As I see it, UN at least is documenting everything as it happens to its members. Hopefully it can be kept unbiased for a long time. If you start kicking left and right, there will be no UN to overlook events.
Maybe without a UN, we would already be having a WWIII. It is impossible to weight its influence, but I very much doubt it is having any nefarious effect.
No need to sledgehammer the world until it gets better
Too much faith/credit in the UN. With the security council, not much has or can happen. Beyond that there’s also incompetence. Look up jadotville or Dag Hammarskjöld (suspected to have been assasinated)
In 1986, then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden said, “Supporting Israel is the best $3 billion investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.”
Israel is a satellite state of the US in all but name. You'd have a better shot at dissolving the UN entirely than suspending Israel.
What ive always wondered is why the US hasn't put Israel on the security council, considering it is a nuclear armed state.
> Israel is a satellite state of the US in all but name.
The US is more reflexively pro-Israel than Israel is pro-US in international policy, the opposite of what you’d expect if Israel was a US vassal.
> What ive always wondered is why the US hasn't put Israel on the security council
There are lots of reasons, but one that renders all the others secondary is that the US can’t add permanent Security Council members.
> considering it is a nuclear armed state.
India, Pakistan, North Korea, and, when it was a nuclear-armed state, South Africa also are (and were) not permanent UNSC members, a set whuch hasn't expanded, though two seats have switched hands, since the UN was founded.
Russia is there because they wouldn’t even come to the table otherwise, and it’s more valuable to have a hobbled organization than one that doesn’t include significant powers. The others don’t have permanent slots because they joined when they had less power, or they never gained enough power to bargain.
Russia isn't a founding member because they're not the same as Soviet Union. Ukraine on the other hand is one of the founding members.
Just by allowing Russia to keep the permanent seat of USSR legitimizes their revanchist goals to regain the territories they controlled during the cold war
The best move UN could do is to kick Russia out of permanent seat as it was done with Republic of China, US has the mechanisms to do it but sadly they never will
We can discuss American misadventures and horrible decisions in the aftermath of 9/11, but equating the U.S. military to Russia, which effectively has rape and torture as part of its doctrine, is more than a stretch.
To be clear, I totally expected a comment like that, but I can guarantee you 1000% that no Ukrainians will be hanging on to Russian cargo plane wheels once they are booted out.
Guantanamo was and is a thing, there are literally handbooks on how to torture used by the American military. The American military also has a long, rich history of systemic sexual assault. Heck one of my friends was sexually assaulted by a service member to the point of hospitalization and he received no punishment or recourse. I also think reporting on Russian military by western media is largely propaganda, it’s hard to know what’s true and take.
Well, you can't just show your cards THAT quickly. It's so hard to know! You can see the leveled cities from space, but "everything is possible and nothing is true". Okay.
This is often repeated but is historically VERY incorrect. Yes, Israel does lobbying in the states and does influence (like every other country). The current Israeli government is indeed terrible and blatant at that.
However, Israel left Gaza in 2005 with no deal as part of US pressure (which led to the current situation). Israel offered a Palestinians a country which included east Jerusalem twice based on US pressure. Israel left Lebanon alone due to such pressure.
Israel didn't attack Lebanon for a year and tried to settle due to US pressure despite an average of 25 rockets per day towards civilian population.
Imagine a country being attacked and fired on for nearly 20 years (by Hamas) and keeping reposes "moderate". That's US pressure and influence right there. Israel delayed going into Rafah due to US pressure, it turns out Sinwar and quite a few hostages were there...
The reason it seems that US pressure isn't working is mostly because no one knows what to do exactly. Hostages are still held by Hamas. Hezbollah is still firing rockets/drones even now. I'm 100% for a hostage exchange but right now there's no deal, part of that is because of Netanyahu (who is terrible) but not all of it. The US can't fire Netanyahu (I wish they could...), and that's a problem. They want to strengthen anti-Netanyahu forces within Israel while still moderating its actions, that's a very tight rope to walk on.
Israel never left Gaza. They surrounded it. They controlled the entire land border and didn't let ships sail or planes take off from Gaza. It's as if, after a prison riot, all of the guards just said fuck 'em and decamped to a perimeter around the prison with machine guns with orders to shoot to kill. Gaza is way too small and densely populated to be remotely self-sufficient.
Now, just to short-circuit the reply chain, you're going to say that Hamas would have just used the borders to move in weapons. Sure, that's true. In fact, they dug a bunch of tunnels under the Israeli controlled border crossings and smuggled in a bunch of weapons. Normal stuff like food and medicine though were constantly blocked or delayed.
By the way, I don't know how to solve this problem well at this point. Both sides have done enough evil shit to each other that they will want to kill each other for generations. Israel though, has never withdrawn from Gaza, and Israel has never agreed to abide by the terms of UN Resolution 242 that obligates them to withdraw from the 1967 occupied territories. What I expect to happen based on the ground reality and statements from members of the Israeli government is that the Palestinians in Gaza will either die or have their lives be made so intolerable that they leave, and then Israel will annex the land, just as they have in Jerusalem and many areas of the West Bank.
Israel did withdraw from Lebanon though, this wasn't effective at all at promoting peace as we're now seeing, and same thing has happened in Gaza; Israel did uproot all the settlers from Gaza and there was no single Israeli soldier left in Gaza - you can say the Gaza withdrawal was incomplete but saying it never happened at all is incorrect.
Unfortunately Israelis only learned that withdrawals from enemies who have sworn to destroy you only make things worse for them.
Israel does not exist around Gaza. It exists on two sides of Gaza. On the Egyptian border, Israel has made an agreement with Egypt to prevent imports and exports, and on the Mediterranean, they prevent access to the sea by force.
Israel has long prevented the import of all sorts of goods. They do not provide "everything necessary." Israel also has prevented the export of almost all goods, so that the Palestinians will have no money and be completely dependent on Israel to provide for basic needs.
I'm sure you're right that if the border were opened up that Hamas would import weapons and attack Israel, which is why Israel surrounded Gaza, as I said.
As you say, "peace requires proof", but that goes both ways, and ever since Camp David collapsed, Israel has likewise proved that it does not intend to make peace by further expanding the settlements, and generally making the lives of the Palestinians intolerable, often in capricious ways that do not enhance Israeli security.
The very obvious long-term goal of Israel is to drive the Palestinians out of the occupied territories and annex them for Israeli use.
I think we're in agreement then. The current, democratically elected government of Israel intends to remove the Palestinian population and annex the territories.
When you talk about "a*holes like Netanyahu", he's the Prime Minister, and has been for something like 17 of the last 30 years. He speaks for the country. If Israelis don't support his actions, they should elect someone different.
No or not exactly. What's missing is the nuance and in this case it's everything. Netanyahu voted 4 times for the law that bans Jewish settlements in Gaza. This law is still in effect.
Yes, he has coalition members that want to repeal that law and are actively trying to resettle Gaza, but the IDF stops them because it's against the law. Yes, they want to repeal that law but even within their extreme coalition that would be tough.
Saying Israelis should elect someone different is even worse than saying Americans shouldn't elect Trump. This lacks nuance and understanding in how elections and parliamentary systems work. This is also the exact argument Israelis make about Hamas: the people of Gaza voted for them. Both are bad arguments.
Netanyahu got roughly 30% of the vote in Israel. He built a coalition based on many conflicting parties. On the one hand he has the fascist extremists. They got a large number of the votes thanks to unification within their ranks. Then he has the Hasidic Jews, they don't care about anything as long as they get paid. This coalition brings him to roughly 50% of the voting populace, he won in a landslide by a 3000 vote difference in the last election. The reason is mostly due to the collapse of the left due to electoral complexities in the way votes are tallied.
Netanyahu himself lacks ideals and is practically made of Teflon. He switched ideological sides multiple times, charged with crimes etc. Prosecution of his crimes just solidifies his base which chucks all of that to "leftist persecution". It's remarkably hard to break that cognitive bias. Guess what helps that cognitive bias?
A sense of persecution. "Everyone is against us" is his greatest slogan. The "pro-Palestinian" rallies were the biggest gift Netanyahu could receive and have bolstered his grasp over Israel. He's pointing at them as "we can't trust western countries", he isn't wrong. Every time Biden tried to pressure Israel politically or by leveraging weapon shipments this actually boosted support for Netanyahu. It's stupid, but it's a fact.
Biden understands that which is why he showed strong support to the Israeli people. Unfortunately, the leader at that time was Bibi and it's really hard to show support for Israel while attacking its elected leader directly. It is a very tight rope and I don't think Biden could have done much better. Especially given the recent claims that Trump has been calling Bibi and encouraging him to avoid a deal.
I wish people abroad would understand this nuance, but it doesn't play well on TikTok. It also doesn't have a nice slogan or rally. We need people to support both Israel and the Palestinian people while demanding their respective far-right factions get out of power.
I understand that Israeli politics is complex, but ultimately it’s a democracy, and Netanyahu is who was chosen, repeatedly. All of those far right parties that make up Netanyahu’s coalition got real votes and they represent a real slice of Israeli opinion.
If Israelis want something different they just have to vote differently in the next election.
The U.S. cannot just pretend Rabin is still in power and send money and weapons with the idea that Israel desires peace at the end of the day, because that faction is (as you say, for many reasons) no longer a majority in Israel.
As for Hamas, yes they were elected, and that does have significance, but also that was 18 years ago, and most of what would be the current electorate wasn’t even old enough to vote back then.
Ultimately as it stands though I believe both sides of the conflict wish to conquer the other, and the U.S. should just decline to support either side.
> If Israelis want something different they just have to vote differently in the next election.
So 54% of Americans (which includes a lot of Democrats) support deporting millions of Mexicans. These are law abiding non-citizens who are contributing to the economy, yet most Americans want them gone.
Is it surprising that a Trump like demagogue is successful when the people in question actually do commit mass murder and want to destroy the country?
The reaction to violence is never, OK I was wrong... Let's settle. It's always violence in response and the weaker side always suffers.
> The U.S. cannot just pretend Rabin is still in power and send money and weapons with the idea that Israel desires peace at the end of the day, because that faction is (as you say, for many reasons) no longer a majority in Israel.
The first part is 100% true. Things changed. The problem is that your base assumption is completely wrong. You need to understand why the US sends weapons to Israel and that has a complex and long history. First, it sends weapons because it gives jobs to Americans. Israel demonstrates the quality of the weapons and improves them.
Back in the day, Israel was completely embargoed. In the 60s it would buy French weapons and collect money to afford that. It developed its own industry but on the eve of war the French cut off Israel. Despite that Israel won, big time. It then started making the best weapons on earth. Guns like Uzi became the hot tool for everyone. Even its planes started selling everywhere and were pretty good. The US started selling weapons to Israel both to eliminate the competition and to improve its own. When Israel got its early shipments of US made planes it would rip out all the avionics and push in its own. US made avionics and weapons systems at the time were crap. They no longer are, guess who made that happen?
But Israel is also a powerful ally. E.g. Sadam Husain would have a Nuclear weapon were it not for Israel. So would Assad. Israel killed quite a few terrorists on the US most wanted lists and provided a lot of support in the middle east on things where the US would rather stay neutral. It enabled keeping countries like Egypt and Jordan on the western side of the fence and serves as a balancing tool/lightning rod in the region. That has value.
The more interesting thing is what would happen if the US would stop weapon shipments. This would be very bad for everyone. Most Israelis would see it as proof that they are alone again. This would mean Israel would need to show deterrence. It still has a massive security industry and still makes some of the best weapons around, it still has stocks of weapons but would now need to make them all count. It would mean a massive aggressive attack.
Why?
Without US support Israel would be concerned that this would serve as a signal for Iran or even Jordan that Israel is now "fair game". That can quickly deteriorate to nuclear war to keep deterrence clear.
Finally, look at countries like Turkey which just bombed many civilian Kurds. They are a member of Nato and no one is even talking about it... Obviously no one cares just like no one cares about Sudan, China etc. None of those causes have TikToks or advocates since they have no sponsors.
Both Turkey and Israel have similar problems. Authoritarian leaning leaders who are slowly dismantling democracy. The solution in both cases is difficult, most aggressive action can accelerate this process and make things worse for everyone. There aren't any good answers here.
> As for Hamas, yes they were elected, and that does have significance, but also that was 18 years ago, and most of what would be the current electorate wasn’t even old enough to vote back then.
As I said, I think it's a silly argument but don't expect a different result prior to the war. Hamas controlled UNRWA completely and was teaching pretty horrific stuff. If anything I'm afraid the situation is worse.
See Egypt, given democracy they instantly picked the Muslim Brotherhood which is a fanatic organization. The education in these countries is mostly comprised around religion and a pretty extreme perception of said religion.
> Ultimately as it stands though I believe both sides of the conflict wish to conquer the other, and the U.S. should just decline to support either side.
It isn't a "both sides" scenario.
Israel has a law that disallows settlements in Gaza, signed by Netanyahu. The IDF specifically stopped settlement attempts there. Yes, there are extremists in the government who want to revert that law. But they don't have the votes for that. Biden has drawn a red line related to that and to violations of Leahy. There is a status quo, it might seem more extreme than in the past and Bibi is indeed stretching the boundaries but there is a line.
The idea that sending weapons to Israel is some sort of economic or military advantage to the U.S. is sophistry. We could simply take those same weapons and add them to our own inventory and use them in ways that actually benefit the U.S.
The actual reason the U.S. sends weapons to Israel is two fold. One is as a carrot to continue the peace process. The permanent allocation to Israel started when Camp David I was signed. The second reason is that a lot of people that support Israel live in the U.S. and they vote. If Israel no longer desires peace, the first reason doesn't exist. The second reason still does which is why it continues, despite being against the interests of the U.S.
Yes, Netanyahu stopped the settlements in Gaza, but again, sophistry. While the settlements in Gaza were dismantled, the settlements in the West Bank were being expanded, as they continue to be. Netanyahu has always been about creating physical conditions that cause a two state solution to be politically impossible, regardless of changes in the Israeli government.
It very much is a "both sides" scenario. I'm not going to argue about exactly which side is more unreasonable, but ultimately so much water has gone under the bridge that I don't think a settlement is possible, and I'm not interested in paying taxes to supply weapons to fuel an unresolvable conflict. If Israel wants to turn Gaza into rubble, leave millions of people homeless, and year after year take more land in the West Bank, I suppose we can't practically stop this, but personally I don't want want any part of it.
> The idea that sending weapons to Israel is some sort of economic or military advantage to the U.S. is sophistry. We could simply take those same weapons and add them to our own inventory and use them in ways that actually benefit the U.S.
A huge number of US politicians disagree. It's fashionable to claim that they are all stupid but the fact is that this just isn't true. Looking at Israels success in missile defense and similar technologies it shows where the R&D collaboration with the US has made both more successful.
If the US won't send weapons Israel would just make its own and in the past made fantastic weapons. Including great fighter jets that were approaching F16 level in the 80s.
> One is as a carrot to continue the peace process.
That is true too.
> The second reason is that a lot of people that support Israel live in the U.S. and they vote.
That is also true. Today that's mostly the evangelicals though.
> If Israel no longer desires peace, the first reason doesn't exist.
This isn't true. First it assumes Israel doesn't want peace which is detached from reality. Peace exists with Egypt, Jordan etc. Israel returned territory it captured at war and signed a peace deal. All sides abide and this works well.
It can very well be argued that the current war is because of peace pressure against Israel. Israel left Gaza under US pressure to do so with no deal. Despite repeated attacks from Hamas it didn't go back in and maintained status quo. US pressure worked but created a powder-keg in Gaza that blew up eventually.
US pressure using the weapons as incentive worked very well, but you can't just wish peace to happen and force it on some people.
> Yes, Netanyahu stopped the settlements in Gaza, but again, sophistry.
Netanyahu has one ideal: Netanyahu. He has no morals, no backbone and no principals.
> While the settlements in Gaza were dismantled, the settlements in the West Bank were being expanded, as they continue to be.
As you can see from my other answers here I 100% agree that this is indeed a huge problem. The right-wing used the violence of Hamas as a means to attack the Palestinian authority for the past 3 decades. To be fair the Palestinian authority isn't great (e.g. lynching Israelis by tearing them limb from limb) but I agree that this is awful. The only way to solve this is to remove the two zero-sum entities: Hamas and the current government of Israel. The latter might not be removed in the next election, but the pendulum will eventually swing back...
Without Hamas things would hopefully calm down for a while.
> It very much is a "both sides" scenario.
No. The fact that there are bad people on both sides is true. But that simplifies the situation. Israel wants a Palestinian state and tries to achieve that. Yes, it has some lunatics but unlike Hamas even in the current government they can't do anything.
Hamas just wants to kill all Israelis. No law other than Sharia law. No civilian differentiation.
But the real horrible thing about Hamas is that they don't care how many Palestinians die as part of their Jihad. They consider the death of their own children as a bonus, they would go to heaven as they die heroes. Israel has never been like that. If Hamas had the firepower of Israel there would be no Israeli left. The reverse isn't true despite everything.
> If Israel wants to turn Gaza into rubble, leave millions of people homeless, and year after year take more land in the West Bank, I suppose we can't practically stop this, but personally I don't want want any part of it.
The thing is that Israel can do it and doesn't.
Furthermore, once the war is over it will help rebuild Gaza as it did in the past. The war isn't against the people of Gaza, it's against Hamas whose an enemy of the people of Gaza. It's a terrible organization that murders gays, believes domestic violence isn't a crime and brainwashes children to commit suicide bombings.
Yes, the war is terrible and violent. But what's the alternative?
Leaving the hostages to die?
Letting Hamas regain power and do another round of the same thing?
Violence is terrible. Always. But sometimes the avoidance of violence doesn't work. It just shoves it into a pressure cooker; it will be worse later on. We saw that with the 2005 deal. Israel left Gaza and tried to mostly ignore Hamas, that didn't work out well for anyone.
> A huge number of US politicians disagree. It's fashionable to claim that they are all stupid but the fact is that this just isn't true. Looking at Israels success in missile defense and similar technologies it shows where the R&D collaboration with the US has made both more successful.
If the US won't send weapons Israel would just make its own and in the past made fantastic weapons. Including great fighter jets that were approaching F16 level in the 80s.
I don't doubt that they would make their own weapons, and I'm sure they'd be pretty good. From a standpoint of U.S. interests though, collaborating with Israel hasn't been that great. Israel took U.S. money and tech to develop that F-16 level jet (the Lavi), and then covertly sold the design to the Chinese. Meanwhile, when the U.S. wanted to send Israeli produced, U.S. owned SPIKE missiles to Ukraine, Israel blocked the transfer.
> This isn't true. First it assumes Israel doesn't want peace which is detached from reality. Peace exists with Egypt, Jordan etc. Israel returned territory it captured at war and signed a peace deal. All sides abide and this works well.
Yes but the settlement with Egypt where land was returned was 45 years ago. Israel is not the same country it was back then.
> Israel wants a Palestinian state and tries to achieve that.
Based on Israel's actions, and the statements of Netanyahu and a couple of ministers, I don't believe this. I think that they've given up and intend to remove the Palestinians from the occupied territories.
> But the real horrible thing about Hamas is that they don't care how many Palestinians die as part of their Jihad. They consider the death of their own children as a bonus, they would go to heaven as they die heroes. Israel has never been like that. If Hamas had the firepower of Israel there would be no Israeli left. The reverse isn't true despite everything.
That's probably true, and so I also do not support sending weapons to Hamas.
We both agree that this is a very difficult problem. Personally I see no practical long-term solution, because the demographics of Israel have changed and continue to change in a direction towards more right-wing nationalism. Many peace-oriented Israelis (incl people I know personally) have left Israel over this. I don't think that if things calm down that minds will gradually change and a deal will be struck, because when things were relatively calm, Israel continued to expand the settlements and continued to oppress the Palestinians in numerous unnecessary ways. The Palestinians rightly don't believe that if they just stop attacking Israel that eventually they'll get their state.
How do you see there being a positive resolution in the long-term?
> Israel took U.S. money and tech to develop that F-16 level jet (the Lavi),
Its development was started based on prior Israeli Jets so the technology was Israeli. Funding was given to keep an eye on the project and control. Israel had far superior avionics which eventually went into US jets as a result.
> and then covertly sold the design to the Chinese.
It's unclear if it was sold or stolen. Regardless the technology is ancient by today's standards. This was 20 years after the project was disbanded and possibly had reduced classification by then.
> Meanwhile, when the U.S. wanted to send Israeli produced, U.S. owned SPIKE missiles to Ukraine, Israel blocked the transfer.
I agree that's pretty terrible. Israeli governments did a lot of shitty moves like that and still does. But it's not alone in that sense.
First, this is pretty standard stuff when selling weapons. You can't sell them to 3rd parties without permission. This is true for US weapons that are sent to Israel and any country selling weapons.
The main logic behind this is that Israel is concerned about escalating against Russia. There are many Jews in Russia which might be on the receiving end of retaliation and there is deep Russian presence in the middle east (notably Syria). I can understand that concern and we don't know all the facts since a lot of it has to do with information that isn't exposed to the public.
