Middle East?
First, ending an occupation and apartheid is not “changing borders”. You are maliciously oversimplifying the situation in Palestine.
Second, are you seriously saying that people’s feelings have nothing to do with injustices waged upon them by force?
And just to add one thing - the theoretical worsening of a situation in response to ending injustice never justifies the maintaining of said injustice. You can argue this point all you want, but it will never be true.
> ending an occupation and apartheid is not “changing borders”
"Poof[ing] Israel and turned Israel & Palestine into a democracy" literally is.
> are you seriously saying that people’s feelings have nothing to do with injustices waged upon them by force?
Nope.
> the theoretical worsening of a situation in response to ending injustice never justifies the maintaining of said injustice
I'm not talking about justification. Famine is unjustified. The war is unjustified.
I'm saying Y would be worse than X. That is true. It doesn't justify X. But it does make Y stupid.
Which hostages? Israel still detains several thousand Palestinians in violation of international law. There are no plans to release them or give them a fair trial, that I'm aware of.
Which international law is Administrative Detention a violation of?
Are you aware that Egypt holds 16,000 to 20,000 people under administrative detention. A similar number is found in Japan. I can't find numbers for Australia, but I think it's number is also over 10,000. The highest number that I could find for Israel is 3000.
For what it's worth, a guy I'm friendly with (not a friend per se, but we've exchanged phone numbers and talk on the phone) had his son in administrative detention for several weeks. Probably more than a month. There was no "plan" to let him go, the police released him when it was deemed that the circumstances of his arrest did not merit further procedure.
> Which international law is Administrative Detention a violation of
Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile."
But you knew this: it just didn't suit whatever defense of Israel you were trying to make.
I'm not actually defending Israel. I'm demonstrating that the practice is not only widespread among nations that the West generally agrees with (Japan, Australia), it is practiced more there than here. And our neighbours here (Egypt) as well. So arguing against Israel on this subject does not put Israel at a moral disadvantage here.
In any case, at least in Israel, the vast, vast majority of those under administrative detention are held for violent acts such as throwing stones, molotov cocktails, etc. There are a few cases in which the authorities have not stated reason, I know this, but that number is in the single digits. Administrative detention is not a violation of Article 9.
I'm not excusing it, I'm putting it in perspective. For what it's worth, I personally am against the whole idea of administrative detention in any country. If a government body detains someone, the reason should be clear and transparent before the arresting officer punches out of his shift.
And your equivalence of administrative detention to the taking of babies hostage and murdering them and their mothers in captivity only reinforces the notion that those who oppose the state of Israel are generally unreasonable and lack the morals which form the basis of a stable, productive Western society.
> at least in Israel, the vast, vast majority of those under administrative detention are held for violent acts such as throwing stones, molotov cocktails, etc
Actually, the vast majority of hostages israel holds, have done nothing at all. Just like the hostages hamas holds.
This is easily demonstrated: show the list of israeli detainees and the fair trials they had to determine if they were, in fact, guilty of the accusations israel unconvincingly levels. Otherwise, if you take the IDF's word for it that their hostage taking is righteous, intellectual honesty requires that you also take hamas' word for it when they say the same thing. Notably, israel kidnapped, raped, and tortured hostages first.
Also, israel has willfully or indiscriminately killed way more babies and mothers than hamas. Surely you view an innocent civilian life as equally valuable regardless of religion, skin color, or national origin? Surely your emotional outrage won't evaporate when the victims are Palestinian?
This is such a gross misrepresentation of not only the Israeli side of events, but even Hamas' own description of events, that I have no idea on what you base your claims. I can't use facts to change your mind when your mindset is not based on facts. And I'm not the right person to get into a no-I'm-right screaming match with. So have a nice day and I'll go have a nice day myself.
> This is such a gross misrepresentation of not only the Israeli side of events, but even Hamas' own description of events, that I have no idea on what you base your claims. I can't use facts to change your mind when your mindset is not based on facts. And I'm not the right person to get into a no-I'm-right screaming match with. So have a nice day and I'll go have a nice day myself.
Your reply to my post does not seem to address anything it said (or indeed, anything of substance), but it is noted that you, 1 person out of billions, disagree very, very strongly with both international and scholarly consensus, which I merely repeated, and which are each individually more authoritative than your opinion. Thank you for your invaluable contribution and have a nice day!
> "And your equivalence of administrative detention to the taking of babies hostage and murdering them and their mothers in captivity "
I did no such thing - I just joined the thread, go lick a battery and calm down.
But seriously, this tactic of hysterically conflating replies in a long, tedious reply to create a straw-man which then becomes the topic is taught to propagandists and zealots the world over.
Source: my govt taught it to me.
You are correct, that was bigyabai who made the equivalence. My apologies.
And it's been over forty years since I've last licked a 9V! The sensation and taste were exactly as I remembered.
Apology noted. Shalom
> only reinforces the notion that those who oppose the state of Israel are generally unreasonable and lack the morals which form the basis of a stable, productive Western society.
I bet most IDF personnel would think that. You really need to disclose this sorta thing before you accuse other people of lacking moral fabric or international perspective.
I would have an honest discussion on-grounds with you about this, because it seems like we're in agreement that the detention is bad. But your (quoted) conclusion is hysterically disproportionate, and does not reflect any opinion you are qualified to tender. Furthermore, the parent is right; you know exactly what I am referring to, admit it is an issue, then pretend that we're the dumb ones when we demand accountability. It is a bad-faith tactic that you are deliberately employing to deflect valid criticism of Israel. So instead of stimulating discussion I will just tell you this, expedite some shit slinging and let you react however you like.
Most of us here are willing to put things in perspective. I'll show some vulnerability, I'm a US citizen. Abu Ghraib turns my stomach, the 1953 coup and the SAVAK files make me appalled. But I also know those aren't the scariest skeletons in the closet, so do you. Neither of us probably want to talk about the lingering consequences of apartheid, or the fact that the US has knowingly supported no fewer than three genocides in the past century (Bangladesh, Rwanda, now Gaza). They're horrible, world-defining revelations. Which is why we both have to look past the phenomena, which tells us they are justifiable, to interact directly with the geist, the actual truth.
As Americans and Israelis, we are partners whether we like it or not. We have the benefit of hindsight (both countries individually!), to admit that empire politics are worthless. 21st century colonialism is pointless. It is a waste of human life, and for what? To subvert a free market economy we're both ultimately at the whims of? If Israel wants to play the long game, my wholly empathetic opinion is that they need international credibility. There is still a road for the Israeli state to persist with international - perhaps even Arab - support. The first step on that road starts by unseating a president who only demands war and resists his corruption charges. Supporting this war is literally killing Israel as a functioning nation, which sickens me, as an American. I'm still advocating for an expedient and fair trial for those prisoners because someone has to care about Israel even if Netenyahu won't.
> war will continue to make sense until the hostages are returned
Not really. Hamas should unilaterally return the hostages. They're not getting any negotiating points by keeping them.
But Israel prosecuting the war as it has is permanently debilitating its long-term security and economic prospects. (Its zenith was probably after its Iranian bombing campaign. Tel Aviv should have withdrawn then and fallen back to targeted bombings of Hamas leadership.)
> But Israel prosecuting the war as it has is permanently debilitating its long-term security and economic prospects.
If the economic prospects are being debilitated, it is only because people are actually believing in the narrative that Hamas has hoped they’d be manipulated into believing, through a sustained campaign of disruptive rioting and propaganda - all while trying to not talk about the decades-long rocket attacks, the murder/rape of October 7, etc. But it’s silly for the world to fall for this narrative when it is clear who the aggressors are. Only one of these parties fundamentally believes in genocide of the other party - and that’s Hamas, per their own statements about their goals.
As for the long-term security - this I am not clear on. Why do you think Israel’s security has been reduced? I think it will be very hard for Hamas to regroup quickly to the extent that it has been built up previously (especially thanks to Qatar’s help). But if left alone rather than stamped out, I think eventually they will build up strength and in 20 years we’ll have the next October 7. I think Israel’s only choice is to put a definitive end to Islamic terrorism.
> way past where it made sense.
If they don't destroy Hamas now, then a war will happen again in another 10 years. At which point 10s of thousands of palestinians will needlessly die, again. The only resolution to all of this, will happen when Hamas is completely disarmed and out of power.
You can criticize how Israel goes about achieving that goal. But that goal is the only one that gets to a real, permanent peace.
A lot of problems with this.
1) As long as Israel treats Palestinians the way they current do, there will always be another Hamas. That or completely remove Palestinians from the area, which seems to be the current goal. So no, completely destroying hamas is not the only way to get to a real permanent peace.
2) How Israel is going about things is the exact issue at hand. You can't just hand wave it away.
3) Let's say for the sake of argument destroying Hamas IS the only way to achieve long lasting peace, how much death and destruction does it justify? 10% of the population? 20%? 50%?. So again just because it's an armed conflict, doesn't mean anything goes.
> As long as Israel treats Palestinians the way they current do, there will always be another Hamas
Eh, Trump's peace deal isn't great for Palestinians. But it gives them peace and a path to more peace in the future, and paths where considering options for resistance other than terrorism may flourish.
> Let's say for the sake of argument destroying Hamas IS the only way to achieve long lasting peace, how much death and destruction does it justify? 10% of the population?
Yikes. Based on precedent, I don't think countries have typically put an upper bound on this figure. I think a better question might be what's the upper bound on civilian deaths that should not be required to be exceeded if Hamas has to be routed out by force.
History there has shown that other types of resistance don't work very well. Just need to look at the west bank. No Hamas, no rockets being lobbed into Israel and yes peace as long as the people there put up with their land being taken over arbitrarily, being beaten or killed at some frequency and just in general being treated as a lower tier of humans.
yeap. lets look at west bank. there is so much hamas in west bank that there are areas that PA doesn't go to. Last/this year PA tried to clean it up [0] but failed and asked Israel to help
There are occasional attempts at shooting rockets from west bank. Rocket workshop was found two week ago in Ramallah [1]. The only reason that we don't see 20,000 rockets from west bank like from gaza, it's presence of Israeli army and security services there.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024%E2%80%932025_Palestinia...
[1] https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bjbqu9qolx
> History there has shown that other types of resistance don't work very well
“Paths other than terrorism” doesn’t mean non violence. It October 7th had been limited to military bases, the hostages IDF soldiers, this would be a very different conflict.
If Hamas attacked a military target on Oct 7th, killed 1000+ IDF personnel and took a few hundred more hostage, you don't think Israel will be bombing Gaza today? There isn't a way to prove either way, but I'm highly doubtful. I think the demands would still be the same; "return the hostages or we'll keep bombing you".
> If Hamas attacked a military target on Oct 7th, killed 1000+ IDF personnel and took a few hundred more hostage, you don't think Israel will be bombing Gaza today?
Oh, they'd absolutely be at war. But I don't think they'd have the freedom to collectively punish as they do now. There would also be a credible argument for Hamas remaining in power, possibly armed, after the peace.
> It October 7th had been limited to military bases, the hostages IDF soldiers, this would be a very different conflict.
The same thing happened when Hamas attacked an IDF post and captured a soldier, Gilad Shalit. There were multiple invasions by Israel, including "Cast Lead" which was described by the UN Fact Finding Mission as "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability."
Replace Palestinians with Black South Africans, and imagine this offer was made in 1990 to the ANC, then reread your comment.
> Replace Palestinians with Black South Africans, and imagine this offer was made in 1990 to the ANC
Black South Africans weren't de facto surrendering in a militarised conflict.
The ANC resorted to small-scale terrorism [1]. (It didn't work.) If the ANC had launched an October 7th scale attack, not only would it have derailed the international pressure that ended Apartheid, but in the likely ensuing civil war, yes, one side would have probably been forced to unconditionally surrender.
The practical options on the table are war and peace. If you're losing this badly, you take peace. Then you litigate over war crimes, et cetera. Gaza has no seat at the table because there is currently nobody to take the seat, that's what peace gives them. (I'd be shocked if Gazans, in a plebescite, rejected this deal. The only people who win by continuing this are Hamas and Likud.)
[1] https://markhumphrys.com/anc.violence.html
> But that didn't help and would have derailed the international pressure that did end Apartheid if it had escalated into a single attack with a thousand casualties.
Let’s stick to the facts instead of coming up with conclusions out of thin air.
And your understanding is wrong: the ANC gained freedom for South Africans because of its decision to resort to violence. Mandela and the ANC did not make this decision lightly, but it was a decision of last resort. The same applies to other African independence movements.
> Gaza has no seat at the table because there is currently nobody to take the seat, that's what peace gives them.
They have no seat at the table because: a) they saw what a “seat” resulted in (Oslo and then limbo) and b) the response to their democratically gained “seat” was a coup by Fatah backed by the US and Israel.
> the ANC gained freedom for South Africans because of its decision to resort to violence
This is a genuinely ambiguous question--I respect your position. What we can agree to is there were no large-scale terrorist attacks leading up to the negotations that ended Apartheid. (The Boipatong massacre almost did, and that was forty something casualties.)
> the response to their democratically gained “seat” was a coup by Fatah backed by the US and Israel
This is entirely accurate. It's also a fact that Hamas proceeded to never hold an election again. (Which isn't grounds for ignoring them. October 7th is.)
Hamas can't credibly represent Gaza. It continues to call for the destruction of Israel. It's shown a complete lack of concern for its own civilians. And it has no evidence of a popular mandate.
Gazans need a seat at the table. They can only get that through peace.
> If they don't destroy Hamas now, then a war will happen again in another 10 years
Sure. Destroying Hamas doesn't require starving children. Let food in. Keep targeting Hamas.
Maybe they can set up another extremist party to undermine Hamas, lke how Netanyahu used Hamas to undermine the Palestinian Authority and draw off momentum from the prospect of a Palestinian state getting established.
They are not going to be able eliminate or disarm Hamas by force. Heck, they only were able to “rescue” the vast majority of hostages via negotiation.
The only way forward is negotiation.
It is not possible to destroy an idea with violence. The more palestinians you shoot or starve the stronger Hamas will be when it returns. The only way for Israel to get real, permanent peace is probably removing all the palestinians which is why they are currently engaged in a genocide.
> It is not possible to destroy an idea with violence. The more palestinians you shoot or starve the stronger Hamas will be when it returns
One, lots of ideas have been destroyed by violence across history. When a nation with an oral tradition of history is exterminated, their ideas quite literally die with them.
Two, it's not a given that Palestinians will be terrorists. Eliminating Hamas gives room for other, better ideas around resistance to rise.
> better ideas around resistance to rise.
What might those be? What other types of resistance hasn't already been tried and failed there?
> What might those be?
Well they could accept that Israel is always going to exist and that the Palestinians should instead have an actual government that is focused on helping the palestinian people as opposed to launching failed attacks that will only cause 10s of thousands of palestinians to die.
If you want a good template, look at Egypt and Jordan. Countries that were previously at war with Israel and made peace and eventually became thriving allies of Israel.
The Egypt/Jordan model, where you accept whatever the current borders are, has worked out quite well for them in comparison to the groups that won't accept this.
Once that happens, well you can look at some of the stuff that was in the Trump plan, where the surrounding Arab states would help setup a coalition government and would invest significant amounts of money into rebuilding Gaza.
> What other types of resistance hasn't already been tried and failed there?
Literally everything other than terrorism!
You can fight a resistance without killing kids at a concert. Remember the videos of Ukraine treating its POWs well? Imagine if Hamas had restricted its targets to military assets, released all non-active duty hostages, and then released videos of them being served tea and hummus while Israeli planes pounded above. How different would the narrative be?
To be honest, I don't think things would be much different. If Hamas took only military personnel hostage, the IDF would still be bombing Gaza and demanding they be returned.
When Gilad Shalit was taken hostage Operation Summer Rains followed. That was one soldier. You really think if Hamas took hundreds of soldiers hostage, they wouldn't go bomb Gaza?
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You are basically saying that regardless of criticisms and international condemnation, Israel has no choice but commit war crimes and genocide? This is like "look what you made me do" defence in court, not sure it will save genocider Netanyahu from rotting in the Hague jail.
Nor would it stop us from boycotting Israel and calling out their genocide.
> Israel has no choice
Yeah thats basically how thing will end up. Because if they dont get rid of Hamas now, they will end up in another war and end up killing 10s of thousands of more Palestinians later. Thats just what would happen.
I mean, people are saying Israel is doing a genocide now right? If thats the case, why wouldn't they just do a genicide again if another October 7th happened? Obviously thats what they would do.
> Nor would it stop us
You don't have to stop doing anything. Just realize that they have a modern military that they are going to continue to use to kill their enemy until that enemy has surrendered or been destroyed. Thats the only way this ends.
The only question is how many people have to die and how much of gaza has to be flattened in order to achieve that outcome. Boycotts aren't going to stop anything. Nor will condemnation. The only thing that would come close is serious military action, but well would you look at that, every major of enemy of Israel is now destroyed, from Syria to Hezbollah to Iran. Military action seems rather unlikely now, given how successful Israel was in obliterating every enemy it has in the area.
So, the people of palestine are left with choice. Accept peace, or watch as Israel keeps killing people until Hamas is gone for good.
> rotting in the Hague jail.
Even if this fantasy land future did come to past, trials don't bring back the dead. If Israel has to kill another 50 thousand people to get rid of Hamas (because a peace deal with rejected), well those 50k genocide victims are still dead. The world's not turning on a dime here. Nobody is coming to save palestine. Boycotts don't stop bombs.
> only question is how many people have to die and how much of gaza has to be flattened in order to achieve that outcome. Boycotts aren't going to stop anything. Nor will condemnation
I agree with the last part of this sentiment: boycotts and weapons-sale bans won't stop Israel.
But they will decrease its wealth and power in the long term. That should be something Tel Aviv seeks to avoid. Eliminating Hamas should not require inducing a famine.
> they are going to continue to use to kill their enemy until that enemy has surrendered or been destroyed. Thats the only way this ends
If I may ask something about a similar event, how do you think the Rússia vs Ukraine war will end?
Russia vs Ukraine is much more of a stalemate than Israel vs Palestine (although Russia is still winning.. ish). It is being fought with modern armies on both sides, and the lines of battle have barely changed in months. And it is fought over a huge area.
Thats much different from a conflict over a tiny area, where one side can quite literally bomb every single building in a matter of weeks.
As for how Ukraine vs Russia ends, well probably there will be a continued grinding down of both sides, continued increasing costs, while the borders don't change at all. And then when Russia wants to stop throwing money and lives into a metaphorical pit, there will be some sort of ceasefire/peace deal where Russia gets to keep all the land it took but the fighting stops. Ukraine isn't going to kick out Russia back to its original borders, and Russia isn't going to have some sudden breakthrough where it takes over Kiev. Its sad that Russia will get to keep its gains, but in war there are few good endings and most bad compromises.
But fortunately, Russia simply doesn't have the capability to flatten its enemy on a timeline measured in weeks, and is just stuck in a slog thats going nowhere.
If things had gone differently at the start of the war with Russia's blizkrieg having succeeded well we'd be having a different conversation now about much worse compromises that would have to be made, but fortunately that didn't end up happening.
Israel has killed more civilians in a year, than Hamas has in its entire existence.
This was has been initiated by Israel invading Palestine.
The only reason more Israelis haven't died is because Israel builds bunkers and iron dome rockets to protect its civilians. Hamas builds tunnels to protect its rockets and hides among civilians.
You can't compare the death of people who are willing to release 1027 terrorists to get back just one solider to the death of people who are taught from kindergarten to kill and die for Allah. [1] Nobody criticizes Britain because it killed more Nazi civilians that the Nazis killed British civilians. Back then we understood that war is between good and evil, and we didn't take the side of evil.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DMCqrgaNR0
> Nobody criticizes Britain because it killed more Nazi civilians
The bombing of Dresden has absolutely been condemned. British area bombing was contemporaneously criticised by America. It's why we flew our bombers in the day, despite that meaning more of them got shot down--so they could see what they'd hit.
Bombing civilians wasn’t right when Germans did it and it wasn’t right when it was done to them in retaliation either.
I think in the next millennia, as the objective historians review the last century, they will write that the civilian towns were fire bombed in ww2 to gain military advantage and nobody cared about the innocent, just like how we talk about how Caesar becoming an emperor without getting lost in the daily politics and blindness of the day.
Edit: Added “in ww2” for clarity.
> in the next millennia, as the objective historians review the last century, they will write that the civilian towns were fire bombed in ww2 to gain military advantage and nobody cared about the innocent, just like how we talk about how Caesar becoming an emperor without getting lost in the daily politics and blindness of the day
Doesn't your example suggest the opposite? You're arguing for reductivism. The reductive view on WW2 would almost certainly skip over the bombing of Dresden and even the Holodomor, because those didn't have long-term strategic effects.
Also, Caesar was never an emperor. And plenty of people love to obsess about the daily politics of the late Republic.
I’m saying that those historians, being divorced from the guilt of committing those atrocities, will call things out as they see them. Fire bombings of Dresden, Tokyo, and many other cities were done to gain military advantage, knowing full well that they were killing innocent civilians, because a) they were forcing the enemy to come out, and b) killing an entire population en masse. But only the losers of the war had to admit their part in these atrocities, although this was a crime against humanity.
Regarding Ceaser, I meant emperor in the modern sense not that he held the bundle of sticks during war time. The dude practically took over a republic from within using political games and bribery, assassinations and all kinds of stuff, but the gist of it is that, he wasn’t elected democratically by popular vote or anything, he took an army and pass the Rubicon and if you didn’t vote for him you could die in mysterious ways, and some people loved him because he handed out free grains (who cares), in the end, in ww2 innocent civilians, kids, elderly were killed by millions of tons of high explosives on purpose, and my conscience is just not okay with it.
> It's why we flew our bombers in the day
Is a questionable statement, many of the joint US|UK WWII bombings were carried out at night, in the Japanese theatre the Tokyo bombing by the US was carried out at night time as were most (IIRC) of the 71 bombings of other Japanese cities (not including Nagasaki and Hiroshima).
The atomic bombings in Japan were carried out in daylight, accompanied by photography aircraft, with radio calls to proceed based on low cloud cover - the primary objective in the bomb | not bomb on the day decision was visibility to record the effect of the new weapons.
> so they could see what they'd hit.
Such as the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima?
> Such as the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima?
You're claiming the nuking of Japan is not criticized?
Your comment that I responded to implied that the British engaged in indiscriminate area bombing while the Americans did not. Nothing to do with who was or was not criticised. Don’t straw-man.
Anyone who understands the difference between good and evil would fight against the Israeli fascists.
It's not, this conflict was started by Israel in 1948. The current genocide is just the most extreme phase of an ongoing, highly unequal, struggle since then.
Hamas releasing hostages will not end the genocide. Look at how the last ceasefire was intentionally broken by Israel.
How did Israel start the war in 1948? As I understand it, the UN proposed a partition plan between the Jews and the Arabs. The Jews accepted and declared a state. The Arabs did not accept, and seven Arab nations invaded the new Jewish state.
I would go as far as to say that the very existence of Hamas is due to the actions of Israel.
Do you think that Israel, with the most advanced intelligence agency in the world, capable of planting bombs in pagers just in case for when they need them, did not know about the october 7 attack beforehand ??
> Do you think that Israel, with the most advanced intelligence agency in the world, capable of planting bombs in pagers just in case for when they need them, did not know about the october 7 attack beforehand ??
Yes. Quite easily. We missed 9/11. And nobody can still find Al Houthi.
9/11 is incomparable. The amount of resources and interest Israel has to monitor the movements of Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere, particularly the Hamas, cannot possibly compare with US trying to keep tabs on half a continent across the globe.
And finding a simple person that could be anywhere is also an incomparable situation.
Bush was warned about 9/11 in a memo in august. It explicitly said al qaeda was planning to use commercial planes. Bush knew.
> Bush was warned about 9/11 in a memo in august. It explicitly said al qaeda was planning to use commercial planes. Bush knew
You're really hanging your hat on the competence of American intelligence in the Middle East for this one?
9/11 was different. Yes, that's the difference. airport security was more lax, the way we dealt with hijackings was different, and the security on airplanes was minimal.
You had a heavily fortified military DMZ between the massive surveillance and military state of Israel and Hamas flying in with kites, bulldozers, and motorcycles. I hope it was merely a massive failure due to arrogance and misallocation of resources, because a plausible alternative is sadly realistic and believable.
We still don't have a comprehensive map of Hamas' tunnel systems. I think you're overestimating the degree to which 2 million people can be surveilled.
Perhaps not, but it doesn't help when Israel demonstrates with pretty high frequency the ability to precisely target things, but then goes and drops a couple of 2000 pound bombs on a refugee camp. Or claim they know precisely how many hamas fighters have been killed but have no idea how many civilians have been killed.
Oh sure. I'm just saying that yes, it's overwhelmingly plausible that Israel missed October 7th because Netanyahu was distracted with his court-overhaul gambit.
But they didn't come through via tunnels? They used bulldozers and hang-gliders to go above ground.
> they didn't come through via tunnels? They used bulldozers and hang-gliders to go above ground
And the 9/11 terrorists used planes.
Unless there were literally zero unusual bulldozer and hang-glider citings ever made in Gaza, it shouldn't take that much imagination to see how the three thousandth one gets put to the side.
What was crazy about that, was seemingly the majority of Israels active military personnel were stirring up trouble in the west bank. Its a bit like they were showing their bare arses to Hamas. There were stories over the next few days about conscripts having to take civilian transport to the front line after activating.
The war had to be fought hard, because at the very least it was required to distract from the absolute mess the IDF was in when it started.
Fixed headline: "How Israel caused famine in Gaza".
There is an editorial voice reserved purely for blunting reporting on American and Israeli state crimes that drives me nuts.
The horror that starvation inflicts on the human mind is beyond comparison. My grandfather experienced this firsthand when he fled from the Japanese invasion, an occupation that stripped civilians of their food supply. He helplessly watched as his parents, relatives, and even his older brother succumbed one by one to hunger. Barely escaping the same fate, he fled the country just before starvation could claim his own life.
When I was eight years old, I asked him why he always kept a room filled with dried cassava root. His reply was simple but unforgettable: dying from starvation is the most terrifying experience imaginable, and he was determined never to endure it again.
Starvation may also cause epigenetic and metabolic changes, which persist and are even passed to next generations. In children tissue dystrophy is particular damaging, since their bodies are still developing. Starvation is a really fucking bad thing.
In many ways, the fear of hunger is deeply ingrained within us as human beings. Our instincts continually drive us to optimize for consumption and survival. Yet, how often do we pause to reflect on how much of our daily lives revolve around thoughts of food or the pursuit of security?
I think this is pretty evident, observing your emotions when someone, a sibling loads up too much in a shared meal. If you ever tried fasting, you realize how much time we spend daily on food intake.
But let's not trivialize the issue. Most certainly, no-one here can even begin to understand starvation from experience. For starters, you would be in a total different state of mind, potentially delusional, disassociated, depressed, abulic, manic, have an altered perception of reality. During the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, participants mutilated themselves, one guy cut off three of his fingers with an axe and didn't remember why... in the rehab phase! Starvation is an holistic horror.
It's nature's way of communicating to the next generation. That is crazy and beautiful.
Pretty cynical and tone-deaf comment in this context, in my opinion.
Molecular evidence was notably described in nematodes, so epigenetic inheritance is a very old mechanism. I don't think you could describe molecular transgenerational trauma as beautiful, or useful adaptation regarding human life. Especially considering the artificial nature of every famine in today's world, where we are producing enough food to feed all humans on earth three times over.
My grandfather had to join Nazi German military towards the end of the war at the age of 15. Fully indoctrinated of course, thinking, that he must serve his country. Got captured in Russia, survived prisoner camps there, by eating grass to avoid starvation. He told me stories about the conditions there. Hard work, and every morning someone would be dead from the cold or from starvation, or from suffocating in puddles of water. Later he was moved to an US managed prisoner camp, where food was plenty and good.
He also survived a head shot wound (visible on the side of his head) and doctors told him, that he should drink and smoke as much as he wants, because he wouldn't make it long anyway ... Well, he made it to old age and only dies a few years ago. (He did stop smoking, when my grandma also stopped. He smoked cigars and then from one day to the next, they both stopped doing that.)
However, I think it is in those Russian PoW camps, that he developed something we call "Hungerhast". I couldn't find a translation in 2 dictionaries, so I am not sure it is a proper term. Basically, body begins shaking, cannot stop hands from shaking, if he got hungry.
He didn't have higher education, but definitely had an engineer's mind. He built many things out of wood to sell them. For example he got into woodturning and also made traditional nutcrackers, which he also painted in various colors. Back in DDR this stuff was highly sought, because getting it from West Germany was not possible for everyone. He also had a writing side. Was able to come up with spoonerism (I just looked up that word. Not sure if correct. Some kind of phrase that rhymes.) and collected them.
What a story! Thank you for sharing.
In 1942, Jewish doctors conducted the Warsaw Ghetto Hunger Study used the man made famine to study the physiological and psychological effects of hunger. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Hunger_Study Not all scientific studies need to be replicated.
There are articles about Israel planning for Gazans to emigrate for months. The idea is they would 'voluntarily' emigrate to several African countries Israel made deals with. So I think that is more proof the starvation is deliberate. They can claim they aren't forcing anyone to migrate but if you stay you die. Not only is that evil but they are forcing some other country to deal with the problem.
UK surgeon Nick Maynard, a volunteer at Nasser Hospital, tells Good Morning Britain that he and other doctors tried to bring baby formula into Gaza and the Israelis confiscated it from them with no justification. [0]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ipJEROtHOs
I think we all know what their 'justification' was unfortunately.
Would it be acceptable even with a justification?
If a justification was given we'd be able to evaluate the worthiness of that decision - if there were technical notes about, for instance, food safety concerns, we could evaluate the justification against other standards in different areas of the world around proper formula storage.
Without a justification the decision is arbitrary and silences any ability to push back against it within the normal bounds of dialog. A justification would potentially allow aid groups to remedy whatever the specific deficiency is if it is a reasonable deficiency to remedy.
If there was a justification it might be acceptable - depending on the justification - without a justification it is unacceptable when there is such a clear need. The aid is blocked and there is no recourse to unblock it outside the current attempts to just smuggle it in.
Starving infants is justifiable sometimes? When?
It is justifiable to stop a shipment of baby formula if that baby formula is known to be unsafe and carry bacteria that will kill infants.
I think in this particular case it's quite safe to say that those blocking the shipments aren't acting in good faith, however.
Does the food carry bacteria in reality? Why are we talking about bizarre hypotheticals?
No, but the callousness of an arbitrary decision without even spending 10 seconds to make up a pretend reason is a pure display of power. They do what they want and they don’t care one bit about even looking like the good guys.
Every con has an expiration date.
Potentially.
The main ingredient in Hamas' rocket fuel is sugar. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_candy
That would be an acceptable justification for confiscating sugar. If Hamas were making rocket fuel somehow out of baby formula, then yes, that would be an acceptable justification.
That said baby formula cannot in fact be meaningfully used to make explosives, so this is not acceptable.
Starving infants is morally justifiable if it's possible to make a rocket from their food?
Preventing the entry of something that can be made into a weapon is justified, yes. If you want to call that “starving children”, that’s up to you.
Withholding food from children results in children starving. It’s not semantics.
Only in the same way that pointing at a starving infant as a prop is a moral justification for using food meant for the infant instead to manufacture weapons.
That rather depends on the justification. "We think you might be planning to use that to feed babies," no. "There's a small canister of nerve gas concealed in the middle," yes.
The reason for that is apparently that you can use baby formula to make rocket candy. Because apparently extracting the lactose from 40kg baby formula is all it takes to make a quassam rocket.
If you can get your hand om 20kg of oxidiser that is. It is all more than ridiculous.
Edit: and Nick Maynard is a national treasure.
Same for water. I've heard they could electrolyze drinking water into hydrogen and oxygen. Then they could explode the hydrogen using the oxygen as an oxidizer.
Only solution is to cut off all wells and water supplies.
https://www.dhmo.org/
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Hamas did not start it though, according to history.
The problem did not start at October 7.
> Hamas did not start it though, according to history
Hamas absolutely started this war. It did not start the conflict, and is not the sole party that has antagonised the situation. (Iran, America, Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf countries each played a role in that.)
The Eastern Mediterranean is probably the most fought-over tract of land in human history, principally because it's on the shore of the largest easily-navigable body of water near where human history began. Before the British and French there were the Ottomans and Mongols; before them, the Greeks, Romans and Parthians; before them, the Macedonians; before them, the Achaemenids and Babylonians; before them the Egyptians. The last time the region of Palestine contained any independent power was under the Crusader Kingdom. (Before that, around the Jewish-Roman wars.)
I think one could credibly claim that pretty much every nation on Earth has some credible historical claim to some land in the Levant.
Okay, let us look at it this way: you are constantly starved, blocked from trading food and water, and all sorts of things Israel did to Palestine. Would you just sit back and watch?
What do you think that Israel is doing to civilians going to do to long-term? There will be another Hamas, I guarantee it. Israel's actions only breeds violence, i.e. Hamas.
What I am saying is that you cannot expect people to be okay with it. And they will not be okay with it. These kids who survived will turn adults and will retaliate for these actions of Israel. They may have fled, but they will come back full force one day.
In any case, no, Hamas did not start the war, they only started this battle. There will be more because of Israel's ways of doing things.
Israel should have let them live in peace.
A blockade is an act of war, so speaking strictly no war could have started while an act of war (amongst a hundred others) was already in commission.
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Yeah, support from Israel...
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That depends, did you want enough water to flush your shit into some kind of septic system so all the people around you don't get some awful disease, and maybe enough left over to grow something to eat since your territory is effectively blockaded and situated in an area that requires irrigation?
Or maybe for doctors to you know, wash before surgery, or to clean wounds.
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Though different from the rocket fuel, I've read Israel has dumped so much ordinance on Gaza that the Hamas weapons primarily use material from unexploded ordinance as their warheads.
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"Israel accused the IPC of lowering the second threshold of acutely malnourished children for a famine declaration, which the IPC has denied."
Damn, Israel is really arguing about how much child starvation they are allowed to inflict before it becomes egregious?
That might be another one of those "are we the baddies?" moments right there.
Definitions matter. It's possible for an organization to redefine "acutely malnourished" as less than 4000 Cal/day, and then use that to make an accusation. Is that reasonable? No, because that does not match reality. It's unreasonable to criticize pushback on changing definitions because definitions should be pushed toward reality.
As you say definitions matter - so let's not invent hypothetical scenarios to dismiss points.
Israel was not arguing about the definition of 'acute malnourished'. The threshold for famine is 15%. The IPC said it had just hit 16% and was thus a famine. Israel was arguing that other data showed it was only 12.2-13.5% and therefore not a famine. When you get to the point of arguing "only 12% of the children are starving, not 16%" you probably shouldn't bother.
> When you get to the point of arguing "only 12% of the children are starving, not 16%" you probably shouldn't bother
Devil's advocate: we grow enough food to feed every human. What we lack is the logistics. War disrupts logistics. Food insecurity rising is thus, unfortunately, an expected (and probably unmitigatable) consequence of war.
That's why we have to define a line, based on history and capability, that sets what's a tolerable amount of starvation. And what is not.
Famine is not an inevitable outcome of war. It is the inevitable outcome of Israel's deliberate actions to limit access to food, which are well-documented.
> Famine is not an inevitable outcome of war
Food insecurity is. Famine is not. The latter is statistically defined, which is why we have levels and people arguing about which side of that level they stand.
Fine, remove the word famine.
Acute malnourishment going above 10% is not an inevitable outcome of war. This was deliberate action.
> Acute malnourishment going above 10% is not an inevitable outcome of war
I don't know enough about this topic to debate levels. I'd just point out that you're still specifying a level, and that level can't be zero if it's going to be taken seriously.
I'm specifying a level that is clearly too high, and everyone agrees has been hit, and avoids semantic arguments.
This solves the problem you were devil's advocating. And we don't need to theorize about other numbers.
Not sure this is defined the same way but 10% seems pretty common even without war. Even India is apparently already worse than that [1]. Who would you blame for starving the Indians?
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/malnutrit...
and "in 2019, the global rate of malnutrition was estimated to be approximately 9 percent." [1].
> Not sure this is defined the same way
It's not.
According to the IPC, "acute malnutrition is a form of malnutrition that occurs when an individual suffers from current, severe nutritional restrictions, a recent bout of illness, inappropriate childcare practices or, more often, a combination of these factors. It is characterised by extreme weight loss, resulting in low weight for height, and/or bilateral oedema, and, in its severe form, can lead to death." [1].
Your chart measures undernourishment, which the FAO defines relative to "how many calories [one] need[s] to maintain a healthy life" [2].
[1] https://www.nutritioncluster.net/sites/nutritioncluster.com/...
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/undernourishment-definition
You've chosen a number there, conveniently lower than the one the Israelis picked. I must say, an argument that convenient is not persuasive.
To address it properly we must start with whether anything above zero is "acceptable" (in the sense of a level that would accord with the realities of increased food insecurity in a war zone, not morally).
If it is, then a level needs to be set, and if the level is met then I would expect the parties in question to argue about it, if only because of the propaganda value, let alone the truth of the claim.
The claims about mistakes in the data, or presentation of the data, are here[1], I am unable to tell if they are right or not, but that is not the point of this conversation. The point is, whether their should be stages at all, and if so, should the results of reports be scrutinised?
I would say yes to both.
[1] https://www.israeltoday.co.il/read/gaza-famine-claim-based-o...
> You've chosen a number there, conveniently lower than the one the Israelis picked. I must say, an argument that convenient is not persuasive.
They're disputing whether the actual rate is 12% or 16%. So if I can make my argument without any numbers inside that range, of course I will do so.
Why is that less persuasive?
You could say that I'm giving Israel the benefit of the doubt. Sure, let's say it's 12%. That's still bad.
> whether their should be stages at all
Sure, there are many levels of hunger issues.
> should the results of reports be scrutinised?
In general yes. But in this particular case we can be confident it's at least the number Israel is giving, plus or minus some fraction of a percent, so that's what I based my argument on.
It has also been well-documented that the controlling interest within Gaza also limits access to food - of it's own citizens/people.
While it seems undeniable the people of Gaza are experiencing food scarcity - we cannot lay blame soley at the foot of Israel here. That would be grossly disengenous and an outright falsehood.
> we cannot lay blame soley at the foot of Israel here
For the famine, yes we can. Let the aid in. Let Hamas steal it. Now you can blame Hamas. The fact that we have zero evidence of Hamas stealing the current aid makes it entirely one side's fault.
Aid did get in, and Hamas did steal it. The media ignored it, so the narrative continues status-quo.
Israel has no reason to support Hamas and their efforts here. If Hamas wasn't stealing all of the aid earlier in this conflict, perhaps aid would still be flowing into Gaza.
It doesn't seem so absolute/cut-and-dry like you try to make it.
> Aid did get in, and Hamas did steal it
We have no proof this was routinely happening [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/world/middleeast/hamas-un...
The UN's own data does not support your claim or article[1]. The UN's data showed 88% of trucks delivering aid to Gaza were looted along their routes - failing to reach their intended destination.
[1] - https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/08/05/un-reports-88-percen...
> UN's data showed 88% of trucks delivering aid to Gaza were looted along their routes - failing to reach their intended destination
Yes. I think a shop in San Francisco also had some candy bars stolen this AM. Doesn't mean Hamas did it.
You're trying super hard here...
So explain to us who is armed and can loot a moving UN convoy in the Gaza region???
This is some insane, wild, political nonsense.
> explain to us who is armed and can loot a moving UN convoy in the Gaza region
That's not what the data say! "Intercepted" means what in retail one calls "shrinkage." It was there before. It isn't now.
A staffer could have stolen it. A security guard or driver could have been bribed. It could have been dropped off at the wrong location, or not tracked. It could have been ripped off a moving truck by unarmed, hungry people [1]. It could be non-militants who picked a gun off a dead combatant. Or it could be armed militants. Concluding that all shrinkage is the result of armed robbery is sort of like figuring everything a store's inventory system says was delivered to the store that isn't on the shelves and hasn't been sold was obviously robbed at gunpoint.
(I'm also not sure where you're getting the idea that these are armed convoys of UN assets being run through Gaza. Aid provisioning is generally much more rinky dink. And the "U.N. does not accept protection from Israeli forces, saying it would violate its rules of neutrality.")
[1] https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-aid-tru...
You actually believe 88% of all UN aid disappeared to "shrinkage"? The mental gymnastics going on here are stunning...
Hamas regularly brags in their recruitment videos about how much food they have, and how their fighters get to eat as much as they want.
Ah then cut off the whole region entirely. Makes perfect sense.
Here's a crazy idea. If hamas steal even 90% of the food, why not flood the area with so much fucking food it becomes worthless instead of letting humans starve as terrible collateral against your war goals?
Which approach do you think better serves the stated goals of defeating the terrorists?
Nah, isolation and cruelty it is. Israel has created generations of enemies.
And pissed away generations of goodwill (deserved or not) abroad. The damage to the Israeli state is incalculable.
> The damage to the Israeli state is incalculable.
Is it? Because not even the Arab countries that have recently recognized Israel don’t seem to particularly care about what Israel does in Gaza. Aside from a press release or a vote at the UN. All empty words.
Not a single Arab country that recognizes Israel has suspended (or even lowered) diplomatic relations with Israel.
I’m pretty sure that once the war in Gaza ends, everyone will be all too happy to forget that it even happened. Even if they won’t say it out loud.
> once the war in Gaza ends, everyone will all too be happy to forget that it even happened. Even if they won’t say it out loud.
It may have a lasting effect in America. Which would mean Israel finding friends in Russia, China and/or India, the latter two which would probably be fully on board with an actual ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
The whole EU is debating putting sanctions on Israel. Even if it doesn't happen this time, it's a major shift of the Overton window.
> whole EU is debating putting sanctions on Israel
Not really. It's debating applying "tariffs on some Israeli goods and impos[ing] sanctions on Israeli settlers, and two members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet" [1].
(The EC has also endorsed Trump's 20-point plan [2].)
[1] https://apnews.com/article/eu-israel-sanctions-tariffs-gaza-...
[2] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2025...
Eh. Just about everyone is doing the absolute best they can to give an impression that they are doing something about it, without actually doing anything meaningful at all.
Even the recent recognition of the Palestinian state from Canada, UK and France. They know full and well that it’s basically a meaningless gesture.
> why not flood the area with so much fucking food it becomes worthless instead of letting humans starve as terrible collateral against your war goals?
...this is a really good idea. And American farmers are over a barrel due to tariffs...
Now you believe them?
Sure, I believe them when they say that they’ve got all the food. I believe them when they say that if the residents of Gaza don’t want to starve then they should send their sons to sign up as a soldier. I believe them when they say that they want to kill all Jews between the River and the Sea. They may not be very trustworthy in most respects, but when they say these things then I believe them. Not much reason not to.
according to published data above 80 percent of shipments are intercepted: https://app.un2720.org/tracking
There is enough food to feed the children but Israel won't let the food in. Not logistics someone trying to kill them and claiming to be the victim.
Are Gazans receiving adequate nutrition? If not, why are we discussing semantics?
Does this particular (supposed) definition change matter here? Because if it doesn't, pushback by the aggressor is heinous and obviously disingenuous even if your abstract love of accuracy means you happen to agree with the objection.
From my understanding there is an argument about whether 12% or 16% of children meet a certain threshold of food availability, which affects whether or not it is called a famine. One is regarded as not a famine, one is regarded as a famine, and there is argument over what data to use.
And the definition does matter, because 'famine' has the meaning of a certain level of bad thing happening. If we do not preserve the meaning, then the word will not have a meaning, then we have no more word to talk about that bad thing, so we will pay no attention to averting or fixing the bad thing because we don't have the literal ability to talk about it.
I'm in favor of being able to have a productive discussion about famines and how to avoid them, so I'm in favor of having a word for 'famine' with a clearly defined meaning.
Ok, so the aggressor is saying “it’s not a famine, we’re only starving 12% of the children.” You do understand that this is not a good faith argument, right? You might care about preserving the meaning of the word but they don’t give the slightest shit about it. They are not trying to preserve the meaning of the word so that we have the ability to talk about it. They are trying to muddy the waters of the actual facts of what is happening so that people talk about whether there is actually a famine or not rather than the fact that a large number of children are starving. Stop being a patsy and doing their work for them.
> they don’t give the slightest shit about it
Who cares?
We just watched this nonsense happen with the word genocide. Both sides were careless with it. Now, it's lost meaning. Famine is still a hard line in the sand. All the evidence points to Israel having breached that line. The solution isn't to get rid of the line, it's to point to the line, point to the ground and say you're past the fucking line.
If "genocide" lost meaning, it's because people got pulled into a debate around the word rather than focusing on the fact that innocent people are being killed in large numbers. Whether "genocide" or "famine" or any other atrocity, the response to "this doesn't actually meet the definition" should be "you're trying to deflect from the atrocities you're committing and I'm not going to fall for it."
The use of percentage here can really mask the scope of a problem.
A village of 100 people where 50% are starving is better than a country of 1,000,000 where 10% are.
The word “famine” does not have a clearly-defined statistical meaning outside of some very specific circumstances. We abhor the idea of famine whether it occurs at 12% or 14% or 23% of children because we see all of these things to be very bad circumstances. One particular organization chose a 15% threshold for a legalistic definition in their framework, and the government is lawyering this because they can lawyer an arbitrary threshold and they think that will help them win some PR points. Thats all this is.
PS Do you really think the number “15%” is some natural value that nature or the Bible or teams of scientists chose to define “famine”? It’s an arbitrary threshold that someone picked because it’s a bit larger than 10% and less than 20% and divisible by the number of digits on the human hand.
> It’s an arbitrary threshold
But it’s a threshold. Remove the threshold and we lose accountability. Any level is simultaneously abhorrent and unavoidable.
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Sent by whom?
Also, the Israeli government cannot be trusted.
Their whole strategy since 1948 has been about distracting the Palestinians with fake peace processes that were never meant to lead to anything.
(see the book "The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine")
> Their whole strategy since 1948 has been about distracting the Palestinians with fake peace processes that were never meant to lead to anything
Totally untrue. Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza in 2005 [1]. The current divides aren't as entrenched as the belligerents would have us believe.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_the...
From the Wikipedia article you linked:
> Bernard Avishai states that the Gaza withdrawal was designed to obviate rather than facilitate peace negotiations [...]
> Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's senior adviser, Dov Weissglass, explained the meaning of Sharon's statement further: The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process, and when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state [...]
> Shimon Peres, then Vice Prime Minister, stated in an interview that: "We are disengaging from Gaza because of demography"
The first two are suppositions. The last...I don't know what to make of it. Isn't the whole point of delineating Israel and Palestine demography?
But the acceptance of the deal is up to Hamas and not the people starving.
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If we were to believe Israel, why did they ban foreign media from Gaza? I'm sure the "most moral" army in the world has nothing to hide?
> why did they ban foreign media from Gaza
For the same various reasons (safety, opsec, etc) every modern military does. Ukraine for example only allows invited, escorted media in "red" zones. Most people seem to understand and accept such restrictions, except when it's Israel.
Probably because it also helps enforce the Israeli Military Censor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Censor
...if foreign media was banned from Gaza, how would you get your propaganda from Hamas now?
How did Hamas get UK/Australia/Canada/France etc to recognise Palestine?
Or do you think that Israel has control over every inch in Gaza...? The truth is that Israel from the media standpoint has lost this war already 2 years ago, on the 8th of October. The world was very sad for just 1 day. The moment Israel decided to go to war, that's when the machine started. They knew, Hamas knew it, they did it on purpose. And they are reaching their goal. So tell me, who is the winner?
Everyone claiming Israel is the worst of the worst - just put yourselves in their shoes, and imagine for a moment that your friend/your husband/wife/baby/kids are still kept hostage by brutal people. Hostage. Not prisoner because they had done something. Hostage - grabbed in the night while sleeping or whatever.
>Everyone claiming Israel is the worst of the worst - just put yourselves in their shoes, and imagine for a moment that your friend/your husband/wife/baby/kids are still kept hostage by brutal people. Hostage. Not prisoner because they had done something. Hostage - grabbed in the night while sleeping or whatever.
Ok, so I have systematically erased a people, and colonised their land in full view of the worlds media. I built my community right up against the wall of their open air prison while ignoring their rights and supporting a blockade of their country. Heck, the foundations of their original homes are probably still somewhat visible in my back yard.
They fought back and took hostages and am sad now HOW DID THIS HAPPEN TO ME!!!!! I could have stayed in Europe and not built my house on land that people in the adjacent prison have a reaffirmed right to return to.
Pretending that zionist colonists are civilians instead of a militia is crazy. Talk about human shields. Building a farm on land cleared of palestinians less than 50 years ago, right next to where those palestinians are imprisoned, is the biggest case of FAFO you could possibly imagine.
Is it bad to kill unarmed people and take them hostage? Yes. Can I empathise with a single person living next to the imprisoned refugees whose land they occupy? Never.
>Everyone claiming Israel is the worst of the worst - just put yourselves in their shoes, and imagine for a moment that your friend/your husband/wife/baby/kids are still kept hostage by brutal people. Hostage. Not prisoner because they had done something. Hostage - grabbed in the night while sleeping or whatever.
This happened routinely to Palestinians for decades (detained without charge is a kidnapping), but since those detainees (often kids) are considered subhuman by zionists it never mattered to them.
Oct 7th didnt just come out of nowhere. It came from people who were exactly as furious as you are now for identical reasons.
> Yet Israel is the baddies and America/the Allies are sited as doing the correct thing even though they had equal or less food going in.
If Israel institutes a Marshall Plan equivalent that rebuilds Gaza/West Bank to the NEMA equivalent of West Germany and Japan, then maybe decades from now their actions will receive the same deference that the historical actions of the Allies have now.
Israel blocks the entry of Plumpy Nut into Gaza, a peanut-butter like paste meant for treating severe acute malnutrition. They say it is a luxury item Hamas might steal.[1] The amount of evidence Israel is committing genocide is embarrassing.
[1] https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1971582137947295831
As a side note, that's the same stuff that just sat on shelves and went back instead of going to starving kids all over the world because Trump and Musk and Co. decided that USAID was a "waste of money".
https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/04/25/g-s1-...
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You're right, the number of babies Israel is starving is clearly higher than 14,000.
He took a credible claim by the IPC and changed several things (~12 months -> 48 hours, 6mo-5yr children -> babies, acute malnutrition -> death), making it patently false. There's no excuse for that kind of deliberate disinformation.
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Do you really believe that this have anything to do with the hostages? They want the land, that's it. It could be done little by little or it could be done like now, when they have an excuse. But the end goal is the same.
Do you think that what they are doing in the west-bank have anything to do with the hostages or Hamas?
> Do you really believe that this have anything to do with the hostages?
To a significant degree, yes. If Hamas turned over the hostages today, Israel's position would significantly weaken. Palestinians' would strength. But so would Hamas', which is why they haven't.
> Palestinians' [position] would strengthen
in what way? what new negotiating or military power would the palestinians gain?