But I'm 100% with you that Israel should have been more helpful to Ukraine. It set up a field hospital and helped later on with some knowledge transfer but not much beyond that. At least not publicly.
Back to the main subject though. Israel is sharing a ton of information with the USA using spy networks. There's a lot of collaboration in preventing nuclear armament in Iran, Syria and Iraq.
Israel did a lot of the dirty work the USA just can't do. After Afghanistan and Iraq it is pretty clear that the USA is losing its deterrence and Israel can do the stuff the USA doesn't want to do officially. It can wag its finger publicly but approve of the result in some of these cases. E.g. the Hezbollah people that Israel killed in Lebanon had US bounties on their heads. Furthermore, the level of destruction is indeed horrible, but it's deterrence. The US can then enjoy both sides: It has the higher moral ground of avoiding the dirty work and chastising Israel. But it still gets the impact of "you mess with the west and we can get you anywhere".
> Yes but the settlement with Egypt where land was returned was 45 years ago. Israel is not the same country it was back then.
The settlement with Jordan was 30 years ago. The Oslo accord with the Palestinians is still in effect today.
Yes, I sadly agree Israel moved to the right. That is exactly what I would like to fix. The problem is that a lot of the well meaning people are doing more damage than good.
You can't stop a war by taking weapons, it will just make the war FAR more violent since you need to make every bomb count. I very much agree there should be pressure on Israel but it needs to be the right nuanced type of pressure.
> > Israel wants a Palestinian state and tries to achieve that.
>
> Based on Israel's actions, and the statements of Netanyahu and a couple of ministers, I don't believe this. I think that they've given up and intend to remove the Palestinians from the occupied territories.
Sadly that might make more sense in the past tense at the moment. Still, despite all the violence and terrible government there are still Israelis who have hope for a two state solution.
This is exactly my point. How do we change things back so Israelis will have hope again in a two state solution?
The first ingredient is time. Right now we've got a war going on. It's terrible for everyone and should end as soon as possible. If Hamas survives this war in any functional way then the Palestinians will be f*ed. It will do this all over again and things will end up worse. It's in its nature.
But if it's a shell of its former self then there is a chance. There's now a border wall which keeps Israel out as much as it keeps Palestinians in. There are offers such as the Saudi deal which can pave a way for a long term deal. Netanyahu is old by now and since he eliminated any competitor on the right, there is no heir apparent.
> the demographics of Israel have changed and continue to change in a direction towards more right-wing nationalism.
Sadly this is very true. Even worse... Due to the success of the Oslo accord young Israelis don't meet Palestinians and vice versa. It creates a detachment between the people and lets both sides develop antagonism.
Unfortunately when speaking to foreigners the opinions are either you're evil or you're 100% right. Both are the wrong answer. E.g. a friend of mine was living in Ashdod which gets lots of Hamas rockets. About a decade ago we had lunch and he was furious. He told me about the panic in his kids eyes, the started bed-wetting from the fear. They lived like that for a decade with no end in sight.
He said something along the lines of "I don't care what they bomb in Gaza, they're coming after my kids". My answer was roughly "you're right, but that would only make a father in Gaza feel the same way". That worked well.
Looking at things like US funding contributing to the war is problematic. Israelis blame the US for this whole mess. It left Gaza because of US pressure. It didn't go back in because of US pressure. Cutting funding or weapons would be the ultimate betrayal and authorization to do "anything". I think it will make everything worse.
> This is exactly my point. How do we change things back so Israelis will have hope again in a two state solution?
I have no idea. I also have no idea how you'd get the Palestinians to have hope either. Even if Israel were willing to do a two state solution, they would undoubtedly ask for a very limited sovegerenty that would require the Palestinian state to be demilitarized, which would mean that Israel would have to control ports and border crossings to check for weapons, which means they could also do things like they have done in the past like prohibit the import of concrete.
What the Palestinians see is the Israelis constantly expanding the settlements, and so they see that their only alternative to losing their land inch by inch is armed resistance, futile as that may be.
As an American, I don't really see how the U.S. is positively influencing the situation, or can positively influence it. If you look at what's happened in Gaza, yes, Israel is legitimately furious over Oct 7, but the response has killed something like 28,000 noncombatant Palestinians. For all of that, they've managed to get the release of, or rescue 60 or so hostages.
As an American and as a Dad, I don't want to buy bombs so that Israel can kill Palestinian kids. The sense in the media is that Israel expects us to view Israeli lives as being worth 1000x as much as Palestinian lives, but as a gentile American, I view them as equally valuable.
If there were some credible plan that would lead to a resolution of the issue from the Israeli side, it would be a different matter, but all I can see is endless carnage, and I do not want to be a party to it.
> I also have no idea how you'd get the Palestinians to have hope either. Even if Israel were willing to do a two state solution, they would undoubtedly ask for a very limited sovegerenty that would require the Palestinian state to be demilitarized, which would mean that Israel would have to control ports and border crossings to check for weapons, which means they could also do things like they have done in the past like prohibit the import of concrete.
I'm pretty sure a demilitarized state is the only option for everyone involved. I think that seeing the destruction in Gaza might be the incentive that lights a fire under both sides to compromise.
Israel will control border crossings regardless. The west bank can bring in products from Jordan but I'm guessing Israel would demand oversight. That would probably force Israel to tame its expectations. Also as time moves and the deal proves itself Israel could relax, I doubt Hamas will let it relax too much but I'm hopeful on that front.
I hope this can be done as part of a wide region Saudi deal. Biden has been pushing for that and it's the smart move. A Saudi peace agreement will change the region and validate Israels right to exist, it would put a huge damper on Hamas's ambitions.
> What the Palestinians see is the Israelis constantly expanding the settlements, and so they see that their only alternative to losing their land inch by inch is armed resistance, futile as that may be.
That conflates the two situations. Palestinians in Gaza don't have settlements. Palestinians in the west bank (who specifically aren't joining in the war), have settlements.
That's part of the insanity of the Israeli right wing... Hamas is evil so they get no settlements and what is effectively their own country. West bank is mostly moderate so they get settlements and restrictions. This is obviously over simplified but just bonkers.
The Palestinians in the west bank understand the violence when you're the weaker side eventually hurts them. That doesn't mean there are no attacks there (there are), but they are driven by Hamas offshoots and small forces. Palestinian resistance in the west bank is mostly political which makes a lot more sense and IMHO far more damaging to Israel in the long term. I hope Israelis will be able to climb out of their bubble and disassociate the two approaches.
Settlements in the west bank get constructed as response to violence from Hamas. That's an insane policy by an insane government. Things like that can be reverted though, most of these settlements are illegal by Israeli law.
> As an American, I don't really see how the U.S. is positively influencing the situation, or can positively influence it. If you look at what's happened in Gaza, yes, Israel is legitimately furious over Oct 7, but the response has killed something like 28,000 noncombatant Palestinians. For all of that, they've managed to get the release of, or rescue 60 or so hostages.
I see that and I mostly agree (although none of us know the exact number of noncombatant casualties but even one is tragic). That's why Biden's pressure for a hostage deal is so important. I wish pro-Palestinian protesters would march with both flags calling for a deal which is in everyone's interest at this point.
> As an American and as a Dad, I don't want to buy bombs so that Israel can kill Palestinian kids. The sense in the media is that Israel expects us to view Israeli lives as being worth 1000x as much as Palestinian lives, but as a gentile American, I view them as equally valuable.
Don't cast that as a racist war. Yes, Israel has racist just like any place. Also no one on the Israeli side is targeting kids. It's also not about balance (and the number isn't 1000x right now even based on larger estimates it's around 20-40x).
> If there were some credible plan that would lead to a resolution of the issue from the Israeli side, it would be a different matter, but all I can see is endless carnage, and I do not want to be a party to it.
That is understandable, neither do I. But picking up and going home can lead to far worse consequences as the USA saw in Afghanistan. That was tragic on a whole different level and is a continuing disaster to everyone who lives there. America broke the middle east on multiple occasions, right now the options are between bad and worse.
If the USA stops weapon shipments this will:
* Force Israel to use more less accurate armaments
* Let the right-wing claim that "Jews are abandoned again", "we can trust no one"... Then proceed to do whatever they want to do with no concequences
* If it runs out of weapons it might use nuclear weapons for deterrence
As a parent myself I always threaten my kids with punishment if they misbehave. The problem is that when you actually punish them (e.g. throwing away a toy or deleting a game), then you're fed. You no longer have the leverage of the threat and need to either move to more extreme threats or lose any control over them.
Biden is in that position. Obviously threatening Israel with war isn't on the table... But if he does anything, it can seriously backfire. Furthermore, the impact is *much* bigger. Israel is part of a proxy east/west war against Iran/Russia/China. If there's even a hint Israel isn't getting the full support of the USA it can have dire consequences to Ukraine/Taiwan.
Yes, bad people within the Israeli government are abusing that and the US elections to get away with terrible stuff. I very much liked the Biden set of sanctions against settlers. I think they can go further with action like that but it's a delicate needle to thread.
Their slogan in Arabic is "from the river to the sea Palestine will be Arab", the river and the sea are the borders of Israel and its tantamount to "kill all the Jews".
There are many variants of the slogan of course, but for some reason you're picking one of the more uncommon (and more virulent) versions. However, he "official" versions (for example from the PLO) use the phrase to call for a single democratic state for Arabs and Jews, that would replace Israel, and from which nobody will be expelled.
This is of course also in line (albeit in somewhat simplified form) with the version one sees almost uniformly on the streets these days, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", and if you ask people what they mean by that, most of them will tell you something equivalent to the PLO version.
Meanwhile since 1977 Likud has used essentially the same slogan, but in reverse, minus any aspirations of democratic equality, and with racial supremacy baked in: "Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty."
> However, he "official" versions (for example from the PLO)
The PLO recognizes that Israel has a right to exist and has abandoned official "armed resistance" approaches. They understand that this never worked and ultimately only hurt the Palestinian people.
I'm explicitly talking about Hamas and making a clear distinction between them and the Palestinian people at large.
> use the phrase to call for a single democratic state for Arabs and Jews
That was suggested in the past and has gone back in vogue for some extreme liberals but it's probably not what any side wants. I don't think it's something that's workable. See Lebanon as a case in point where three different conflicting cultures are constantly violently clashing.
> This is of course also in line (albeit in somewhat simplified form) with the version one sees almost uniformly on the streets these days, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", and if you ask people what they mean by that, most of them will tell you something equivalent to the PLO version.
Well... What *some* people mean doesn't really mean anything. There was a Nordic Journalist who recorded pro-Palestinian demonstrations and the Arabic slogans people yelled were VERY different.
But even without that. Hamas is looking at these protests and seeing them as Israel losing support. So they keep fighting, keep holding hostages and keep sending children as carriers. Netanyahu points at these demonstrations as how the world is turning anti-semetic so Israelis MUST fight for their home. And yes, Israelis 100% hear "Palestine will be free of Jews". Trump is pointing at them as a failure of the liberals...
These protests are only helping bad people and increasing strife. If they were indeed pro-Palestinian they would carry both flags in support of a two state solution. They would also support the cause of returning the hostages. They are now for peace, they are anti-Israel protests.
> Meanwhile since 1977 Likud has used essentially the same slogan, but in reverse, minus any aspirations of democratic equality, and with racial supremacy baked in: "Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty."
That was not an official slogan but yes people on the more extreme right did sing it. People still do and also say worse things. There are several big problems with whataboutism... Palestinians are the weaker part of this situation, violence will always end up worse for them. That's why the PLO abandoned that approach (at least officially excluding lynch mobs), it doesn't help Palestinians to keep that rhetoric.
Also the Likud was the party that voted to leave Gaza. That included Netanyhau who signed that law. A PM who originated from the Likud offered a Palestinian state in 2008.
I'm aware of just one "official" Hamas formulation of the slogan, via the 2017 charter as quoted below. Can you point to any others? We do have that quote from Khaled Meshaal as well, but one doesn't hear it so often.
Hamas’ 2017 charter states that in principle, it “rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.” In a 2012 speech, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said, “Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no concession on any inch of the land.”
Regarding the nicer-sounding variants that "nobody wants / aren't workable": That may be, but it is significant that the variant that most folks in their camp at least pretend to believe in (as an "aspiration") is at least nominally non-genocidal. And that the genuinely genocidal variants -- just aren't on display that often.
(Might get back to the other stuff you wrote later)
من المية للمية / فلسطين عربية, "from the water to the water / Palestine is Arab"
Notice that this is nitpicking since the intention is clear to Israelis/Palestinians even in the moderate version of the slogan.
This hurts Palestinians because it discourages their leaders from compromises that might have ended this conflict (see the 2000 and 2008 statehood rejections). It also strengthens the sense within Israelis that there's no partner for peace on the other side.
It's like using the N-word. Once you said that you have that label and feeling, nothing you say will matter to any side.
> As long as Hamas exists in a functioning form there can be no peace.
I think the big problem with this approach is that actions taken now, which lead to deaths, lead to the friends & family of said people becoming more radicalised and thus to more terror attacks/wars in the future.
I read recently in the FT that 60% of current Hamas fighters have lost family to previous conflicts, suggesting that this isn't going to end.
And more generally, it's basically impossible for conventional armies to defeat guerilla fighters who have the support of the population (c.f. Irish/English conflicts, Iraq, Afghanisation (multiple times) etc).
Like, fundamentally the only way this can end is through either extermination or negotiation. Given the relative power imbalances, it'll be extermination of the Palestinians, which would be terrible (and incredibly depressing given that a lot of Israeli citizens are descended from survivors of the Holocausts and the various pogroms in European history).
I used to be of that mindset and no longer am. Hamas killed more people in a single day than the IRA killed in its entire existence. The Irish conflict which is more similar to the conflict Israel has in the west bank, is mostly a territorial conflict.
If it were true that violence breeds violence then Jews would have blown up post war Germany with suicide vests. It was still filled with Nazis and their collaborators.
Hamas is a different story, there's no amount of negotiations or compromise that will placate a fanatic. They will probably keep doing these things forever just like Isis didn't fully go away. But once the leadership got cut down Isis found it much harder to pull off the same level of terror.
I agree that this needs to be a dual motion. Young frustrated people are kindle for these organizations and this won't work without a peace process that would give hope to the people. That's why I don't have any faith in the current Israeli government. I hope it can be replaced so there would be a parallel process that would help rebuild and pave a way for peace again.
I agree that the Irish conflict is more like the West Bank (but that's super super bad and has been for a long time) and that October 7th was much more destructive than anything in the Troubles.
Like, it's worth noting that the core of the nationalist and unionist terrorists still live in Ireland and engage in a bunch of criminality. These organizations don't disband, they just die off/become politicians.
The big problem with Israel making peace is that it appears a solid majority don't want that, which depresses the hell out of me.
A solid majority is for peace and has been for a while. Oct 7th might have screwed the numbers, but they will bounce back. The Oslo accords wouldn't have happened with out a solid majority. Netanyahu himself had to make a speech where he specifically supported the idea of a Palestinian state in order to get elected (see the Bar Ilan Speech).
There are many peace activists on both sides but also a lot of fatigue and disillusionment. Don't let that get you down too. I think once the dust settles things could change. The pendulum always swings to the other side, we just need patience and to set an environment receptive for that. If Trump wins this election things will probably get much worse before they get better. But I think that they will get better even in that worst case scenario.
So kind of them to offer freedom, and sovereignty, both taken by themselves. What a moral high ground they have!
Did they offer reparations too, for the ethnic cleansing in Jaffa, and Haifa, and numerous other villages and cities? I am sure they would even respawn the murdered Palestinian children.
> Most of the Palestinians who fled in 1948 did so because of Arab armies who urged them to move so they can kill the Jews more easily. That backfired. Those who stayed are Israeli citizens and always have been. Those who fled couldn't come back because the borders were sealed due to a war their leaders chose to start.
You mention 1948....but what happened in 1946, and 1947? Aren't those years also relevant? Things like the bombing of the King David Hotel (by Zionist militias) and the Deir Yassin Massacre (same militias again), precede intervention by neighboring Arab states. Palestinians were already fleeing from murder, and they couldn't return to homes which had been demolished by the Zionist militias, and with the rubble mined to prevent people returning.
Sure. Lehi and Shamir are indeed awful and that's why the Hunting Season was justified. There was no similar ability to unify against the extremist voices in the Palestinian side which is the main point I'm making here.
This isn't history. You see the same patterns happening right now. Arafat and Abu Mazen were unable to control Hamas in the same way the Jews were able to control their extremists.
You could argue that the Irish were unable to control the IRA which would be a very accurate comparison. But the scale would be different. Hamas killed in one day more than the IRA killed in its entire existence. Hamas enjoys the backing of Iran, Qatar, Turkey and others. It's used as a puppet to force a regional war that goes against the interests of the Palestinian people. At least the ones who don't want to die in a holy war.
It's good to see a contraction from "Palestinians" to Shamir and Hamas.
We can also contract Jews to IDF and perhaps discuss how they kill 10x more than Hamas by most accounts.
The killing is the extreme behaviour. The insidious cause is the constant slow creeping pushing out of the other, the dispossesions and land captures that continue unabated.
> We can also contract Jews to IDF and perhaps discuss how they kill 10x more than Hamas by most accounts.
Why is killing more of the enemy a "bad thing"?
> The killing is the extreme behaviour.
Yes. However, you fail to offer an alternative. Israel left Gaza, Israel made attempts to form a Palestinian state. Palestinians had the opportunity to end the cycle and Israel made that step...
Last time Israel left Gaza Hamas took over. It killed MANY Palestinians then started preparing for war, building rockets, tunnels etc. Israel didn't return to Gaza and tried to limit retaliation. That clearly didn't work.
> The insidious cause is the constant slow creeping pushing out of the other, the dispossesions and land captures that continue unabated.
This I actually agree with. I think the settlements in the west bank, especially the deep ones are a huge mistake. Guess what enables them...
> Some see it. Other refuse to acknowledge it.
Goes both ways sir. What do you expect Israel to do?
I wish the current conflict wasn't as violent. I wish more planning was given for "the next day". I wish Israel worked with the Palestinian authority and used this as an opportunity for that. I wish it would clear the deep settlements in the west bank instead of expanding them.
Unfortunately, Israel has a terrible government and Hamas/Iran knew that when they initiated Oct 7th. I hope that after this is all over Israel would elect a more reasonable government. It would probably still be very right-wing since violence tends to push people in that direction, but hopefully it would be reasonable. A right-wing government cleared settlements in Gaza, made peace with Egypt etc. So everything is possible.
Okay. Wow. I hadn't realised you were on board with Hamas killing more Jews.
Or are you saying all Palestinians are "the enemy"?
Currently there's a lot of legit credentialed journalists being killed with evidence that some are being specificly targetted. That's a straight up war crime .. although as unlikely to be prosecuted, just as Kissinger skated.
> However, you fail to offer an alternative.
It's on me? Perhaps act in good faith, eg:
> Israel left Gaza, Israel made attempts to form a Palestinian state.
Israel also continued displacing and taking land via settlements in defiance of International law, etc.
> Guess what enables them...
Is the answer Netanyahu and his scaly mates? They do seem to offer a lot of incentives.
> What do you expect Israel to do?
Act in accordance with the people that have acquired power .. for now I expect Israel to act in the worst way possible and it hasn't disappointed .. years of pushing limits have rebounded much as many predicted and now those that sought permission to go all out have that in spades.
It'd be nice albeit a little fanciful, if the people of Israel could put better people in power .. but that's a whole other slice of alternative history.
> Okay. Wow. I hadn't realised you were on board with Hamas killing more Jews.
That's a ridiculous strawman argument. Do I seriously need to explain how wars work?
It's fair to be a pacifist, but it's unrealistic and deadly. PLO killed many Israelis, children etc. But their goal was statehood so they stopped and moved forward. Hamas's goal is ending Israel. Wars work towards goals.
> Currently there's a lot of legit credentialed journalists being killed with evidence that some are being specificly targetted.
That is terrible. But you know what's also terrible? Hamas literally kept hostages in the house of a Journalist. Many so called Journalist were part of the October 7th attack. They used UNWRA as a puppet as part of their attacks and money laundering.
They used ambulances, hospitals etc. as cover. There's some point where using an ID as a get out of jail free card is a problem.
> That's a straight up war crime .. although as unlikely to be prosecuted, just as Kissinger skated.
That is a huge problem. Unfortunately the UN has zero credibility at this point. It came up with more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined. More than Russia, Sudan, China, Iran etc.
That's a problem because I would like to know if Israel is committing actual war crimes and I would like an objective body to be in control of that. The UN is not objective by any stretch of the imagination.
Luckily the US has Leahy. If there is actual evidence of a war crime being committed then a lawsuit against Israel in the USA can stop financial support for Israel. Even if the lawsuit is thrown out the facts would still be out. Yet such a lawsuit isn't prosecuted.
> > Guess what enables them...
>
> Is the answer Netanyahu and his scaly mates? They do seem to offer a lot of incentives.
How did Netanyahu get into power and keep it for so long?
During the 90's Israel tried to go through with the Oslo accords. Hamas blew up busses filled with civilians in the middle of Tel Aviv. Many busses. They shot up coffee shops and did everything they could to stop the peace process.