Man, in a scenario where all the hostages are freed, I can't image Netanyahu stopping the genocide... so far he's been "Well, what are you going to do about it?!" about all the war crimes and killings, I would bet my left nut he'd continue the bombings even if all the hostages are returned. It's too easy to say the terrorist want to annihilate Israel (and so, Israel being a rules-abiding civilized democracy, must annihilate the Palestinian state first - terrorists, civilians, all the same...).
> in a scenario where all the hostages are freed, I can't image Netanyahu stopping the genocide
Okay. Are you certain enough about your imagination that it's not worth attempting? Two, it may not end the war. But it reduces Israel's leverage. If you think any of the international pressure and opinions have any effect, then returning the hostages is a winning move.
Israel has rejected every peace offer from Hamas, including ones brokered by the US. They invited Hamas peace negotiators to Qatar and then bombed them. They have shown no indication that they are willing to agree to a peace deal in exchange for the hostages, it’s just a rationalization they use so that people like you can counter every anti-Israel argument with “well what about the hostages?”
> Israel has rejected every peace offer from Hamas, including ones brokered by the US
Which offer did Israel reject that was put forward by Hamas and endorsed by the U.S.?
> They have shown no indication that they are willing to agree to a peace deal in exchange for the hostages
Maybe you're right. The Palestinians' hand is significantly strengthened if this is shown to be true. If Hamas unilaterally turned over the hostages and sued for peace, I really don't think Israel could continue the war. If they did, they'd lose a massive amount of of international indifference.
Israel does not want gaza. They want the west bank. Gaza is worthless land, they just want the gazans gone.
so, they want the people that it's there now gone, and the control of that territory, but they don't want Gaza.
Israel's ideal outcome with gaza is for egypt to take it and all the gazans. They do not care about controlling the region, they just want the gazans gone.
> they want the people that it's there now gone, and the control of that territory
Israel's actions so far have shown it doesn't want Gaza controlled by Hamas. Some elements want to annex it. But it seems they've been quelled given Netanyahu's agreement to Trump's 20-point plan, which does not grant Israel control.
Ah, let’s try your logic the opposite way around: if hamas and the middle east is so hostile, why do Israeli’s not move to some flyover state. What do you think?
You are shockingly uninformed. All major human rights organizations are saying the exact same thing: Israel is actively committing a genocide.
> All major human rights organizations are saying the exact same thing: Israel is actively committing a genocide
Your argument loses credibility when you overstep like this.
Human rights organisations (and credible third parties) agree that Gaza is in famine. The term genocide is not universally applied, though it is increasingly and increasingly credibly, albeit at the expense of the clarity of the term.
> Human rights organisations (and credible third parties) agree that Gaza is in famine. The term genocide is not universally applied, though it is increasingly and increasingly credibly, albeit at the expense of the clarity of the term.
UN commission uses word genocide [0].
ICJ used word "plausible" [1].
HRW has used the word genocide [2]
...actually the list of explicit accusation of genocide is quite big [3].
Is there some single, powerful organisation left that does not agree that there is genocide? All the big mentioned also [4].
[0]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-c...
[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3g9g63jl17o
[2]: https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/12/19/israels-crime-exterminat...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humanitarian_and_human...
[4]: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/09/1165856
> UN commission uses word genocide
Yes, that's the credible third party I referred to.
> ICJ used word "plausible"
Correct.
> HRW has used the word genocide
In the phrase "may amount to the crime of genocide" [1].
> the list of explicit accusation of genocide is quite big
Yet not amounting to "all big humanitarian organizations." Like, the two you chose to highlight stepped back from making that claim prematurely because they don't want to cry wolf with a word that should have a lot of meaning, but which activists have effectively neutered in American political culture.
[1] https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/12/19/israels-crime-exterminat...
> > HRW has used the word genocide > In the phrase "may amount to the crime of genocide" [1].
They wrote “In doing so, Israeli authorities are responsible for the crime against humanity of extermination and for acts of genocide” [1].
Thank you for clearing up what the Israeli state officials are responsible for. We are saying the same thing, but you want to dance around it.
Maybe you missed it but Hamas are terrorists, they don't care that much. Hamas mistake was believing that Israel would care more about civilians, turns out they care much less. And Israel is supposedly this western democracy.
> Hamas mistake was believing that Israel would care more about civilians, turns out they care much less. And Israel is supposedly this western democracy
Let's be honest, betting on civilian shields when attacking any country, including a democracy, has never been a winning move.
I think the most amazing part of the comments is how much the sentiment has changed over the last 2 years. Is anybody else noticing this?
A lot of it is that Israel has stopped bothering to make a believable pitch to the rest of the world that their actions are justified.
People will latch onto even implausible justifications to avoid changing their opinion. When there's just nothing at all, it gets a bit difficult.
What shocks me is that there are still people trying to whitewash and/or defend the genocide.
They are stuck in the bubble. They too will come out.
what are you talking about? The sheer number of 10+ year old hn accounts tirading to defend, downplay and whitewash the actions of Israel in the comments in this exact thread is simply horrifying. .
I'm saying the percentage of this appears different to me
Plausible deniability dried up as the blatantly skewed results of this “conflict” became impossible to ignore.
And Israel will still get away with it. There will be delays, complaints, but 10 years from now Israel will have Gaza and at best the Palestinians, reduced in number, will live in a small ghettos. At worst somewhere else or dead
They will get away with it if we believe we are powerless to change it. Russia has been proven to be pushing defeatist propaganda similar to your sentiment, and I'm sure Israel has been as well.
The situation in Gaza is horrifying and despair-inducing. While acknowledging the incredibly complex historical context of the region and the security bind that Israel is in, IMO they have surrendered all moral authority by their actions there. The military campaign and blockade of aid into Gaza is wildly disproportionate and monstrous.
Denying Palestinians their basic human rights to create an apartheid ethno state is not complex.
The narrative that “it is complex therefore there is nothing to be done” is meant to paralyze people from standing up for what’s right.
The solution has always been a single democratic secular state from the river to the sea. For all inhabitants of the land. Including those expelled previously.
How do you propose that should happen? Seems impossible to me.
A two-state solution is still possible, but becoming vanishingly small:
On the Palestinian side, it doesn't give them the "right of return" (to the land they were expelled from in 1948) that they frankly deserve, which is a tough pill to swallow for them. But besides some hardliners they've pretty much resigned themselves to the fact they'll never get their stolen land back (much like the Native Americans).
On the Israeli side, it's much more problematic as it would mean dismantling many or all of the settlements on the WB. This is anathema to Israel and would be heavily resisted (perhaps violently) by the settlers who were put there in the first place expressly to prevent a two-state solution. Israel deliberately violated all the agreements about settlements reached over the years in order to create a situation where it could say "we can't expect those settlers to move out". It's no coincidence that the settlers who were given the stolen land are generally the most militant of the Israelis, and many are heavily armed, by the way.
There isn't a famine in Gaza.
Calories per capita and aid per capita is high.
They've taken steps to stop Hamas from hoarding food aid.
People's complaints are they "had to eat rice instead of bread".
The people posting with pots near a truck was asstaged photo with the backstage readily available - there wasn't even any good being handed out.
Restaurants and markets are open on Gaza social media.
The UN has a proven bias against Israel, easily proven by the amount of resolutions against Israel versus say North Korea or Iran or Qatar or Pakistan, and the funding of UNRWA (that promotes terror to children as its own custom defintion of 'refugee') rather than UNHCR the actual UN organization for refugees anywhere else.
The starving children were 12 different disabled kids, with fat parents and siblings that were cropped out of the photos.
The real issue here is why the flagging that probably happened on this post was undone.
> why the flagging that probably happened on this post was undone.
Likely due to the famine in Gaza.
Question: There is a repeated claim that more calories have been provided to the Gaza people than several other human crisis scenarios, but that Hamas is currently stealing it all.
But I have never seen rampant obesity in Hamas prisoners that the IDF have captured alive? Hamas can't be extorting the Gazan people for those calories, the Gazan people have no money at this point by and large due to the huge swath of destruction of property and infrastructure via bombing-- only Hamas has those underground tunnels or somesuch.
So like... what is going on here
> Question: There is a repeated claim that more calories have been provided to the Gaza people than several other human crisis scenarios, but that Hamas is currently stealing it all.
This claim is made by supporters of the war _outside of Israel_ for external consumption. If you look at what the Israeli cabinet, generals and politicians are saying for internal consumption... it's pretty deliberate.
UN data, compare numbers "arrived" and "intercepted": https://app.un2720.org/tracking
are you saying un supports the war then?
Intercepted is defined as "either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors, during transit in Gaza." Some fraction of that may be Hamas. But we have no evidence of that.
I guess we may never know.
But hey, between hungry peasants and buff hamas soldiers we do know who has the guns.
This is a truck. You are a hungry person. How do you even stop a truck? And why, if you could just... follow it to a location where it was supposed to despense stuff to you?
> Either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully armed actors, during transit in Gaza
the article also states that the US has looked into the reports of Hamas stealing the aid and found that none of the aid appears to have been stolen by anyone.
given the current US administration and their hard-on for Israel, I can't imagine this is a faked report. if it were faked, it'd be to agree with Israel
Have a look here:
https://apnews.com/article/mideast-wars-photo-gallery-hostag...
Plenty of Hamas fighters looking in pretty great shape.
Congratulations on discovering an easily identifyable lie.
Kinda silly logic, access to calories doesn't mean someone has to be obese.
Not saying that the claim is true, just that your logic is faulty.
From the article: "An internal US government review found no evidence of widespread theft by Hamas of US-funded humanitarian aid in Gaza." Other reporting supports this.
So what is going on is that the IDF are lying to justify their genocide. There is a massive propaganda machine at work to muddy the waters.
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The IPC standard says for famine to be declared:
> at least two in every 10,000 people die each day from starvation, or from malnutrition and disease.
Gaza population is 2 million * 2/10000 = 400 people dying per day in order for it to be a famine.
> After more than 700 days of war, 455 Palestinians have died of malnutrition or starvation, including 151 children, the health ministry in Gaza reported on October 1. One hundred and seventy-seven of the total number have died of malnutrition or starvation since the IPC confirmed famine on August 15, it said.
Is 455 in 700 days more than 400 per day? I don’t know, I’m having trouble doing math. Perhaps the people of HN can tell me the IPC standard is being met as the CNN article states?
Media and general literacy is apparently impossible even for journalists.
> Gaza population is 2 million
In August, the IPC found about 514,000 Gazans are Phase 5 (famine / humanitarian catastrophe) [1][2]. It projected by September that was around 641,000. So the threshold you're looking for is a crude death rate (CDR) between 100 and 120 per day.
CRD "needs to be directly attributable to outright starvation or to the interaction of food consumption deficits and disease" and does not include trauma [3]. So it will be more than just confirmed deaths from malnutrition or starvation (which is, in practice, impossible to procure for anywhere on even the brink of famine).
[1] https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Food_Security_Phase...
[3] https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/I...
The mortality exceeding the rate I mentioned is a prerequisite for declaring stage 5. It has not been met. You don’t declare stage 5 until it has according to their own standards.
The rate of death in Gaza from those causes is nowhere near that CDR. The total death rate from all causes is substantially below that number (by a factor of 4).
> The mortality exceeding the rate I mentioned is a prerequisite for declaring stage 5
Source?
> The total death rate from all causes is substantially below that number (by a factor of 4)
You're still making the mistake of taking statistics from across Gaza and pretending that's relevant. Based on your method, there has never been a crime wave anywhere in the world because the global crime rate tends to be somewhat stable across time and countries.
> Source?
Literally the OP and the magical thing called math I did in my last post.
So focusing on the details of the situation in Gaza is quite awful. The general tone of the comments in this thread, along with basically any public forum I think speaks for the reverberation of human suffering throughout this -- civilians are being made into casualties, Israeli and Palestinian, and it's terrible.
Taking a broader perspective, large parts of the human race have come to realize famine is a relic of the past. Modern agriculture, synthetic fertilizer, and the technology of the last 100+ years has made famine optional. There is without a doubt the technological capacity to supply every person on earth with food and clean water. Nobody needs to go hungry to feed every person in Gaza. The same could be said of Sudan, or Bangladesh, or Haiti.
200 years ago, famine was usually a natural disaster; now it is almost exclusively a political choice.
Famine is political, always. The world produces a significant excess of food. The only reason famine exists is because one group of people is perfectly happy to starve another group of people. Gaza is not unique here although Gaza is a aprticularly egregious example of industrial mass starvation and death at the hands of a highly-developed military and state actor.
I can't disagree. Modern famine is a tool used to cause harm indiscriminately. It is a testament to the human capacity for cognitive dissonance that so many people can be against the starvation of children yet support politicians responsible for mass starvation.
Though my point was more about considering the historical context. Famines used to happen all the time but largely because of crop failures. That famine is _caused_ has become common knowledge is, I think, at least an improvement. ~All~ Most of the famines that could've happened for the old reasons haven't.
Admittedly, I'm grasping at straws to avoid dwelling on the horrid situation at hand.
You make a good point, and it extends to other disasters besides famine. As humans we have evolved to the point where there are certain problems that we can eliminate -- starvation being one of them as you pointed out -- thanks to technological solutions. And yet, we deliberately choose not to. There are millions of people who die each year whose deaths are wholly preventable -- we have the technology and the resources to prevent them (without harming anyone else) -- but we choose not to, mostly so that some relatively small group of people can amass more wealth than they need. Humans have always been that way, I suppose, but never have these solutions been more within our grasp and yet, we choose not to use them. It's a terrible indictment against the human race.
For reference: While the gas chambers were are the prominent way of death during the Holocaust, the majority of victims died of starvation. Starvation death looks like succumbing to a random sickness (the body is just too weak for a functional immune response), and thus saves the perpetrator from the usual psychological consequences of direct murder. This methodology was agreed on during the Wannsee conference in 1942.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan
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The way Israel is alienating much of the rest of the world is unlikely to help with that. More importantly, the end doesn’t justify the means.
Israel is prioritizing defeating Hamas over making the world like it. This is partly due to the incompetence of the government, partly due to the impossible realities on the ground, but also partly due to an understanding that the survival of Hamas in Gaza and their perceived win is a larger threat.
I would also say that it's the propaganda war against Israel that's causing most of the alienation. To some extent Israel can do no right here and its critics aren't really proposing any alternatives that they would be able to live with if they were in a similar situation. The extent to which social (and traditional) media has been mobilized as part of the war here is unprecedented.
Re: "end and means" why is this argument made here but not e.g. wrt/ the world's war on ISIS/ISIL or Al Qaeda? Or WW-II? Should Ukraine surrender because the end (having a free/democratic Ukraine aligned with the west?) doesn't justify the "means"?
Ukraine isn’t trying to eradicate the general Russian population, they are fighting Russian military on their own territory. The Ukrainian war effort is largely in compliance with international law, which Israel on the other hand is in grave violation of.
Is there any version in your mind that stops Israel from genociding innocent Palestinians while also allowing them to get hostages back?
What does that look like? Is it realistic?
Ukraine gets the luxury of fighting an internationally recognized country with internationally recognized borders who wears compliant uniforms and recognized infrastructure that can be targeted. When Russia faked "separatists" in Ukraine in flagrant breach of laws of war, there was minimal international response and Ukraine was left to fend for itself.
Russia tried to freeze all of Ukraine and Europe to death early on in the war. It's not really a war crime, because blowing up infrastructure and cancelling trade is fair game. Countries did not give Ukraine immense aid even after that. The thing that got Putin labeled a war criminal was abducting children. Not shooting missiles at children, which he does regularly, but abducting them.
Hamas is breaking international law by fighting without official uniform, and is therefore in breach of the Geneva Convention. I don't think they actually recognize it so it doesn't matter. Hamas members commit a war crime every time they shoot at an IDF soldier, so don't lend much credence to "war crime" as a morality thing.
At some point though, you should be willing to recognize that "leave Palestine alone" without putting any requirements on Palestine is just "Let Hamas do whatever it wants", right? Palestinians are not jumping at the chance to replace Hamas. They are being oppressed by Hamas, and dissent is met with murder. Hamas is clear that they intend to keep killing Israeli people, regardless of religion even. Nobody has demonstrated an ability to liberate a populace from terrorists like that. So what strategy can we use to actually fix things?
Israel accepts like 10:1 innocent casualties for every Hamas member they kill, which is obscene. But whats the correct number? If it's zero, you have decided that it should not be possible to fight against non-traditional combatants.
Lets agree Israel needs to be stopped from controlling food going into Palestine (and probably other things). I would also advocate for Netenyahu in prison forever. What next? Assume a magical organization rose up and waved it's hands and those things happened. How do we go from there to both no more Palestinians dying AND no more Israeli people dying?
This isn't a real answer your question, it's just an idea that's crossed my mind a few times.
We've seen with the exploding pagers and all kinds of other covert ops that Israel has a really powerful spy network that's capable of doing precisely targeted strikes that kill specific people. Could they put a lot more into that and use it to carry out an enormous infiltration of Hamas and assassinate lots and lots of Hamas fighters? Like not just leaders but even lower-level participants? It's true that if you detonate someone's pager in a cafe you may injure or kill some bystanders, but it seems like such collateral damage would have to be multiple orders of magnitude less than what's going on right now.
What about the Holocaust Israel is perpetrating in the Gaza Ghetto right now? Should we stop that one?
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Hard to actually believe. What, Hamas steals all the calories and consumes the calories themselves? They'd be bloated.
I think the idea is that they sell it
Sell it to who? In the end someone has to eat it.
Two years later after several ceasefires have been broken, only one chooses to continue the famine and the war.
yes. "Hamas military leader in Gaza objects to ceasefire plan, BBC understands"
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c708v2q5r09o
You call this breaking a ceasefire?
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That is a reference to the one who has power to do both.
so you are talking about hamas.
You know we can see you spamming the same argument in every sub-thread, yes?
I wasn’t previously aware of that dimension of the post-war German occupation. War sucks. Thank you for adding context that’s new to me.
> A senior COGAT official told a briefing in early September that 27% of the trucks entering Gaza are UN vehicles, claiming it was “a lie” that the UN had brought in 600 aid trucks a day before the war.
un own statistics site https://www.ochaopt.org/data/crossings
food tracks fluctuate between 2000 and 3000 a month prior to oct 7th. a few more dozens of of tracks with "non-edible consumables" and "medical supplies". rest of tracks are construction materials
"farm land" part, they forgot to mention that gaza was always totally dependent on imported food. farmland iirc provides only few percent of calories required in gaza. live stock is also sustained by imported feed
It's amazing to see how support of Israel has started collapsing. Scores of US-aligned nations now recognise Palestine. Even inside their traditional support base in the US, it's on the decline; 50% of Republicans under 50 don't support Israel. At least one republican is calling it a "genocide". MAGA split over Iran.
What's interesting is that I don't see the zionist talking points changing at all. They still hold out hope they can accuse everyone of "anti-semitism" and they'll all get back in line like it's 2020. I think they're holding out hope things can go back to normal, but it will be hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
I've heard it said by eliminating all other avenues of Palestinian political expression, Netanyahu created modern Hamas.
He undermined the two-state solution and Palestinian Authority. When you do this, you back people into a corner. There's no path to peacefully making progress on anything you care about. It also conveniently gives Netanyahu a boogeyman for his own political ends.
You might argue the PA was corrupt, etc. But that status quo was far better than what exists now.
Israel gave Hamas seed funding back in the 1980s. They thought it would weaken the PLO. This was when the US funding the Taliban. Having pet Jihandis' was cool back then.
More recently, USA gave ('returned') $1.7 billion to Iran. Of course a large chunk of that has gone to Hamas and Hezbollah and numerous other interests that destabilise Israel and Western powers.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-united-states-iran-an...
I would argue that the 2005 Israeli unilateral withdrawal from Gaza created the vacuum that allowed Hamas to grow. Palestinians and Hamas interpreted that withdrawal as a validation of their resistance strategy [0]—including suicide bombings—and it boosted their confidence in the goal of liberating all of Palestine “from the river to the sea,” which effectively means the elimination of Israel.
So no, what really happened was precisely the opposite of “eliminating all other avenues of Palestinian political expression.”
0: https://besacenter.org/gaza-disengagement-lessons/
Calling the old PA-led status quo “far better” ignores how dysfunctional and destructive it was. The PA was given territory, money, and international legitimacy after Oslo, yet instead of building a transparent, functioning state, it became notorious for corruption, power struggles, and failing to deliver basic services. Worse, during that same period, suicide bombings and the Second Intifada erupted under its watch, so for ordinary Israelis, that “status quo” meant buses, cafes, and markets being blown up.
Even for Palestinians, the PA’s rule was hardly a path to peace or progress. Billions in foreign aid were stolen by elites, elections were canceled, dissent was crushed, and everyday life was marked by both authoritarianism and insecurity. So while today’s Hamas reality is undeniably worse, pretending the old PA era was some kind of lost golden path to peace overlooks that it was already a dead end for both peoples.
How come you have an account from 2014 and this is the first time you're commenting?
I’m that old.
not detracting from your point, I found this line somewhat describes the current situation in the US right now with the government shutdown
“it became notorious for corruption, power struggles, and failing to deliver basic services”
In other words it was like most governments of the world.
More details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas
I don't think anyone doubts Israel supported Hamas. But Israel wasn't paying Hamas so they'd launch October 7th.
> Israel wasn't paying Hamas so they'd launch October 7th
Agreed. But as a close friend -- who spent years living and working in the Middle East, including Gaza, and very well connected there -- pointed out to me, it's very hard to believe that Israel, with one of the most, if not the most, heavily guarded borders in the world, with arguably the best intelligence force in the world that is very embedded in the Palestinian Territories, did not know of the attack in advance, if not the details. Think about how much Israel had to gain from letting it happen and it becomes an easy decision.
Time will tell if they knew and looked the other way. Or more like time will confirm with more evidence that this actually happened.
On the contrary, I think you will find that most people simply cannot comprehend the idea that Netanyahu/Israel would aid Hamas, they will think you are a conspiracy nut for stating the plain facts.
I'm not sure what the point of this is. "Do you want Hamas or the PA?" is like asking someone "do you want rotting meat or polluted drinking water?" Why are these the only two options?
The PA is a captured extension of the Israeli security state. The PA is standing by while Israeli settlers systematically kill, chase off and terrorize Palestinians on the West Bank. IOF soldiers will idly stand by while a settler just comes up with a (government-supplied) gun, shoots a 60 year old farmer and then complains to the Army that the locals are harassing them.
> There's no path to peacefully making progress on anything you care about
Would note that there is a huge divide between violent resistance and terrorism, same as there is between counter-insurgency and war crimes.
> huge divide between violent resistance and terrorism,
There... is? Really?
The most recent episode of John Oliver goes further and says he actively funded Hamas to destabilise the area and cause problems for the PA.
Netanyahu himself has said that:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel’s regular allowing of Qatari funds to be transferred into Gaza, saying it is part of a broader strategy to keep Hamas and the Palestinian Authority separate, a source in Monday’s Likud faction meeting said.
The prime minister also said that, “whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for” transferring the funds to Gaza, because maintaining a separation between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...
Yep, Netanyahu used Hamas' existence as a political tool to divide Palestinians, weaken peace efforts, and maintain Israeli control.
He let Qatari cash find its way to Hamas.
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By those HN guidelines, your shallow dismissal of my clear criticism is what is against the HN rules that you quote. So is your twisting of my words to a conclusion that I did not state.
Furthermore, if you're dragging out the HN guidlines, it clearly states that comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Your comment was neither thoughtful nor substantive. Further furthermore, that document states that Hacker News should not be used for political or ideological battle - yet that is all that we see in these Israel posts that happen here every few days. The top of that document states that most stories about politics are Off-Topic. Yet HN happily drags many non-tech discussions about Israel on for over a thousand comments, whereas discussions about similar situations are completely absent from HN.
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Fall in line with what exactly? Living under military occupation? Denied statehood by having their borders controlled? Being forcibly relocated out of Gaza?
As the GP said, there needs to be an actual alternative.
Not sure what you mean by "military occupation". The military was for the most part not in Gaza itself. Not all borders were controlled (why do they even want to cross over to Israel?).
Israel is here to stay. Gazans need to an accept that and try to progress towards civilized society. And Hamas definitely needs to go.
> Israel is here to stay. Gazans need to an accept that and try to progress towards civilized society. And Hamas definitely needs to go.
All of these can be true without using food as a weapon.
The people of Gaza fighting a terrorist group is also lunacy. They shouldn't be held responsible and if Israel can't fight Hamas without overwhelming causing suffering to the people of Gaza they shouldn't.
do you happen to have a link to a helpful YouTube video tutorial on how to organize a coup against a terrorist state while starving to death in the middle of a total occupation?
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> Funny how literally every written record of history agrees the Jews are the people of Israel, but the Arabs don't.
Why do people keep bringing this up as if it matters? Every piece of land has had someone living on it for the last 10,000 years, how does it matter that some group lived there in like 500 bce then a jewish tribe came in and then later some other tribe came in and so on.
Because it's literally the only Jewish land/state.
Think of how many Arab states exist.
Now think of how many Jewish states exist.
Israel is literally the only claim to land Jews have. Have you seen the size of Israel? It's not exactly gigantic
There's no mormon land/state, or sikh, or uygur or a dozen other religions. What makes this religion so special that they should be allowed to conquer another nation to take their land for their own?
I wonder how a mosque found itself sitting on temple mount.
Its almost as if the Muslims conquered Israel to take the land for their own.
Yes?
At some moment in time, the first human built a house there, then sometime later some other people showed up then sometime later the israeli tribe conquered the land then the romans conquered it and so on until some muslim tribe conquered it and then in 1950 or whenever the current people conquered it.
Which one of those groups is supposed to have some kind extra special entitlement to live there?
> You know, since its been on the table no less than 5 times, and each time the Arabs have rejected it... Even when Israel voted for it
Not doubting you--I'm still learning about this conflict--but source?
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Do you think what Israel is doing is right?
I feel like you could say Ukraine were backed into a corner, multiple times, they didn't resort to October 7 levels of horror either. In fact, there is not a single documented case where they have attacked civilians or civilian infrastructure.
So while I'm not closed to the idea that Netanyahu is a bad man. I find it hard to rationalize the actions of the people who were "backed into a corner"?
> Ukraine were backed into a corner, multiple times, they didn't resort to October 7 levels of horror either
While I personally condemn Hamas's tactics and don't recognize their political legitimacy, Ukraine has billions in modern military equipment, including tanks and fighter planes. They have conventional military options Palestinians could only dream of.
Ukraine has also been supplied with intelligence, weapons and materiel from other countries in Europe, with which they also share land borders, as well as the United States. Palestinians can't even get food from Egypt, their immediate neighbor.
> there is not a single documented case where they [Ukraine] have attacked civilians or civilian infrastructure.
It must further be observed that Israel has likely killed over 100,000 civilians and miles of civilian infrastructure, even as they enjoy the upper hand economically and militarily. Whatever damage Hamas has done to Israel, Israel has retaliated far out of proportion to Palestinian civilians, in a way that is judged calculated to be genocidal.
While I personally condemn Hamas's tactics and don't recognize their political legitimacy, Ukraine has billions in modern military equipment, including tanks and fighter planes. They have conventional military options Palestinians could only dream of.
It's funny because until they started winning, it was basically, "they're done in 3 days", now it's, oh they have billions in equipment etc.
Here's a question for you, why didn't Hamas have that? Why didn't the rest of the world send them more aid and weapons aid? Hmm strange.
The civilians are not living and partying on Ukrainian land, next to an open air prison.
Killing civilians is bad, killing soldiers invading your land is protected by international law.
October 7 is a tragic grain of sand in an desert of horrors the palestinian people suffered for nearly a century.
"Open air prison"
If you were in an "open air prison" (silly term, but ok), would your next move be to raid a peace and love festival and slaughter kids ? Just wondering?
> civilians are not living and partying on Ukrainian land
Crimea contains multiple resorts! (And they've been selectively targeted when political and military elites are present [1].)
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-my/news/other/ukrainian-drones-strike...
In 2014 they burned a building with civilians inside: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Odesa_clashes
Thats a weird framing. It seems more like an escalation of an already violent clash than Pro Ukrainian protestors burning a building full of Pro russians alive intentionally.
>A 'United Ukraine' rally was attacked by pro-Russian separatists where Stones, petrol bombs and gunfire were exchanged. The pro-Ukraine protesters then moved to dismantle a pro-Russian protest camp in Kulykove Pole, causing some pro-Russian activists to barricade themselves in the nearby Trade Unions House. Shots were fired by both sides, and the pro-Ukraine protesters attempted to storm the building, which caught fire as the two groups threw petrol bombs at each other.
Abhorrent. Not only in the crime but that "although several alleged perpetrators were charged, there has yet to be a trial."
But also, that's forty-eight dead. The fiasco started after "a 'United Ukraine' rally was attacked by pro-Russian separatists." And this was criminality by a protest group (in predominantly pro-Russian territory, no less) not any party claiming to govern Ukraine.
Nethanyahu didn't vote for Hamas, the Palestinians did, and they did it while the party in power in Israel was kadima, which just gave the Palestinians gaza literally for free.
Shortly after the election Hamas murdered the Fatah in Gaza and those elections were the last time the Palestinians had a say over who controls Gaza.
Nethanyahu only after the 7th of October decided that letting hamas rule Gaza is unacceptable, and this decision was only made after the terrible cost.
There Palestinians simply preferred hamas and terrorism over the PLO and relative peace in the one historical vote they were given. The situation might've changed since then. Making deals of two state solution when that second state could turn into another hamas state overnight would be an even bigger mistake.
The Palestinians can't barely make peace with themselves, between Fatah and hamas and agree to resolve their political conflicts in peace rather than armed conflict. When that's the case you can hardly blame Israel that they can't make peace. They need to commit to non violence between themselves before it's possible to commit to non violence with their enemies.
There's also a generation of Palestinians who's never even voted in Palestinian elections because there weren't elections in a decade.
> There Palestinians simply preferred hamas and terrorism over the PLO.... They need to commit to non violence between themselves before it's possible to commit to non violence with their enemies.
Hamas won 44% of the vote and then, as you noted, they murdered their political opposition. For this, everybody in Gaza should suffer both under a terrorist group running their lives and Israel bombing them?
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> That's wrong question because there was no other option than to get rid of Hitler, and there is no other option than to get rid of hamas.
I feel like there might, in fact, be other ways to do that.
How?
Improve the living conditions of the average person so they're more interested in watching the next football game instead of taking vengeance for their murdered father.
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> can understand why desperate people, whose land is increasingly stolen, whose rights are increasingly abused, and who cannot see their lives improve would turn (or be turned) to an organisation who would ultimately commit such abhorrent acts
I can't. It doesn't work and makes you the bad guy. Even if just temporarily, that's enough for the other side to exploit. It's always been enough for the other side to exploit. Terrorism has a terrible track record for a reason.
That said, I challenge the premise. Palestinians didn't vote for October 7th. They didn't vote to suspend elections. They voted to kick Fatah out.
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And your post helps the conversation how?
I'm reiterating and underlining a point made two posts ago about perspective. You're welcome.
I can understand why desperate people, whose land is increasingly stolen, whose rights are increasingly abused, and who cannot see their lives improve would turn (or be turned) to an organisation who would ultimately commit such abhorrent acts.
There are a lot of examples of really bad stuff happening to groups of people over the centuries, very few of them have resorted to October 7 levels of horror.
I'm not Jewish, but the soviets did some really horrific shit to our family, and we actually lost all our land, our whole livelihoods and strangely, no one in our family killed women or children over it. We never resulted to terrorism to deal with the issue. We did get our land back in the 90s though.
I can guarantee you that if the Palestinians / Hamas didn't do October 7, they would be in a much better position than they are now. 99% of people lost the ability to feel sympathy for them after that. Which is why Israel can basically make the plans. Most of the world just gave up.
Comparison of two peoples occupation and suffering and response to it is quite unfair.
And you act as if Oct 7th is the be all and end all of the story of the Palestine/Israel. "Oct 7th levels of horror". I won't excuse Hamas for what they did, but worse levels of horror have been inflicted on the Palestinian people. It's odd you ignore those levels or are ignorant to them. Just saying.
And you say 99% of people lost the ability to feel sympathy. I'll dispute that because the sane among us don't blame civilians for the actions of a paramilitary organisation gone wild. But let's pretend you're right. Isn't it ironic then that the world has so strongly turned against Israel now? (at least in the UN and your average people).
I'll contend that Israel may have destroyed Gaza, but in so doing they have destroyed their reputation and brought ill and hatred to their people now for a generation.
I'll defend Jews always as many have stood side by side with those against what's happening in Israel. But Israel has made their lives harder. Israel's actions have now made it much, much easier for the crazy people among us to do crazy things (c.f. today's Manchester, UK synagogue terrorist attack).
The way you conflate upwards of 150.000 slaughtered civilians (numbers directly from Isreali military sources - who are being ethnically cleansed according to UN experts, with Hamas is sinister and beyond dark, especially when you also completely ignore 75 years of Israeli violence and occupation before october 7.
Yeah the over thirty thousand dead kids really shouldn't have "done" october 7, a response done by completely different people to decades of violence, it was so stupid of them.
This is vile and incredibly dehumanising if not straight up violently racist.
> 150.000 slaughtered civilians (numbers directly from Isreali military sources
Source? Even Hamas claims fewer than 70,000 [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war
In all objective measures of life quality, gaza was better off occupied by Israel, both compared with before 67 (Israel's occupation made Gaza prosper relative to when it was controlled by Egypt), and compared with after hamas took over and forced Israel to isolate gaza increasingly in order to deal with the terrorism from Gaza.
The only thing gaza didn't have under Israeli occupation was democratic election. And guess what, they didn't have that after the occupation stopped either. They don't have it in most Arabic countries either.
CNN is quoting data from the Gaza health ministry, an organization run by genocidal Islamist Hamas, without mentioning its affiliation and without questioning the data. So much for objectivity on CNN and "Hacker News". There is also no mention on the food convoys that get plundered by Hamas. Just to mention: Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization in the US, since 1997 - just adding some missing background information.
There is a genocidal group of religious crazies here, and it is the Israeli government.
the absurdity of blaming the victim is really atrocious/despicable; nobody is forcing Muslims to hate Jews, that's part of the core of Islamic fundamentalist ideology. Everyone who pays the slightest amount of attention to media bias knows that CNN "leans left" and, even though there is suffering in Gaza/Palestine, let's ask ourselves: "why is this once again the 'flavor of the decade'?". "Those evil Jews, so unjustly 'causing' the suffering in the Middle East, why can't they all just stay in New York and Hollywood and leave the rest of the world to be overtaken by Sharia law as Allah intended!?" I'm sure this comment will get downvoted into oblivion, but oh well.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/left/cnn-bias/
https://www.newsweek.com/mainstream-media-biased-against-isr...
https://honestreporting.com/doctor-terror-media-relies-on-ga...
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-mainstream-media-so-against...
Executive Order 14046
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/09/21/2021-20...
this financial blacklisting was done on the mere allegation of famine and no court tribunal was involved at all and nobody split hairs on the definition
find and replace Ethiopia with Israel, Eritrea with Gaza, and that's all we need to do
happy Yom Kippur! there's a lot to atone for, as some say, and an easy way for the US Government to ensure it
" We will clean Gaza of every potential murderer, and everyone there is a potential murderer." - Michal Woldiger, member of the Israeli Knesset
"Tulkarm and Jenin will look like Jabalia and Shujaiya. Nablus and Ramallah will look like Rafah and Khan Younis. They too will be uninhabitable ruins, their residents will be forced to migrate and seek a new life in other countries." - Bezalel Smotrich, Finance Minister of Israel
"It's a simple matter, existential and survival, of wiping these crazy Amalekites off the face of the Earth. Like the Nazis, so with Hamas: we will fight them and hunt them forever. Until not one of them is left. This is a Jewish commandment. This is an Israeli commandment. This is a historic commandment. And today's pictures are just another reminder of what we must not forget for a single moment: the nature of this deranged enemy. And why they must be wiped off the face of the earth." - Shai Golden, Channel 14 News
"Gazans will be concentrated in a very defined area and live as refugees their whole lives without water or electricity until they decide, of their own accord, to emigrate." - Eyal Shalit Snir, Lt. Col. in the Israeli military
"Anyone who stays there [in north Gaza] will be judged by law as a terrorist and will go through either a process of starvation or a process of extermination." - Uzy Raby, Professor of Middle Eastern History, Tel Aviv University
[Quotes taken from zionism dot observer, a website that aggregates statements from Israeli sources]
I think there's a sort of naivete amongst people who don't pay close attention to the realities of Israel's social and political climate, and simply ascribing a sort of ghoulish evil to the vague bloc of 'nationalist' or 'religious' right-wing is simply not true. Genocidal intent permeates every level of Israeli society, from citizenry to the highest decision-making levels of the government, to all strata of the military. Israel is a fascist society and it's plain to see. This is a Pandora's Box that cannot be shut anymore, and people won't magically unsee or forget the horrors that are broadcast on a daily basis on social media. The ghastly accusations of 'Pallywood' don't cut it anymore, either. The sheer speed of information dissemination has ensured that whatever horrors the Palestinians are experiencing the rest of the world sees in real time, as opposed to being memoryholed for 5-10 years, then uncovered in a viral tweet. Now, every airstrike is actually recorded as it happens, alongside its outcome.
I wonder if israeli citizens are blocked to enter other countries, or maybe Israel itself is disconnected from visa and mastercard
not that it is a proper response, but you know, at least it would be a principled one
Not sure how much sarcasm did you put in this comment, but banning from entering other countries and disconnecting from visa / mc only hurts. Here's why.
I am originally from Russia and I do not support the war my country has started. I moved to another country because of that. And I face all the fun consequences from two nice restrictions above. Some of my former neighbors or acquaintances who decided to stay in the country or even support the invasion face no issues. They don't visit other countries and don't need international cards.
Which means both these things primary target people who most likely do not support the shit which is happening. Is that the goal?
that's exactly what I am on about, and facing those restrictions as well
as such, sarcasm here is beyond measurement - obviously those measures were just a distraction for own voters, but presented as a matter of principle yada yada yada
an absolutely identical situation gets a 100% hush hush reverse treatment, hence my comment on being a matter of principle - even though I don't agree with such measures, seeing them implemented against Israelis would at least be an honest thing to do instead of the current hypocrisy
Thats eye opening
Remember that Gaza has the most amputated children per capita in the world. Next time you see a child, you should remember this fact. because Palestinian children aren't this abstract concept, but real people just like the children in our own neighborhoods
How many people died of famine in Gaza?
Read the article
I did. 450, according to CNN, no sources cited, and no reference to how many died of hunger before the war. One thing I did not expect on this board is innumeracy.
That's presumably the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
But, obviously, there's no reliable source in a war zone, and starving people often don't die directly from hunger, but from disease after being weakened. Most statistics about deaths from famines are estimates after the fact.
What I find the most jarring about this on a day-to-day being in tech circles is how some of the smartest people I know are not only unwilling to call out what's happening, they're unwilling to acknowledge it to begin with, and some like the triangle man and Collison brothers even support it.
The more time I spend in tech the more I realize there's a deep moral rot here covered up by noveau-rich wealth
There's a special brand of anti-intellectualism running rampant in tech circles. They've drunk the koolaid on STEM vs. humanities and therefore glorify their willful ignorance towards all things "soft" science, like morals or philosophy.
The problem is we’re in an age of mass disinformation that makes any claim potentially propaganda. It comes down to trust and belief and those things are either easier than ever or harder than ever depending on media you consume and common sense.
Yea... It's sad and worrying.
I feel like the community is censored or rather finds inconvenient to talk about it because of the big role that Israel plays in the tech scene. SV has an ethos of avoiding name calling and finger pointing at members of the community, since they know it's a long repeated game they are playing.
But I'm glad to see some prominent voices step up. Particularly, PG and Amjad Massad (Replit) have been very vocal. I hope their voice makes people feel like it's OK to call out human right violations when they see them.
Then there's the other extreme of the tech scene that simply decided to play politics for its own gain. The All In Pod crew as the poster children of this. Their cynicism is s transparent and disgusting in how they kiss the ring to get favor of the king in turn. I think that's a bit of what triangle man is trying to get, and it's certainly what sama was trying to do when this admin started.
Who is “triangle man”? Quick google provided no answer.
Guillermo Rauch of Vercel
Where did the idea that being smart meant being moral come from? Why would anyone assume that people in tech are "good"? A lot of (I would say most) people go into tech to make money. All the people you expect to say something won't because doing so could jeopardize the amount of money they make. The same goes with celebrities, academics, politicians, etc. If you are someone who makes a lot of money, and you speak negatively about america's greatest ally, you will probably make less money as a direct result.
Because tech people spent probably 5 years signalling their moral goodness about a wide array of topics, indeed proclaiming these the most important political topics. IT was and still is insufferable.
It’s called marketing and value signaling. Doesn’t mean they believe what they spew.
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You can donate to help break the cycle of IDF impunity.
https://www.hindrajabfoundation.org/
I've seen air dropping videos, if random countries were to try that would they be at risk of being shot down, probably right for violating air space (cough cough).
Yes, airdrops are only done with permission from Israel since they control Gaza airspace (they have for decades). But airdrops are not an efficient way to feed millions of people (and the pallets have killed multiple people by landing on them). Shipping by truck allows a much larger volume much faster, and the UN has experience doing so, but they have been largely blocked from doing so for months by Israel, which runs its own much less efficient aid operation with many fewer distribution points guarded by mercenaries who regularly kill aid seekers who often have to travel long distances through dangerous areas.
For anyone commenting on this, I'll leave this: Official aid delivery reported by UN. I'd also assume this to be of the lower side, as there probably is more that doesn't get reported thorugh UN 27720 mechanism. I find the fact that this article does not use this or point to this data very questionable, but maybe I am wrong and I am imagining things.
https://app.un2720.org/tracking
> Intercepted - Either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors, during transit in Gaza
I presume you meant to suggest Hamas is bathing in baby formula, but your link isn't evidence for that. It could be desperate people doing desperate things, you know, because they are starving.
Nope. My main question is why journalists do not use official, readily available data, but instead talk about bullshit. How can you talk about aid, famine and not put this information in there is beyond me. The problem is not aid. the problem as proven by UN data is logistics and interceptions by someone(probably mostly Hamas, but even if it's some other peaceful side) How do we deal with that?
Samantha Power wrote an excellent book: "A Problem From Hell" - America and the Age of Genocide [0], [1]
She had seen war and genocide first-hand in Bosnia and that provided the impetus for her to study how America had responded to various genocides.
I will repeat the last paragraph of her Preface for some context.
>Before I began exploring America's relationship with genocide, I used to refer to U.S. policy towards Bosnia as a "failure." I have changed my mind. It is daunting to acknowledge, but this country's consistent policy of nonintervention in the face of genocide offers sad testimony not to a broken American political system but to one that is ruthlessly effective. The system, as it stands now, is working. No U.S. president has ever made genocide prevention a priority, and no U.S. president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on.
[0] https://samanthapower.com/books/a-problem-from-hell-america-...
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Hell-America-Age-Genocide/dp/...
Readers should be dubious of her moral authority on this issue. When given influence, her advocacy of the war on Libya resulted in endemic violence and showed that she was as misguided as anyone else in American politics when it comes to intervention in world affairs.
Genocide is a terrible thing. But that doesn't mean the USA has any obligation to directly intervene in foreign conflicts. Most of these aren't worth sacrificing the life of a single US soldier, and even when we do intervene it often makes the situation worse. Unless critical US national interests are involved, our actions should usually be limited to sanctions and diplomacy.
(I am commenting on the general US policy and not making a statement about the current situation in Gaza.)
Most of the time US sells the weapons used to do the genocide. This time they're just giving them away, and that is what a lot of Americans have a problem with.
> Most of the time US sells the weapons used to do the genocide
We sold weapons to Burma, China, Russia, ISIS, Sudan and Somaliland [1]?
We're absolutely complicit in Gaza, the DRC f/k/a Zaire and Bosnia. And we helped defend the Yazidi and Ukrainians. Honestly, looking at the list, that's a better record than Russia or China have had since WWII.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides
Germans would often say _their_ grandparents were never Nazis.
Ironically, the same thing will happen in future Israeli generations when they look back at the current genocide - "No, my grandfather wasn't involved in the Gaza war"
There is massive narrative deception from Israel... wake up world:
>“There is no famine in Gaza. Period,” the [Israeli] official said, adding that “Israel and the IDF are trying to strengthen the humanitarian situation in Gaza with partners.”
If you want to see what Netanyaho looks like when he's covering things up [lying] just watch the 2024 documentary The Bibi Files — about his corruption charges (which features over an hour of Netanyaho lying to investigators about his accepting roses and leaves [wine and cigars]) — complete with his shit-eating-grins galore...
World leaders know this, they're pretending not to see it. For example, the Biden administration set specific aid targets for Israel to meet and even acknowledged that they weren't being met by the "deadline" but neglected to impose any consequences.
https://www.propublica.org/article/biden-blinken-state-depar...
Israelis (including those who use this platform to repeat the same warmed-over genocide denials for the umpteenth time) know it's happening too. That's why the argument is usually 50% "it's not happening" and 50% "but they deserve it".
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Perhaps you could spell out what you're talking about?
read the 1988 Hamas charter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Hamas_charter
>The charter defines the struggle to be against the Jews and calls for the eventual creation of an Islamic Palestinian state in all of former Mandatory Palestine, and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel.
Okay, I read the wiki. My question is simple: why does Israel have the Right to "reclaim its historical territory," but the Muslim Brotherhood does NOT?!
If I were to continue this line of questioning, next would be: why does ANY religion have ANY right to wholely-rule ANY territory?
They're being pushed by world powers to provide aid for civilians that have been caught up in a war zone and who are being systematically starved to death, according to a lot of reputable organizations including Israeli human rights organizations.
If you want to discuss aid to the regime then maybe we can start with the suitcases of money Bibi's government sent Hamas for years because they thought a more extreme group would be easier to control.
For those out of the loop the actions of the Israeli gov. are not some fringe overreaction. This is what the people want. by their own admission, 48% of Israeli Jews want Palestinians to be ethnically cleansed which would constitute a genocidal act, while 79% believe they should get preferential treatment over Arabs. [0]
Both Israeli Arabs & Palestinian Arabs. This is not some, 'oh no! it just happened.' Everyone who has actually spent time studying this conflict, the state of Israel has a policy of systematic rape, torture, mass incarceration, murder, and dehumanization of Palestinians at an industrial scale that's been in place for decades now.
They're just going mask-off in a way Western audiences can't pretend not to know about it any longer.
Israelis and their Western supporters try to make out their actions as that of fringe far-right loonies like Smotrich, etc. Nope. Systematic rape, torture, murder, of non-Jews has been their policy for decades now. You're just finally learning about it after so long. The ultra-orthodox don't make up a plurality of the population and used to not serve in the military until recently. So, if their abominable ideology is state policy, it's because Israelis are okay with it.
[0]: https://www.timesofisrael.com/plurality-of-jewish-israelis-w...
Their hubris will be their own downfall.
>Israel has denied the allegations. [from linked CNN article]
People are waking up.
> Systematic rape, torture, murder, of non-Jews has been their policy for decades now.
I'd like some evidence for each of these three. I'm aware of the policy of interrogation which might count as "a policy of systematic torture". Can you do systematic rape and murder?
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> Jewish sources like Jewish Chronicle, ADL and JVL are largely banned, as well as all the major conservative news sources.
Source?
My personal rule-of-thumb is that an international news source is likely to be fairly reliable so long as it's not reporting on something that they have a conflict of interest in (eg home country/demographic).
The source ratings (for sources that have been discussed substantially) are on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...
> Most editors seem to agree that Al Jazeera English and especially Al Jazeera Arabic are biased sources on the Arab–Israeli conflict and on topics for which the Qatari government has a conflict of interest.
> Al Jazeera's live blogs should be treated with caution, per the policy on news blogs.
The note about bias does nothing to prevent it from being used. Wikipedia doesn't really have any policy of avoiding biased sources; see WP:BIASED.
The live blog warning is mostly ignored in practice, even though it reflects a broader policy (WP:NEWSBLOG). Al Jazeera's live blog alone is probably used more than any other source in the topic area.
> The note about bias does nothing to prevent it from being used.
If you actually edit in this topic area, you should know that its bias comes up all the time. Almost every talk page on I/P is littered with endless debate over whether Al Jazeera covered this or that accurately.
Not really. There's no particular policy basis for objecting to biased sources, so this only comes up when
- An occasional newcomer tries to raise concerns, before being informed that it's pointless because Al Jazeera has been deemed reliable.
- Occasionally other reliable sources contradict Al Jazeera.
Both are quite rare compared to the vast number of Al Jazeera references.
And AlJazeera is not even biased enough sometimes. They were suspended from operating in Gaza for a while by Gazans/PA.
How would you define Zionism?
I would say most definitions are fine. Here's the Oxford Languages one for example,
> a movement for (originally) the re-establishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel
Every "real" encyclopedia likewise has a reasonable definition without overt bias. Wikipedia is really the exception here.
> From a very particular pool of sources. Jewish sources like Jewish Chronicle, ADL and JVL are largely banned, as well as most of the major conservative news sources.
This is a misunderstanding of Wikipedia policy. In particular the ADL is still considered a reliable source outside of a few narrow circumstances.
Unreliable sources may still be cited as a reliable source of the source’s author’s opinion of a matter. So they are not, in any real sense, “banned.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources
> Meanwhile Al Jazeera has the highest status, and is the top source for most articles in the topic area. . .
This is incorrect. Wikipedia’s list of perennial sources contains the following disclaimer:
> Al Jazeera is a Qatari state-funded news organization and in the 2024 RfC there was consensus that it is generally reliable. Most editors seem to agree that Al Jazeera English and especially Al Jazeera Arabic are biased sources on the Arab–Israeli conflict and on topics for which the Qatari government has a conflict of interest.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/P...
> This is a misunderstanding of Wikipedia policy.
It's not a policy, it's a summary of past community discussions.
> In particular the ADL is still considered a reliable source outside of a few narrow circumstances.
They're not narrow at all, they're essentially the only areas that are relevant to the ADL. It's like "narrowly" banning CNN, but only for news.
Al-Manar (Hezbollah's propaganda arm) has a similar carve-out for example. It doesn't really matter; even deprecated sources are generally useful for basic uncontroversial information about themselves and what not.
> This is incorrect. Wikipedia’s list of perennial sources contains the following disclaimer:
Which part do you think is incorrect? If it's the RSP part, GREL is indeed the highest status, and the note about bias is inconsequential since there's no particular policy basis for avoiding biased sources (see WP:BIASED).
There is an abundance of allegations and testimony from not exactly neutral sources and a few isolated cases that have actual evidence going for them - which have been investigated and prosecuted by authorities.
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"Both the definition and charge of ethnic cleansing is often disputed, with some researchers including and others excluding coercive assimilation or mass killings as a means of depopulating an area of a particular group, or calling it a euphemism for genocide or cultural genocide."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing
Notice the lack of "moving" in your quote.
I'm not saying the moving isn't wrong, but it's a LONG way from gas chambers.
"moving people" is a horrific way to obscure what is happening in Gaza today
That's not what anyone said. I said that moving people is not genocide. Killing people is genocide. And sometimes one happens (like when all muslim states in the entire world moved out the jews into Israel) and that's not a genocide, and sometimes the other happens (when the nazis killed the jews) and that IS genocide.