Netanyahu used that and built his power base around it. He went to every such attack site and gained traction. Without Hamas he would have been an anonymous secondary "also ran" politician. Hamas made him. This symbiotic relationship continues to this day to such an extent that the right-wing extremists defined Hamas as an asset. Following October 7th they expanded settlements in the West Bank as "retaliation" which is stupid and evil. But again, zero-sum entities act like that.
The difference here is that Israel is the stronger side. When Palestinians pick a zero-sum approach to solving a conflict it is a suicidal death cult.
> > What do you expect Israel to do?
>
> Act in accordance with the people that have acquired power ..
That isn't an answer. Israel tried to do that. It tried to offer statehood. It tried "just leaving". You can argue that this wasn't "genuine" or wasn't enough... But baby steps are required in this case and Hamas proved the problematic nature of this approach.
> years of pushing limits have rebounded much as many predicted and now those that sought permission to go all out have that in spades.
This shows deep misunderstanding of the situation. Hamas is a zero-sum player, it wants an all out war because it wants everything from the river to the sea. It objects to the very notion of peace with Israel.
> It'd be nice albeit a little fanciful, if the people of Israel could put better people in power .. but that's a whole other slice of alternative history.
Israel did put better people in power. Notice how the whole world including Europe and the states are seeing a surge in the right-wing?
Why is that? Because unfortunately the extreme left has become delusional in its extreme stances.
There's a huge difference between wanting peace and refusing to fight a war. You're completely dismissing Israeli attempts at peace and mis-labeling Hamas attacks as territorial when they are religious, fanatic and proxy driven.
In the US the majority of people want to deport all immigrants. These are people who contribute to the economy and do nothing wrong. Is it a surprise that Israelis moved to the right as a result of Hamas attacks?
Is it a surprise that these right-wing politicians use that to further their agenda in the west-bank?
I think Israel is naturally liberal and will move back to the left when it is no longer under threat. The problem is that as long as Hamas is a threat this just can't happen. One of the reasons the settlements are expanding is to block such motion to the left, this is where US pressure could help but it's a delicate needle to thread. If the UN had any credibility it could help, unfortunately it doesn't when it comes to Israel.
In 1940s the Palestinians went to Hitler and asked him to take care of the Jews.
So you're using Amin al-Husseini as a stand-in for all Palestinians, which I suppose is about as cool as using Netanyahu as a stand-in for all Israelis. Or as the other commenter pointed out, when referring to the occasion when agents from Stern Gang met with Nazi officials to discuss the possibility of an anti-British alliance, we might as well just say simplify and say "the Jews" did so, collectively.
But never mind that. Just tell us, please: what did Amin ask Hitler to do, specifically?
Referencing the transcript we all have of their sole meeting in November 1941, of course.
> So you're using Amin al-Husseini as a stand-in for all Palestinians
Nope, not what I'm saying. I'm saying you can pick any historical point in time and show why things happened in a particular way. Palestinians bemoan that Israel exists and that Jews were "given" statehood (I quote given because there was a war and it was paid for with blood). But if you look at the history it's pretty clear why the UN felt Jews deserved a home in Israel. They were on the right side of history in this particular conflict and fought besides the allies.
This is a repeating pattern for Palestinian leadership. Unwillingness to compromise and victim-hood, that doesn't work well for them. I'm not saying they're not victims or even not saying that Israel isn't to blame for a lot of their problems. I am saying that their leadership bares a LOT of that responsibility too, the choices they made brought them to this point and they continue to make similar choices which make matters worse.
Right now it's obviously too late since the last big choice they had was in 2008 when they rejected a statehood deal. Hamas had a choice during that time of recognizing Israel and negotiating, but it's Hamas so it obviously wasn't much of a choice.
I hope there will be another such fork in the road, I doubt they will get anything remotely as good as the 2008 offer. Knowing history I doubt Palestinian leadership will take it and again they will blame Israel.
I guess we have to "snap the chalk-line" somewhere. I didn't explicitly establish this but in debates I often snap it at the end of WW2. The period 1914-1945 was full of so much chaos and bloodshed globally, I think the end of WW2 was when people REALLY tried to catch a breather and try to build a newer, better world.
> The initial Jews that came into the area were under constant attacks by Palestinians in the area so they formed militias of their own. These became very successful and split into 3 groups. Hagana which was the moderate one ended up becoming the IDF. The two others were the ones that performed those attacks and indeed performed terrorism (moderate by today's standard but still terrorism).
When you refer to Jews "coming into the area", do you mean the post-WW2 immigration, or some other timespan? Because the Irgun, at least, was actively committing terrorism against the British, even outside of Palestine ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946_British_Embassy_bombing ), as early as 1946. This appears to be a mostly one-sided campaign (not targeting the Palestinian Arabs...yet) but definitely set the stage for their level of violence moving forward. Interestingly, neither Morris nor Pappe cover 1946 violence in particular detail (both focus on the Zionist leadership's planning for the following ethnic cleansing). I need to find additional sources for this period.
> Palestinians didn't have that capability of unity. They have very little in common other than hate towards Israel.
Where does that hate come from, though? It didn't coalesce in a vacuum.
> That is both unconfirmed
I'll be perfectly honest, it's really hard not to interpret that as anything other than "Holocaust denial" level delusion. Which, of course, is tragically ironic given the subject. Both authors I mentioned cite documents in IDF archives about the deliberate planning process for the destruction in this timeframe. If you are going to assert that the destruction, its specific methods, or the resulting movements of large numbers of civilians, is unconfirmed, you need to support that with some very robust evidence. I'm not sure what could be more authoritative than "primary source documents from the perpetrator".
> Then they couldn't return since there was a border.
Some of them tried to return (refugees from Huj, in one example from mid-late 1948), and were refused, after internal debates by the Israelis over whether it would "set a precedent". Those debates were documented, and are cited in Morris' book, pgs330-333. Those were deliberate decisions made by Israeli leadership.
> But Israel didn't choose that war, it was forced on them.
Actions have consequences. As an aside, I constantly see this use of the passive voice in discussing this conflict. Israel never does anything, it just has stuff happen to it. Once you notice it, it's a really obvious form of shaping the information environment to condition people to think that nothing could ever possibly be Israel's fault, that no one making decisions in Israel has ever done so with malicious intent. Things just....happen.
> Notice that Israel didn't take neither Gaza or the West Bank during that war. So why didn't the Palestinians finally have a state at that point?
> Did anyone complain to Egypt/Jordan for denying the rights of the Palestinian people?
That's a good question, I'll add it to my list of RFIs as I continue to research.
> The fact is that this is purely because Jews were involved.
I watched a man hooked up to an IV bag in a field hospital BURN ALIVE after an Israeli airstrike. The perpetual victim complex just doesn't resonate with people anymore.
> But as far as this conflict goes, Israel acted WAY better than pretty much any other country in a similar situation. E.g. Turkey which keeps blasting Israel over and over just bombed civilians for a tiny attack. Crickets from the world police...
Yeah, because Turkish airstrikes haven't killed FORTY THOUSAND PEOPLE in less than a year. What a ridiculous deflection.
-----
At any rate, I hope this discussion has provided enough material for other HNers to educate themselves. The available Israeli sources are detailed and surprisingly candid. I don't expect either of us will illuminate any further understanding.
> I think the end of WW2 was when people REALLY tried to catch a breather and try to build a newer, better world.
I think discussing history is irrelevant. None of us were around back then so blaming some ancestor for something is just stupid posturing that doesn't solve anything.
The bottom line is that there are millions of people on both sides who were born in the region. They have nowhere to go and the idea that some would "just leave" is just stupid. There's only one solution and it's a two state solution, blaming history is redundant since both sides did some bad things.
We can review history to see what we can learn from it. Here the pattern is clear: Jews unified and strengthened their moderate base. Palestinians fragmented and moved towards violent approaches which didn't work well for them. With the exception of Oslo, but even there their leadership failed to compromise.
> When you refer to Jews "coming into the area", do you mean the post-WW2 immigration, or some other timespan?
19th century when the initial Jewish militias were formed.
> > Palestinians didn't have that capability of unity. They have very little in common other than hate towards Israel.
>
> Where does that hate come from, though? It didn't coalesce in a vacuum.
I'm not saying that Israel doesn't deserve some hate. But it's much easier to blame others for your problems instead of blaming yourself. Jordan and Egypt did pretty evil things to the Palestinians and didn't give them a country when they controlled these regions. Yet you don't see the same level of hate.
> I'll be perfectly honest, it's really hard not to interpret that as anything other than "Holocaust denial" level delusion
That is nonsense. You claimed "Palestinians were already fleeing from murder, and they couldn't return to homes which had been demolished by the Zionist militias".
Were there homes destroyed during the war?
Sure. Was it by Israelis? Possibly.
Was it with the purpose to prevent people from coming back? Maybe.
But you're presenting this as if all the Palestinian refugees or a significant amount of them escaped because of such actions. That is not something anyone can claim. The common narrative on the Israeli side is that the armies of surrounding countries orchestrated a strategic retreat. No one knows because there was no actual army in 1948. It was being formed from a militia and there was no organized standard/hierarchy. Also that particular war was remarkably deadly/violent for both sides. Record keeping wasn't exactly something you can count on.
Regardless, this is irrelevant. The fact that Palestinians keep going back to 1948 is part of the toxicity that prevents them from compromising on proposals for a Palestinian state.
> Some of them tried to return (refugees from Huj, in one example from mid-late 1948), and were refused, after internal debates by the Israelis over whether it would "set a precedent".
Could Jews who had to flee Arab countries and territories within that region return? Could they get their assets back?
"Ukraine was given territory from Poland, and the Polish minorities were expelled from Ukraine. In turn, Ukrainian minorities were expelled from Poland. While the Polish had to leave Lithuania and Belarus, the Lithuanians and Belorussians had to leave Poland. Also, Poland was given land from Germany, and the Germans were expelled from Poland. Many Hungarians had to leave from the Transylvania region of Romania. The Italians were expelled from what is Croatia today. In May 1945, the President of Czechoslovakia called on his people to “eliminate the German problem.” Nearly 2 million Germans were expelled from the country, and thousands of Germans died in the process."
Wars reshape regions and demographics. Especially in the 40's. Jews were victims of that through history too. I'm not excusing it, but it's not something special or unique in any way.
> > But Israel didn't choose that war, it was forced on them.
>
> Actions have consequences. As an aside, I constantly see this use of the passive voice in discussing this conflict. Israel never does anything, it just has stuff happen to it. Once you notice it, it's a really obvious form of shaping the information environment to condition people to think that nothing could ever possibly be Israel's fault, that no one making decisions in Israel has ever done so with malicious intent. Things just....happen.
Instead of proving that something is wrong you try to twist it. When the facts don't work in the favor of your argument then obviously the argument is redundant.
The fact is that Israel did seek peace and made a great deal of effort in that direction. But the standard Israel is held to is a standard that no country on earth would be able to hold to.
> I watched a man hooked up to an IV bag in a field hospital BURN ALIVE after an Israeli airstrike. The perpetual victim complex just doesn't resonate with people anymore.
You mean the hospital to which civilian hostages were taken and murdered there? Where Hamas literally had a base of operations?
I agree, it's awful. But what is the option here?
From now on firing rockets is OK as long as you do it on top of orphanages?
By accepting that narrative you're encouraging Hamas. Every time people talk about children dying in Gaza it creates a terrible incentive for Hamas. They use children as couriers because they know the IDF doesn't want to shoot them, but if they die they also win: https://www.timesofisrael.com/encouraging-our-children-to-ki...
> Yeah, because Turkish airstrikes haven't killed FORTY THOUSAND PEOPLE in less than a year. What a ridiculous deflection.
40,000+ most of which were Hamas terrorists. This was a response to an attack that killed 5 people. This is besides all the stuff that Erdogan is doing in Syria etc.
> At any rate, I hope this discussion has provided enough material for other HNers to educate themselves. The available Israeli sources are detailed and surprisingly candid.
The fact that you're surprised that Israel is honest indicates a lot about your core bias. Israel is a liberal democracy and tries to do better all the time. Its history isn't perfect, whose is?
Try criticizing Hamas in Gaza. You might get buried alive by your brother using a spoon...
It goes on and on. Escalating conflict in the ME, such as with Israel and Lebanon, regardless of who is at fault, is not in the interest of the US. The administration feels attempts to deescalate are falling on deaf ears, but is in a politically precarious situation.
>What ive always wondered is why the US hasn't put Israel on the security council, considering it is a nuclear armed state.
That isn't the criteria for being a council member, if it were they'd need to allow India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Plus, pretty sure the US does not officially recognize Israel as a nuclear power, it's one of those open secret things
Besides that, how would the US benefit from another country being able to veto anything they want to do in the UN? Sure, they'd probably agree with far more things than Russia or China, but the US wouldn't gain anything from them being there.
The thing is, Israel doesn’t protect U.S. interests in the middle east. All the U.S. has really ever wanted there is oil, and because of U.S. support for Israel, we’ve been the subject of two oil embargoes.
Israel provides us zero military bases, even when Arab countries provide us dozens. Despite all of the support we give them and have given them, they have repeatedly escalated conflicts when the U.S. asked them to stop. Today, we are unable to ship goods through the Red Sea because the Houthis are upset over Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Has the US asked for a base? They do have Site 512, not a typical base but still a base.
In many ways Israel does the US' dirty work, like crippling Hezbollah which is responsible for numerous attacks against US (and other Western) personnel.
The Houthis are squarely to blame for the disruption of Red Sea shipping; Israel's military operation in a different country isn't a legitimate reason to attack (almost) random ships.
I think you’re missing the point here. The only reason the U.S. cares about Hezbollah is because they attack Israel. The only reason Hezbollah exists is because of Israel. The reason the Houthis are attacking shipping is because the U.S. supports Israel. Being an ally to Israel has imposed huge costs on the U.S. and virtually no benefits.
Many in the U.S. feel that protecting Israel is a moral cause, but it is undeniably a strategic albatross for us.
> The only reason the U.S. cares about Hezbollah is because they attack Israel. The only reason Hezbollah exists is because of Israel
You can't know that. The Iranian Islamic revolution happened not because of Israel. Iran would have probably tried to gain influence through proxies and destabilize the Middle East regardless of Israel. It would have joined forces with Russia and China. It would have probably tried acquiring nuclear weapons and it would have hated the U.S (which it calls Big Satan to this day).
In short Iran would have been a huge headache and security risk for the U.S and the West even if Israel didn't exist imo.
The U.S is definitely strong enough to deal with Iran without Israel, but its helpful to have allies in a very very unstable neighborhood.
Now go back a few years and take into account the US meddling with Iran. You'll notice some cause -> effect with our intended consequences coming back to bite us for decades.
Excellent point. But assuming you're not being facetious, the Security Council is largely a historical artifact: all five permanent members were the victors of WWII. (Why occupied France was included is something I never understood.)
While it's true nuclear proliferation began with the five permanent members, at the time the UN and Security Council were founded in 1945, only the US had the bomb.
The USSR didn't test one until 1949, the UK in 1952, France in 1960, and China (as you mentioned) in 1964. The Soviet Union had an early start because of their spies in the Manhattan Project, while the UK contributed to it during the War. 15 years would pass before another permanent member caught up.
And Russia took the USSR's seat just as China did Taiwan's.
There’s plenty of non Jewish Zionists in the US as well. And I don’t think anyone is really being secretive here. The US is taking actions that benefit Israel to the detriment of America.
This is exactly what people are saying when they are referring to 'zionists', everything else is just a red herring. Unfortunately even well intentioned people are ignorant of this.
For example, it's hard to comprehend how a country like Russia is not suspended?
A country which signed the Charter, and is member of the security council, is trying to annex a country of 40 million people, claiming they and their culture don't exist.
They don't even hide the genocide intent, and yet Guterres is visiting the BRICS conference in Russia legitimizing the regime. Despicable.
We have control over Russia. We have not fully sanctioned them and in the past the US was more than willing to trade with Russia or even give them money.
I just don't think you are aware of the scale of the event.
Do you realize that in less than 3 years Russia has caused more than 1.000.000 casualties, Russia has kidnapped more than 25.000 Children, and made 10.000.000 people into refugees some of them filtrated in Russia?
It's like the destruction of +1,500 medical facilities, deliberately, isn't much of a big deal...
Both are horrible events but at completely different scales. We're talking about a country of 40.000.000 people who was at peace, posed no threat to anyone, and never attacked any neighboring country. There are several days of +1.000 casualties - these are human beings, I don't know why you're deliberately dehumanizing Ukrainians and Russians.
Europe hasn't seen anything like this since WW2, even after we witnessed the genocide of Chechens at the hands of Russia, another one.
HN posts about this used to be 99% Pro-Zionist. There’s been a marked shift in opinion (or less bots) and I’m very, very glad that people are recognising the extent of war crimes being committed by Israel.
Worth considering that in terms of relative size, Israel has a population of 10 million, Jews in the world number ~14 million.
Whereas the Arab world, which tends to be relatively anti-Israel, numbers ~220 million. And Muslims, which tend to be anti-Israel as well, number 1.2 billion.
So just in terms of number of voices, the natural pro-Israel voices [1] are vastly outnumbered by the natural anti-Israel voices.
Think about how this impacts what you hear, how this impacts the votes in the UN (which is not democratic but votes are by country), how this impacts economic reactions (number of consumers), etc.
[1] This is a sweeping generalization, but it is statistically true that Jews are usually pro-Israel and Arabs and Muslims are usually anti-Israel. With other religions/ethnicities it's more complicated.
Though global populations show a larger anti-Israel sentiment, Western media and internet forums don't reflect this balance.
Western media often aligns with Israeli perspectives due to strategic alliances, lobbying influence, and media ownership dynamics, framing Israel’s actions as defensive while sidelining broader Arab or Palestinian views.
Online, pro-Israel narratives are reinforced by organized digital campaigns and moderation practices that shape public discourse. Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian voices lack comparable resources and organization in Western spaces, limiting their visibility. This creates a media and digital environment where Western audiences are exposed to narratives that don’t fully represent the global spectrum of perspectives.
> Though global populations show a larger anti-Israel sentiment, Western media and internet forums don't reflect this balance.
I'm not sure you're right. Isn't this a bit hard to judge without first deciding what is true and what constitutes bias? I'm fairly certain we don't agree with on either of these.
Most Israelis consider things like the BBC and the NYT to be biased against Israel. Are you sure they're wrong?
The NYT insisted that a veteran of the Israeli air force, with no prior reporting experience, conduct on the ground research for a massively-significant piece on Hamas sexual abuse allegations.
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new-york-times-anat-schw...The fear among Times staffers who have been critical of the paper’s Gaza coverage is that Schwartz will become a scapegoat for what is a much deeper failure. She may harbor animosity toward Palestinians, lack the experience with investigative journalism, and feel conflicting pressures between being a supporter of Israel’s war effort and a Times reporter, but Schwartz did not commission herself and Sella to report one of the most consequential stories of the war. Senior leadership at the New York Times did.
Why would you consider the NYT biased against Israel?
1. That's just one interview, I'm not sure it's actually representative.
2. Even if you think it is, that's just the US media specifically. I agree that they tend to be relatively pro-Israel, especially compared to other countries, but there are other countries.
3. If we accept that this is representative, can we also consider Ta-Nehisi Coates's book itself to be representative of the attitude of "intellectuals" in the US on Israel? As he himself said, he came into the topic biased against Israel, went to the West Bank to "study" the issue for 10 days only, chose not to talk to any Israeli at all to get any other side of the issue, and wrote what is likely to be the highest-selling book this year about the topic.
Not exactly a great example of journalistic rigor, IMO.
Sorry—I was focusing on bias in US media. (I live in the US)
> As he himself said, he came into the topic biased against Israel, went to the West Bank to "study" the issue for 10 days only, chose not to talk to any Israeli at all to get any other side of the issue
What is the other side of the issue? He and actually experts who study Israel call it apartheid. Is it not? If it is, is there a justification for implementing it? Or maybe I’m missing your point.
Some experts call it apartheid, most Israelis disagree (and Israel officially disagrees). [1]
> If it is, is there a justification for implementing it? Or maybe I’m missing your point.
Well, yes. That's exactly the other side of the issue, and is exactly what a real journalist talking about the Israel/Palestine situation should ideally explore.
This is an HN comment, not exactly the place for the history of the relations between the West Bank and Israel, but the short version is - most of the measures taking place in the WB are a direct result of terror attacks committed by the Palestinians, as a means of securing Israel from future attacks. You can see that relations were much better 40 years ago, it's not like Israel set out to have some kind of apartheid regime over the WB - people from Israel used to go far more freely into the WB, Palestinians used to work far more freely in Israel.
But as more and more attacks happened, Israel implemented various measures to stop terror - including the infamous checkpoints, including various border walls, including limiting work permits for Palestinians.
Looking at a snapshot of the WB now is looking at the end result of worsening relations over many years, with many of the things that seem "cruel" being direct measures to prevent terror attacks; and to prevent things like October 7th happening on a far larger scale, as would happen if it happened from the WB.
Most Israelis believe, probably correctly, that without these security measures, tens of thousands of Israelis would be killed. That would cause almost any country to do whatever it can to secure its "border".
[1] I personally don't care much for battles over semantics; if people agree on what is actually happening in the WB, then whether to call it apartheid or not seems irrelevant to me. There are lots of differences from the situation in South Africa, and lots of similarities.
I think it's worth keeping in mind that Palestinians are not Israeli citizens, and ostensibly the leadership of the Palestinians, which has a limited government role over the WB, is aiming to become a separate state; those circumstances make it seem, to me, that wondering why Palestinians don't have the same rights as Israelis is a category error, like wondering why Mexicans don't have the same rights as Americans.
Then again, it's also worth keeping in mind that whatever the goals of the Palestinians, in some respects Israel does, in fact, have control over the people of the WB, so in practice there are real problems here.
Finding justifications for apartheid will only be an exercise in racism.
Apartheid is a crime against humanity, illegal under international law, and countries have an obligation to prevent apartheid policies from persisting.
Israel’s policies in the West Bank has been ruled to be an apartheid by the ICJ, and Israel has been ordered (non-binding though) to stop apartheid practices, reverse the damage and pay reparations.
The accusation of apartheid against Israel makes no sense because of what Apartheid means -- institutionalized racism against country's own citizens.
If non-jewish citizens of Israel(that as you know DOES NOT include West Bank or Gaza) had different rights than jewish citizens, than you could argue Apartheid.
Again we are talking about Israel proper, not Westbank(controlled by Fatah) or Gaza(formerly controlled by Hamas).
Please tell me which rights do non-jewish citizens of Israel lack institutionally within Israel that Jewish citizens have?
Please tell us about the JNF, and what happens when non-Jewish citizens attempt to purchase or lease land from it.
After that, please tell us what happens when a non-Jewish citizen seeks to marry and obtain citizenship and residency rights for their spouse, and how this differs when a Jewish citizen makes the same application.
After that you can tell us about the Nation State Law, and the not-so symbolic language it contains.
And after that you can tell us about the 14,000 Palestinians annexed into Israel after the latter's illegal annexation of East Jerusalem, who were then forcibly expelled according to criteria determined by the occupying regime. If there's no apartheid in Israel, why weren't their rights protected?
> "The crime of apartheid" means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime;
The word apartheid in popular discourse is not this clearly defined, but I’ve personally never heard this provision. After all, the prototypical case of Apartheid in South Africa insisted that their victims were actually citizens of independent Bantustans and thus not subject to equality under South African laws.
But even so, countries occupying territories have an obligation to protect the people of that territory, subjugating them to apartheid policies under such occupation is at best failure to protect them from apartheid, which is still a crime under international law, and has been ruled as such by the ICJ, which actually goes much further.
> Please tell me which rights do non-jewish citizens of Israel lack institutionally within Israel that Jewish citizens have?
I’ve always had a problem with this statistic. It is at best an irrelevant obfuscation of more plausible explanations, the most plausible—as well as simplest—being the one that your parent offered.
There are plenty of non-zionist Jews among those 10 million. A non significant number of are even anti-zionists (particularly in the USA). There is also plenty of non-jewish zionists. It wouldn’t surprise me actually if non-jewish zionists actually outnumber jewish zionists by a significant margin, maybe even an order of magnitute.
Then there is the deeply problematic aspect of assuming people’s politics based on their ethnicity. Yes there is a correlation, but correlation is not causation and offers no explaination. The 220 million Arabs and the 1.2 billion Muslims around the world probably have a similar opinion about Israel as most people around the world, I bet some of them—albeit a tiny minority—are even zionists.
Your footnote where you explained this does not offer justification. This is a misuse of statistics at best.
The simple explanation here is simply that people empathize with victims. Palestinians have been victims of colonialism for a long time, and are now victims of an ongoing genocide. The simple explanation here is that people follow the news and understand what is happening.
> I’ve always had a problem with this statistic. It is at best an irrelevant obfuscation of more plausible explanations, the most plausible—as well as simplest—being the one that your parent offered.
You think the world feels this way because of the "vast atrocities" committed by Israel.
The problem with this is that there are far, far worse atrocities all over the world, to which no one pays anywhere near this kind of attention. The Syrian civil war found 300,000 civilians killed, an order of magnitude more than in the Gaza war. Since WW2, there have been, I believe, 100 million refugees of ethnic cleansing worldwide. The Uyghurs in China being a recent example of persecution of an ethnic minority, allegedly far worse than anything Israel does.
And if apartheid is what we're talking about - worth mentioning that Palestinians have very few rights in almost every ME country that they are in.
Now let's be clear - I'm not trying to "whatboutism" here - how Palestinians are treated elsewhere, and the existence of other bad things, does not and should not absolve Israel of anything bad it is doing.
But if your belief is that the world thinks badly of Israel because of what it's doing specifically, but there are 100 things that are far worse by almost any metric happening all the time that few people pay attention to - I think you need to reevaluate the real reason here. If you think the UN putting out more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined makes sense by the numbers - then you are just ignorant of what is happening all over the world.
But you are doing whataboutism. But even if we give you that, Israel’s crimes far outweigh those you mentioned, both in time, and in scale. If you want to find any population that has suffered as many atrocities as Palestinians in Gaza, you would have to go to Darfur. But the impunity in which Israel commits these crimes is not comparable to any other oppressor.
People’s reactions are not based on the criminal act void of any context, they look at the past, they look at consequences, etc. Bashar al-Assad’s mass atrocities were met with international condemnation. Israel’s were met with sympathy from our world leaders, and more weapons to continue and further their crimes. People take this into account.
Peoples opinion also reflects what they see. We see in our news everyday some of the worst crimes of the century being committed against a relatively small population. Every day there is another bomb that wipes out a whole family, including children, in Gaza. Every week there is a journalist or a doctor targeted and killed by Israel. We hear no such stories from East Turkistan, or at least not on the same scale nor horror.
> If you think the UN putting out more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined makes sense by the numbers - then you are just ignorant of what is happening all over the world.
I don’t think that, but it is worth noting the history here. In a nibling thread you wanted to go into the history to (seemingly) justify apartheid policies. I want to do the same except to justify the UN behavior here.
Palestine has explicitly been the UN problem since it was decolonized from Britain. The UN had (and still has) a policy of decolonization so this made sense. Unlike most former colonies, full decolonization was never realized for Palestine, so it is still an explicit UN problem. Here is the reason why the UN has focused so much on Israel. It is not helped by the fact that on UN security council member keeps vetoing any potential progress for furthering more decolonization efforts. Resulting in many half measures which ultimately don’t deliver any results towards Palestinian liberation.
I suspect you want to explain these things on a racial line. But I reject all such science. There exists much simpler explanations for these things which don’t require us to go on the dangerous path of racialized demographicial behavior.
I'm not, because the debate is on the comparative feelings towards Israel vs. other countries, so actually comparing to other actions is specifically what is necessary.
> [...] Israel’s crimes far outweigh those you mentioned, both in time, and in scale.
I'll give a more detailed answer, but this is the most important point - you're wrong. I'm not even sure why you think this, since I gave specific numbers for those atrocities.
In what way is the scale of the civilians killed in the Syrian civil war smaller than that of Gaza? It is literally an order of magnitude more civilians killed, as I mentioned. That's 10x more.
In what way is the scale of what's happening to the Uyghurs smaller? An estimated 1 million have been arbitrarily arrested and put into forced labor, per Wikipedia.
However horrible you think what is happening in Gaza is, thinking that it is more horrible in scale than anything else is just wrong and easily disproven by any of a multitude of examples, including the ones I already wrote. What am I misunderstanding in your view here?
Btw, worth mentioning that many of the biggest examples of anti-Israel bias I'm talking about, e.g. the UN sanctions and a lot of ill-will around the world, were all happening before the Gaza war too.
> Bashar al-Assad’s mass atrocities were met with international condemnation. Israel’s were met with sympathy from our world leaders, and more weapons to continue and further their crimes. People take this into account.
I disagree with your characterization of what Israel is doing as crimes, at least not in general (I'm sure specific war crimes have been committed). It is a war. Unless you think war itself is a crime and never justified, in which case that's an entirely separate discussion (I wish I could agree).
In any case, yes, some leaders are standing up for Israel, because unlike many people, they are aware that this is a valid war that needs fighting, if not always agreeing with everything Israel does. I don't think whether the leaders of the US back Israel or not is very strong evidence of morality, but I definitely don't think it's evidence against the morality of the war, as you imply.
> Peoples opinion also reflects what they see. We see in our news everyday some of the worst crimes of the century being committed against a relatively small population.
Oh, I totally agree. People aren't reacting to reality - since these are not even close to "the worst crimes of the century". You could fill 10x the airtime given to what is happening to Gaza with similarly horrible things that have happened in other places (civilians killed in the Iraq war alone - ~120k).
But that's the thing. The news doesn't show anywhere near as much coverage of other "atrocities", which is why people have a skewed perspective of this. It's literally availability bias, and is caused for many reasons. But it simply doesn't reflect reality if you look at the actual numbers.
> Every week there is a journalist or a doctor targeted and killed by Israel. We hear no such stories from East Turkistan, or at least not on the same scale nor horror.
Yes, my point exactly.
> Palestine has explicitly been the UN problem since it was decolonized from Britain. The UN had (and still has) a policy of decolonization so this made sense. Unlike most former colonies, full decolonization was never realized for Palestine, so it is still an explicit UN problem. Here is the reason why the UN has focused so much on Israel.
I mean, yeah that's one explanation, though I don't think it's particularly correct. Mostly because I reject the idea of Israel never having been decolonized- it was, it turned into Jordan and later Israel.
But let's leave that aside and look again at what I think is more correct.
The UN is not a democracy - votes are by country. The Arab states, which have historically been anti Israel (including trying to wipe Israel out, multiple times) - number 22. They also hold a population of 220 million consumers, and vast oil wealth.
So Democracy-wise - they have far more "votes" and "voters". Capitalism-wise - they have far more consumers than Israel. Geo-politics-wise - they have far more importance than Israel because of that oil wealth and for other reasons.
Those are all very good reasons to explain why Israel, which makes up 0.1% of the middle east, is like the 150th country in size and population in the world, and by any objective standards does not commit "atrocities" on anywhere near the scale of other countries, even if you think it does commit atrocities - those are all very good reasons for Israel to have more resolutions against it than all other countries combined.
Plus, it's a convenient scapegoat for lots of countries.
Plus, I didn't even mention the rest of the majority Muslim countries, who tend to also be anti-Israel.
I mean, the effects of "democracy", capitalism and geo-politics certainly seem more relevant in my eyes to explain the UN, rather than some idealistic story about colonialism which doesn't even make sense.
> I suspect you want to explain these things on a racial line. But I reject all such science. There exists much simpler explanations for these things which don’t require us to go on the dangerous path of racialized demographicial behavior.
Just to be clear, I'm not making any racial statements here, unless you consider statements like "the Arab countries are historically against Israel". If you don't accept even statements like that - I don't really think you can analyze any history of politics, at all. (And you'll note I didn't even mention anything about antisemitism, which most people certainly think is at least part of the story here, but we can leave that aside.)
> I disagree with your characterization of what Israel is doing as crimes, at least not in general (I'm sure specific war crimes have been committed). It is a war.
So what is the threshold past which even Israelis would acknowledge that what Israel is doing is both morally repugnant and illegal? What would that look like, in terms of actions on the ground?
The problem is that the crimes do not appear to be one-offs, but systemic, especially when viewed in the context of public statements by senior leadership of the Israeli government explicitly advocating for violence and destruction.
It might be "normal" for soldiers to pose for pictures in a combat zone, but soldiers committing war crimes while doing so should be prosecuted in accordance with international law....and for some reason IDF soldiers do this quite often, from posing while burning down libraries, to scrawling graffiti such as "Nakba 2023" on walls with a smile, to making instructional videos on how to blow up mosques on TikTok.
> So what is the threshold past which even Israelis would acknowledge that what Israel is doing is both morally repugnant and illegal? What would that look like, in terms of actions on the ground?
I can't speak for Israelis in general. I certainly think some of the things Israel is doing are morally repugnant, especially some of the actions in the WB (or lack of stopping settlers from their actions), and especially any of the things Israel has done to withhold aid from Gaza.
I don't think that makes the war itself a crime or most of the things happening in it crimes. I do think, like most Israelis do, that one of the reasons the war is going on so long is because of Netanyahu's particular political needs, which is obviously extremely immoral.
It's war. It's complicated. There are no easy answers.
> The problem is that the crimes do not appear to be one-offs, but systemic, especially when viewed in the context of public statements by senior leadership of the Israeli government explicitly advocating for violence and destruction.
Some officials have made clearly awful and genocidal statements. Most of the ones in charge have not, except for the first few weeks after the Hamas attacks, and have made thousands more statements that explicitly speak against any kind of genocidal intent. I think it's important to look at statements in their totality.
> It might be "normal" for soldiers to pose for pictures in a combat zone, but soldiers committing war crimes while doing so should be prosecuted in accordance with international law....and for some reason IDF soldiers do this quite often, from posing while burning down libraries, to scrawling graffiti such as "Nakba 2023" on walls with a smile, to making instructional videos on how to blow up mosques on TikTok.
Those soldiers are obviously doing terrible and stupid things, and often face some form of military trials. This is unacceptable behavior in my mind and is rightly condemned.
Overall this is a pretty balanced take. I still think we have different interpretations of what is "normal" for a war but I don't expect we'll close the gap on that.
Now to introduce some levity into the conversation:
> It's war. It's complicated. There are no easy answers.
When I was a Senior Watch Officer at the Operations Center of a 3-star command, our Operations Chief was lifelong infantryman and Fallujah veteran. I haven't been in combat. But I used to frequently rant "Why do we always make this stuff so complicated?!?! It can't be this hard to kill people!" For those lacking context I'm complaining about how I felt that our approach to command & control was needlessly diffusing our core Marine Corps function of efficiently killing our enemies.
...and one time the Chief just looked at me and responded plainly: "Trust me, it's not."
Nothing here is “normal” war behavior, even by the standards of war. And people see that and correctly judge Israel for it.
I remember growing up in Europe during the Iraq war. Even though I was young, I got that USA was obviously on the wrong, and so did most people around me. I remember not just hating the American government for what they were doing, but Americans in general. When Bush was reelected in 2004 it was seen as a damning proof that it wasn’t just the American government that was bad, but every American. It took me personally a few years to erase this prejudges from my head.
I also remember being in Europe during the Syrian civil war. Syrian refugees had a huge sympathy from most people around me. This was compounded by how many European governments treated Syrian refugees horrible (and still do), such injustice only grew our sympathy for Syrian people.
I no longer live in Europe, but I see the same sentiment for Ukrainians who are obviously wronged by a heinous Russian invasion into their country.
Palestinians have had to suffer injustice for a long time, and awareness of this injustice has grown rapidly over, with the ongoing genocide, support for Palestinians among the people (not governments) has also grown massively. This is consistent with previous victims of war.
During the Iraq war Bush’s lies played a factor in anti-American sentiment, so did the Patriot act, the Guantanamo Bay prison, the Abu Ghraib torture revelations, and the number of massacres (particularly the Nisour Square massacre, and the “Collateral Murder” as leaked by Chelsea Manning).
During the Iraq war we heard of those atrocities on a weekly to a monthly basis, and they were all a big deal, and we all hated Americans for it. Compounded were with the emotion was the impunity in which these crimes were committed. Americans were very seldomly (and very selectively) punished for these crimes. Individual soldiers were arrested, tried, received minimal (if any) punishment, and later pardoned or acquitted. But we all knew the crimes were systemic and that generals, cabinet members, and presidents were equally, of not more guilty of those crimes. The problem was with American policy, and nobody was being arrested for that.
Now compare this to Gaza. Israel has been committing the crime of Apartheid for a very long time. They have been subjugating Palestinians with an illegal occupation, a border wall (in Europe we know all to well of the infamous Berlin wall), shooting at protestors with much more impunity than UK soldiers in Belfast. Gaza was illegally blockaded and systematically bombed every few years (something the reminded us all to well of Sarajevo).
And now during the Gaza genocide we see the same kinds of atrocities as during the Iraq wars (including torture and sexual abuses of prisoners) except now, instead of them being reviled every few weeks or months, we see every day another massacre, another neighborhood bombed, another hospital sieged, another torture camp exposed, etc. This is not normal, not acceptable, and people don’t accept it.
There was a time where Israel had it relatively good compared to other oppressors, that people made a fine distinction between the government and the people (unlike with America). But I don’t think this is true any more. The crimes of Israel are far to severe, and the impunity far too great. Hardly any of these soldiers committing the crimes are ever prosecuted, none of the war crimes are investigated, no general is questioned, and no politician is impeached. People see this and (IMO correctly) judge Israeli society along with their government for the impunity of how those crimes are committed.
> However horrible you think what is happening in Gaza is, thinking that it is more horrible in scale than anything else is just wrong and easily disproven by any of a multitude of examples, including the ones I already wrote.
Every single Palestinian in Gaza has lost their home, a family member, or a limb. This is not the case in the Syrian civil war (as horrible as that was) nor among Uyghurs in East Turkistan. As horrible as those atrocities are (particularly the Syrian Civil war) it is still dwarfed by the atrocity which Israel is inflecting on Gaza. Bashar al-Assad never committed a genocide (ISIS tried but were beaten). Israel has been committing a genocide for over a year now, with no end in sight. And we are talking about the Syrian civil war here. One of the worst wars in this century, if this is our baseline of what is acceptable, something horrible is wrong. But even in the Syrian Civil War, which caused millions to flee their homes (by some very plausible estimates half the country), most Syrians kept their homes, family members, and limbs. Like I said, the only comparable scenario is in Darfur, where mass hunger against civilians is used as a weapon and where most people have lost somebody they know in the ongoing genocide.
> Btw, worth mentioning that many of the biggest examples of anti-Israel bias I'm talking about, e.g. the UN sanctions and a lot of ill-will around the world, were all happening before the Gaza war too.
This was also true of South Africa and Rhodesia (the latter of which was met with so much anti-Rhodesian bias that it no longer exists) despite neither of which going on a full on genocidal rampage against their victims of apartheid. Israel has been committing similar crimes against Palestinians for decades now, and sympathy has increased as more and more people are made aware of their crimes. The ongoing genocide only furthers this anti-Israel bias past the scale we ever saw against Rhodesia or Apartheid South Africa. The world’s reaction against Israel is consistent with previous cases of apartheid (outside of superpowers like the USA).
> Mostly because I reject the idea of Israel never having been decolonized- it was, it turned into Jordan and later Israel.
What are you saying here? It sounds like you are saying that the nation or territory of Palestine does not exist, and that Israel’s (unambiguously) illegal occupation of Palestinian territory is not just justified, but also complete and absolute. I hope that is me misunderstanding, because if that is what you mean, than you are advocating for the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and on the West Bank.
> "the Arab countries are historically against Israel".
This is factually incorrect. Most Arab countries (as do most countries in the UN, and the UN it self) favor a 2-state solution with an independent Palestine along the 1967 line and a capital in East Jerusalem. There was a short period where this was not true, that most Arab countries wanted a single Palestinian state without the mass-immigration of European Jewish settlers. However that hasn’t been true for a long time and is largely irrelevant to any current discussions. The three or four of decades where this was true have no relevance over the 80 years of the existence of independent Israel. Throughout majority of the existence of Israel, most Arab countries are against the illegal occupation of Israel, and are fine with the existence of Israel.
Today, and for all of this century, and a significant part of the end of the last century Arab countries stance on Israel mirrors what most countries today say. That Israel should end its illegal occupation, and grant Palestine independence with a capital in East Jerusalem.
EDIT: Just to ring the point home about the scale of the atrocities Israel is committing in Gaza. I just saw these numbers on Al Jazeera https://aje.io/18noxx?update=3278807 :
- 87% of all housing units in Gaza are damaged or destroyed.
- 80% of all commercial facilities are damaged
- 68% of all cropland is damaged
- 17/36 hospitals in Gaza are only partially functioning, the rest are shut down.
- 68% of all the road network is damaged
- 87% of the schools in Gaza are damaged.
Even if we zoom in the worst affected city of the Syrian Civil war like Aleppo, or Raqqa, you don’t get anywhere near this level of destruction.
EDIT 2: Compare this to Aleppo, which has been (IMO accurately [until Gaza]) described as the worst urban warfare of our century. Aleppo was under siege for four years, with mass atrocities committed on a weekly bases, including bombings of residential neighborhoods, hospital and mosques.
This should absolutely not be a benchmark for what is acceptable in warfare. But even still, a staggering 33,500 of the cities housing units were damaged or destroyed. This was unprecedented before the Gaza genocide. In Gaza we have 87% of the housing units damaged or destroyed.