Trying to put an equivalence between those two things is idiotic. And if you DO that, then the arab world perpetrated a massive "genocide" in 1948, much bigger than what the Nazis did. See how crazy that is? Obviously that's not what happened!
-cide is a latin suffix that quite simply means "kill". Trying to call ethnic cleansing genocide is like calling divorce mariticide or moving away from home patricide.
The correct latin term would be something like "expulsio gentium".
Raphael Lemkin, the guy who first coined the term "genocide", considered "cultural genocide" (the killing of a culture if you will), a central component of genocide.
Also, I don't know if you've noticed, but people generally resist being ethnic cleansed, and so the perpetrators have to kill a lot of them.
Ok? And moving them will kill their culture magically? Come on.
Gazans are not being expelled though.
Netanyahu's equivalent of the Nazi Madagascar Plan fell through, just like the Madagascar Plan did.
His Plan B was the same as the Nazi Plan B: Genocide.
Historically, forced mass migrations are usually both a mechanism and an ideological cover for genocide. People like you are an integral part of these genocides by legitimizing their actions with statements like "moving people is not genocide".
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> [David Attenborough voice]
Please don't comment like this on HN. We all know it's an awful situation. It needs to be discussed with sincerity, even if we find other people's opinions about it to be abhorrent. It's unbecoming to use tropes like this to sneer at other people's positions.
You can make a good argument that a state forcefully resettling ethnicities is a form of genocide (the Nazis did that, too, e.g. with german speaking northern Italian minorities).
But comparing that with the holocaust is just disrespectful hyperbole.
Holocaust had 6M jewish victims[1] (depending how you count). Current confirmed gaza death count is -as yet- ~65K [2], with projected ~600K at risk by year's end [3][4][5]. The original population of gaza was ~2M [6] which sets the upper bound to the crisis. (If you look at it as a % of population, it's quite a large number already.)
Of course, one can argue that if the allies had been able to intervene sooner, the holocaust would have been less severe. Obviously we'd like to demonstrate some lessons learned here.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victims_of_Nazi_Germany
[2] https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-updat...
[3] https://www.who.int/news/item/22-08-2025-famine-confirmed-fo...
[4] https://civil-protection-humanitarian-aid.ec.europa.eu/syste...
[5] https://www.un.org/unispal/document/ipc-alert-un-agencies-wa...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip
A huge part of the Holocaust was the forced relocation of Jewish people* to concentration camps, which would have been (rightly) remembered as an inexcusable horror even if the killings in said camps hadn't been as extensive and inhuman.
* and Roma, and Armenians, and others - but that's less salient here.
So the arab expulsion of the jews in 1948 was a genocide?
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> [Palestinians] will raid and murder, rape and destroy
> those savages
Wtf? I already responded to a later comment of yours here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45454043, but this rhetoric is unacceptable on HN and if you continue to post like this we will ban you—the same way we ban accounts that post like this about other groups.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
My parent comment said :"the state of Israel has a policy of systematic rape, torture, mass incarceration, murder, and dehumanization of Palestinians at an industrial scale that's been in place for decades now."
How is that allowed while what I said isn't? My parent comment literally says the same thing. Your moderation is one sided. I didn't say anything that wasn't claimed by the other side.
I see far worse slurs about Israel and Jews here which remain unmoderated. And you won't even let me attack them back.
There's a big difference between making such a statement about a government vs. about an entire population. That ought to be obvious.
> I see far worse slurs about Israel and Jews here which remain unmoderated
There are many comments criticizing Israel (and many defending Israel), but comments slurring Jewish people in general are another matter and we crack down just as hard on those (see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45377645).
We don't see every post on HN, but I don't believe there are many such comments going unmoderated, because readers are usually pretty quick to point them out to us. If you see a comment that should have been moderated but hasn't been (and certainly if you see one that is slurring an entire population), you can help by flagging it and emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.
Also, the outright antisemitic comments I see are mostly by a small number of serial trolls, by which I mean troll accounts in a sequence n, n+1, n+2, ... where they create n+k+1 after we ban n+k. That tells me that these are mostly, if not entirely, fringe participants.
Edit: as a spot check, I just skimmed through all (live) comments from the last week that contain the word 'Jews'. I didn't see any slurs in there, and most seem to be from people defending Israel, arguing against antisemitism and so on.
Not every antisemitic comment is going to contain the word 'Jews'; the art of being antisemitic without such overt references is a long-honed one that few are aware the totality of. Unfortunately, today is also the one day of the year that the already relatively few people best equipped to identify and flag antisemitism are mostly offline.
Yes of course, and we warn/ban accounts that do that too:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45266839 (Sept 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44738555 (July 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44362828 (June 2025)
Governments are hierarchical, and they can (and should) be held responsible for their actions. The population of Palestine, taken as a whole, is not. If you had said "the Hamas state is savage and murderous" that wouldn't have bothered me very much, but instead you generalized each individual Palestinian as a savage. I think @dang's moderation makes perfect sense here.
I was gonna argue with the parent comment but instead here you are doing your best to prove their point. In your mind there’s one Palestinian person, multiplied by a couple million, and you hate that person. It’s the same as any racism.
> Gaza was given to the Palestinians for free in 2005.
That doesn't mean anything. Israel was illegally occupying Gaza before 2005, and has been illegally blockading it since.
And every single year for the past 50 years or more, Israel has murdered more Palestinians than the Palestinians have murdered Israelis - most years, at least 2 dead Palestinians for every dead Israeli. Not to mention, Netanyahu has been one of the biggest international supporters of Hamas in the world, and he has admitted to as much repeatedly: the PLA having control of Gaza would have risked a real two state solution, and he will never allow that to happen.
And Egypt was occupying it before Israel, and the British and the Ottomans and the Romans.
The Ottomans had conquered the whole of Palestine, including Gaza, and had been ruling it for some few hundred years at the time their empire crumbled and the British Empire acquired it from them. The vast majority of the population, both Arabic and Jewish, and either Muslim and Jewish and Christian, were regular citizens of the Ottoman Empire. It was not being "occupied" by the Ottomans, any more than Turkey is "occupying" Istanbul today.
Then, the majority of this population, and the vast majority of the Arabic parts of this population, were displaced to make room for the novel state of Israel, most of the population of which were Europeans and Americans of Jewish descent. They came in and took the homes of the Palestinians living today in Gaza and the West Bank, or their parents or grandparents. And then they have occupied the lands where these Palestinians had been driven away to, with direct military presence for a long time, and then with "just" a blockade and controlled movement.
The Jewish and Arabic population became the state of Israel. Where do you think the millions of Israeli Arabs came from?
And that justifies things for you some how? If someone was beating by someone else before, then it's ok to beat them now?
It points out the hypocrisy. Israel was bad for occupying Gaza decades ago, but Egypt was fine for occupying Gaza decades ago.
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Oh yes, the people killing tens of thousands of children are the ones who value human life.
You sound almost exactly like Trump talking about Mexicans. When you dismiss an entire people as murderers, rapists, and savages, something's gone wrong with how you understand the world.
I'm sure that many many Palestinians hate Jews, but that shouldn't be a surprise when Palestinians have been brutally oppressed for a century for the sake of creating a Jewish state. This is the natural consequence of oppression, and the way to end that hatred is to end the oppression.
Lastly, you say "Gaza was given to the Palestinians for free", but neglect to mention how Israel came to control Gaza. Is it really that generous to return a small piece of the land that was stolen?
As if rolling out the tanks, building a wall and using the population for low skill low wage workers is giving away anything. Gaza is under a blockade since 2006.
As opposed to what Israel has been doing for 80 years?
Israel was formed by murdering Palestinians and taking over their land, driven by religious lunacy and 3000 year old fairy tales as justification.
This genocide reveals how much Israel truly controls the US government and other Western countries. I am beyond appalled this is allowed to happen. The last couple of months also showed that international rules and agreements don't mean anything - they are in fact only there to please the Western countries, until they throw it in the bin when it is convenient to them.
Anyone who isn't from the West, hell even Southern Europeans, are taking note. There is no rights and freedoms for us. All this for to support a bully of a fundamentalist state and a bunch of theocratic kingdoms/emirates.
I've got to wonder if Israel is one the pillars propping up Trump along with China and Russia. It would make perfect sense with its relation to the Epstein files (in which Trump is likely mentioned every other paragraph).
I'm not saying the Democrats have done great by Gaza, but I feel like the point we're at - irrefutable genocide through starvation - there would at least be significant pressure to stop attacking humanitarian convoys.
All I can really say about the current situation is that it would be a great time for the EU to step up, demonstrate some international leadership, and forcibly deliver aid under the guard of military force.
That simply will never happen. As outspoken as EU countries are, they are not inclined to act beyond the diplomatic equivalent of a strongly worded email. It's a fantasy to think that any single EU nation would risk a shooting war with Israel by trying to deliver aid without permission, and they absolutely could never reach a consensus on doing it as a unit.
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> genocide reveals how much Israel truly controls the US government and other Western countries
Nonsense. Israel has influence because a lot of American voters make Israel one of their ride-or-die issues. If that support shifts, the influence does, too.
> last couple of months also showed that international rules and agreements don't mean anything
Did you miss Russia invading Ukraine, America invading Iraq and China annexing Tibet? Or the ongoing genocides in Burma, Sudan and recently-concluded one in Ethiopia? (I think.)
Nothing has opened my eyes more to how much mainstream media is distorting reality to fit their narrative, than the genocide Israel is committing in Gaza.
You can sit with literal video of an incident, and then see media headlines tell a completely different story than what actually happened.
Social media in our generation has been a weird amplifier of both misinformation as well as truth from the ground that contradicts misinformation in the media.
My selection of topics I trust media to report on has greatly narrowed down to ones that are completely apolitical, which is sad (they’ve always been biased, but at least I felt you could tell that they were biased and read through it).
If any other country in the world was doing what Israel is doing, there would be international sanctions against them and talk of military intervention (if they had oil or natural resources to grab). The fact that Israel can get away with this is almost entirely due to the US' "unwavering" support for political (a strategic military ally in the Middle East) and religious (Evangelicals and the "Promised Land") reasons.
As an American, I'm disgusted that my tax dollars are actively supporting genocide.
And let's not fall into the trap of telling ourselves that this only started in response to Oct 7. The Palestinians have been severely oppressed for _decades_ -- which is why it's almost impossible to root out something like Hamas, because the next generation of boys will be more than willing to sacrifice themselves to break and/or avenge the oppression of their families when they get old enough to carry a gun.
The Trump peace plan calls for a resumption of aid contingent on the Palestinians accepting the deal.
Please understand that this is a war crime. You can not use starvation of civilians as a weapon or as leverage against combatants.
> this is a war crime. You can not use starvation of civilians as a weapon or as leverage against combatants
America withholding its own aid is not a war crime.
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How do you mean target? They don't seem to target the people. Seems like they make whatever calories hard to get.
You're posting the same comment, each time linking to a source on WWII, but never linking to evidence of Israeli's policy or confirmation from any third-party attesting to it.
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1500 calories per day is not, by any measure we now know of, an adequate number of calories. The fact that 80 years ago we thought it was does not have any moral value in discussions about Israel's actions today.
A third-party source attesting to the validity of Israel's claims regarding the nearly the 4400-calories-per-person-per-day they're letting into Gaza would at least be something in a discussion of their actions.
But yes, that source would obviously be viewed somewhat skeptically given the level of starvation we see in Gaza.
The Red Cross targets 1500 calories minimum as well within the USA:
https://emergency.lacity.gov/sites/g/files/wph1791/files/202...
The Red Cross does not target 1500 calories minimum. They allow for 1500 as an absolute minimum. In the event of a disaster.
From your own link:
"Sites should plan their menus based on available foods and must provide a minimum of 1,500 calories per person, per day. The Red Cross suggests 2,000 to 2,500 calories per person, per day."
2,000 to 2,500 calories per day.
Which Israel is more than capable of allowing into Gaza.
Israel targets 3200 a day.
From my link, as you quoted, the Red Cross lists 1500 as the floor. Just like I stated. It's considered bad but the acceptable floor for disasters in the USA. 1500. Not great, but the floor to ensure is being met.
I see all this talk and am trying to understand what is going on. The only actual numbers I have seen are the CNN 1400 in one area at one point in time, so I tried to compare that to what could happen in the USA. My quest to understand started last week when people said Israel needed to behave like the USA in occupied Germany, that is the norm to be followed. When I looked up the numbers and pointed out Israel was, people said 'no, not like that'.
Israel targets 3200, above Allied occupied Germany. In some areas for some lengths of time actual consumption dropped to 1400, bellow but not that far from the Red Cross published floor in emergencies.
Looking at other war areas, Kenya has 800,000 war refugees that the UN just cut down to 552 calories a day, even though the UN claims they have enough food on hand to feed Gaza's 2 million, but aren't allowed to give out. The UN stated they have the food (but only for Gaza), and provide much less food in Kenya than Israel in Gaza (even though the UN says they have food for 2 million).
It's all horrific and awful that the government of Gaza chose to initiate a hot war, and that the people in Gaza are suffering because of their governments killing of over 1000, injuring/maining/raping/torturing of thousands more, and kidnapping of so many (including the apparently 6 year old girl that Gaza's government broadcast video to the internet of themselves kidnapping from her home). But from the numbers I can find it's not that far outside of norms, especially for an active armed conflict.
Bold of CNN to so openly report facts that the current administration will take offense at. I wonder what retaliation they will face.
I generally use conversations on this topic as a litmus test for a group or community. I’m pretty disappointed by all the whatabout-ism and false equivalence.
I expected better from HN.
We can study why this happened later. The genocide needs to stop now.
The first question that should be asked is this: if there is indeed so much suffering in Gaza, why is no one pressuring Hamas to end the war by accepting Donald Trump’s peace plan? The war could have been over by now if Hamas had surrendered, yet this point is rarely mentioned. Why is that?
Instead, many—including major Western media outlets—repeat Hamas’ narrative: that Israel is responsible for the killing (while Hamas has been accused of using human shields [0]) and that Israel prevents the UN from distributing aid (even though the UN is said to be heavily infiltrated by Hamas [1], and the GHF was established to restrict Hamas’ access to food supplies and prevent profiteering through resale [2]).
Furthermore, if starvation in Gaza is a pressing reality, why does the UN refuse to distribute food directly [4]? In fact, the claim that there is a famine going on just doesn't match the numbers [5], and UN-linked IPC finds no mortality data to prove famine is present, despite their very intention of proving so [6], and media was found to misrepresent the situation on the ground [7]
Finally, little attention is given to Egypt’s role in maintaining the blockade of Gaza, which also contributes to "famine". Egypt does not allow Gazans—who are described by some as facing genocide—to cross its border to escape [3]. It often seems as though those who argue that starvation is being deliberately inflicted prefer to keep the situation unchanged, only to place the blame on Israel.
0: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/11/01/hamas-officials-admi...
1: https://govextra.gov.il/unrwa/unrwa/
2: https://www.aipac.org/resources/gaza-aid
3: https://theconversation.com/why-egypt-refuses-to-open-its-bo...
4: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/07/24/un-refuses-to-cooper...
5: https://x.com/Aizenberg55/status/1966495888051761582
6: https://www.timesofisrael.com/key-food-security-org-finds-no...
7: https://honestreporting.com/famine-standard-was-lowered-for-...
Hamas is dire, hencw the increased media attention lately, hopefully it'll all end soon, regular people have suffered enough
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> not a single Jew has been allowed to live in Gaza for 20 years, per Hamas
Israeli law in the past 20 years says Israelis can not live in Gaza. Something you neglected to mention.
Because it took releasing thousands of terrorists to return one jew from Gaza. If he were to survive long enough for something to be released that is.
Not in a thousand years I would have expected CNN to start reporting on this.
Hope they got some good lines responding to accusations on how every single one of them, including the janitors at the CNN Center in Atlanta are antisemitic.
-"But we're not!" -"Aha, that's exactly what they always say, clearly a sign of guilt!" /s
Too little too late in order to save face now that the tide of public opinion has shifted
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You can be the most efficient without being the one causing the most death.
Maybe Israel is scoring well in terms of amount of starvation caused per hour of genocidal effort?
Doubtful, they have been spending tremendous efforts and the population of Gaza has barely bulged downwards. If this is genocide, they are shitty at it.
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> they could have leveled most of Gaza in the first week following the terrorism of October 7.
How exactly would we know the difference from this hypothetical and reality? 92% of the livable housing in Gaza was demolished or damaged following October 7th: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1616491/gaza-war-infrast...
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Where do you see antisemitism?
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Only Hamas could do that but this article is pointing out that all of Gaza (not just Hamas members) are being starved.
In fact, Hamas are almost certainly not being starved at all. They have the guns, and they will make sure they get food. They have shown again and again they are quite willing to shoot Palestinian civilians for just being slightly inconvenient to them. They certainly won't mind shooting some for food.
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Sure, and equally, stop the collective punishment/ethnic cleansing of innocent people.
What is a boycott, if not collective punishment?
A boycott is people choosing where to spend their money (exercising their right of free association). That's not even in the same universe as punishing innocent people by murdering and starving them.
Israel is doing neither, as far as I am concerned. Israel allowed in more than the required amount of food. Collateral damage within the context of war is not murder. Internal food distribution difficulties are not systematic starvation. If truly there was a famine, propagandists would not need to use photos of cancer patients (and similar) as false evidence for starvation.
Fair enough, what are sanctions, if not collective punishment? There is a concentrated campaign to isolate the entire country and its citizens, from the same type of people that say Hamas does not represent Palestinians. Either there is a double standard here, or collective punishment is fair game. Choose one.
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I agree, Israel should release the thousands of hostages its detained for decades and surrender to put an end to its judeo-supremacist policies
How are they Judeo-supremacist? Israel peacefully lets Islamic Arabs to live and practice their life - a whole 20% of their population. On the other hand, Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, literally talks about their Islamic supremacist goals in their charter. It’s not even something they’re afraid of admitting or think needs to be hidden.
The article is about famine and the system used to create it. Not hostages.
No Hamas in West Bank but everyday invaders come and push natives from their homes.
Plenty of hamas in west bank. It kicked ass of pa this year. As example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024%E2%80%932025_Palestinia...
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Probably because Israel violated the ceasefire earlier this year (that was a sham from the beginning) that lasted from January to March. The first phase of the ceasefire saw an exchange of hostages, but then the Israelis refused to move on to the second phase and broke the ceasefire by bombing Gaza in the middle of the night, killing over 400 Palestinians in one day, including over 200 children. [0]
Not to mention the fact that Israel just killed a top Hamas negotiator in Doha, Qatar only a few weeks ago. [1] How can you negotiate with someone who just killed your negotiator?
[0] https://apnews.com/live/latest-updates-israel-launches-new-w...
[1] https://apnews.com/article/qatar-explosion-doha-e319dd51b170...
> Probably because Israel violated the ceasefire earlier this year (that was a sham from the beginning) that lasted from January to March. The first phase of the ceasefire saw an exchange of hostages, but then the Israelis refused to move on to the second phase and broke the ceasefire by bombing Gaza in the middle of the night, killing over 400 Palestinians in one day, including over 200 children.
Israel has been rather consistent that a permanent ceasefire will only happen when Hamas effectively surrenders and gives up power. Hamas had also refused to continue releasing hostages which effectively ended the ceasefire(as the terms of the second phase were never finalized).
> Not to mention the fact that Israel just killed a top Hamas negotiator in Doha, Qatar only a few weeks ago. [1] How can you negotiate with someone who just killed your negotiator?
I suppose when attempting to negotiate the surrender of Hamas if the negotiators refuse to surrender after having clearly lost a war they started then eliminating the current negotiators may result in their replacements being more likely to capitulate. That seemed to work out with Hezbollah at least.
>I suppose when attempting to negotiate the surrender of Hamas if the negotiators refuse to surrender after having clearly lost a war they started then eliminating the current negotiators may result in their replacements being more likely to capitulate.
That's insane and not how you negotiate.
> That's insane not how you negotiate
So how exactly do you negotiate with genocidal terrorists that refuse to surrender despite having clearly lost a war? There certainly isn't an easy solution here.
> that refuse to surrender
The point is that surrender is something that has to be negociated.
> how exactly
By organizing boring meetings with negociators and never killing them.
And from a guerrila warfare point of view, I disagree that they "clearly lost the war".
> The point is that surrender is something that has to be negociated.
It actually doesn't have to be negotiated, one side can simply make a demand for surrender with their terms and then apply military pressure until capitulation. This is largely what happened with Germany/Japan in WW2.
> By organizing boring meetings with negociators and never killing them.
If it's clear the current negotiators/leaders will never surrender then there is arguably no benefit in keeping those particular negotiators/leaders alive. Once an organizations leadership tree is wiped out a few levels deep there's a decent chance you will get negotiators/leaders that will eventually capitulate to the demands(i.e. like what happened with Hezbollah).
If Israel believes they are genocidal terrorists that won't surrender why are they even negotiating?
You either negotiate or you attack the people you want to negotiate with. Not both
> If Israel believes they are genocidal terrorists that won't surrender why are they even negotiating?
One reason would be to try and get back as many hostages as possible, regardless of whether or not the terrorists surrender.
> You either negotiate or you attack the people you want to negotiate with. Not both
One can still attack an enemy while negotiating with them, I see no reason one would have to pick one option over the other.
It's not at all uncommon to negotiate with ones enemies while you attack them(including trying to kill them). If Israel explicitly gave the enemy representatives they were negotiating with diplomatic immunity then one might have a better argument against attacking those with immunity, but that was AFAIU not the case here.
Well Israel's current solution is to impose famine and genocide on the civilian population. This certainly isn't the right solution here.
> Well Israel's current solution is to impose famine and genocide on the civilian population.
There is no credible evidence that there is famine or genocide occurring in Gaza. Obviously the situation in Gaza is bad but that's to be expected for a war.
This thread is literally about an article in which it is outlined that there is indeed a famine in Gaza.
> This thread is literally about an article in which it is outlined that there is indeed a famine in Gaza.
It's not credible however[0]. There have been many claims without appropriate evidence for a while[1] and those involved tend to be antisemitic individuals interested only in pushing a specific narrative regardless of the facts on the ground.
[0] https://unwatch.org/hillel-neuer-on-sky-news-fabricated-u-n-...
[1] https://unwatch.org/legal-analysis-of-un-food-rapporteur-mic...
As opposed to the first source you posted which is the text of a sky news interview with Hillel Neuer
From wiki "Neuer was selected as one of the "top 100 most influential Jewish people in the world" by Israeli newspaper Maariv,[9] and by the Algemeiner Journal in 2017. He is an outspoken defender of Israel[10][11] and critic of the UN's human rights councils' actions.[12]"
So he's not pushing a pro-Israel view? How can you dismiss one source with claims of bias by providing a source that is also bias but of the opposing view?
I want to point out that I don't think sources should be ignored merely due to bias. You do though so I await your defense
> So he's not pushing a pro-Israel view?
I don't think I ever claimed his view was neutral. Groups on both sides putting out analysis papers will likely have some degree of bias.
> How can you dismiss one source with claims of bias by providing a source that is also bias but of the opposing view?
I mostly consider them unreliable because they have a history of putting out reports that push a narrative that simply isn't in line with reality and tend to have major methodological issues. They also have a history of putting out wildly inaccurate future projections.
> I want to point out that I don't think sources should be ignored merely due to bias. You do though so I await your defense
There's two aspects, one is the history of methodologically problematic analysis put out by these organization like those involved in the IPC report along with other UN organizations.
The other is that individuals involved in the reports tend to hold extremist viewpoints that point to a clear motivation for pushing narratives regardless of the reality on the ground.
UN officials in particular have a rather common habit of straight up lying about facts(and even what their own UN reports say in regards to starvation risk) and when caught they simply try and justify their lies[0] because those lies supposedly help their cause.
The most detailed responses/rebuttals to these IPC reports would generally be reports that COGAT is involved in producing[1][2]. While COGAT is arguably biased they do put out sufficient data/references for one to validate their analysis, groups like UN Watch do likely source from these reports. Keep in mind there's not many organizations that have access to data on the ground, COGAT likely has the most complete view while humanitarian organizations likely only have data specific to their own operations. By cherry picking data(often non-public data), ignoring counterfactual data and largely excluding COGAT data the IPC report authors can paint a false narrative more easily.
[0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-one-un-leaders-mistak...
[1] https://govextra.gov.il/media/orumgksl/politics-disguised-as...
[2] https://govextra.gov.il/media/sftjdsg2/cogat-humanitarian-ef...
>UN officials in particular have a rather common habit of straight up lying about facts
What's your evidence of this?
> What's your evidence of this?
There's plenty of examples[0] of this issue when it comes to UN officials.
[0] https://unwatch.org/francesca-albaneses-made-up-math-and-fal...
Claims of famine citing the UN/IPC are normally appeals to authority, whose convincingness depends on the credibility of the authority.
The UNWatch article isn't that - you can easy verify their points yourself. I.e. by IPC's own definition and Hamas' own casualty data, we're about three orders of magnitude short of meeting one of the requirements of a famine. IPC is just ignoring their own definition and declaring a famine anyway.
For other evidence of lies from UN officials, this one from the head of OCHA was rather blatant: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/debunked-un-off...
you said it was common and claimed it was UN officials. You only supplied one example. How can you make such a general claim?
Why would one UN official's reputation be affected by another? Especially if it's not common, which you haven't yet shown.
That wasn't me. I would say the question of how often UN officials lie is rather moot. If it follows from plain facts and basic math that the famine claim is false, we don't really need to argue about the credibility of those making the claims.
> How can you negotiate with someone who just killed your negotiator?