The battle of Aleppo killed at least 30,000 people, including over 20,000 civilians. Such high civilian casualty numbers were also unprecedented in modern warfare, until the Gaza genocide where over a much shorter period we have at least 42,000 confirmed deaths (most likely a significant undercount), most of whom women or children. So even if we go only by confirmed deaths, and only count women and children as civilians, the civilian deaths after a year of genocide is still greater than the 4 years of the worst urban fighting of our century until Gaza.
Look. We're discussing horrible things here. I want to make sure it's clear that I think every civilian death is a tragedy. Hell, almost every non-civilian death is a tragedy too - Hamas militants were born in a pretty awful situation, all things considered. I'm taking a pro-Israel side in these comments, because I honestly disagree with your characterization of most things Israel is doing, especially as compared to other wars. (Though I do thank you for discussing fairly horrible topics in a civil manner.)
But as a disclaimer for everything else - I consider myself firmly in the Israeli left, possible far-left. I think Israel has done a lot of morally wrong things for (at least) the last 15 years. And while I think the war's aims are absolutely legitimate, I think it has gone on far, far longer than it should and that Israel has done many immoral things as part of that war. (And to make this all worse - I think one of the main reasons it has gone on this long isn't even because it's good for Israel - it's just that it's good for Netanyahu personally.)
That all said, I will answer your specific points that I disagree with -
> Every single Palestinian in Gaza has lost their home, a family member, or a limb. This is not the case in the Syrian civil war (as horrible as that was) nor among Uyghurs in East Turkistan. As horrible as those atrocities are (particularly the Syrian Civil war) it is still dwarfed by the atrocity which Israel is inflecting on Gaza.
To parse what you're saying here - you honestly think killing 600k civilians is not worse than killing ~30k civilians? Because there are less total civilians so this needs to be measured in percentage of the population? I don't agree with that kind of calculus, at all.
Also, Israel is not targeting civilians, as opposed to many of the other situations I mentioned. This doesn't matter much to the civilians killed, but it is very different morally speaking.
And yes, most Gazans know someone who was killed. That's awful and will absolutely traumatize them even more. I wish it were possible to wipe stop Hamas with no one dying. Hamas has made it impossible. They've said so, in their own words, many times - which is why most Gazans despise Hamas at this point.
But you know what - many if not most Israelis know someone who was killed on October 7th too, and everyone hears daily of the 100 hostages still in Gaza. That's awful too. But I don't think that is proof that the number of dead Israelis is somehow a bigger atrocity than other things, just because Israel is small. Lives are lives.
> Bashar al-Assad never committed a genocide (ISIS tried but were beaten). Israel has been committing a genocide for over a year now, with no end in sight.
I don't agree with your characterization of what Israel is doing. But even if you think it is a genocide - that's not a separate claim to what you were saying above. You're saying, as I parse it - Israel has killed far fewer civilians than in other situations, but it is doing a genocide so that makes it worse. But that's nonsensical - the death of the civilians is what genocide means.
And btw, you call it an ongoing genocide, which I really disagree with. There are very few civilians killed on an ongoing basis right now, and there hasn't been for months. It's certainly an ongoing case of mass displacement, which I really hope is temporary as Gaza is rebuilt.
And it really is relevant to say - Israel has lost hundreds of soldiers in Gaza. It could easily lose zero soldiers by attacking more from the air, with a 10x higher civilian death toll. That is relevant to considering whether killing civilians is Israel's goal - because it could easily do so with minimal losses if it didn't care about civilian casualties.
> But even in the Syrian Civil War, which caused millions to flee their homes (by some very plausible estimates half the country), most Syrians kept their homes,
It is true that one of the main things Israel has done in Gaza that is objectively worse is the destruction of much civilian infrastructure and homes. That's bad. A lot of it is because of the cynical use Hamas has made of civilian spaces, making it impossible to stop Hamas without destroying massive civilian infrastructure. But it's entirely possible that Israel has gone far beyond this in the destruction it has wrought.
I personally think lives are more important than property, so looking at the actual civilian death toll is a far more important metric.
> > Mostly because I reject the idea of Israel never having been decolonized- it was, it turned into Jordan and later Israel.
> [...] It sounds like you are saying that the nation or territory of Palestine does not exist, and that Israel’s (unambiguously) illegal occupation of Palestinian territory is not just justified, but also complete and absolute. I hope that is me misunderstanding, because if that is what you mean, than you are advocating for the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and on the West Bank.
I'm absolutely not advocating any such thing, and I have no idea how you got there.
Historically speaking, there was no nation of Palestine. That's not a POV - that's a historical fact. The territories Israel occupies were not Palestinian territories - they were Jordan's and Egypt's territories at the time that Israel captured them. That is Israel's position on why this isn't an occupation, iirc - that the countries don't want those territories back.
That all said, of course a relatively new and distinct national identity of Palestinian now exists, they existed in the territories of Palestine before, and they deserve to have their national aspirations met, which is why I am a big advocate for a two-state solution. It is the obvious and only solution to the conflict - two peoples with legitimate claims on the same territory, so they should each have a state on that territory.
> > "the Arab countries are historically against Israel".
> This is factually incorrect. Most Arab countries (as do most countries in the UN, and the UN it self) favor a 2-state solution with an independent Palestine along the 1967 line and a capital in East Jerusalem.
I was more referring to how they vote in terms of the UN and how their people perceive Israel, which influences a lot of policy etc.
And I don't think favoring a 2-state solution is being against Israel, btw - it's just common sense.
I do completely agree that Israelis tend to overlook the real progress made in relations with the Arab world. Israel is no longer quite as surrounded by enemies as it used to be, and that's a huge and important shift that most Israelis have not internalized, IMO.
My university background is not in CS but it psychology and statistics, and even though I’m an expert in neither, I know at least one thing, that humans are horrible at statistics. We don’t think neither in absolute terms nor in proportional terms (although between the two we are more likely to think in [heavily biased; and nonsensically; inconsistently non-linear] proportional terms). What the human mind likes to do is to zoom in on the most extreme parts, and apply that to the whole population, that is we love to think in details, find patterns, and extrapolate. Like I said, humans are very bad at statistics.
In the Syrian civil war this manifested in use zooming in on cities like Aleppo or Raqqa, see the horrors there and apply those to the rest of Syria. So when we see the horrors in Gaza, we are not comparing 600k vs. 40k. nor 10% of the housing units in Aleppo vs. 85% of the housing units in Gaza. What we see is the absolute horrors that was Aleppo, and see it repeat in Gaza and think, this is unacceptable, and people don’t accept it.
Even though humans are very bad at statistics, humans are also smart. We are very good at spotting patterns and we can tell when we are being lied to, and we don’t like it. The Israeli government has been constantly lying to us throughout the genocide. They have been lying to us about about Hamas’ command centers, about their war goals, about their concerns for the hostages, etc.
We humans see that and can easily spot it, and it makes us mad. When the Israeli government tells us that all this destruction is because of Hamas’ presence there, we don’t believe it, that all those civilian deaths are just collateral damage we don’t believe that either. We know what collateral damage looks like, and see that Gaza does not fit it. Instead we see that civilians aren’t just accidentally killed, but they are actually targeted. I’ve seen interviews with experts on the news (mainly Democracy Now!) and they pretty much all agree that you don’t see this level of death and destruction among civilians unless they are actively targeted. This was also true of Aleppo btw.
We also spot the rhetoric among Israeli officials, and see similarities with history, we spot the racism and the hatred and it rings alarm bells. That is why we call this a genocide. Humans are good at spotting patterns, and the conduct of Israel is consistent with the patterns of genocide, so we call it a genocide. A case in point. As we were debating this, the Israeli Knesset voted overwhelmingly in favor of banning the main avenue for Palestinians to get aid. The only reason I personally see for this is genocidal intentions among 92 of the 120 members of the Israeli Knesset. That pretty much the whole Israeli legislator is on board with an ongoing genocide. The lies about UNWRA being connected with terrorism compounds mine (and most people’s) reaction, which further our anti-Israel bias. And you personally downplaying the history of the nation of Palestine also plays into this. Though not as extreme as what I initially feared (nor as extreme as the rhetoric of your government) it is still pretty damning and speaks of the complicity of the whole nation of Israel (not just the government) in the ongoing genocide.
It is not unusual for citizens of perpetrators of genocide to deny that genocide. I psychology this is called cognitive dissonance. Many Serbians today deny that the Bosnian genocide happened (or deny the very obvious Serbian involvement in it). Indonesians deny the genocide in East-Timor (despite the fact that there has been a political revolution in Indonesian since then). We even have quite a few Americans that deny the horrors of slavery, and probably most Europeans who deny (or downscale) the horrors of European colonialism.
Now, lets move away from peoples perception and the reason for why anti-Israel bias is increasing in the public consciousness, and onto the future and international law.
Like the the human brain, international law doesn’t compare atrocities with statistics. International law actually goes further and doesn’t compare them at all. International law takes into account which agreements a country has signed on to, and judges whether or not the country is in violation of those. This is the reason why the international community is giving Iran shit about their nuclear program but not Israel, despite the latter being a far worse offender. Iran has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treat, but Israel hasn’t so international law can’t do anything about the latter.
Israel is however a member of quite a few treaties of international humanitarian rights, and has been in violation of quite a few of them for a long time (the most obvious example being the apartheid wall on the West Bank). Very few countries (except superpowers like the USA or China) have disregarded international law for such a long time with impunity. And since the Gaza genocide, Israel has only doubled down in this behavior, the UNWRA ban is a prime example of this. I very much doubt the in 2026 Israel will remain a member of the UN if it keeps doing this (which [as a human] I think they will).
We are probably seeing Israel’s last moments as a non-pariah state. The anti-Israel bias is increasing among the public consciousness plus blatant disregard of international law is Israel’s own doing, and the time of impunity has come to an end. This prediction is consistent with the fate of other (non-superpower) oppressors and violators of international law.
I think it has a lot to do with tiktok's rise to power, for the first time there is a platform that is not controlled by the west (Pro-Zionist), which would completely censor out news like Facebook and Instagram does.
Then again Zuck recently donated $125000 to Zaka, the Zionist org responsible for the lies about beheaded babies. Facebook also has several ex-members of the IDF's Unit 8200 on its board.
The first statement is plainly anti-semitic. (Talking about a people and culture) The second is, arguably, against the Israeli state. Israel is a social and political construct. You can change your mind about being Zionist, for example. It’s not an inherent trait like skin color.
This very post would seem to belie that. In fact, the only times Israel ever rises to the front page is when the article is biased and critical, as is this one.
The only posts labeled "flagged" here are those who are nuanced about Israel at all with the exception of one overtly anti-Semitic post.
"Israel has also said that UN forces are being used as a human shield by Hizbollah fighters, which it is fighting near several Unifil posts along the border. It has demanded the UN evacuate its peacekeepers from southern Lebanon for their own safety. Unifil, and the 50 countries that contribute troops to its ranks, have unanimously refused."
Why aren't the UN troops keeping the peace? Did they let Hezbollah fire rockets into Israel unimpeded? What is the point of the troops being there?
Unifil has been there since the '70s, apparently. Their role was to monitor Israel's withdrawal and to assist the Lebanese government, to patrol the Blue Line and various humanitarian tasks. They're not a counterinsurgency force or an occupying army - as I understand it, they're a tripwire for treaty enforcement.
Also, you don't get to shoot through human shields. It's still immoral to kill noncombatants, just as it's immoral to hide behind noncombatants. You don't gain moral high ground, you're just sinking to the level of the enemy.
> Also, you don't get to shoot through human shields.
I am not saying it’s morally correct but from a war crime standpoint, I think you actually do. As longs as it’s proportional, you can attack combatants hiding under civilians, even if you kill civilians by doing that. At least that’s my understanding.
What seems more relevant today is that UNIFIL was supposed to support the implementation of UNSC 1701, which was a complete failure, with Hezbollah ignoring it outright and the Lebanese army not doing much to stop them.
“You don’t get to shoot through human shields.” I don’t have a POV w.r.t. this conflict, but I’d like to understand what you mean by this statement generally. In the extreme it seems to imply, “if you have a human shield you are invincible.”
It’s a messed-up calculus to have to make but I feel like there must be some middle ground.
Take a step back and observe you've erected a mental block for yourself. We've got a false dichotomy here - either we shoot through human shields or we do nothing.
If there are insurgents among civilians, they either have logistics and communication networks to conduct operations, or they're unable to operate effectively. Weapons do not materialize from nowhere, they must be smuggled into the country and distributed. Operations do not materialize from nowhere, they must be coordinated.
If they have logistics, we can leverage that against them. We saw this when Israel expected their pager attack. They've already proven that they can exercise their creativity to conduct effective attacks with great precision.
If they lack logistics and communication networks - then they can't conduct effective operations against us. There's little to fear and no reason to shoot through human shields.
This is some armchair strategy a nonexpert came up with on the spot. Consider that real military strategists and intelligence agencies are better at coming up with ways to find and kill their enemies than we are.
Do not accept that these people cannot solve these problems without bulldozing through human shields. Do not accept the notion that a powerful military and intelligence apparatus is helpless. They could prosecute this war differently. They have made a choice not to.
> Take a step back and observe you've erected a mental block for yourself. We've got a false dichotomy here - either we shoot through human shields or we do nothing.
No, you're the one making imaginary false dichotomies. See your last paragraph:
> Do not accept that these people cannot solve these problems without bulldozing through human shields. Do not accept the notion that a powerful military and intelligence apparatus is helpless. They could prosecute this war differently. They have made a choice not to.
You're now making a false dichotomy - Israel can choose to prosecute the war differently, but it doesn't, implying that they are choosing to kill human shields on purpose.
The reality is that you're coming up on the spot with a dozen ways to defeat an insurgency, without taking into account that they are just as smart and just as motivated as you, and planned for years to make them impossible to hit without significant civilian casualties. This is incredibly well documented.
Sure, you can pretend there is always a secret third option - and there sometimes is. And there sometimes isn't. And the more you let militants using civilians as human shields deter you, the more the militants are incentivized to use human shields, so even in a best case scenario, you're kicking the can down the road.
None of this is to say that Israel's actions are perfect or even good - that's a separate argument. But imagining that Israel has a magic way to do what it wants to do and eliminate Hamas - which many people support it doing and agree it has a right to do - imagining there is some magic way this could get done without hurting civilians is, frankly, incorrect.
>None of this is to say that Israel's actions are perfect or even good - that's a separate argument. But imagining that Israel has a magic way to do what it wants to do and eliminate Hamas - which many people support it doing and agree it has a right to do - imagining there is some magic way this could get done without hurting civilians is, frankly, incorrect.
The way isn't "magic" or "secret". It's a combination of the following:
1. Restrict the types of ordnance used to prosecute air attacks on Gaza. Emphasize cannon fire and Hellfires from AH-64s attack helicopters, as well as UAVs. These are utilized to engage insurgents on the surface, in dynamically-tasked missions with timely and accurate observation of insurgent heavy armaments.
2. Employ proper usage of restrictive fire support coordination measures to protect sensitive sites such as aid distribution locations, hospitals, and places of worship. Bombing them is bad publicity. Reference No-Fire Areas and Restrictive Fire Areas, page B-7, here: https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/MCWP%203-25%2...
3. Establish a large number of checkpoints along the Gazan-Israeli border. Establish refugee areas INSIDE OF ISRAEL for the Gazan population. Distribute leaflets, social media messages, etc...welcoming the entire Gazan population into Israeli borders, provided they come to the checkpoints unarmed and only with the belongings they can personally carry.
4. After conditions are set (which needs to be determined, how much of the population Israel will allow to remain in place/not cooperate before it attacks)....then go into Gaza with a drastically larger (easy given Israel's ability to rapidly mobilize) but primarily light-infantry / dismounted force, slowly moving house-to-house with small arms in an incremental clear & hold approach. This is SIGNIFICANTLY less destructive on both the civilian population AND the urban infrastructure, but does incur much higher casualties for the attacking force.
This would probably cost thousands of additional Israeli (military) lives.....but save tens of thousands of Palestinian lives. And also save Israel's international reputation.
I can't speak to the more military/combat aspects of this - I honestly know very little about it personally. I'm leaning on analyses done by people who do know, and have spoken about what Israel is doing.
Regarding your point of putting refugees inside of Israel - I don't know if there's any practical way to do this. It is impossible to tell apart Hamas militants and normal civilians. Even if you somehow made a vast area inside of Israel to house the refugees, you're all but guaranteeing thousands of Hamas operatives getting into Israel as well.
Do you similarly support the idea of letting the refugees into Egyp in a similar manner? Cause that seems like the obvious solution to the problem from my perspective (and is the "usual" solution in urban war situations). Except Egypt absolutely refused to allow this, and almost no one pushed them on this, often claiming it was an attempt at more ethnic cleansing from Israel. (Apparently sacrificing Palestinian lives to prevent ethnic cleansing, without asking them, is somehow moral?)
> I can't speak to the more military/combat aspects of this - I honestly know very little about it personally. I'm leaning on analyses done by people who do know
While it's been over a decade since I've controlled live aircraft or built an Air Tasking Order, I've managed rather complex dynamic airspaces in exercises within the past few years. Points #1 & #2 are basic stuff that would be incorporated into how the USMC and Joint Services conduct air operations. I haven't worked with the IAF but I assume their approach to battlespace management is roughly analogous to a NATO nation.
The sheer amount of ordnance dropped in the first few weeks after October 7th was indicative of a completely permissive air campaign. In other words, it was conducted with NO concern for collateral damage, probably against a bunch of pre-planned targets from a Prioritized Target List that was refined over a period of years prior. And almost certainly with little or no terminal control (i.e. nobody looking at the targets on the ground minutes/seconds prior to ordnance release to ensure there were no civilians at the target, or to even verify that they destroyed what they meant to destroy).
> Even if you somehow made a vast area inside of Israel to house the refugees, you're all but guaranteeing thousands of Hamas operatives getting into Israel as well.
Yes, there are some risks involved. Saving lives is a hard decision. But even if Hamas operatives end up inside new Israeli camps, you are separating them from their military infrastructure, heavy ordnance, and logistics supply chains. You are also extending an olive branch in a very real and tangible way, which would make inroads in giving them a different perspective of Israel besides "these are the people who have killed my relatives/destroyed my home".
> Do you similarly support the idea of letting the refugees into Egypt in a similar manner? Cause that seems like the obvious solution to the problem from my perspective
No. Why should Egypt be forced to allocate resources to mitigate the consequences of a disaster that entirely derives from Israeli actions? The Palestinians were not driven out of homes in Egypt, they were driven out of homes in Haifa, Jaffa, Ashkelon, etc. Gaza is starving and without healthcare because the Israeli Air Force, not the Egyptian Air Force, has bombed the place back to the stone age.
Israel could at any moment decide "Hey you know what we're just gonna honor the 1967 borders and recognize a two-state solution too. From now on we expect to diplomatically deal with the Palestinian State via your capital in Eastern Jerusalem. Also we are lifting our maritime blockade so you can conduct international trade via ports in Gaza once you build them....and once you start exporting gas from your Gaza Marine 1/2 offshore gas fields....lemme know if you want to hire some Israeli engineers to help build all that though." You don't have to give them hand-outs, make them borrow money (probably from Qatar or Iran, but still...) to pay for Israeli services like any other trade deal...but normalize their economic opportunities. That would radically change the circumstances of the Palestinian people....regardless of Egypt's position on the matter.
The Palestinian refugee problem is entirely a creation of Israel; it is Israel's burden to bear. Under no circumstances should the neighboring countries reward Israel with what the far-right in the Likud Party want: to be the sole inhabitants and controllers of what was originally "Mandatory Palestine".
You may consider these actions a complete non-starter. At some point Israelis will need to come to terms with reality: their state in its current incarnation is dependent on maritime trade imports, even to keep their most pivotal military branch (the Air Force) supplied with munitions. That munitions supplier and principal political benefactor is also beginning a period of pretty severe imperial decline. You are surrounded by increasingly well-equipped adversaries who are refining their skills at modern protracted/attritional warfare....a style of warfare that Israel does not have the population to sustain. It is likely that continuing to "massacre your way to security" will no longer be a viable course of action. As the timeline extends further to the right....prognosis negative.
It's an interesting variation on the "iron triangle" problem: distinctly Jewish state, liberal democracy, multi-ethnic/multi-religious population. Pick two. I think Israelis would lean towards the first two....but that requires either killing or expelling almost the entire Palestinian population, which obviously the rest of the planet is no longer interested in tolerating.
> The sheer amount of ordnance dropped in the first few weeks after October 7th was indicative of a completely permissive air campaign. In other words, it was conducted with NO concern for collateral damage, probably against a bunch of pre-planned targets from a Prioritized Target List that was refined over a period of years prior.
Yes, this seems accurate. And this caused a large amount of the civilian deaths.
However, I think this is actually one of the most defensible actions Israel took. This started after an invasion of Israel in which thousands of militants roamed around inside the country and literally took over towns, a military base and a police station. It also happened while Israel was being daily bombarded with rockets multiple times a day.
Israel was literally shut down for a couple of weeks because of the massive rocket fire. The economy was completely shut down, schools were shut down, etc, as we ran into safe rooms 3-5 times a day.