The only other option seems to be that Israel is about to destroy the rest of Gaza City, and take out the last major location that Hamas controls. So their options are to either accept the peace plan, or die.
I don't think Israel cares that much which choice Hamas choses. But yeah accepting this peace deal sounds like it it quite obviously the mostly likely option to help prevent all the buildings that are about to be destroyed and people who will be killed.
That wasn't a ceasefire violation. It was a six week ceasefire that had expired at the beginning of March
Practically everything you said is a lie.
> Israelis refused to move on to the second phase
No. They couldn't come to an agreement with Hamas.
> [Israel] broke the ceasefire
No. The ceasefire was over - it was time limited. The 2nd phase was supposed to be release of the rest of hostages. Hamas wouldn't release the hostages.
Let me take a guess. You are against Trump's plan as well and think Hamas should refuse it.
I can't believe I'm weighing in on a political thread, but the "deal" is very one sided. It offers very little for the Palestinians in terms of creating their own country and ability to self govern and gives Israel pretty much everything they want including some control over Palestine.
The current "peace deal" is terrible for the Palestinians. No other country would sign it either.
> the "deal" is very one sided
This is pretty much one should expect when one starts and loses a war, same as with the surrender of Nazi Germany and the Japanese at the end of WW2.
> The current "peace deal" is terrible for the Palestinians. No other country would sign it either.
It's a surrender agreement effectively, it's certainly not a peace deal amongst equal parties.
The indigenous people of Palestine did not start this conflict. They did not choose to be colonized by Jews fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe.
Yes they did. The jews were ready to accept the UN plan in 47. If the palestinains agreed the nakba would have been the end of this conflict. Instead the Palestinians chose governments that attacked israel. Even when Israel left gaza after the second intifada the gazans continued to launch rockets at tel aviv.
In context, of course pro Zionist leaders such as David Ben-Gurion were strongly in favour of a plan that saw a two-thirds majority Arab population pushed back into 43% of the territory, at the time such leaders were advocating acceptance of that plan as their ideal stepping stone to to future territorial expansion over all of Palestine.
Naturally the opposing Arab leaders were against a plan that saw a majority population receive less land, a plan that was being put forward by people openly stating it was a first step to total control of everything.
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_...
It's a shame a better deal could not have been struck for the benefit of all the people with a millennium plus history in the Levant, of all faiths.
> Naturally the opposing Arab leaders were against a plan that saw a majority population receive less land, a plan that was being put forward by people openly stating it was a first step to total control of everything.
Keep in mind that there is a state with a Palestinian majority population that came out of the division of the territory under the British Mandate system, that country of course is Jordan.
> It's a shame a better deal could not have been struck for the benefit of all the people with a millennium plus history in the Levant, of all faiths.
I think it's pretty clear that the Arab leaders at the time would never have accepted an independent Jewish state regardless of how fair the land division was.
Most people wouldn't accept a new country being made over their heads within their land. Jewish people had largely not been there since Roman times. That's a long, long time. Would you accept a country being founded in yours for, say, the Roma? I highly doubt it.
> Most people wouldn't accept a new country being made over their heads within their land. Jewish people had largely not been there since Roman times.
There were plenty of Jews living on the land by the time of Israeli independence, land which had largely been acquired by purchases from Arab landowners.
> Would you accept a country being founded in yours for, say, the Roma? I highly doubt it.
Palestine was never a country prior to Israeli independence so that's probably not a realistic comparison either.
Most of the land allocated to the jews was uninhabitable desert. You can count acreage but that doesnt really tell you anything about the value each side received. Im not going to act like the plan was a great deal for palestinians, but it was an choice they had and they spurned it in favor of a never ending war that they can not win.
> The indigenous people of Palestine did not start this conflict.
These arguments are not particularly helpful because you can easily make the case for either side being the indigenous people depending on how far you want to go back in history.
> They did not choose to be colonized by Jews fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe.
At this point the majority of Israelis were born in Israel and hold no other citizenship, so if you're suggesting the Jews all go back to Europe that isn't a realistic expectation, also many Jews were forced out of other middle east countries shortly after the founding of Israel. You can make these same arguments about many countries like the United States or Canada as well as being colonies that pushed out their indigenous people, but these arguments are not going to be particularly productive as nobody is expecting these countries to return all land to their indigenous populations either. By the way these Jews fleeing Eastern Europe prior to Israeli independence were largely purchasing the land from Arab landowners which is arguably better than them haven taken the land by force.
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Germany and Japan also got to keep their countries in the end. What guarantees do the Palestinians have that they'll get to keep Gaza and not have it be overrun by Israeli settlers (who are already wreaking havoc in the West Bank)?
> Germany and Japan also got to keep their countries in the end.
Germany was split in two for many years. Ultimately they were able to keep their countries because the occupation forces were successfully able to largely de-radicalize those countries.
> What guarantees do the Palestinians have that they'll get to keep Gaza and not have it be overrun by Israeli settlers (who are already wreaking havoc in the West Bank)?
I suppose that would depend on the surrender agreement and whatever agreements are subsequently put in place, but the settler issue differs significantly between Gaza and the West Bank for various reasons. For example the issue of religious sites is a much bigger issue in the West Bank, there has been little desire amongst Israelis to settle Gaza compared to the West Bank. The security issues in the West Bank tend to also be more problematic due to proximity to major Israeli cities.
> This is pretty much one should expect when one starts and loses a war, same as with the surrender of Nazi Germany and the Japanese at the end of WW2
You're being downvoted, but this is pretty much it. Gaza gets peace out of the deal. That's about all they have left to negotiate for.
the deal is not with palestinians but with hamas (unless you say that hamas represents palestinians). palestinians at large and palestinian authority support this deal.
Well the palestinians shouldnt have launched a terrorist attack if they wanted a good deal. Now their choices are bad deal or genocide
How could Palestine launch an attack if it wasn't a state? It was Hamas, right? It's a war against Hamas, not a grab for territory, right?
This is not how international law is supposed to work.
Nothing justifies a genocide.
International law is not real and anyone who ever thought it was has their head up their ass
Because it doesn't move the situation any closer to liberation of their people and their homeland.
They have been willing to constantly fight, and constantly keep getting killed by an enemy with overwhelming advantages, for their cause for two years now. Why would you assume that being able to escape with their lives is suddenly more important to them?
> They have been willing to constantly fight, and constantly keep getting killed by an enemy
Thats not true at all. Most people in palestine do not want to throw their lives away for nothing. Most of them want peace. Its only Hamas that would apparently prefer to get killed and have gaza be flattened instead of accepting peace.
The question I responded to was: "why is Hamas refusing a peace deal that ends all this and lets them escape with their lives?" Your responding that what I wrote is "not true at all" makes no sense in the context.
> They have been willing to constantly fight, and constantly keep getting killed by an enemy with overwhelming advantages, for their cause for two years now
Hamas has. If you put this deal to a plebescite in Gaza, do you really think they'd vote for more war?
Yes, Hamas (and all the other resistance factions that are active in Gaza). The question I responded to was: "why is Hamas refusing a peace deal that ends all this and lets them escape with their lives?" My answer was perfectly within the scope of the original question.
If you gave the jewish resistance in Nazi Germany the same deal, would you be just as suprised if they continued to fight for total freedom?
> If you gave the jewish resistance in Nazi Germany the same deal, would you be just as suprised if they continued to fight for total freedom?
Yes?
Just so I understand the hypothetical, the Jewish resistance in Nazi Germany (not really a singular thing, but I'll read this as the French Resistance and ghetto leaders) are offered amnesty, i.e. an end to the Holocaust, in exchange for literally anything? Why wouldn't they take it? It's literally a choice between life and death.
And again, it gives time for regrouping, clear thinking, rallying support. Turning it down seems to scream that the offer, in this hypothetical an end to the Holocaust, in our timeline a ceasefire, isn't actually that important. At that point, both sides are choosing to fight. European Jews didn't choose the Holocaust. I don't think Palestinians are choosing this war, but if they turned down a peace deal, they by definition are.
I mean, it moves the situation closer to not living in war and famine? Also the idea of amnesty to all Hamas members looks pretty generous to me - Nazis didn't enjoy the same privilege
> I mean, it moves the situation closer to not living in war and famine?
And then what? Look at the West Bank to see what happens when you don't resist the occupation and fully cooperate with the colonial state. You get slowly cleansed anyway.
> Also the idea of amnesty to all Hamas members looks pretty generous to me
Israel specializes in assassinations and has a history of relentlessly pursuing those it deems its enemies. If you were a Hamas fighter, your choice would be to either die fighting for a purpose, or be killed in exile without a purpose anymore.
Settler violence in the West Bank sure sucks, but in my opinion less than Hamas regime and war in Gaza, both for Israelis and Palestinians.
Valid point for the safety of Hamas members though, would be hard to come up with an arrangement that convinces them that they are going to be safe
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The Israelis (and their suppliers) are the ones with the power to end it. They have chosen this. There are actually other avenues you know. This is entirely on them.
Like, not at all? They tried to withdraw from Gaza, and preferred to educate their population on living under daily rocket attacks just to avoid waging a war in Gaza. It all dragged on with no hope for a permanent peace and culminated in the October massacre.
Hamas on the other hand does indeed have the power to end it all - if not with all their dreams and wishes being fulfilled - which is a pretty outrageous expectation for the losing party
Weird how you are commenting like Israel is some western democracy when they're run by Zionist extremists that have the goal of taking over the area.
They are not Western, but they are a democracy for sure. The extremist minority got into the government by democratic mechanisms - happens in Western democracies too from time to time
Tried to withdraw? Seems like they like things just how they are. (Well except for the part where they want the Palestinians to give up any claims to the land that was stolen from them and just evaporate.)
The result of Israel:
- subjugating Palestinians in a ghetto, controlling everything that goes into and out of Gaza - preventing Gazans from having their own power, airports, piers, and more, and - "putting them on a diet", and - propping up Hamas to have a plausible enemy to fight against in Gaza, and - occasionally "mowing the lawn" to kill hundreds (or thousands)
is the creation of anti-Israel hatred. Once that boils over, you get what happened, which is the murder and kidnapping of innocent people in Israel.
> Hamas on the other hand does indeed have the power to end it all - if not with all their dreams and wishes being fulfilled - which is a pretty outrageous expectation for the losing party
Maybe instead petition Netanyahu et al to stop committing a genocide? They can stop flattening Gaza and starving Gazans at any point. They hold all the cards.
They could stop the current stage of the war, sure. They couldn't achieve peace though - basically stopping the operation would mean reverting to pre Oct. 2023 state with Israel trying to improve their security (aka "blockade") so that it doesn't happen again. Given the recent advances in military practice I would imagine that would involve lots of drones flying over Gaza 24/7 and I can already hear what international organizations are saying about that.
Hamas on the other hand has the keys for the permanent peace. Not implying that the way current operation is waged is justified though.
Israel can become one state with democracy for all its residents. That's the real answer.
> I can already hear what international organizations are saying about that
What will they say? (And would they be wrong?) Imprisoning Palestinian refugees is definitely a human rights violation.
> Hamas on the other hand has the keys for the permanent peace
Not sure why everyone says Israel (the state with all the power in this relationship) is powerless. What do you propose Hamas do to ensure permanent peace?
>The Israelis (and their suppliers) are the ones with the power to end it
Israel cannot unilaterally end hostilities any more than Hamas can.
Peace requires two willing parties.
Israeli people need to remove Bibi the genocider and be willing to concede land and leave Palestine alone
Palestinians need to be willing to evict and eliminate Hamas, run the country in a non oppressive way, and leave Israel alone
Israel can end the genocide it is perpetrating, and then accept more death in a few years when Hamas feels like doing more marketing (which, fyi, is the point of their terrorism: Fundraising). Is that desirable or useful?
Please show me where Hamas has signaled in any way that they would leave Israel alone if Israel completely left Palestine alone. Right now neither side can even manage a token ceasefire. There's no trust, and there's no accountability.
The real question is this: How many dead people are either side willing to accept to work towards lasting peace?
Lasting peace, a solution to the Palestinian horror, requires people willing to give up legitimate grievances from the past. Are Palestinians willing to move on from half of their children starving to death? Lots of Israeli people were willing to protest their own government before October 7th to agitate for less Palestinian oppression. Hamas targeted some of those young adults for that.
> Israel cannot unilaterally end hostilities any more than Hamas can.
They absolutely can! For a moment consider the power differential in this assault. Do not equate Hamas' attacks with Israel's blockade, exploitation, starvation and war crimes of the entire Gazan population. The displaced Palestinians imprisoned in the Gaza ghetto don't have war planes, armed drones, and tanks, let alone nukes and billions and billions of aid from allies.
Also, consider Israel has a total blockade of Gaza. Nothing gets in or out without Israel's say so. And we haven't even talked about "the hostilities" of the expanding illegal occupation of the West Bank.
Israel can stop their genocide and starvation today. They can stop further occupying the West Bank today.
> Palestinians need to be willing to evict and eliminate Hamas, run the country in a non oppressive way, and leave Israel alone
Israel's flattening of Gaza has nothing to do with Hamas. You don't get to starve and murder everyone in Gaza because of Hamas. You don't get to commit genocide. (An intent stated many times by Israeli officials BTW)
> Please show me where Hamas has signaled in any way that they would leave Israel alone if Israel completely left Palestine alone.
Hamas existing or now is irrelevant to Israel starving everyone in Gaza and destroying every building, hospital, school, house, cemetery in it including all the farm land. This is rank inhumanity.
> Right now neither side can even manage a token ceasefire. There's no trust, and there's no accountability.
One side holds all the cards and it's not Hamas nor the civilians in Gaza. IF you want to talk about accountability, maybe the world should actually hold Israel responsible for its actions. Maybe we can get the Israelis to kick the genociders out of its government for a change? (Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben Gvir for starters)
> Are Palestinians willing to move on from half of their children starving to death?
Wait--The Palestinians are blockading themselves?
> Lots of Israeli people were willing to protest their own government before October 7th to agitate for less Palestinian oppression. Hamas targeted some of those young adults for that.
Polling consistently shows Israelis are in favor of what's happening in Gaza.
What do you mean? Trump's plan to end the war, Israel has accepted it. Now Palestinians will probably refuse it. Why refuse the end of the war and the "genocide"? It's like they demanded a country, but when the country was offered multiple times, they refused it because what they actually want is to destroy Israel and not build their own country.
Which offers?
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Rhodesia was "destroyed", and the outcome was for the better.
Apartheid South Africa was "destroyed", and the outcome was for the better.
French Algeria was "destroyed", and the outcome was for the better.
When Israel gets similarly "destroyed", and it is no longer a supremacist colonial state, and the people who remain are living with equal rights, it will be for the better. Everyone other than colonists and white supremacists understand this. If yoru country was colonized by outside invaders, you would understand anti-colonial struggle perfectly well.
Just out of curiosity, what does "destroyed" mean in Israel case? Is this a situation, that can potentially lead to Israel ruled by Hamas and Hamas having a nuke and army, that can easily reach Europe? How is that "better"? There is a reason why no one, except extremists (on both sides, both Greater Israel or whatever, or Greater Palatine) support one state solution.
Not a problem at all. South Africa's nukes were destroyed and/or handed over to USA prior to the dismantling of the state. The same can be done with Israel's nukes, and any other military gear that they wish to keep out of hands of the palestinian resistance.
> The same can be done with Israel's nukes
And what if they say no? And what if they are willing to use every last one of them if needed to prevent their destruction and there is absolutely no way to convince them otherwise, other than to not destroy them?
Then what? They have 100+ nuclear weapons. They can't all be shot down.
You are demonstrating one case of reality denial that props the Palestinian to keep fighting Israel from generation to another, even though they've never been in a worse situation.
There are many other proponents of the Palestinian struggle, that would hate for them to surrender or just go elsewhere, because they need them to keep fighting. I'll name some examples:
1. The Muslim clerics promising them Al Aqsa, who look at the Jews self-rule as an historical insult to a place that should have been "Dar al-Islam";
2. The different movements and people of interest that are implanting nostalgic longing across the 4th generation Palestinian diaspora to a place they never visited and to a country that never existed;
3. Those Arab rulers, like in Egypt, that don't want the "Palestinian Issue" (their words, not mine) to go away because it nibbles at Israel;
4. Those with interests of self preservation, like King Abdallah of Jordan, who rules over a Palestinian majority and fears the moment they try to realize their national aspirations in his kingdom instead of in Israel;
5. Those like Greta and other who look to pick up a cause, and of course lets not forget those who just hate Jews.
6. Lest we forget the billionaires Palestinian leaders, like Arafat and Haniyea who amassed huge fortunes and lived lavish lifestyles on the back of the "Palestinian struggle";
7. All of those functionaries in the UN and elsewhere who feed off this huge machine of handouts in the form of UNRWA, the Red Cross and all those agencies that funnel money and goods to Palestinians wherever they are, keeping them fed and content so they can avoid assimilating and building a real future for themselves, while teaching in their agency schools a curriculum of hate towards Jews and Israel.
8. The Iranian mullahs who need a cause to rally their people, to keep their thoughts away from being thirsty, poor and oppressed.
All of those people making grand plans for the demise of Israel, while Israel just keeps getting stronger. No, seriously; the Israeli GDP per capita has surpassed that of the UK.
What's common to all of those groups that I mentioned is that none of them care about what becomes of the average Palestinian. 10,000 dead, 60,000 dead, it's all worthwhile if Israel suffers.
Golda Meir wisely said, "Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us". As long as those powerful interest groups are interested in keeping the Palestinian struggle alive, there can never be peace; and destroying Israel is just a dangerous pipe dream that kept the Arab world poor and beaten for 80 years now.
What an interesting historical stretch to call Jews "invaders" in Israel, when the entire place is riddled with Jewish history and artefacts dating back thousands of years.
While Rhodesia and South Africa were colonial experiments by people with no prior connection to Africa, that's not the case with Israel. Since the onset of told history there were Jews in that area.
Yes, many thousands of years ago the land was populated by Jewish peoples. Then Romans sacked Jerusalem and kicked them all out. The Eastern Roman empire never reversed that ban. After the muslim conquest of Levant in about 630 AD, caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab lifted the Christian ban on Jews entering Jerusalem some time later during his reign. After a millenium of mixing and slow but gradual conversion to the dominant socio-cultural muslim group, we know that the Jewish population of Palestine at the time (1917) that the British government initiated the process of handing over Palestine to jews in return for Lord Rothschild's money that they needed to keep fighting WW1 [1], was only about 7%.
Subsequent immigration of mostly European jews into Palestine, resulted in about 30% jewish population by the time Western powers decided to declare an independent Jewish-dominated state of Israel on top of Palestine in 1947.
The vast majority of the current jewish population of Israel are absolutely foreign invaders and their second or third generation descendants.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
I can kind of accept South Africa as a success story, but Rhodesia?
> doesn't move the situation any closer to liberation of their people and their homeland.
From Hamas?
From the people killing them in places where Hamas has no control and building illegal settlements on their land.
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No. The Bible says nothing about a European secular nationalist movement called Zionism. Certainly nothing positive.
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The party refusing any kind of deal are Israel since their goal is annihilation of Palestinians. Hamas were ready from day one for a deal, their goal (contrary to israeli narrative of course) was to negotiate prisoner exchange for the 1000s of Palesitnian prisoners held by israel (including children). This is still their goal along with ceasefire and complete withdrawal from Gaza.
> The party refusing any kind of deal are Israel since their goal is annihilation of Palestinians
First, there is no such thing as a Palestinian - that’s a made up identity to falsely claim the region as their own. Second, there have been five two-state solution offers in the past, that Israel was ready to accept. Leaders on the other side refused. Third, Hamas is not accepting the current deal that is on the table, and is incredibly fair (given the lopsided hostage/prisoner release that favors Hamas). Fourth, Israel had already withdrawn from Gaza - that was the status quo when Hamas got elected and began a decades long campaign of terrorism - remember the literal thousands of rocket attacks on Israel? Fifth, if Israel’s goal is the “annihilation of Palestinians”, why are the 20% of Israel’s population that would identify as such doing so well? Clearly this isn’t their goal, but just misinformation.
> First, there is no such thing as a Palestinian
A quote from the Minutes of the Ninth Session of the League of Nations, 1922:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110628180414/http://domino.un....Haha. No. Hamas goal with October 7 was exactly this. To provoke an Israeli overreaction in order to derail the diplomatic recognition talks between Israel and the Saudis.
Hamas just underestimated how much it would actually cost. Or maybe they didn’t, who knows.
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Israel just tried to murder the negotiators in Qatar who were supposedly working towards a ceasefire.
Israel is the one opposing a ceasefire.
> the negotiators in Qatar who were supposedly working towards a ceasefire
Supposedly is the key word. Qatar has urged Hamas to accept Trump’s ceasefire terms publicly. But let’s not forget they welcomed and housed Hamas’s leaders, and funded them, for a long time prior to today. Qatar has a history of supporting other terror groups as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_and_state-sponsored_terr...
Israel is a terror group.
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> a peace deal that ends all this
Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir do not want this peace deal either. There is 0 chance it would be honored.
Netanyahu signed on. I am asking why Hamas won't accept it.
It amazes me how anyone can believe Netanyahu's theatrics at this point.
What is amazing is your ability to avoid the question.
That's not true, if you’re referring to the Trump plan, as he contradicted one of the main points upon return to Israel. He selectively backed some part of it, which is not really “signing” on the same plan that was offered to other parties.
Also, what value has Netanyahu’s word? I mean, after blowing up a truce unilaterally, after killing negotiators, after all the corruption reckoning that is coming to him if/when out of office...
I asked why Hamas won't accept it. You immediately divert and avoid answering.
It would make Hamas entirely useless, how could they accept it?
When Israel has broken all of the previous peace deals, you would have to be deeply idiotic to accept one brokered by Trump of all people.
Whenever they've tried to agree to any peace deals in the past, what ends up happening is they make concessions and then Netanyahu turns around and resumes the war anyway.
Cause they are islamists and have nothing against turning all of Gaza's population into "martyrs"?
Well, hows the "peace" in the West Bank, where there's no Hamas? Israel has proven in both the West Bank AND Gaza that they do not care whether you violently resist or you attempt to be peaceful. You WILL BE REMOVED from your land, dispossessed of everything you own, because growing the Israeli people is more important than your life, your rights, your anything.
Isn’t it true that some of the leadership doesn’t live in gaza at all?
Leadership of the political organisation, not all. However the military branch's leadership is/was in Gaza (like Yahya Sinwar and others who were killed)
Ah okay
Yes, that's who was bombed in Qatar.
They do some finances and politics but aren't involved in running Gaza or the military/militants.
Then it makes a lot of sense they might fear for their life less than the militants actually trapped in gaza
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_leaders_of_Hamas
Has there been a peace deal that ends any of this for long?
Hamas and Israel only had ceasefire deals from what I recall, not an actual peace deal.
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That is, technically, at odds with the truth, and morally, a transparent attempt at misinformation, please read the comments above you, or use “the internet”.
That is both technically and practically not "the truth". In fact, it's diametrically opposite of the truth.
There is a plan. The only reason for Hamas to not accept it is because they want to continue the war and prolong suffering.
Because Netanyahu is already saying he wouldn't comply with the deal that he's already agreed to, and isn't treating it as a peace deal.
> While Netanyahu agreed to the plan on Monday, he already appears to be pushing back on several of its terms.
> In a video posted on X, he insisted that the IDF would would be able to remain in parts of the territory and that Israel would 'forcibly resist' the establishment of a Palestinian state.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15156091/Hamas-mili...
Killing 736 Israeli civilians, 79 foreign nationals, and 379 Israeli military and security personnel, and kidnapping an additional 250 civilians is not, by any fathomable definition, genocide. It is a war crime for sure, but it's not genocide.
Edit: the post I was replying to was claiming Hamas/the Palestinians perpetrated a genocide in Israel. It has since been edited to be a completely different thing.
> Killing 736 Israeli civilians, 79 foreign nationals, and 379 Israeli military and security personnel, and kidnapping an additional 250 civilians is not, by any fathomable definition, genocide. It is a war crime for sure, but it's not genocide.
I think the evidence is quite overwhelming that Hamas had clear genocidal intent, even if they did not have the means to accomplish that intent.
Something I try to explain to people is that HAMAS tries to kill civilians, but fails at achieving their goals, meanwhile Israel tries to avoid killing civilians, but fails to achieve that goal.
One of these is better than the other.
Weirdly, many people disagree over which one that is.
> Israel tries to avoid killing civilians
Did you read the article this discussion is about?
How could one cause a famine accidentally, without intent to murder civilians?
> How could one cause a famine accidentally, without intent to murder civilians?
There isn't credible evidence of a famine in Gaza. I'm not saying things are great(it is a war zone after all), but they certainly haven't gotten that bad. Look at pictures of Palestinians on the street in Gaza and compare them to pictures of people in countries where there is actual famine, they look nothing alike.
Pull your head out of your ass and start actually listening.
Maybe so. Genocidal intent is not genocide, by any stretch of the imagination. The shooter at the UK synagogue would love to be able to kill every last Jewish person in the world. That doesn't mean he committed genocide when he killed those 2 people and injured 4 others.
I think you are mixing up genocide and the acts that are committed in furtherance of genocide.
Genocide is legally a set of acts committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.
So yes, what Hamas did on Oct 7 was not genocide, and similarly what Israel does on any given day in Gaza is not genocide. Rather they are both part of ongoing campaigns that arguably are genocide.
This is patent absurdity. What Hamas did on October 7th was an atrocity and a war crime. Many of the perpetrators, and of Hamas military leadership, would be very happy to be able to commit genocide against the people of Israel, and maybe even Jewish people in general.