And in the background, for the first three weeks, we waited to hear if Hezbollah would join in the action, which was clearly the goal of Hamas. Had they done so, we suspected it could lead to a massive war with huge losses. We've since seen that the situation was even worse than most of us suspected - if you're following along with what the IDF is uncovering in Southern Lebanon, Hezbollah apparently had stockpiles of weapons and massive tunnels primed to attack Israel, in a move that could've made October 7th look like a picnic.
This is a situation that no country in the world would countenance. You can't invade and shut down a country without a massive retaliatory strike. And it is entirely possible, and I would say likely, that only the massive Israel strike on Gaza prevented Hezbollah from joining in the war. Had they done so, I have little doubt the death toll in all countries would be much higher.
> Yes, there are some risks involved. Saving lives is a hard decision. But even if Hamas operatives end up inside new Israeli camps, you are separating them from their military infrastructure, heavy ordnance, and logistics supply chains. You are also extending an olive branch in a very real and tangible way, which would make inroads in giving them a different perspective of Israel besides "these are the people who have killed my relatives/destroyed my home".
I think there was no realistic way to do this inside of Israel logistically. We're talking about a massive population here - how in the world would you be able to secure this.
I think Israel should've done a lot of other things to earn good will among Gazans, like being the ones securing and giving out aid to the people ASAP, etc.
> Why should Egypt be forced to allocate resources to mitigate the consequences of a disaster that entirely derives from Israeli actions? The Palestinians were not driven out of homes in Egypt, they were driven out of homes in Haifa, Jaffa, Ashkelon, etc.
I was talking about a temporary solution that could save lives.
> Israel could at any moment decide "Hey you know what we're just gonna honor the 1967 borders and recognize a two-state solution too. From now on we expect to diplomatically deal with the Palestinian State via your capital in Eastern Jerusalem. Also we are lifting our maritime blockade so you can conduct international trade via ports in Gaza once you build them....and once you start exporting gas from your Gaza Marine 1/2 offshore gas fields....lemme know if you want to hire some Israeli engineers to help build all that though."
We've seen that this does not work. Israel tried the route of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza - "honoring the '67 borders" - and they elected Hamas, which promptly started shooting rockets at Israel and spent the billions they receive in aid money building up attacks against Israel.
Had Israel done the equivalent of the Gaza withdrawal in the West Bank, deciding to unilaterally leave all Palestinians lands without any negotiation, without any agreements on what things would look like the day after... we'd have just had October 7th, but much worse.
There is no alternative to a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Unfortunately most Israelis believe that it can't happen, since the last time Israel sincerely made the effort to achieve peace, those efforts were met with terrorism (and in Gaza, the election of Hamas).
But I agree with you completely - a negotiated two state solution is the only viable way forward. I just have no idea if it can actually be done.
> This is a situation that no country in the world would countenance. You can't invade and shut down a country without a massive retaliatory strike.
The most difficult and perhaps most important skill for a soldier is knowing when NOT to pull the trigger. Here's an interview with Delta operator Dale Comstock, when he had an opportunity to shoot a gunman but didn't because he knew he'd hit the civilian BEHIND him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iSUUWl8nes
"You have to make good decisions, because you have to live with them."
The problem isn't the "What" Israel is doing, it's the how. We know Israel has the tools at its disposal to conduct an air campaign differently. It has the aviation platforms, the munitions, the surveillance assets, the AI models to assist with information processing. All of that can combine to produce a Master Air Attack Plan and supporting Air Tasking Orders, managed by an Air Operations Center with a robust Fires Cell that should be capable of significantly suppressing Hamas's rocket artillery without rendering Gaza uninhabitable.
But that isn't what the IAF did. So they are either incompetent, or malevolent. Given that the IAF has a multi-decade reputation for being VERY competent, that kinda narrows it down.
> And it is entirely possible, and I would say likely, that only the massive Israel strike on Gaza prevented Hezbollah from joining in the war.
Israel's munitions stockpile is not large. It is quite possible that at the tail end of surged bombing missions against Hamas, the IAF would not have had enough ordnance to be decisive against Hezbollah. I think Iran is adroitly avoiding putting Israel into a situation where it feels existentially threatened until Iran has some sort of solution to the Samson Option. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
Hezbollah didn't initiate a massive cross-border invasion because Iran doesn't want Israel to panic and nuke the entire Middle East. The overwhelming violence unleashed against Gaza doesn't impact that decision space in Tehran.
>I was talking about a temporary solution that could save lives.
We've seen "temporary" displacement of Palestinians turn into permanent displacement often enough that no one is willing to give Israel the benefit of the doubt on this again.
>We've seen that this does not work. Israel tried the route of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza - "honoring the '67 borders" - and they elected Hamas, which promptly started shooting rockets at Israel and spent the billions they receive in aid money building up attacks against Israel.
Aid money != domestic economic independence. It's the difference between teaching a man to fish, and giving him fish. These two things are not the same, so it is fallacious to say that this has been tried already. Would Hamas have been pissed off enough to shoot rockets into Israel if they were instead enriching the population by collecting revenue from...say...the Gaza Airport Terminal, which was the pride of the Palestinian people? Gee, what ever happened to the Gaza Airport? Oh right, it was completely razed by the IDF. With no indications there was any military necessity to doing so.
>But I agree with you completely - a negotiated two state solution is the only viable way forward. I just have no idea if it can actually be done.
Perhaps a massive UN peacekeeping force needs to man DMZs between Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon, with large contributions from India and China (non-US, non-Muslim states interested in burnishing their global influence). Then implement a regional Armament Treaty for all involved parties/states. I would emphasize that all parties can maintain robust air-defense arsenals but are restricted on offensive strike systems: so the masses of Hezbollah rocket artillery needs to go away....but so does most of the IAF's fixed wing aircraft and large bombs. Israel needs to formally declare its nuclear arsenal and join the NPT. Basically make it so everyone doesn't really have the ability to do anything more than annoy each other. People will still die but we've got to get the violence back down to manageable levels so that economic development solutions can have an opportunity to bear fruit.
Even this is probably an unpalatable solution....I don't think Iran will tolerate a nuclear-armed Israel without having SOME means to make Israel think twice about using it. But it's a start.
> the israeli "human shields" narrative is pure hasbara and israeli projection anyway
Saying this is, frankly, ridiculous. There is massive, extensive documentation of the vast tunnel networks and terrorist infrastructure hiding beneath and as part of civilian areas in Gaza (and in Lebanon, now). There are hundreds if not thousands of examples of Hamas cynically using actions that are bound to hurt civilians.
You don't have to like Israel or how it's acting, and you disagree with the legitimacy of the war or how it is conducted, but you should at least be grounded in reality. If you're just wholesale denying the well-documented evidence of how Hamas acts, you're not really criticizing the IDF, because you're not connecting with reality. You're criticizing an imaginary IDF fighting an imaginary Hamas that acts completely differently to how it's acting, and that makes your criticisms meaningless.
(And for the record, the cases of the IDF using human shields in the manner you linked above are pretty well documented too, as far as I can say, and I personally think they should be condemned and the IDF has to answer for that. I do try to be centered in reality and see things as they really are.)
> There are hundreds if not thousands of examples of Hamas cynically using actions that are bound to hurt civilians.
Correct, this is how guerrilla forces have always worked. Either their fighters get protection, or the colonial/occupying (from their perspective) power gets loads of bad PR.
I mean, when you look at the relative arms strength of the two forces, they'd be crazy not to do this.
Is this moral? 100% not. Is it understandable? Strategically, again 100%. yes.
My view is the ethnicity of the human shields in question shouldn't factor into your decision making. You shouldn't shoot through an Egyptian aid worker or Lebanese child if you wouldn't have shot through an Israeli hostage in their place.
> you wouldn't have shot through an Israeli hostage in their place
Well actually, to give Israel some kind of credit, they have also done that, as hostages have indeed been killed in their attacks. In general they have shown a similar disregard of human life towards their own people who have been hostages, so there's that.
I suppose you're suggesting that one shouldn't value "us" over "them". Is a logical extension of this that you shouldn't shoot someone else if you wouldn't shoot yourself?
I mean, you can also just value all human life equally, and not shoot at soldiers unless there's a really good reason to do so. You really shouldn't target civilians, almost ever, cause there's never a good reason to do so by definition.
> Tons of Israeli military bases and weapons manufacturing his placed directly under or very close to civilian domiciles.
This is nonsense propaganda that keeps getting repeated.
Israel has some army bases in or close to civilian areas, as do most countries - e.g. the Pentagon. The reason is that some army bases are used for intelligence, software development or other administrative tasks, which usually involves older officers and many civilians, so it makes sense to have these be in cities.
But note key differences between this and what Hamas is accused of doing:
1. These are administrative buildings. These are not weapons storage facilities, combat factilities, etc. And it's especially not where missile launch sites or things of a similar nature are located.
Shooting missiles from within houses, as e.g. Hezbollah does, or from under refugee camps, as Hamas does, is a different thing entirely - because to stop the actual rockets being shot at Israel, Israel has to shoot at them, which kills civilians. That is not what Israel does with those bases.
2. Israeli bases are not built under civilian buildings. Yes, the same army HQ or intelligence etc bases that are built in cities have sections underground, for obvious reasons - but under the bases, not under people's houses!
The straightforward thing with UNFIL would be to negotiate change at the UN
It's unlikely that Israel decided just now to go attack Hezbollah, and even if they did, it's not like there's been any big status quo change, so they could go to the UN first, if they think the UN is in the way
you think that's the narrative Israel and its allies would go with? Never.
Israel and its allies would cry and whine as if a second holocaust occurred. They would pretend like they haven't done something similar thousands of times before to their enemies and that this retaliation on the Mossad HQ is some sort of uniquely evil and unprecedented event in human history.
Israelis always prefer using the most absurd victim narratives possible. Only Israel can be the biggest bully while also roleplaying as the biggest victim, but it's not surprising considering that even the mossad's motto[0] is "By way of deception you shall engage in war."
I don’t think speculating on how you think Israel would react is helpful or productive.
Of course Israel would “cry and whine.” I agree with you.
Obviously, Palestine also “cries and whines” — they have a narrative when their military operations are hit, too, and it’s not “fair play.”
War is an ugly, awful thing. I wouldn’t expect anybody involved to treat it so rationally. Hopefully we can view things more objectively and fairly given our distance.
> Is it? Hamas and Hezbollah deliberately place their military infrastructure among civilians.
I'm not eager to defend Hamas or Hezbollah, but for Gaza, is there a lot of free space?
Using human shields anyhow, does NOT mean it's the other's fault if you bomb then.
It's entirely your own decision, if you know that they're there.
Do you really think there was no other way, to deal with the problem?
Personally, for me the most absurd aspect of the situation is that you're creating an enormous amount of members for the Hamas' of the future.
However good a person is, and however quiet by nature, they wouldn't be human if a percentage of them wouldn't look for revenge, after having all their relatives killed, endured surgeries without anesthetics, and seen there was no good justification for that.
Which is what some Israeli politicians would probably like, anyhow, to give them arguments for the future elections.
Nothing will be solved. Unless you kill them all? Well, I think there would be a lot of Arabs who'd seek revenge for them, if so.
By the way, with using shields the Israeli might well just mean mean having a tunnel passing under a condo, or that an Hamas member sleeps there rather than, where? Hamas barracks? Along with your family, forever, with a target on your back?
CNN [1] today said:
> There is ample evidence for it: weapons located inside homes, tunnels dug beneath residential neighborhoods and rockets fired from those same neighborhoods in the densely packed territory.
I don't think that's what people think about, when hearing about human hostages.
Furthermore, the IDF seems to wait for the targets to be at home, just because there they're easier to target [2] .
> for me the most absurd aspect of the situation is that you're creating an enormous amount of members for the Hamas' of the future.
This has become a very common argument, and is indeed true, but it's also hypocritically incomplete.
You're creating an enormous amount of members for the Hamas of the future and they will be right in fighting you. Exactly as the current Hamas members are right in fighting you today.
Don't you just love how the brave soldiers of the IDF fight all their wars remotely. 2000lb bombs dropped from the skies, Lavender AI to remove accountability. The kids in the IDF go directly from video games at school to a real war turned into another virtual reality. Without their US-funded military superiority those IDF zombies wouldn't stand a chance in one-on-one combat with a Palestinian resistance fighter.
> “Also, you don't get to shoot through human shields.”
When the human shields are serving willingly as human shields, I will say that yes, you get to shoot through them and keep your moral high ground.
Not only those UN troops have no reason to be there, but there are numerous reports that several of their members are working together and aiding Hezbolah.
Israel has lied repeatedly countless times, like the tunnels under hospitals that never show up, or when they say the didn't kill the journalists they did end up admitting to. Or the claims of rape and beheaded babies that were all fake. You can not take anything they say as serious.
They have also been blowing up buildings in Lebanon because they claim that there is Hezbollah money and gold in them. Human life be damned.
To all appearances, it looks as if the US is allowing Israel to rewrite the rules of war. This is incredibly dangerous. Whether or not the US supports Israel's objectives should not be the deciding factor in supporting these kinds of justifications.
Then thre's the time a former Israeli PM admitted they build the "bunker" under Al Shifa. Whoops. If anyone had been paying attention or properly reporting on that, it might have looked bad.
Not disputing general truthfulness of Israeli government, but specifically as to the latter two examples you listed:
A) There is no direct evidence that Israeli government publicly stated that babies were beheaded. That claim came from a single journalist, spread like wildfire on social media (as did tons of videos and footage of the attacks), and was exacerbated by a statement Biden made.
Just wanted to point that out, because regardless of the moral standing of either side, I think the facts do matter if there is ever going to be a resolution. Obviously the actions committed by Hamas do not absolve Israel from following ethical rules of war, and there are plenty of issues with how Israel is waging war in the current conflict as well; for example using machine learning algorithms to track targets with what appears to be a reckless disregard for non-combatants: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
The bigger problem is that these lies spread “like wildfire” via Western media outlets - with zero fact checking or confirmation. These images were then used to justify the rampage in Gaza.
As far as I am aware, not a single Western media rag has issued an apology for this. In many of our eyes, never again will they be able to claim credibility or professionalism in their reporting.
In addition, Western rags took Israeli statements as gospel, platformed way more guests from the Israeli side, and intensively questioned all pro-Palestine guests on their position on Oct 7 (while treating Israeli guests with more respect than necessary for a media interview).
It’s better now - but that’s easy to do after a year of atrocities and 100k+ deaths. In the US at least, there still is a clear bias against inviting Palestinians on primetime slots, or allowing Palestinians to operate freely within news organizations.
I think they could start with not destroying hospitals and schools and doing better than “at least 1/3 of the 40k people killed were militants.” Israel , the most moral army in the world /s, thinks that two citizens killed for every militant killed is an acceptable ratio, it’s not.
What's the acceptable ratio?
I'm not claiming this reality isn't horrific I'm just not seeing many examples of wars fought better. Did the U.S do it better in Vietnam or Iraq? The U.S wasn't even fighting for its survival, it was fighting to "defeat communism" or to keep oil prices low because of the invasion of Kuweit or 9-11 etc etc. None of these reasons were as strong as what happened to Israel.
Vietnam and Iraq are two nation states and had populations between 25-30m at the time US waged war in those countries. Gaza is a narrow strip of 139 square miles of land with 2mn people packed together like sardines, who have no sovereignty, have been under an economic blockade since 2007, and whose rulers Hamas have no conventional military to speak of. These two are not comparable, I don't know why people keep pointing to the destruction of Nazi Germany and Japan as the benchmark of whats acceptable in Gaza, its quite insane tbh.
Why does the land area matter? Israel is also a tiny and crowded country and is threatened from all fronts. What was the threat against the U.S again , was Vietnam about to invade? was Iraq?
Hamas had enough weapons to kill 1200 Israelis in one day so it's not some helpless entity. It was armed to its teeth. It's only after almost 800 additional dead Israeli soldiers and a very bloody war that Hamas lost most of its power.
I think many people also forget the second intifada suicide bombings, and numerous rocket barrages over the proceeding decades after, to which Hamas was a major belligerent. Despite the more primitive designs of these rockets, without modern defense systems there would likely be more Israeli civilian deaths. I see this context missing from a lot of the discussions of the current iteration of this conflict. Israeli civilians have faced decades of risk (which I think also benefits the right wing of Israeli politics), and this is not a new conflict. October 7th comes on the heels of many other direct and indirect attacks on Israeli civilians. I cant help but think that the current military response might fall under a “never let a crisis go to waste” strategy by Netanyahu’s coalition, which had recently been receiving less support.
Feel free to share your objections to what I wrote.
Unfortunately, it is hard to discern legitimate interest vs. someone wanting to engage in a debate for the sake of it. And I am not interested in wasting my time figuring out which is the case.
I did not say or imply that I have objections to what you wrote.
Your comment strongly implied that you think that Israel overreacted to Oct 7. So I am curious what you think their response should have been.
> Unfortunately, it is hard to discern legitimate interest vs. someone wanting to engage in a debate for the sake of it. And I am not interested in wasting my time figuring out which is the case.
Israel has not overreacted to Oct 7, they have just applied the same policy that they have used for many decades "at least ten of theirs for each one of ours".
This policy is an effective deterrent against enemies, but it should be obvious that with such a policy it will never be possible to end any conflict unless absolutely all enemies and all their relatives or friends are killed.
There have been times when the relations between the parties in this conflict had improved a lot and there was some hope for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Nevertheless on both sides, but especially in Israel, there are people who benefit a lot from the existence of the conflict, so any opponents have been removed by any means possible, including assassination, until the mutual relationships have become as bad as today, when no hope for any kind of peace remains.
Most people in Israel are quite nice, but they are deeply scared by the thought that that at any time someone coming from the neighbors of Israel could come and cut their throats, so they work continuously very hard at their jobs, believing that they must provide thus their individual contributions so that Israel will maintain its military and economic dominance over their enemies, in order to ensure their safety. The workers of Israel have worked all the time since WWII pretty much as hard as those of USA during its short participation to WWII.
Workers from other countries would be very unlikely to work willingly so hard as those of Israel. This is very profitable for the upper class of Israel, for whom an end of the conflict would have caused serious losses, when the workers could not have been motivated any more by patriotic slogans.
> Israel has not overreacted to Oct 7, they have just applied the same policy that they have used for many decades "at least ten of theirs for each one of ours".
The interesting thing is that Hamas seems to share Israel's view that Israelis are more valuable than Palestinians. Whenever there is a prisoner exchange Hamas tends to demand an order of magnitude or more Palestinians be released for each Israeli released.
For example in 2011 Hamas got over 1000 in exchange for a single Israeli.
Or could it also have something to do with Israel having an order of magnitude more Palestinian prisoners (thousands of whom have yet to be charged for years) than Hamas has Israeli soldiers ? If Hamas has 10 Israeli hostages and while Israel holds 10,000, does asking for thousands in return mean you value your people less? Or is that just common sense? And I don't even know what the point of bringing this up is.
I would expect any response to (among other things):
a) adhere to international law (which we now know is a complete farce thanks UNSC veto)
b) not involve ethnic cleansing/forced displacement of Palestinians for a 3rd time in the last 75 years - the only reason it didn’t work this time is because the Egyptians strongly pushed back
c) not involve the deliberate targeting of civilians, the mass punishment of a civilian population, and the denial of access to aid to a civilian population (under occupation no less)
d) not result in the highest proportion of children fatalities and injuries of any modern war - and not involve redefining or rewriting the meaning of the word “child” to give themselves some wiggle room
e) not involve the deliberate targeting of journalists, academics, aid workers, and hospital staff - even if the Israelis claim to have “proof” of them being Hamas members (imagine immediately defunding a UN organization because the Israelis claim a few dozen employees were Hamas members)
f) adhere to Israel’s responsibilities under IHL as an occupying force
Fighting a war against guerillas in an urban context is challenging. Mass & targeted bombing of a densely populated occupied territory containing an enemy with no air force and no air defenses is not only genocidal, but also outright cowardly behavior.
>Your comment strongly implied that you think that Israel overreacted to Oct 7. So I am curious what you think their response should have been.
How about a reaction that wouldn't lead the ICC issuing arrest warrants for the government officials leading the response for crimes against humanity ?
I'm not sure what people act so daft, pretending the Israeli response of the last year was just a totally normal and standard military operation and not a clinical live streamed genocide.
But beheaded babies and babies in ovens portrays a different level of atrocities being committed. This kind of fictional atrocity dissemination is very similar to the approach used during the Gulf War[1].
More importantly, the point is that Western media outlets - who have always proclaimed to be arbiters of truth, objectivity & journalistic integrity - neither did the absolute basic fact checking required before publishing such information, nor apologized later for doing so once the dust settled.
I'm not going to disagree with you about the media sucking, but for what it's worth, I think every side thinks that. I am pro-Israel and have the same feelings about other stories that were rushed, not vetted, wrong, and never apologized for.
Just one thing: you mentioned the "girls" (in fact soldiers) with "bloody pants" in your previous comment. It's quite a stretch to go from bloody pants to "victim of rape".
Shows what appears to be the famous "bloody pants" soldier sitting on the floor close to other presumably injured soldiers after some sort of combat. Isn't that the most obvious way of getting "bloody pants"? Why the leap from those to unfounded rape accusations?