However, there's no such thing as "unsuccessful genocide". Wanting to commit genocide and even terrorist bombings which target the population you'd like to exterminate are not genocide. To be committing the crime of genocide, you have to actually be in a position where you are actively displacing or exterminating a population.
Israel is committing genocide in Gaza since October 7th, because they are actively working towards a goal of eliminating the Palestinian population from the Gaza territory, or at least from the majority of it. They have already achieved a part of the genocide. They're not going all scorched earth and killing by the millions for the same reason they're not launching one of their illegal nukes in Gaza: they fear international reaction if the move is too sudden and overwhelming.
Hamas, by contrast, is not committing genocide in Israel, because it's not actively killing or starving or displacing any part of the population of Israel. I'm sure Hamas would love to do that, but it's a simple obvious fact that they're not succeeding. This is like claiming that Al Qaeda has an ongoing campaign of genocide of the West, because of 9/11 and some other attacks on, say, British troops.
Did you even read the question?
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Why would the answer to this question matter in any way?
It's not a war anymore, wars are between armies, not civilians.
You are honestly blaming the killing of 60,000+ Palestinians on Hamas for not accepting a Peace Deal (Israel didn't honor the last one months ago) only?
Assume it is a hostage situation, 2,000,000 Hostages. Israel has killed 60,000+ hostages trying to rescue hostages. Starvation also counts as killings to me, but I supposed "Starved" is less direct than "Shot"
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> They do not value their own lives [...] If the Palestinians valued their own lives
You can't post slurs like this to HN, no matter which people you have a problem with. No more of this, please, regardless of how divisive the topic and how justified the strong feelings about it are.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(Edit: yes, we moderate HN the same way regardless of which population is being slurred)
Edit 2: please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45454073 also. You went even further over the line in that case.
> Israel values the lives of their hostages above all else and will try to rescue them no matter the cost.
Then why did the Israelis violate the ceasefire in March earlier this year, after they refused to move on to the second phase which would've seen the release of more of the hostages? They broke the ceasefire by killing 400 Palestinians in one day, including over 200 children. [0] Conveniently Netanyahu used it as an excuse to get out of a court appearance for his corruption trial the next day.
[0] https://apnews.com/live/latest-updates-israel-launches-new-w...
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahus-testimony-in-graft-...
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> why is Hamas refusing a peace deal
They're psychotic idiots.
> lets them escape with their lives
On the other hand: how idiotic would they have to be to believe the Israelis will let them escape with their lives, given all the evidence to the contrary?
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That's the entire point of "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" definitions like intentional starvation. It doesn't matter what the justification is, they're not allowed by the international law and need to be punished as such in all cases unconditionally.
International law is not really a real thing. There is what America will allow and what it wont.
Nonsense, this is about the land. Israel wants Gaza and the West Bank, and who knows what more, and if they have to go genocidal to getting it, they will. So simple like that. Any other explanation is just obfuscation of this obvious fact.
Just so we are clear, Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor and we eventually nuked them killing 250k. Was that an international war crime? Al Qaeda attacked us and killed 3000 Americans and in response we killed about 200k Afghanis. Was that a war crime?
Israel has simply responded as any other country would to the attack.
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We see here an example of a useless idiot.
Point 1, nonsense: Allies fed Germans during WW2, the US fed Iraqis and Afghans during their wars and occupations. Point 2, nonsense: The Rafah crossing has been intermittently open, and Egypt has allowed aid in coordination with the UN. Israel has bombed the Rafah crossing multiple times since October 7th. Point 3, whataboutism. Sudan and Yemen are in the news in my circles weekly and there's care for all these horrible events.
My whole point is that there is a double standard applied to the only Jewish state vs all other countries, and I'm afraid you have given pretty weak rebuttal.
Point 1: nope, the Allies provided minimal food to the Germans during the conflict. They were too busy bombing the crap out of German cities, and they didn't bother on warning the civilians first, as Israel does in Gaza. The aid came AFTER the Nazis had unconditionally surrendered.
Point 2: nope again - there has been some food coming from Egypt, but they are not at war and nobody is marching in the streets demanding that they give more. And yes, Rafah was bombed, because there is a war taking place, with Hamas smuggling arms and food through the crossing.
Point 3: nope, the famines in Sudan and Yemen are real vs the fake famine in Gaza, and yet I see no street marches or HN posts on these tragedies. Maybe it's because it is Muslims killing and starving other Muslims. No Jews, No News.
If you actually cared about Gazans you would demand that Hamas release hostages and surrender - conflict ends immediately.
You move goalposts and mire yourself in falsehood.
Point 1 empirically wrong. Of course more food was provided after guns went silent.
Point 2 you sound like you agree with me and disagree with your original post.
Point 3. Reveals you as a propagandist.I've demanded that Hamas releases the hostage. From your rather uninformed framing it's clear you think there's a war on all of Gaza and not just Hamas. You just read an article on how Israel engineered a famine, correct? This reveals quite a lot about your relationship to truth and human suffering.
Well, unfortunately once again lots of opinions in your post but no evidence to back it up.It doesn't look like we will be learning anything new from you. Buh Bye.
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Mhh, what if we let enough food into Gaza so that everyone can survive?
Why would Hamas have any reason to steal food then?
Did you know that the population of Gaza has actually increased since the start of the conflict?
This talking point is false.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/01/middleeast/israel-populat...
Could you please link a source for that piece of information?
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This is not how discussions work on Hacker News, and it's also very impolite.
We care about facts, and evidence for arguments here.
The lows Israel is capable of is beyond normal comprehension.
Fixed that for you.
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> ripped fetuses out of pregnant women
This is insane brutality. A cursory search, I don't want to do more than that, tells me it's a misattribution of an older Mexican cartel murder.
Huh, interesting. Search with Grok seems to concur. While they did commit many atrocities against women and children, the ripping from belly events failed journalistic verification.
Insane brutality has happened on both sides. However the statistical numbers are different, before oct 7 and after, one side has been much more successful in its brutalization of the other.
Even if Israel actually were trying to recover the hostages, this wouldn't make sense. Over 20,000 dead Palestinian children and blocking aid does not recover any hostages. On the contrary, it only fuels the terror ideology ensuring Hamas is never eradicated. Israel is responsible for its own actions. It is not Hamas who is using starvation as a weapon of war, it is Israel.
You should look into the accounts of doctors who are not allowed to take in baby food. Israeli mobs destroying aid trucks. Israeli soldiers gloating about killing children.
While Hamas has done atrocities, this does not allow atrocities to be committed in response. Especially by an occupying power that controls every variable in the environment.
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It's incredible how two years of continuing pounding a small strip of land still leaves ample space for Hamas to operate. To the point that Israel international reputation is damaged because, check notes, they don't allow baby formula for babies that might otherwise die under those aforementioned bombs. Or being amputated.
Same with the latest "because Hamas": apparently Hamas, while being under the bombs with Israeli soldiers everywhere, was able to organise, finance and operate a flotilla of several boats to bring food that is otherwise blocked by Israel. Either the IDF has been bombing randomly in the last two years (to inflict the highest pain to civilian) or they are lying. Or both.
Do you think Israel is able to destroy Hamas' power in Gaza, but prefers to starve babies instead?
John Oliver has a very valid point https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_Bwix9IjOE
but this was already known: Netanyahu must cling to power, otherwise he will be screwed on so many levels, that's why he is sabotaging any agreement (and this has always been his modus operandi, see what he did back in the 90s).
It appears that Hamas struck a deeper blow on October 7th than we realized. Perhaps Israel's humanity was the primary target. It's like watching a family member destroy everything in a fit of grief and rage. Surely there is a wiser path.
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I didn't downvote you but I have no idea what you're trying to say.
It's a style of post common in twitter, where you obliquely refer to several things that you personally are familiar with and assume that the reader will understand because they should have basically entirely the same things on their mind that you do.
He's alluding to some prophetic beliefs shared by some jews and some evangelical christians that the temple of Jerusalem needs to be rebuilt again (on the place of the current al-Aqsa mosque). This same mosque is important in Islam because it is in the place where the prophet ascended to heaven.
If the temple is rebuilt (and some more things happen depending on the belief) some jews believe then that the messiah will come, and some evangelical christians believe instead that it starts the end of times, where good christians go to heaven.
> This same mosque is important in Islam because it is in the place where the prophet ascended to heaven.
Is it actually important in Islam? Or is it just a way for fundamentalists to make a claim to land that was historically Jewish? Islam was not invented until the 7th century. The temple ruins that the Al Aqsa mosque is built on is much older - by over a thousand years. I’ve also seen some Muslim scholars claim that the “real” Al-Aqsa is actually not on this site but elsewhere, and potentially lost over time.
>Is it actually important in Islam? Or is it just a way for fundamentalists to make a claim to land that was historically Jewish?
A little of both. Mohammed was sort of a weeb, but for jews. But the jews snubbed him, and he said he'd run off and start his own Abrahamic religion. So while it was just to make a claim to land, it was done right at the beginning, and nothing that any muslim alive today is guilty of... or even their great-great-grandparents, come to that.
>where you obliquely refer to several things that you personally are familiar with
It's sad, I suppose, that you are unfamiliar with the basics such that you can't much discuss (or even follow) current events.
The Third Temple refers to a predicted temple that jews believe they are destined to build some point in the future. Unfortunately, there is an Islamic mosque in the only spot in the world they can/will build it. This is in the West Bank. I don't know how anyone who grew up hearing about Israel/Palestine on the news for the last 20 years wouldn't at least get the vague idea of what I'm talking about. I'll try to have Cliff Notes published for each of my comments published a few weeks before from now on.
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> And why is there never any posted articles with criticism of Hamas?
There definitely is; discussion of the Yemen conflict has been constant on HN. The Israeli criticism of Hamas gets much less coverage because it's less globally important. The consequence of one side or the other "losing" has very little bearing on global affairs.
Many of the Israeli articles criticizing Hamas lack impartial corroboration, largely as a consequence of the urban warfare campaign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...
I mean "bad things" Hamas has done to their own? people ( Gaza people). Example - Hamas has killed people who criticise it ( or I should say thats whats been reported )
I don't think you read my last comment. Hundreds of embedded reporters living in Gaza have died, the only remaining perspective is the famously biased hasbara news, subject to the Israeli Military Censor unit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Censor
We can't take Israel's word for it, since the IDF controls their media. We don't have much independent reporting since Israel suppresses it. You can pretty easily read between the lines to figure out who's hiding what.
Hamas controls the reporters in Gaza too.... Its reported, Some have been killed by Hamas for not reporting as directed by Hamas.
Any reporters previously associated in any way with Hamas would be a extremely dangerous position.
Israel while having release some information on such journalists would NOT be releasing sensitive information that would give clues how information is collected and associated surveillance techniques. No doubt they and lots other militaries would have amazing tracking and interception capabilities. Israel would also be receiving information contributed by associated powers from other countries.
Also maybe Israel have recruited some Gaza people as spys?
> Its reported
By whom? The Israeli Military Censor?
Post links, cite your sources.
Gaza journalists would be in IDEAL position to be spys. Would always be roaming around hotspots, where the fighting is, so would have a increased much probability of being killed.
> Based on logical (to me) probabilities , both sides would be doing "Bad things”
This doesn’t make sense from a Bayesian perspective. Israel’s war capacity far outstrips anything Hamas can field by orders of magnitude in every metric.
Assigning the uninformative prior here requires a degree of ignorance that is not credible.
I mean "bad things" Hamas has done to their own? people ( Gaza people). Hamas has killed people who criticise it ( or I should say thats whats been reported ) Should also include many where Hamas built their war infrastructure un important (school and hospital ) infrastructure -causing these items to be valid military targets under military law
Must have cost $Billions to build (reported) 500 KM tunnels. Money that was supposed to be spent improving lives of ordinary Gaza people.
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> Really, Israel? Maybe Israel started the war and keeping hostages too?
um, yes? How many palestinian prisoners are they keeping without a trial?
> um, yes? How many palestinian prisoners are they keeping without a trial?
How many german prisoners were kept without trial during WWII?
Do you know the difference between prisoners and hostages?
Enlighten me, what’s the difference in this case? Why are Palestinian minors prisoners but Israelis hostages?
Are you stupid, blind or just evil?
Militants and terrorists being captured for specific acts of terrorism or from the battlefield (and being prosecuted according to law btw, also fed and get medical treatment) vs civilians forcefully and randomly captured by terrorists while being randomly slaughtered beaten and starved along the way.
> Are you stupid, blind or just evil?
Nothing like a good ad hominem to prove how right you are.
> Militants and terrorists being captured for specific acts of terrorism or from the battlefield
Yes, thats why they are kept without a trial indefinitely on "Administrative detention". 14 year old terrorists, how dare they throw rocks.
> also fed and get medical treatment
And raped, but hey at least they get fed and treated afterwards.
What do you suggest (based on your madeup accusations)? They let go and ignore teenagers throwing rocks only or all of them? What about teenagers firing rpgs?
Also even with your nonsense you still don’t understand the difference?
> based on your madeup accusations
What do you think is made up? That Israel is holding minors for throwing rocks or that there is rape of Palestinian prisoners?
> What do you suggest
How about providing some evidence of violent acts by these prisoners so we don't have to take their word for it.
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> So yes, maybe Israel started the war, not least by colonizing a territory and forcibly displacing its inhabitants (also called “stealing their land).
As well as ensuring funding of Hamas[1][2], and willfully ignoring warnings the attack was imminent[3][4].
[1]: https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/netanyahu-money-...
[2]: https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/seized-documents-qatar-fun...
[3]: https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-806634
[4]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67082047
Name few exact cities, villages that were stolen? With trustworthy prooflinks about all the details of those specific places being stolen.
Before that your comment with abstract yellow news posts is just a dumb propaganda.
All of it. The entire place.
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Benjamin Netanyahu funded Hamas in the 90s. So this is where we are.
If they allowed the PLO to manage we would have two states already.
The idea that simply empowering the PLO would have produced peace ignores the reality of what happened when they were empowered. After Oslo, Israel handed over cities in the West Bank and gave the Palestinian Authority control in Gaza. Instead of building the foundations of a peaceful state, the PLO leadership became riddled with corruption, failed to create functioning institutions, and tolerated or even encouraged waves of violence. The Second Intifada, launched under the PLO’s watch, was one of the bloodiest chapters in the conflict and shattered Israeli trust in their willingness or ability to deliver peace.
It’s true that the post-Oslo period exposed serious failures in Palestinian leadership, but the picture isn’t one-sided. The Palestinian Authority was granted limited autonomy under Oslo, not true sovereignty. Israel retained control over borders, resources, movement, and security, meaning the PLO never had the conditions to fully build a state. Corruption and mismanagement within the PA certainly damaged trust, but so did ongoing settlement expansion, restrictions on movement, and the lack of progress toward final status negotiations.
The Second Intifada was indeed devastating and eroded faith on both sides, but framing it only as a PLO decision ignores the buildup of frustration from years of unfulfilled promises and worsening conditions on the ground. Empowering the PLO in a genuine way, with real authority, accountability mechanisms, and mutual commitment to peace, might have led to a different outcome.
In other words, both leadership failures and structural limitations played roles. Reducing it to "the PLO blew it" risks oversimplifying a very complex situation.
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I'll bite the bullet and respond to this.
Those claims have been investigated and were found to be insubstantial. Given that the government of Israel is extraordinarily biased in this matter and would never, under any circumstances, admit to deliberately starving civilians, we can safely disregard whatever excuses they put forth in the absence of external corroboration.
> Sam Rose, the acting director of affairs for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza, says Israel – which has near-total jurisdiction over what goods enter and exit Gaza – has controlled “to the calorie” the volume, type and overall flow of food into the enclave. “The system is designed not to function smoothly,” he said.
> Last October, Israel’s government banned UNRWA from operating in areas under its control, a prohibition that went into effect in January, having accused the agency of failing to stop Hamas’ alleged theft of aid. An internal US government review found no evidence of widespread theft by Hamas of US-funded humanitarian aid in Gaza.
Additionally:
> since when did negotiating with terrorists like Hamas even become acceptable
When people say they "don't negotiate with terrorists," what they mean is that they will not make concessions in response to terroristic threats. This idea has no relevance in this situation.
> Why has the rest of the Arab world not volunteered to receive Palestinian refugees?
You're describing forced displacement, which is a component of genocide. The reason why the Arab world has not collaborated with Israel's efforts to commit genocide in Gaza should be self-explanatory.
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This is disingenous. Obliterating entire neighbourhoods, mass-killing children, and engineered starvation, avowed by the main political responsibles are hardly “crossfire” and can only be part of a savage conception of war, at odds with the Geneva convention, and human decency. It is shameful and deeply dispiriting to read such rationalization of genocide.
Why is negotiating with Netanyahu acceptable?
After all, he has more blood on his hands than Hamas combined.
Of course the answer is that without negotiations there is only one path forward - hostile action.
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Could you please stop posting ideological flamebait? Looking at your history, most of your comments seem related to politics/ideology, including multiple comments referencing stereotypes, like this one [1]. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We have to ban accounts that continue to do this after being warned.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45230809
uh-huh. IF there is; Hamas carries the weight. Not Israel. Take a momma bear's cub away and see the momma bear's claws. Duh.
"One day, everyone will have always been against this"
Reminder: Only right wing supporters of Iaraeli Likud party actually support genocide going on. Literally half of Israeli citizens hate Likud and Natanyahu.
ps. Interesting trivia: Mahmoud Abbas (President of the Palestinian West Bank) and FATAH militia also are against Hamas. They always have been:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah%E2%80%93Hamas_conflict
Nothing is black or white.
This is a popular idea in the Israeli propaganda. Israelis like to say that they hate Netanyahu, but in reality, majority of Israeli Jews fully align with his policies towards Palestinians, and multiple polls confirm this. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-08-05/ty-article/.p...
> Israelis like to say that they hate Netanyahu, but in reality, majority of Israeli Jews fully align with his policies towards Palestinians, and multiple polls confirm this. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-08-05/ty-article/.p...
There tends to be a lot more nuance[0] when it comes to polling results like these, the reality is that opinions amongst Israelis vary quite a lot. There are also a lot of problems with organizations like the UN historically wildly misrepresenting the food situation[1] which are likely to make Israelis question the accuracy of many of these starvation reports, especially from organizations that have historically made many highly inaccurate claims. UN backed IPC reports like those cited in the CNN article likewise have serious credibility issues as well[2], additionally there are extremely biased individuals like Michael Fakhri(the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food) cited in the CNN article that even publish comic books with some rather overt antisemitic tropes[3].
[0] https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-06-04/ty-article-opinio...
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-one-un-leaders-mistak...
[2] https://unwatch.org/hillel-neuer-on-sky-news-fabricated-u-n-...
[3] https://unwatch.org/legal-analysis-of-un-food-rapporteur-mic...
This equivocation is absurd. Literally every international aid organization is saying the same thing - and even a few Israeli ones are now recognizing the genocide in Gaza. The fact that Israel, far from sending "large amounts of aid", has, in fact, systematically blocked aid to Gaza was recognized even by the US government. The US even resorted to building a pier to send their own aid in.
Edit: looking at the claims more specifically, this one is particularly easy to debunk:
> even publish comic books with some rather overt antisemitic trope
The supposed "antisemitic trope" is an image of a person holding a cracked globe. The blog post implies that this is supposed to be an image representing the antisemitic "masters of the world" trope. In fact, the image represents the UN rapporteur himself looking at how the lack of international reaction to Israel's crimes has left a crack in the UN-led rules-based world order.
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Ok, find a single international humanitarian organization active in Gaza that believes that Gazans are treated well. Or even a single one active in Gaza that is not saying that a blatant genocide is taking place.
And the "tentacles" are the heads of a hydra labeled "Imperialism", "Racism", "Extractivism", "Capitalism", "Patriarchy". Not sure how much clearer the imagery could get, and which part of this is antisemitic.
> Or even a single one active in Gaza that is not saying that a blatant genocide is taking place.
World Central Kitchen is active in Gaza and last I checked makes no claim of there being a genocide in Gaza.
> And the "tentacles" are the heads of a hydra labeled "Imperialism", "Racism", "Extractivism", "Capitalism", "Patriarchy".
What seems to be implied here is that these are the means in which the Jews control the world. Casting Israelis/Jews as demonic figures in general is also a common antisemitic trope.
> Not sure how much clearer the imagery could get, and which part of this is antisemitic.
The implied world domination part as well as the demonic imagery.
> World Central Kitchen is active in Gaza and last I checked makes no claim of there being a genocide in Gaza.
They don't talk about genocide, true, but they do talk about the famine they're seeing and the extreme difficulty of getting humanitarian aid into Gaza - causing them to have almost ceased food delivery at the beginning of this year, before finding ingenious new ways of cooking and delivering supplies.
It's also funny to pick an organization which has suffered one of the most clear and well documented assassinations of aid workers by Israeli forces, the World Central Kitchen attack in 2024. This was one of the cases that even the IDF couldn't invent a justification for (the convoy they killed had been coordinating constantly with them, they had followed the root exactly, etc). They called it a regrettable error, of course.
> What seems to be implied here is that these are the means in which the Jews control the world. Casting Israelis/Jews as demonic figures in general is also a common antisemitic trope.
The comic is quite explicit, we don't have to look for implicit innuendo. It says that these forces (imperialism, capitalism, etc) are the main reasons for food insecurity everywhere this happens in the world, and Gaza is just one example. While Israel, backed by the USA, is the aggressor in the case of Gaza, the same forces (again, meaning imperialist tendencies, not some conspiracy of "evil Jews") behind other acts of aggression by other states in other places impacted by famine.
> They don't talk about genocide, true, but they do talk about the famine they're seeing and the extreme difficulty of getting humanitarian aid into Gaza - causing them to have almost ceased food delivery at the beginning of this year, before finding ingenious new ways of cooking and delivering supplies.
It's much less an issue of getting aid into Gaza and much more an issue of distribution, with most aid being intercepted before reaching the intended destination[3]. Even then I've yet to see any credible evidence that there is a famine, although there are certainly various degrees of food insecurity.
> It's also funny to pick an organization which has suffered one of the most clear and well documented assassinations of aid workers by Israeli forces, the World Central Kitchen attack in 2024. This was one of the cases that even the IDF couldn't invent a justification for (the convoy they killed had been coordinating constantly with them, they had followed the root exactly, etc). They called it a regrettable error, of course.
It's a war, targeting mistakes happen, the IDF generally makes an effort to investigate when these sort of things happen. It quite clearly wasn't a case of the IDF intentionally targeting aid workers. There are simply no incentives or evidence for the IDF to have a policy of deliberately targeting WCK aid workers. Friendly fire incidents where IDF soldiers have been killed have been somewhat common in Gaza in general so it certainly doesn't seem to be improbable that a targeting mistake like this could happen by accident.
> The comic is quite explicit, we don't have to look for implicit innuendo.
Lets go through these and see if they match up with antisemetic tropes as well.
> imperialism
So here we have the "world imperialism"[0] antisemetic trope.
> capitalism
Here we have the "Jewish Capitalism"[1] antisemetic trope.
we even have a "Patriarchy"[2] trope as well
Seems pretty clear to me what the author is doing here.
> While Israel, backed by the USA, is the aggressor in the case of Gaza, the same forces (again, meaning imperialist tendencies, not some conspiracy of "evil Jews") behind other acts of aggression by other states in other places impacted by famine.
This war was started by Hamas on October 7th, it's quite clear they are the aggressor here.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitic_trope#Causing_wars...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_capitalism
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitic_trope#Turning_peop...
[3] https://app.un2720.org/tracking
> It's much less an issue of getting aid into Gaza and much more an issue of distribution
The WCK that you cited is very clear on this: the problem is getting aid into Gaza, not distributing it. They had to close their kitchens at the beginning of the year because they just couldn't get any supplies into the territory, because Israel wouldn't allow them - especially fuel. They found creative solutions in the meantime.
> Even then I've yet to see any credible evidence that there is a famine, although there are certainly various degrees of food insecurity.
Again, the org you yourself cited has many examples.
> It quite clearly wasn't a case of the IDF intentionally targeting aid workers.
It quite clearly was. The WCK said plain as day that it was. It wasn't the first or the last either - the IDF has killed more international aid workers than even the Russian barbarians have in Ukraine. When you systematically make such "targeting mistakes" over and over again, at some point the deliberate targeting becomes obvious.
> [ going one by one]
Decrying the ills of imperialism and capitalism and patriarchy is not antisemitic. Sure, the nazis used these crisicisms to refer to Jewish people. But the Indians also used them to refer to their British colonizers, the Romanians used them to refer to the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians, the Afghani and the Nicaraguans used them to refer to the USA etc. Stating that imperialism and capitalism and colonialism are the cause of much suffering in this world is not antisemitic, unless you associate it with other antisemitic imagery. Pointing out that Israel is an imperialist country that is trying to conquer (pieces of) its neighbors and opressing the Palestinian people, sometimes for patriarchal/religious reasons, sometimes for capitalist interests, is not antisemitic.
> This war was started by Hamas on October 7th, it's quite clear they are the aggressor here.
This war started when the state of Israel was formed and kicked out much of the local Palestinian population (mostly Muslims, but also some Christians and even Jewish Palestinians). Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been under Israeli occupation for some 70+ years. October 7th was just one atrocity, from a long series of atrocities, on both sides, that have punctuated this war. But the aggressor in a war doesn't change just because of one attack by the defender, even when that attack is a war crime. If Ukraine launches a terrorist bombing in Moscow tomorrow killing 700 civillians, that war crime will not change the fact that Russia is the aggressor in that war.
> The WCK that you cited is very clear on this: the problem is getting aid into Gaza, not distributing it.
I'm referring to the current situation, I'm not disputing that there have been times where aid was not allowed in, however at those times there was generally sufficient stockpiles available.
> Again, the org you yourself cited has many examples.
Examples of food insecurity, sure, but not to the level of famine.