> there is very credible evidence that rape did occur
> FIRST ACCOUNT PANTS PULLED DOWN
>But it turns out that what Otmazgin thought had occurred in the home at the kibbutz hadn’t happened.
> SECOND ACCOUNT: EVERYTHING WAS CHARRED
> Yossi Landau, a longtime ZAKA volunteer, was also working in Be’eri when he entered a home that would produce the second debunked story
I urge people to read the article rather than take the parents claim that it presents evidence of rape on October 7th at face value. It presents no evidence for such a claim through the entire article. It covers debunked claims of sexual violence on October 7th, it does contain a reference to one hostage who was sexually assaulted during her kidnapping who was since thankfully successfully released
“The United Nations and other organizations have presented credible evidence that Hamas militants committed sexual assault during their rampage. The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, said Monday he had reason to believe that three key Hamas leaders bore responsibility for “rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes against humanity.”
I’m not going to dig up and post links to videos showing Hamas parading female captives with blood on their pants, or partially disrobed bodies. Videos which were filmed by Hamas members themselves I might add. Here is an article instead from BBC with testimony from survivors:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181.amp
I don’t want to assume that you are arguing in bad faith, but there are numerous reputable sources showing that other atrocities occurred beyond the murder of civilians. It’s bad enough that Hamas directly targeted and killed over 700 civilians.
That article you linked does not support your claims at all. The UN was pressured by Israel to send a delegation, but they would not cooperate fully and refused a full investigation.
From the UN report [1]:
>In the medicolegal assessment of available photos and videos, no tangible indications of rape could be identified.
>The mission team examined several allegations of sexual violence. It must be noted that
witnesses and sources with whom the mission team engaged adopted over time an increasingly
cautious and circumspect approach regarding past accounts, including in some cases retracting
statements made previously. Some also stated to the mission team that they no longer felt
confident in their recollections of other assertions that had appeared in the media.
>It was determined by the mission team that the
crime scene had been altered by a bomb squad and the bodies moved, explaining the separation of the body of the girl from the rest of her family. Allegations of objects found inserted in female genital organs also could not be verified by the mission team due in large part to the limited availability and low quality of imagery.
How does any of this information from the report lead you to believe that the allegations of mass rape are 'very credible'?
See this interview from Pramila Patten who is the special representative that wrote this report [2]
>“May I just ask, why not put the responsibility and blame the atrocities quite simply on the perpetrators and say, ‘it was Hamas who did it?’” the host demanded.
>Patten replied that the mission of her visit to Israel was “only for the purpose of gathering and analyzing information,” not for attributing alleged crimes to any perpetrator.
>“It is pretty clear who did it, after talking to survivors who returned – it wasn’t the Belgians who did it,” chortled the host.
>“I think it’s up to your government to give access, and that was one of my first recommendations,” Patten responded.
I would suggest you stop peddling these baseless allegations as these lies are being used to justify civilian massacres to this day.
You are cherry picking text out of the report, and removing it from the overall context. The UN investigators visited multiple locations, some of which did not contain evidence, and some of which did. See sections 58/60/61/66/68.
The conclusion of the report itself reads:
“Overall, based on the totality of information gathered from multiple and independent sources at the different locations, there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred at several locations across the Gaza periphery, including in the form of rape and gang rape, during the 7 October 2023 attacks. Credible circumstantial information, which may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including genital mutilation, sexualized torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, was also gathered.”
At this point I don’t see any further point in discussing this subject. I’m only replying in case someone reads these comments, and doesn’t dig deeper into the report. I find it concerning that you glossed over those sections and the conclusion of the report, while only presenting text that supports your viewpoint. It’s bad enough that ~700-800 civilians were murdered in the first place, and it’s horrible that civilians continue to die in Gaza through the present. Please have a good day.
Of course you don't want to talk about it, when you have zero evidence to back up any of your claims. You wrote all that but you could not produce a single piece of evidence besides a few sentences to indicate unproven rapes might have occurred based on very selective information given to them by the Israelis during guided propaganda tours. The claims are "mass rapes" have occurred (not that there were no instances of SA), not a single piece of evidence has been produced, every testimony that came out was proven to be fabricated and here you are trying to peddle your unsubstantiated propaganda as if its something already proven beyond reasonable doubt.
Nope, Iran does not really prop up Palestinians. Maybe Saudi Arabia and their donations sure but Iran does not fund more than military assets, and mostly in Lebanon
Judging from your other comments it seems you’ve bought into the narrative that anyone who would ordinarily be protected by the laws of war is not when their presence inconveniences the IDF. I don’t think I can help you.
There's absolutely no evidence of UN forces being used as human shields. There's clear evidence, including that cited in the article, of the situation being very different from the claims/report of the IDF.
The most credible reason for Israel wanting Unfil to vacate is less impartial observers.
The most credible reason for Israel to want UNIFIL to vacate is that UNIFIL’s mission is to help keep unauthorized military forces out of South Lebanon, and Israel’s invasion force is decidedly unauthorized.
Given they targeted observation posts and monitoring cameras first, I suspect they don't want witnesses observing war crimes. Local witnesses are outright killed or smeared with accusations of belonging to militant groups, as it's being done to journalists in Gaza. They just put targets on the backs of the few surviving journalists that are still documenting the siege of northern Gaza. See: https://www.aljazeera.com/program/inside-story/2024/10/24/wh...
That trick is harder to pull when the witnesses are external UN observers.
Well, UNIFIL for the last twenty years pretty much ignored the other unauthorized military force in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah, so why they should care about IDF?
Hezbollah is part of the elected government within the in internationally recognized borders of Lebanon. It might be illegal for them to fire at Israel, but it's not illegal for them to be present. It is illegal for Israel to be present within Lebanon's borders.
Shouldn't that be an internal political problem for Lebanon to solve?
> Imagine if every political party had an army.
Well, the People's Liberation Army is not technically the army of the nation of China....it is actually the armed wing of the Communist Party of China. Just the PRC is a de-facto one-party state.
Hezbollah's presence might not be illegal under Lebanese law, but it is illegal under UNSC 1701.
Israel's current presence might technically also be illegal under UNSC 1701, but Israel has a very strong casus belli from self-defense, having been bombarded for the past year.
They care about Israel Bulldozing UN's bases (walls and towers)
Israel is being openly threatening UNIFIL, and they aren't retailating in any way. I am 100% sure the white hats have never had any capacity to do anything beside being witness. Hezbollah was ok with that, Israel is not ok with that.
I would think that a people that was close to extinction through genocide only 80 years ago, cares little about what other people authorizes them to do in order to protect themselves.
They were attacked from Lebanon, they retaliate. It’s quite simple.
Hezbollah has launched over 10,000 rockets at Israel since Oct 7 last year. While under the watch of the UN. But apparently Israel is supposed to just do nothing about it and accept it going on for as long as Hezbollah likes. Absolutely no other country on this planet would. So many people seem to have a special set of double standards they apply to Israel for some reason.
> Which attack came first? Who is responding to who? It just doesn't matter any more.
As a fellow taxpayer, fuck no. As the initiator, Hezbollah can stop shooting the rockets at any moment, give up the Oct 2023 attackers and everyone actively involved. I don't see why that wouldn't stop Israel from going further.
This can not work for Israel, because they are responsible for bringing these fucks to justice.
>As the initiator, Hezbollah can stop shooting the rockets at any moment, give up the Oct 2023 attackers and everyone actively involved.
I don't think Hezbollah has any of the Oct 2023 attackers. Those attackers all came from Gaza, and were in Hamas. Hezbollah just decided to join in on the side of Hamas by shooting rockets, but they weren't the ones who did the Oct 2023 attack.
No, I didn't: your assertion still doesn't make sense. No Oct 2023 attackers came from Lebanon (it's quite a long distance away from southern Israel after all), so how exactly are they supposed to "give them up"? They're all in Gaza. Hezbollah doesn't control Gaza.
I suppose; I'm simply addressing the part about "giving up" the Oct 2023 attackers. They aren't in Lebanon anywhere, so there's no way to "give them up".
Probably not, at this point. Israel left it to the UN, which failed to maintain peace and order. I imagine the intent would be to smash Hezbollah like Hamas.
Which came first in your mind? Are you trying to go back to 1948 here? I mean why stop there we could say this is all stems from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand leading to the invasion of and break up of the Ottomon empire. But we have to live in the reality we have today.
In this reality Hezbollah started attacking Israel after Oct 7 in support of Hamas’s attack on Israel. But for that happening Israel would not be invading southern Lebanon to try and put and end to these attacks now.
There is nothing at all wrong with criticizing Israel, I am deeply annoyed with a lot they do, the right wing element and the West Bank settlers are really ruining the ability to reach a two state solution. (Palestinian leaders also share blame in not reaching this outcome too sadly.)
The problem is that people so often have double standards and expectations of Israelis they would never apply to anyone else. And they definitely never seem to have similar expectations for Hezbollah or Hamas. This isn’t constructive and gets kind of antisemitic after a while (Jews are different, hence unrealistic expectations, they should just take the rocket fire and never respond). It’s a weird lack of empathizing with Israelis as also being real humans behaving as real humans anywhere would. This really doesn’t help bring about any kind of peace.
Just because other countries started by brutally colonizing the natives does not mean we should let Israel continue doing it. A true solution requires some admission of guilt on their end for the past century of death and destruction and a path forward that creates a state that is not tied to Jewish identity. Much like other western nations, they will have to learn to deal with a diverse population by abandoning their previous culture and religion.
Israel is simply not going to decide to cease to exist. People living in Israel are not going to up and leave. They’re not going to say “sure take my house” any more than you would. This kind of thing is entirely magical thinking that can only happen because you aren’t able to generate any kind of empathy for people living in Israel.
Kids born in the West Bank or Gaza today are not helped to have a better future by this kind of thinking you’re pushing here.
The parent is suggesting a single state solution and giving this is the context of Hezbollah, the right of return. (Hezbollah is not in Palestine.)
Nobody on this planet would make that deal with groups who have the goal of destroying your country. If Hamas had been a peaceful group, democracy had taken hold in Gaza, it had existed peacefully with Israel, had never had the aim of destroying Israel, then yeah, you might be able to imagine a future where the two merge and live harmoniously. But that is not reality today.
You're projecting more into the commenter's words than is actually to be found in them, it seems.
It's quite cleare Hamas needs to be marginalized and taken out of the picture (along with its spiritual companions in the 37th Government) before anything can move forward, but that's a separate issue.
What are they saying then? I am interpreting them in the context of this discussion which is on Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel and Israel’s response.
You seem to imply they are pointing to internal matters to Israel, not Hezbollahs aims. In which case it’s a total non sequitur comment. Or are you or they, suggesting Hezbollahs aims (given Hezbollah is what we are discussing) simply to reform internal issues within Israel and that is their reason for launching 10,000 rockets at them? I think you know that’s not the case.
My reading of their post is that it was putting the current Hezbollah context to the side and addressing the bigger picture in terms of what, in their view, Israel should do (if it wants to have a just and lasting peace and other nice things).
There is a staggering amount of ignorance present in the other comments here.
I was ignorant too. But I spent a good amount of time educating myself this year. I hope others do the same so they can make completely informed assessments. I worry about tribalism and politics driving too much of the thinking.
Every reaction from the international community is vetoed by the United States of America. A veto power it has used on behalf of Israel to protect it from international scrutiny more than it has for literally any other country on earth. Over half of all US vetoes in the Security Council have been on behalf of Israel.
> The U.S. has vetoed resolutions critical of Israel more than any other council member – 45 times as of December 18, 2023, according to an analysis by Blue Marble. The U.S. has vetoed 89 Security Council resolutions in total since 1945, meaning slightly over half of its vetoes have been used on resolutions critical of Israel. Of the vetoed resolutions, 33 pertained to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories or the country’s treatment of the Palestinian people.
> The first time the U.S. used its veto to support Israel was in September of 1972, when it vetoed a resolution that called on Israel to cease its aggression in Lebanon.
There's a mechanism for bypassing the Security Council by the GA during deadlocks caused by vetoes (Emergency Special Sessions convened under Uniting for Peace—5 of the 11 convened so far have concerned the Arab/Israeli conflict, including one of the two that is currently open, which is now on its 27th year), but no combination of countries otherwise willing to act to constrain the conflict has the capacity to effectively act against both Iran and its proxies and the Israel (directly) backed by the US.
There is the same enforcement power as there is for Security Council resolutions, the coordinated action of member states.
UNEF, the first UN peacekeeping mission, was deployed under a GA resolution passed under Uniting for Peace in an Emergency Special Session called due to British and French vetoes creating a deadlock over the Suez Crisis.
Did what action actually happen? Those reported in the article? If so, clearly yes. They've been widely reported and confirmed repeatedly. The initial international outrage appears to have subsided. I'd guess partly mainly due to the obvious support of the US, who gave up on being outraged when it became obvious there was no one listening on the Israeli side.
It's fascinating to read multiple comments openly justifying attacks on the UN, saying that if they haven't stopped hezbollah themselves that they are the same as terrorists. Even among this group of generally logical mathematical thinkers, reason is left by the wayside when identity is involved.
These "attacks" amount to whining, speculation, and exaggeration. UN soldiers were exposed to smoke in an active warzone. what exactly were they expecting? Same with driving a tank through a gate for cover during a firefight.
There is a clear slant to how the majority of these stories are conveyed. There are probably some real attacks too. that's part of war, its messy.
I have been flagged in this thread by merely re-iterating points mentioned in the Financial Times article. @dang — I doubt you’ll see this, but I would appreciate some help. This is pretty sad.
Me too, for giving context that the article elided. Flagging is supposed to mean "breaks guidelines" not "disagrees with my outlook". Strange that this is the only topic that inspires such zeal.
Israel has a pretty compelling argument. I wish the article had mentioned it. That they did not leads me to believe the article is biased.
The argument goes like this: UNIFIL had one mission, which was to disarm and disband any military force in Lebanon south of the Litani River that was not Lebanon's army. UNIFIL has not done this. This is known and well-documented. Hezbollah regularly fires rockets and missiles into Israel. Hezbollah has built bunkers within sight of UNIFILs own posts. If true, this is not only a clear, systemic failure of their mission, but such an egregious failure that their presence is actually dangerous to civilians.
>...and therefore they deserve to be shot at, maimed or killed?
You quoted the wrong part. Here, let me fix that for you.
>> If true, this is not only a clear, systemic failure of their mission, but such an egregious failure that their presence is actually dangerous to civilians.
>...and therefore they deserve to be shot at, maimed or killed?
There. That's better. Now I can properly answer.
In my opinion, no, of course not. However, in light of their failure to accomplish their mission, and actually hindering peace, Israel asked them to leave. They did not. They have chosen to remain in an active war zone. So, "deserve" doesn't really come into play.
> However, in light of their failure to accomplish their mission, and actually hindering peace, Israel asked them to leave.
Asked them to leave a whole other country, that is not Israel or Israeli territory. Would this be reasonable to you if it were Ethiopia asking UN troops to leave Eritrean territory for failure to keep the peace, while there are active skirmishes between the 2 countries? This is an astounding ask for any country, and an affront to any semblence of a "rules-based order"
You're not addressing the most difficult point. The UN has failed spectacularly in their one single mission while giving cover to terrorists. You might disagree with Israel's response, but the scandal is with the UN. How is it possible that Hezbollah operated unimpeded for decades (e.g that Hezbollah dug a bunker tunnel mere 100 meters from a UN observation post)?
Frankly, I think Israel's reaction is way overdue. 40 years of Hezbollah firing rockets while the "peace keepers" sit on their thumbs. Facilitate terrorism, get the stick.
I suppose, by the same measure, that you approve of Israel's recent directive to the residents of northern Gaza to leave, for the nth time, or be considered a target?
And why they keep closing blind eye on the largest terrorist army in the world violating UN’s own agreements?
Also I wonder who benefits from them intentionally not moving out of harms ways and preventing israel from doing _their_ job of eliminating terrorists?
Their remit for the last 20 years has been to support the Lebanese government in disarming Hezbollah. Israel is not Lebanon.
The sad truth is that Lebanon never went to disarm Hezbollah and the UN didn't care. However, UNIFIL also wants to keep Israel out of Lebanon and track their intrusions. This brought UNIFIL and Israel into conflict
they have multiple jobs. 1) help disarm Hezbollah, 2) make sure Israel stays out of Lebanon. The area is supposed to be a DMZ and is a warzone instead.
Israel's presence highlights the hollow promises and lies of the UN mediated ceasefire that ended the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war.
They dont get to make these choices. The UN could vote to have them do it, but it wont support Israel.
As it stands Helping Israel is against UNIFIL rules. It can only help the Lebanese government. If the Lebanese gov asked UNIFIL to attack Hezbollah, they could. But the Lebanese gov wont do that either.
This leads to the current state. A UN force too small to do anything hiding in their bases and whining about Israel not staying on their side of the boarder.
Although you rightly condemn the IDF's terrorist origins, you fall into the trap of labelling genuine resistance movements as terrorist. Was the French Resistance a terrorist organisation? Or the Polish Resistance? Given the brutal occupation executed by Israel in Palestine why is armed resistance, in your eyes, taboo? This is not a football match between two equal sides. This is, and always has been, asymetric warfare where one side is armed to the teeth by the west. Where is Hezbollah's air force? Or its tanks?
You have it precisely inverted. Hezbollah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood are not "freedom fighters". They are a supremacist, revanchist, Islamist movement hiding behind the notion of "occupation", funded by the government of Iran. The French and Polish resistance movements in WWII aimed to liberate their countries from Nazi occupation and restore legitimate governments, operating with support from the Allied forces as part of a recognized war effort. Their tactics targeted military objectives, respecting international humanitarian laws. In contrast, Hezbollah and Hamas have broader ideological goals, including regional control and, for Hamas, the eradication of Israel, using tactics such as rocket attacks and civilian-targeted violence, which violate international law. Unlike WWII resistance fighters who returned to civilian life post-conflict, Hezbollah and Hamas retain military power within their political structures, acting as armed entities beyond immediate defense. Hezbollah and Hamas are internationally designated as terrorist organizations, unlike the WWII resistance movements, which had legitimate standing under international law.
Is that the same UN that has its secretary-general António Guterres shaking hands with Putin and Lukashenko this week?
Let's be honest, UN is one of the most useless organization in the world (and been for a while, look at history of their Africa operations). By now their presense on ground with inability to actually do anything or help anybody is a liability (eg can't stop Hezbollah from launching rockets and using them as a shield)
The biggest issue we are facing now, it is that the same has happened ot the previous organization, League of Nations Union, which became useless to prevent WW II, UN was born after the war with the goal to be a better organisation than it predecessor.
And here we are, at the edge of WW III, with an useless UN.
First of all, one whose army is actually useful, there are plenty of examples of genocides where UN troops were present and nothing was done to prevent that.
A weapon only works as dissuasion if the agressor isn't sure it might be used, otherwise they might as well be holding paper sticks.
They being there has been informative. We know of israel attacking UN bases. We are yet to see Hezbolla militants holding white hats at gunpoint. Or at least hiding in a tunnel under a UN base
There have been thousands rockets fired from southern Lebanon into Israel. So, Israel doesn't need permission from the UN or the international community or the US to invade and take out Hezbollah. Certainly not UNIFIL, who have been entirely useless as peace keepers.
Thanks for the links. Unfortunately, the telegraph is not a serious source of information (visit the frontpage anytime for proof). The other video is even worse.
I personally wait until CNN publishes such information. It is the only Israel biased news source I deem above fakenews.
If you think of CNN as pro-Israel, no wonder you're so anti-Israel. Bypass the middle men altogether! Listen to Hamas directly! Listen to Israeli officials directly! Listen to everyone you can without preconceptions. Each party says very clearly exactly what they believe and what they are doing and what they want and how they plan to achieve it. Look for consistency and straight-forward statements of fact. Watch out when something affirms your preconceptions because that's when you are most vulnerable to being manipulated. When you listen to a Westerner, especially an American journalist, explain what Hamas, Palestine, Israel, Hezbollah or Iran is doing, they are filtering it through their own biases and preconceptions and are almost certainly flat-out incorrect.
You can't post flamewar comments like this to HN or use the site primarily for ideological battle—it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
We have to ban accounts that post like this, so please don't do it again.
I understand my comment was made in anger, but where is the ideological battle?
I am trying to ask people to discuss non-tech-related politics elsewhere, as per guidelines. How else am I supposed to do that? Flagging doesn't work, politically inclined people just unflag it.
The parent post is the definition of off-topic; if you won't delete it, maybe you need a new guideline, where in garbage posts like this garbage comments like mine are allowed then? :D I think a good approach would be if posts like this were allowed to accumulate comments and then deleted completely, destroying all the dubious "contribution" and thus disincentivising it?
I do hate both ideologies fwiw; as applied to HN however, only one tends to create and promote off-topic political posts like this, or at least I never see the other kind of garbage in the RSS feed.
"Dear butt-hurt lefties" is about as clear a marker of ideological battle as exists!