> The WCK said plain as day that it was.
How would the WCK alone be able to make that sort of determination? Only those with direct access to the targeting decision making process would be able to with any reasonable degree of certainty be able to determine if the WCK incident was a genuine mistake vs an intentional attack. The details the IDF provided regarding how the mistake was made certainly indicate it being a mistake is plausible IMO.
> When you systematically make such "targeting mistakes" over and over again, at some point the deliberate targeting becomes obvious.
So when the IDF systematically has friendly fire issues where their own soldiers get killed does that mean they are deliberately targeting their own soldiers by that logic?
> Decrying the ills of imperialism and capitalism and patriarchy is not antisemitic. Sure, the nazis used these crisicisms to refer to Jewish people. But the Indians also used them to refer to their British colonizers, the Romanians used them to refer to the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians, the Afghani and the Nicaraguans used them to refer to the USA etc. Stating that imperialism and capitalism and colonialism are the cause of much suffering in this world is not antisemitic, unless you associate it with other antisemitic imagery.
You seem to agree that these are in fact historically documented antisemitic tropes(i.e. used by the Nazis), you appear to be saying their use is justified...that's a rather different argument.
> Pointing out that Israel is an imperialist country that is trying to conquer (pieces of) its neighbors and opressing the Palestinian people, sometimes for patriarchal/religious reasons, sometimes for capitalist interests, is not antisemitic.
One can easily make an argument that Israel's formation was anti-imperialist because its independence was an act of breaking away from an imperialist power(the British). I would agree that is a bit of an oversimplification. This particular conflict has a number of elements to it that are somewhat unique which make these sort of broad categorizations somewhat misleading.
> This war started when the state of Israel was formed and kicked out much of the local Palestinian population (mostly Muslims, but also some Christians and even Jewish Palestinians).
That's not exactly accurate IMO, the Arab-Israeli War started when the British Mandate ended and the Arab states attacked[0].
> Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been under Israeli occupation for some 70+ years.
This is simply factually inaccurate, Gaza has not been occupied by Israel for 70+ years, you seem to forget that it was occupied by Egypt[1] until 1967. The West Bank was annexed/occupied by Jordan until 1967 as well[2]. So in reality this occupation by Israel of Gaza and the West Bank has only been happening for around 58 years. Most Palestinians say the occupation has occurred for 70+ years because they consider all of Israel proper to be an occupation(as they largely reject Israel's right to exist outright).
> October 7th was just one atrocity, from a long series of atrocities, on both sides, that have punctuated this war.
This is certainly a conflict where one can easily blame either side depending on at what point in time you start.
> But the aggressor in a war doesn't change just because of one attack by the defender, even when that attack is a war crime. If Ukraine launches a terrorist bombing in Moscow tomorrow killing 700 civillians, that war crime will not change the fact that Russia is the aggressor in that war.
There's no clear original aggressor here as it largely depends on how far you look back in history, there's been so much back and forth fighting that's it's hard to pin the blame on either side for starting the conflict due to the lack of clearly defined national boarders being recognized by both sides as was the case with Ukraine and Russia.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Gaza_Strip_b...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordanian_annexation_of_the_We...
> You seem to agree that these are in fact historically documented antisemitic tropes(i.e. used by the Nazis), you appear to be saying their use is justified...that's a rather different argument.
No, I'm saying that the nazis also ate apples, but that doesn't mean eating apples is antisemitic. Just because the nazis accused the Jewish people of being the root of all evil doesn't mean that saying evil is bad is antisemitic, if you're not accusing the Jewish people of being the root of this evil. Yes, even if you're accusing a particular group of Jewish people, such as the Israeli state, of doing this.
> There's no clear original aggressor here as it largely depends on how far you look back in history
This is actually very simple. The historic region of Palestine has been inhabited by more or less the same people ever since Biblical times. It was conquered a few times by various empires, and a large part of the population has converted to various religions (from pre-Biblical religions to Judaism, to Christianity, to Islam). The languages they speak have changed various times, and of course the genetic makeup of the population has not been constant, especially given it's a relatively common trade route.
Then, starting with the 1930s or so, a colonization effort by an initially fringe group of Jewish zealots, the Zionist movement; they became much more mainstream after the horrors of the Holocaust. This colonization effort culminated with the proclamation of the state of Israel as a "Jewish and Democratic" state in 1948, led mostly by the colonists who started to expel the local population from the region, with the assent of the British Empire, the USA , and even the USSR (and other European powers). This is the beginning point of the current conflict. Going back further in history is completely absurd: the Palestinians of today are descendants of the ancient Jewish people, of ancient Romans, of ancient Arabic tribes and so on - just as much if not more so than the Jewish people "returning home".
> This is actually very simple. The historic region of Palestine has been inhabited by more or less the same people ever since Biblical times. It was conquered a few times by various empires, and a large part of the population has converted to various religions (from pre-Biblical religions to Judaism, to Christianity, to Islam). The languages they speak have changed various times, and of course the genetic makeup of the population has not been constant, especially given it's a relatively common trade route.
There have been many rather significant demographic shifts since biblical times[0] including migration waves of Egyptians during the Ottoman period. The genetic makeup of the population changing would be something one would expect to result from things like population movements into and out of the region, so I'm not sure what you mean by "The historic region of Palestine has been inhabited by more or less the same people ever since Biblical times." if there have been significant changes since Biblical times.
> Then, starting with the 1930s or so, a colonization effort by an initially fringe group of Jewish zealots, the Zionist movement; they became much more mainstream after the horrors of the Holocaust.
That didn't just start in the 1930s[1].
> This colonization effort culminated with the proclamation of the state of Israel as a "Jewish and Democratic" state in 1948, led mostly by the colonists who started to expel the local population from the region, with the assent of the British Empire, the USA , and even the USSR (and other European powers). This is the beginning point of the current conflict. Going back further in history is completely absurd: the Palestinians of today are descendants of the ancient Jewish people, of ancient Romans, of ancient Arabic tribes and so on - just as much if not more so than the Jewish people "returning home".
The origins of the current conflict arguably started in the 1800s, however Jews occupied the region prior to that period as well in smaller numbers.
Regardless of the history most Israelis living in Israel were born in Israel and hold no other citizenship so one can't really expect them to leave their country at this point.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palesti...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliyah
> even a single one active in Gaza that is not saying that a blatant genocide is taking place
Anyone saying, definitively and prior to 17 September [1], that a genocide was or was not taking place in Gaza is probably not credible.
[1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-c...
The ICC has found a significant risk of genocide more than a year ago, based on solid legal documents. People with on the ground experience have been saying it even longer. Holocaust scholars have been looking at the evidence and noticing the patterns. It's ridiculous to claim that it only started being a "legitimate genocide" two weeks ago.
> The ICC has found a significant risk of genocide more than a year ago
Both the court and the finding described are inaccurate: it was the ICJ, not the ICC, and it didn't find a significant risk of genocide (it found that Palestinians plausibly had rights under the Genocide Convention, South Africa had the legal right to bring a case to vindicate those rights, and there was a risk of harm in the period of adjudication of those rights were provisional measures not adopted.)
Sorry, I always get the ICC and ICJ mixed up.
But what you're saying undersells the decision. They very explicitly found that there is credible evidence of a risk of genocide, and ordered Israel to cease their military operations entirely until the court finishes its investigation. They reviewed numerous indications of genocidal intent from public speeches by President Hertz, ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich, and various members of the Knesset, in addition to various facts about the way the actual operations are carried out.
Here is their specific finding [0]:
> In light of the considerations set out above, the Court considers that there is a real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice to the plausible rights invoked by South Africa [emp. mine], as specified by the Court.
The rights above being protection from genocide.
[0] https://www.icj-cij.org/node/203454 (chapter V, last paragraph)
You're treating the "real and imminent risk" finding as being comparable to an injunction, which weighs whether the plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits of the cafe. To my knowledge, the ICJ doesn't do that.
Prejudice to the rights to be protected against genocide doesn’t mean genocide, it can mean making it impossible to litigate the potential violations because of destruction of evidence and witnesses, with or without genocide.
The ICJ decision is important, but it being sold as a ruling on the likelihood of an ultimate genocide finding is inaccurate.
Good try.
But now, dear reader, just do as instructed and visit the links [0] and [1]. The comic imagery is not antisemitic. But a claim here to the contrary, and the fact that we don't have infinite time to check claims, might have fooled you, as it very nearly fooled me. Fortunately, I clicked and read by myself.
> But now, dear reader, just do as instructed and visit the links [0] and [1]. The comic imagery is not antisemitic. But a claim here to the contrary, and the fact that we don't have infinite time to check claims, might have fooled you, as it very nearly fooled me. Fortunately, I clicked and read by myself.
I posted the link because it's incredibly obvious that these are variations of classic antisemetic tropes, I'm really not sure how one could argue otherwise.
You were refuted in a sibling post. I am not sure what is unclear to you in that situation. Can you screenshot what you think is at fault? Because if it is that subtle, it isn't working.
I think antisemitism is becoming a very elastic concept to neuter any criticism. And, by the way, the Palestinians are a semitic people too. So it should be antijudaism.
> You were refuted in a sibling post. I am not sure what is unclear to you in that situation. Can you screenshot what you think is at fault? Because if it is that subtle, it isn't working.
If you don't recognize the obvious antisemitic tropes based on what I've already shown I don't think further evidence would change your mind.
> I think antisemitism is becoming a very elastic concept to neuter any criticism.
I'm sure there are some cases where that happens, but I don't think this case would qualify as it's far too overt.
> And, by the way, the Palestinians are a semitic people too. So it should be antijudaism.
You're now going as far as trying to redefine the normal accepted definition of antisemitism, this seems to me to just be another attempt at downplaying antisemitism for whatever reason.
“Here's a challenge - find me just one article in the mainstream media that calls for the de-radicalization of Israeli society. I'll save you the effort - you can't!”
https://youtu.be/lHuUJTPhN0A
"Fully align" is not supported by your reference.
The massive demonstrations in the street seem to counter your narrative though.
The demonstrations are about his power grabs. They have 0 to do with the genocide. On that topic most Israelis are not against him. It is, in fact, what is keeping him in power and why he wants this war so badly.
~15% of Israelis believe that a terrorist who shot up a mosque (literally all he did) is a national hero.
It shouldnt be that that hard to imagine that most of the rest are willing to look the other way in the event of a genocide against the same untermensch.
More evidence of this in a poll from earlier this year.
https://archive.is/nNzq4
(It's an archive link because the original is paywalled).
> Nearly half (47 percent) of respondents agreed that "when conquering an enemy city, the Israel Defense Forces should act as the Israelites did in Jericho under Joshua's command – killing all its inhabitants."
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It is exactly from the article:
> Religious interpretations play a key role in shaping these views. Nearly half (47 percent) of respondents agreed that "when conquering an enemy city, the Israel Defense Forces should act as the Israelites did in Jericho under Joshua's command – killing all its inhabitants." Sixty-five percent said they believed in the existence of a modern-day incarnation of Amalek, the Israelite biblical enemy whom God commanded to wipe out in Deuteronomy 25:19. Among those believers, 93 percent said the commandment to erase Amalek's memory remains relevant today.
Opposition to Netanyahu inside Israel is almost entirely about domestic issues (like judicial reform) and the fact that he refuses to accept any negotiated deal to get the hostages back. Relatively few Israelis care about what he's doing to the Palestinians.
Israeli society is deeply complicit in the mass killing and starvation in Gaza. The IDF is a citizen army. There haven't been mass refusals or resistance. It's not just Netanyahu.
majority of Israeli keep supporting IDF policies, shame on them
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Does Israel have a government structure that allows for a counter-majoritarian government?
In the US, we do... due to the structure of the Senate and Electoral College, low population states wield outsize influence on national politics. This goes as far as allowing the election of a president with <50% national support. Add in political gerrymandering (setting electrical districts to constrain the influence of certain demographics), and we have a national government that's opposed to policies that have wide support across the population in general.
Moderate Israelis are the only people who have the power to peacefully defuse the situation.
Moderates in Israel have shrunk because for decades, every attempt at compromise seemed to end in more violence rather than peace. From the Oslo years and the Second Intifada, to the Gaza withdrawal and repeated rocket wars, many Israelis came to believe that “giving ground” only brought terror closer to their homes. The sense is that moderation was tried, failed, and cost lives.
On top of that, politics and demographics shifted rightward, and October 7th reinforced the belief that peace is not realistic in the near term. For many Israelis, moderation no longer feels like a safe or responsible option- it feels like a risk their families can’t afford.
I appreciate the response, and I essentially agree with your assessment that this has become the prevailing feeling in Israel. With that being said: surely Israelis understand that the current direction of travel leads to a dark place, not least for Israel itself? I can't imagine a reality where the crisis in Gaza continues and Israel continues to be supported by the West. And then what happens? Surely at some point peace and reconciliation prevails?
I wish that was the natural path, that seeing the damage would turn people back toward reconciliation. But for now, most Israelis don’t see a viable partner on the other side to reconcile with.
This is a very dire situation. We’ve come to realize there are millions, perhaps tens of millions, across the region whose worldview includes the elimination of the Jewish state, and they are very committed to it. We can’t and won’t wage war on whole populations as that is not in our blood. Nor can we realistically change their beliefs in the foreseeable future or find something to offer that would produce lasting peace.
So today our choices feel grim and limited. That is why many Israelis believe we must: 1. Be excellent at predicting attacks and when necessary, strike first to disrupt them 2. Impose a very heavy cost on anyone who contemplates attacking us, so others think twice 3. Remain stronger and more capable than everyone around us
It’s a terrible place to be, and it’s not the future anyone hoped for. But until there’s a credible, sustained shift in the region, a process that would likely take generations of committed leadership, many here see little alternative.
I wish this were true, but it looks like that even if Natanyahu has little support (mostly because of corruption), the genocide is well accepted by israeli public
https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/poll-show-most-jew...
Reminder: The US does support the genocide. Both the Republicans and the Democrats.
This is nonsense, Israel's center right "opposition" won't even acknowledge the genocide, how can they be against it?
I think people blaming it on Hamas need to realize that Israel funds Hamas and uses it as a tool to further their goals. Hamas is their version of Talibans. It fully lines up.
> Israel funds Hamas
Funded. Past tense. We funded the Mujahideen, once, and then got bombed by their successors.
The Taliban had very little overlap in membership with the Mujahedeen. They were their successors in the sense that they overthrew them.
The Mujahedeen did not morph into or rebrand as the Taliban. In fact they became the Northern Alliance, opposed to the Taliban.
> Taliban had very little overlap in membership with the Mujahedeen
Taliban didn't bomb America. Al Qaeda did. I believe bin Laden was in the Mujahideen.
Apologies, I thought you were referring to the Taliban.I've had previous conversations with people who had that misunderstanding.
Bin Laden claimed that neither he nor his specific group of Arab foreign fighters (which became the genesis of Al Qaeda) received funding from the US. Though the reality was that the US funded proxies which funded the Afghan Mujahedeen, so it's possible he may have indirectly benefited. Bin Laden was independently wealthy and largely self funded his group though.
To be clear, I don't think we funded bin Laden in proximity to 9/11. Just that we funded elements where bin Laden trained, and was likely--to some degree--radicalised, and then that blew back on us. October 7th looks like Israel's 9/11 in more than one way.
Well, if that was the case, it's not really working out for Israel now, is it? Considering that more and more countries are recognising Palestine, etc.
This comment is widespread on X or other social media as the n-th conspiracy theory that Israel has staged the attack etc. Crazy.
Israel's territory is still expanding, and Palestine's is still shrinking, so it seems to be working out pretty fine. All those countries recognising Palestine don't have the balls to actually conduct any kind of military intervention against Israel.
You really need to google “Netanyahu. Hamas. Qatar”. Pick your favourite news source. You’re in for some surprises.
> Considering that more and more countries are recognising Palestine
Would note that none of the recent recognitions, to my knowledge, said anything about borders. A Palestinian state that solely exists in the West Bank would be consistent with these statements.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas
Doesn't prove anything, and it definitely doesn't prove he gave Hamas weapons so they would be victims of a terror attack.
Hell, we in the West have given Gaza (and indirectly, we knew it would go to Hamas) so much money. Did we support terrorism? How did we know that they would use our money to buy weapons to murder people in Israel instead of building good things?
For me this is more showing an utter incompetence both from Nethanyau and our Western leaders who totally didn't see how they outsmarted us for years. Why do you think our leaders can control everything and know everything? They can make mistakes out of incompetence.
I guess this strategy sometimes works in other countries, and sometimes they screw you :)
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> How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza
Way to whitewash a genocide. The title make it sound like the famine is accidental or an unintended consequence of Israel's "actions". While in reality, it's the sole purpose of what Israel is doing in Gaza for years, they are conducting a genocide, plain and simple.
Is there any difference between carrying it out and intending to carry it out if given the chance? From the river to the sea?
> Way to whitewash a genocide
I honestly think invoking the g- word is harmful to the Palestinian cause at this point.
It's a war. There are war crimes. Maybe there's genocidal intent. But that seems like a distraction compared to actual harm on the ground.
The UN calls it a genocide now. What evidence more do you need?
> UN calls it a genocide now
One, really important to specify that the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel said this, not the UN as a whole. "The UN" is generally held to be the General Assembly.
Two, I'm not disputing that it probably is a genocide. I'm just saying that people have been calling it a genocide well before we had evidence it was one. As a result, the term has lost moral weight.
Put another way, I don't think support for Palestine increases by calling it a genocide again. I do think it increases by showing, specifically, what the famine means for the kids on the ground can change hearts and minds. (Nobody, at this point, is probably going to be swung on a fundamental opinion. People may, however, re-prioritise this politically.)
It was called a genocide early on because of the disregard for civilian life but it doesn't become one until everyone dies. The more accurate term is war crimes.
At this point public opinion matters less than existing relationships.
> It was called a genocide early on because of the disregard for civilian life but it doesn't become one until everyone dies
The Holocaust was a genocide. It didn't exterminate the Jews.
> more accurate term is war crimes
Agree.
> At this point public opinion matters less than existing relationships
What do you mean?
The relationship between Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and between Israel and America military matters more than public opinion. It could be 90% against but that would matter less.
> relationship between Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and between Israel and America military matters more than public opinion
The relationship is absolutely guided by public opinion. If Israeli support among registered Republicans starts hitting 50%, Trump is constrained.
It's currently 64% net sympathy for Israel and 9% for Palestine among Republicans. 55% of Trump voters say "Israel should continue its military campaign until Hamas is fully eliminated, even if it means the civilian casualties in Gaza might continue," while only 29% say "Israel should stop its military campaign in order to protect against civilian casualties, even if Hamas has not been fully eliminated" [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/02/polls/times-s...
People called a genocide because if we wait for it to be bad enough to be called a genocide by even the most cynical person, too many people have died.
Quite frankly, the genocide of the Jewish people in Germany also started far sooner than just the final solution. But I guess "Never again" is just fancy words for pretenders.
> People called a genocide because if we wait for it to be bad enough to be called a genocide by even the most cynical person, too many people have died
No, what happened is the word got diluted into popular meaninglessness. ("It's not a war it's a genocide" doubling down on that mistake.) A lot of people called wolf early and often, and that did its damage. (I'm unconvinced they care. A lot of activism on this topic seems to be self serving.)
> the genocide of the Jewish people in Germany also started far sooner than just the final solution
Sure. We also didn't have international institutions whose job it is to investigate and identify genocide in WWII. Now we do. Turning "may be" and "at risk of" genocide into "is genocide" just means that when e.g. a credible UN agency determines it is genocide, the finding doesn't resonate.
Two numbers on the effectiveness of that strategy:
680.000 and 380.000.
The total number of Palestinians murdered, and the number of those who were kids under 5 years old.
source: https://arena.org.au/politics-of-counting-gazas-dead/
These numbers are just false. Even the Hamas numbers are 10x less than this!
I'm not sure why you're being down-voted... But here's two credible sources:
Reuters estimates the deaths at 60,000 [ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-many-palestini... ]
The UN estimates it to be at about 65,000 [ https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaz... ]
Neither of which are around 600 thousand as the previous commenter posted. The French News Channel called France24 did a quick video explaining the current fake news that certain NGOs are spreading with misleading death counts -- https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/truth-or-fake/20250624-...
Because the linked article clearly states why the official numbers are not accurate in the authors opinions.
Also "These numbers are just false" is not a valid argument.
Hello again.
Saying it's false is a valid argument against something completely ludicrous like 680,000 dead. If you expect everyone to come up with "valid arguments" for blindingly obvious things then it is you who is not carrying out polite conversation (as per your other comments)
It would be a valid argument if you provide evidence for it, such as other commenters here have done. Whereas you just rejected my claim without any argumentation.
I have provided a source for the numbers cited in the original comment. Where those numbers are explained.
Well, these numbers are from July, and from that very first article:
"Official Palestinian tallies of direct deaths in the Gaza war likely undercounted the number of casualties by around 40% in the first nine months of the war as Gaza's healthcare infrastructure unravelled, according to a peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet journal in January."
Still, from those numbers, it seems difficult to stretch from 60k to 600k.
That said, even if you take the absolute tail number, 60k, how anyone can defend a genocide of 60k people in a land area smaller than Portland, in less than a year, is reprehensible. Especially when many of those are children. Almost one child murdered every 10 minutes, at the low end, for an entire year?
Are you surprised I'm being downvoted? I'm working towards my 500 karma so I can also start downvoting obvious nonsense like that comment but publicly correcting nonsense craters your karma.
Small thought exercise: What if the numbers were real? Would that change any of your stances/views? Would you self-reflect and consider that you had been tricked into spreading lies at the expense of thousands of lives?
Maybe it helps to start smaller. Many (Israeli's) have told me that the IDF is the world's most 'honest' military - one that even warns buildings before they're bombed!
Then, you can imagine how difficult it was for me to reconcile that with many facts from the ground. Here's one. Only one. The Rafah paramedic massacre:
"Israel at first claimed that the medics' vehicles did not have emergency signals on when troops opened fire but later backtracked. Cellphone video recovered from one of the medics contradicted Israel's initial account."[0]
Is that a one-off lie?
0: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/20/nx-s1-5370617/israeli-probe-k...
Let me turn the mirror around a bit. If numbers or incidents turn out to be false, exaggerated, or stripped of context, would you also self-reflect and consider that you might have been tricked into spreading lies - at the expense of Israelis whose lives are also on the line?
Of course, militaries make mistakes and sometimes issue wrong statements, just as governments everywhere do in the fog of war. The Rafah paramedic case you cite is tragic, and investigations matter. But a single flawed or retracted statement doesn’t prove a systematic policy of “lying” or “massacre” just as one instance of misconduct in any country’s army doesn’t automatically invalidate its overall values or procedures.
if we’re going to judge Israel by its errors, we should also weigh the context in which those errors happen (urban warfare, Hamas embedding itself in civilian areas, use of ambulances to smuggle fighters or weapons, etc.). And we should also judge Hamas by its admitted policies - deliberately targeting civilians, embedding in hospitals, rejecting coexistence.
If we’re honest, both of us need to be open to the possibility that our sources and interpretations can be incomplete or biased. Real reflection means asking hard questions in both directions - not only of Israelis, not only of Palestinians.
You're right that there are two sides to every story, things aren't black-and-white.
To your first point, I've already agreed that the numbers seem faulty. Beyond that, I'm not sure what you're asking me to consider, beyond suspending belief. 60k people did die on the low end, many of them children.
From an outsider's perspective, the killing of 60k people in a small, corralled environment, many of which are children, says everything that can be said about the actor in question. This is without the additional context of years of West Bank occupations, experiencing the crazy two-tiered apartheid like system that is Israel (I've visited and was personally quite shocked), and other things.
Is Hamas terrible? Certainly. Would they do the same to Israel if they had the capabilities? Probably. But that doesn't change the facts on the ground.
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What are the numbers then?
440+ according to Wikipedia. Only a lower bound I guess.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip_famine
EDIT: only due to starvation
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I was referencing numbers from the article which I linked, which clearly states the reasons for why those researchers don't believe official numbers.
The page you linked seems to only include deaths where the name of the person is known. Who is left in Gaza to count or report the dead?
Who is left in Gaza to count or report all the dead? The people who die of famine?
Official numbers have increased by less than 20.000 in the last year of genocide. Isn't that curious?
It's not as if Hamas is only counting hospital/morgue records. There's a Google form where any Gazan can report a casualty.
The drop is to be expected, since the fighting was much more intense in earlier phases of the war.
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Where did you get that information from? :)
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Completely absurd projection not supported by any serious sources. That would mean 1 in 3 Gazans dead, and 10 deaths per reported death, which would be completely out of line with other conflicts.
I haven't seen any numbers exceeding 100k. Where did you get 600k from ?
the article is taking projections and applying multiple extrapolations to them. It is a bad estimate.
The current estimates are between 53000 - 66000. About 10x lower than what you propose.
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I read the article. It piled about 5 different assumptions on top of each other.
It takes the upper bound for the deaths in the first 9 months. Then extrapolates it linearly to the last 2.5 years. Then multiplies it by 4, because it estimates that starvation deaths must be 4x.
At that point, why even guess ?
How CNN, a supposedly reputable news source can quote Hamas-run (a recognised terror group in the US) Health Ministry’s number without even noting who runs the ministry or raising any doubt is ridiculous? More ridiculous, noting the prices of different goods in Gaza when the vast majority of those goods enter Gaza as free aid. So who is stealing it and extorting others? Hamas and other terror groups are ghosts in this article. It is time that the UN focus on delivering aid rather than blaming Israel. Gazans die when they both refuse IDF convoys to keep them safe and blame the IDF for not keeping them safe as the “occupying” power. If only the IDF had already won, then Gazans would eat like normal already