Now that I read your comment more closely I see that you intended it differently than I thought. I'm sorry I didn't get it right the first time. On the other hand, the way you phrased it guaranteed that a lot of readers (like me) wouldn't get it right, so I'd say the expected value* of the comment remains negative even though you intended it more positively than that.
https://archive.ph/o7atF
At this point the country should be suspended from UN, like Apartheid SA was before, in 1974. See https://www.nytimes.com/1974/11/13/archives/south-africa-is-...
I’m fine with that as long as numerous other countries get kicked for similar acts, it has to be a package deal tho
As I see it, UN at least is documenting everything as it happens to its members. Hopefully it can be kept unbiased for a long time. If you start kicking left and right, there will be no UN to overlook events.
Maybe without a UN, we would already be having a WWIII. It is impossible to weight its influence, but I very much doubt it is having any nefarious effect.
No need to sledgehammer the world until it gets better
Too much faith/credit in the UN. With the security council, not much has or can happen. Beyond that there’s also incompetence. Look up jadotville or Dag Hammarskjöld (suspected to have been assasinated)
In 1986, then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden said, “Supporting Israel is the best $3 billion investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.”
Israel is a satellite state of the US in all but name. You'd have a better shot at dissolving the UN entirely than suspending Israel.
What ive always wondered is why the US hasn't put Israel on the security council, considering it is a nuclear armed state.
> Israel is a satellite state of the US in all but name.
The US is more reflexively pro-Israel than Israel is pro-US in international policy, the opposite of what you’d expect if Israel was a US vassal.
> What ive always wondered is why the US hasn't put Israel on the security council
There are lots of reasons, but one that renders all the others secondary is that the US can’t add permanent Security Council members.
> considering it is a nuclear armed state.
India, Pakistan, North Korea, and, when it was a nuclear-armed state, South Africa also are (and were) not permanent UNSC members, a set whuch hasn't expanded, though two seats have switched hands, since the UN was founded.
Yet Russia, a country the leader of which is wanted for war crimes - is on the permanent Security Council.
The whole organization needs to be uprooted and rebuilt. It's become a farce.
Russia is there because they wouldn’t even come to the table otherwise, and it’s more valuable to have a hobbled organization than one that doesn’t include significant powers. The others don’t have permanent slots because they joined when they had less power, or they never gained enough power to bargain.
Russia isn't a founding member because they're not the same as Soviet Union. Ukraine on the other hand is one of the founding members.
Just by allowing Russia to keep the permanent seat of USSR legitimizes their revanchist goals to regain the territories they controlled during the cold war
The best move UN could do is to kick Russia out of permanent seat as it was done with Republic of China, US has the mechanisms to do it but sadly they never will
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres just bowed to putin yesterday https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/world/3201518/brics-...
Multiple recent American presidents also committed war crimes
We can discuss American misadventures and horrible decisions in the aftermath of 9/11, but equating the U.S. military to Russia, which effectively has rape and torture as part of its doctrine, is more than a stretch.
To be clear, I totally expected a comment like that, but I can guarantee you 1000% that no Ukrainians will be hanging on to Russian cargo plane wheels once they are booted out.
Guantanamo was and is a thing, there are literally handbooks on how to torture used by the American military. The American military also has a long, rich history of systemic sexual assault. Heck one of my friends was sexually assaulted by a service member to the point of hospitalization and he received no punishment or recourse. I also think reporting on Russian military by western media is largely propaganda, it’s hard to know what’s true and take.
Well, you can't just show your cards THAT quickly. It's so hard to know! You can see the leveled cities from space, but "everything is possible and nothing is true". Okay.
The set of American presidents who haven't would be more easily enumerable/null.
the permanent seats on the security counsel are the winners of WW2.
[flagged]
Israel has far more influence in the US than the US does in Israel.
It is very clear that the current administration is backed into a corner and trying to make the best of the situation.
FWIW: This is not a knock against the current administration.
This is often repeated but is historically VERY incorrect. Yes, Israel does lobbying in the states and does influence (like every other country). The current Israeli government is indeed terrible and blatant at that.
However, Israel left Gaza in 2005 with no deal as part of US pressure (which led to the current situation). Israel offered a Palestinians a country which included east Jerusalem twice based on US pressure. Israel left Lebanon alone due to such pressure.
Israel didn't attack Lebanon for a year and tried to settle due to US pressure despite an average of 25 rockets per day towards civilian population.
Imagine a country being attacked and fired on for nearly 20 years (by Hamas) and keeping reposes "moderate". That's US pressure and influence right there. Israel delayed going into Rafah due to US pressure, it turns out Sinwar and quite a few hostages were there...
The reason it seems that US pressure isn't working is mostly because no one knows what to do exactly. Hostages are still held by Hamas. Hezbollah is still firing rockets/drones even now. I'm 100% for a hostage exchange but right now there's no deal, part of that is because of Netanyahu (who is terrible) but not all of it. The US can't fire Netanyahu (I wish they could...), and that's a problem. They want to strengthen anti-Netanyahu forces within Israel while still moderating its actions, that's a very tight rope to walk on.
Israel never left Gaza. They surrounded it. They controlled the entire land border and didn't let ships sail or planes take off from Gaza. It's as if, after a prison riot, all of the guards just said fuck 'em and decamped to a perimeter around the prison with machine guns with orders to shoot to kill. Gaza is way too small and densely populated to be remotely self-sufficient.
Now, just to short-circuit the reply chain, you're going to say that Hamas would have just used the borders to move in weapons. Sure, that's true. In fact, they dug a bunch of tunnels under the Israeli controlled border crossings and smuggled in a bunch of weapons. Normal stuff like food and medicine though were constantly blocked or delayed.
By the way, I don't know how to solve this problem well at this point. Both sides have done enough evil shit to each other that they will want to kill each other for generations. Israel though, has never withdrawn from Gaza, and Israel has never agreed to abide by the terms of UN Resolution 242 that obligates them to withdraw from the 1967 occupied territories. What I expect to happen based on the ground reality and statements from members of the Israeli government is that the Palestinians in Gaza will either die or have their lives be made so intolerable that they leave, and then Israel will annex the land, just as they have in Jerusalem and many areas of the West Bank.
Israel did withdraw from Lebanon though, this wasn't effective at all at promoting peace as we're now seeing, and same thing has happened in Gaza; Israel did uproot all the settlers from Gaza and there was no single Israeli soldier left in Gaza - you can say the Gaza withdrawal was incomplete but saying it never happened at all is incorrect. Unfortunately Israelis only learned that withdrawals from enemies who have sworn to destroy you only make things worse for them.
[flagged]
Israel does not exist around Gaza. It exists on two sides of Gaza. On the Egyptian border, Israel has made an agreement with Egypt to prevent imports and exports, and on the Mediterranean, they prevent access to the sea by force.
Israel has long prevented the import of all sorts of goods. They do not provide "everything necessary." Israel also has prevented the export of almost all goods, so that the Palestinians will have no money and be completely dependent on Israel to provide for basic needs.
I'm sure you're right that if the border were opened up that Hamas would import weapons and attack Israel, which is why Israel surrounded Gaza, as I said.
As you say, "peace requires proof", but that goes both ways, and ever since Camp David collapsed, Israel has likewise proved that it does not intend to make peace by further expanding the settlements, and generally making the lives of the Palestinians intolerable, often in capricious ways that do not enhance Israeli security.
The very obvious long-term goal of Israel is to drive the Palestinians out of the occupied territories and annex them for Israeli use.
>they prevent access
So this "A 21-year-old woman kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Iraq a decade ago" came to Gaza thru Israel?
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/yazidi-woman-freed...
[flagged]
I think we're in agreement then. The current, democratically elected government of Israel intends to remove the Palestinian population and annex the territories.
When you talk about "a*holes like Netanyahu", he's the Prime Minister, and has been for something like 17 of the last 30 years. He speaks for the country. If Israelis don't support his actions, they should elect someone different.
No or not exactly. What's missing is the nuance and in this case it's everything. Netanyahu voted 4 times for the law that bans Jewish settlements in Gaza. This law is still in effect.
Yes, he has coalition members that want to repeal that law and are actively trying to resettle Gaza, but the IDF stops them because it's against the law. Yes, they want to repeal that law but even within their extreme coalition that would be tough.
Saying Israelis should elect someone different is even worse than saying Americans shouldn't elect Trump. This lacks nuance and understanding in how elections and parliamentary systems work. This is also the exact argument Israelis make about Hamas: the people of Gaza voted for them. Both are bad arguments.
Netanyahu got roughly 30% of the vote in Israel. He built a coalition based on many conflicting parties. On the one hand he has the fascist extremists. They got a large number of the votes thanks to unification within their ranks. Then he has the Hasidic Jews, they don't care about anything as long as they get paid. This coalition brings him to roughly 50% of the voting populace, he won in a landslide by a 3000 vote difference in the last election. The reason is mostly due to the collapse of the left due to electoral complexities in the way votes are tallied.
Netanyahu himself lacks ideals and is practically made of Teflon. He switched ideological sides multiple times, charged with crimes etc. Prosecution of his crimes just solidifies his base which chucks all of that to "leftist persecution". It's remarkably hard to break that cognitive bias. Guess what helps that cognitive bias?
A sense of persecution. "Everyone is against us" is his greatest slogan. The "pro-Palestinian" rallies were the biggest gift Netanyahu could receive and have bolstered his grasp over Israel. He's pointing at them as "we can't trust western countries", he isn't wrong. Every time Biden tried to pressure Israel politically or by leveraging weapon shipments this actually boosted support for Netanyahu. It's stupid, but it's a fact.
Biden understands that which is why he showed strong support to the Israeli people. Unfortunately, the leader at that time was Bibi and it's really hard to show support for Israel while attacking its elected leader directly. It is a very tight rope and I don't think Biden could have done much better. Especially given the recent claims that Trump has been calling Bibi and encouraging him to avoid a deal.
I wish people abroad would understand this nuance, but it doesn't play well on TikTok. It also doesn't have a nice slogan or rally. We need people to support both Israel and the Palestinian people while demanding their respective far-right factions get out of power.
I understand that Israeli politics is complex, but ultimately it’s a democracy, and Netanyahu is who was chosen, repeatedly. All of those far right parties that make up Netanyahu’s coalition got real votes and they represent a real slice of Israeli opinion.
If Israelis want something different they just have to vote differently in the next election.
The U.S. cannot just pretend Rabin is still in power and send money and weapons with the idea that Israel desires peace at the end of the day, because that faction is (as you say, for many reasons) no longer a majority in Israel.
As for Hamas, yes they were elected, and that does have significance, but also that was 18 years ago, and most of what would be the current electorate wasn’t even old enough to vote back then.
Ultimately as it stands though I believe both sides of the conflict wish to conquer the other, and the U.S. should just decline to support either side.
> If Israelis want something different they just have to vote differently in the next election.
So 54% of Americans (which includes a lot of Democrats) support deporting millions of Mexicans. These are law abiding non-citizens who are contributing to the economy, yet most Americans want them gone.
Is it surprising that a Trump like demagogue is successful when the people in question actually do commit mass murder and want to destroy the country?
The reaction to violence is never, OK I was wrong... Let's settle. It's always violence in response and the weaker side always suffers.
> The U.S. cannot just pretend Rabin is still in power and send money and weapons with the idea that Israel desires peace at the end of the day, because that faction is (as you say, for many reasons) no longer a majority in Israel.
The first part is 100% true. Things changed. The problem is that your base assumption is completely wrong. You need to understand why the US sends weapons to Israel and that has a complex and long history. First, it sends weapons because it gives jobs to Americans. Israel demonstrates the quality of the weapons and improves them.
Back in the day, Israel was completely embargoed. In the 60s it would buy French weapons and collect money to afford that. It developed its own industry but on the eve of war the French cut off Israel. Despite that Israel won, big time. It then started making the best weapons on earth. Guns like Uzi became the hot tool for everyone. Even its planes started selling everywhere and were pretty good. The US started selling weapons to Israel both to eliminate the competition and to improve its own. When Israel got its early shipments of US made planes it would rip out all the avionics and push in its own. US made avionics and weapons systems at the time were crap. They no longer are, guess who made that happen?
But Israel is also a powerful ally. E.g. Sadam Husain would have a Nuclear weapon were it not for Israel. So would Assad. Israel killed quite a few terrorists on the US most wanted lists and provided a lot of support in the middle east on things where the US would rather stay neutral. It enabled keeping countries like Egypt and Jordan on the western side of the fence and serves as a balancing tool/lightning rod in the region. That has value.
The more interesting thing is what would happen if the US would stop weapon shipments. This would be very bad for everyone. Most Israelis would see it as proof that they are alone again. This would mean Israel would need to show deterrence. It still has a massive security industry and still makes some of the best weapons around, it still has stocks of weapons but would now need to make them all count. It would mean a massive aggressive attack.
Why?
Without US support Israel would be concerned that this would serve as a signal for Iran or even Jordan that Israel is now "fair game". That can quickly deteriorate to nuclear war to keep deterrence clear.
Finally, look at countries like Turkey which just bombed many civilian Kurds. They are a member of Nato and no one is even talking about it... Obviously no one cares just like no one cares about Sudan, China etc. None of those causes have TikToks or advocates since they have no sponsors.
Both Turkey and Israel have similar problems. Authoritarian leaning leaders who are slowly dismantling democracy. The solution in both cases is difficult, most aggressive action can accelerate this process and make things worse for everyone. There aren't any good answers here.
> As for Hamas, yes they were elected, and that does have significance, but also that was 18 years ago, and most of what would be the current electorate wasn’t even old enough to vote back then.
As I said, I think it's a silly argument but don't expect a different result prior to the war. Hamas controlled UNRWA completely and was teaching pretty horrific stuff. If anything I'm afraid the situation is worse.
See Egypt, given democracy they instantly picked the Muslim Brotherhood which is a fanatic organization. The education in these countries is mostly comprised around religion and a pretty extreme perception of said religion.
> Ultimately as it stands though I believe both sides of the conflict wish to conquer the other, and the U.S. should just decline to support either side.
It isn't a "both sides" scenario.
Israel has a law that disallows settlements in Gaza, signed by Netanyahu. The IDF specifically stopped settlement attempts there. Yes, there are extremists in the government who want to revert that law. But they don't have the votes for that. Biden has drawn a red line related to that and to violations of Leahy. There is a status quo, it might seem more extreme than in the past and Bibi is indeed stretching the boundaries but there is a line.
The idea that sending weapons to Israel is some sort of economic or military advantage to the U.S. is sophistry. We could simply take those same weapons and add them to our own inventory and use them in ways that actually benefit the U.S.
The actual reason the U.S. sends weapons to Israel is two fold. One is as a carrot to continue the peace process. The permanent allocation to Israel started when Camp David I was signed. The second reason is that a lot of people that support Israel live in the U.S. and they vote. If Israel no longer desires peace, the first reason doesn't exist. The second reason still does which is why it continues, despite being against the interests of the U.S.
Yes, Netanyahu stopped the settlements in Gaza, but again, sophistry. While the settlements in Gaza were dismantled, the settlements in the West Bank were being expanded, as they continue to be. Netanyahu has always been about creating physical conditions that cause a two state solution to be politically impossible, regardless of changes in the Israeli government.
It very much is a "both sides" scenario. I'm not going to argue about exactly which side is more unreasonable, but ultimately so much water has gone under the bridge that I don't think a settlement is possible, and I'm not interested in paying taxes to supply weapons to fuel an unresolvable conflict. If Israel wants to turn Gaza into rubble, leave millions of people homeless, and year after year take more land in the West Bank, I suppose we can't practically stop this, but personally I don't want want any part of it.
> The idea that sending weapons to Israel is some sort of economic or military advantage to the U.S. is sophistry. We could simply take those same weapons and add them to our own inventory and use them in ways that actually benefit the U.S.
A huge number of US politicians disagree. It's fashionable to claim that they are all stupid but the fact is that this just isn't true. Looking at Israels success in missile defense and similar technologies it shows where the R&D collaboration with the US has made both more successful.
If the US won't send weapons Israel would just make its own and in the past made fantastic weapons. Including great fighter jets that were approaching F16 level in the 80s.
> One is as a carrot to continue the peace process.
That is true too.
> The second reason is that a lot of people that support Israel live in the U.S. and they vote.
That is also true. Today that's mostly the evangelicals though.
> If Israel no longer desires peace, the first reason doesn't exist.
This isn't true. First it assumes Israel doesn't want peace which is detached from reality. Peace exists with Egypt, Jordan etc. Israel returned territory it captured at war and signed a peace deal. All sides abide and this works well.
It can very well be argued that the current war is because of peace pressure against Israel. Israel left Gaza under US pressure to do so with no deal. Despite repeated attacks from Hamas it didn't go back in and maintained status quo. US pressure worked but created a powder-keg in Gaza that blew up eventually.
US pressure using the weapons as incentive worked very well, but you can't just wish peace to happen and force it on some people.
> Yes, Netanyahu stopped the settlements in Gaza, but again, sophistry.
Netanyahu has one ideal: Netanyahu. He has no morals, no backbone and no principals.
> While the settlements in Gaza were dismantled, the settlements in the West Bank were being expanded, as they continue to be.
As you can see from my other answers here I 100% agree that this is indeed a huge problem. The right-wing used the violence of Hamas as a means to attack the Palestinian authority for the past 3 decades. To be fair the Palestinian authority isn't great (e.g. lynching Israelis by tearing them limb from limb) but I agree that this is awful. The only way to solve this is to remove the two zero-sum entities: Hamas and the current government of Israel. The latter might not be removed in the next election, but the pendulum will eventually swing back...
Without Hamas things would hopefully calm down for a while.
> It very much is a "both sides" scenario.
No. The fact that there are bad people on both sides is true. But that simplifies the situation. Israel wants a Palestinian state and tries to achieve that. Yes, it has some lunatics but unlike Hamas even in the current government they can't do anything.
Hamas just wants to kill all Israelis. No law other than Sharia law. No civilian differentiation.
But the real horrible thing about Hamas is that they don't care how many Palestinians die as part of their Jihad. They consider the death of their own children as a bonus, they would go to heaven as they die heroes. Israel has never been like that. If Hamas had the firepower of Israel there would be no Israeli left. The reverse isn't true despite everything.
> If Israel wants to turn Gaza into rubble, leave millions of people homeless, and year after year take more land in the West Bank, I suppose we can't practically stop this, but personally I don't want want any part of it.
The thing is that Israel can do it and doesn't.
Furthermore, once the war is over it will help rebuild Gaza as it did in the past. The war isn't against the people of Gaza, it's against Hamas whose an enemy of the people of Gaza. It's a terrible organization that murders gays, believes domestic violence isn't a crime and brainwashes children to commit suicide bombings.
Yes, the war is terrible and violent. But what's the alternative?
Leaving the hostages to die?
Letting Hamas regain power and do another round of the same thing?
Violence is terrible. Always. But sometimes the avoidance of violence doesn't work. It just shoves it into a pressure cooker; it will be worse later on. We saw that with the 2005 deal. Israel left Gaza and tried to mostly ignore Hamas, that didn't work out well for anyone.
@throwaway9917 and @invalidname -- thank you both for a fantastic example of civil disagreement and interesting conversation.
> A huge number of US politicians disagree. It's fashionable to claim that they are all stupid but the fact is that this just isn't true. Looking at Israels success in missile defense and similar technologies it shows where the R&D collaboration with the US has made both more successful. If the US won't send weapons Israel would just make its own and in the past made fantastic weapons. Including great fighter jets that were approaching F16 level in the 80s.
I don't doubt that they would make their own weapons, and I'm sure they'd be pretty good. From a standpoint of U.S. interests though, collaborating with Israel hasn't been that great. Israel took U.S. money and tech to develop that F-16 level jet (the Lavi), and then covertly sold the design to the Chinese. Meanwhile, when the U.S. wanted to send Israeli produced, U.S. owned SPIKE missiles to Ukraine, Israel blocked the transfer.
> This isn't true. First it assumes Israel doesn't want peace which is detached from reality. Peace exists with Egypt, Jordan etc. Israel returned territory it captured at war and signed a peace deal. All sides abide and this works well.
Yes but the settlement with Egypt where land was returned was 45 years ago. Israel is not the same country it was back then.
> Israel wants a Palestinian state and tries to achieve that.
Based on Israel's actions, and the statements of Netanyahu and a couple of ministers, I don't believe this. I think that they've given up and intend to remove the Palestinians from the occupied territories.
> But the real horrible thing about Hamas is that they don't care how many Palestinians die as part of their Jihad. They consider the death of their own children as a bonus, they would go to heaven as they die heroes. Israel has never been like that. If Hamas had the firepower of Israel there would be no Israeli left. The reverse isn't true despite everything.
That's probably true, and so I also do not support sending weapons to Hamas.
We both agree that this is a very difficult problem. Personally I see no practical long-term solution, because the demographics of Israel have changed and continue to change in a direction towards more right-wing nationalism. Many peace-oriented Israelis (incl people I know personally) have left Israel over this. I don't think that if things calm down that minds will gradually change and a deal will be struck, because when things were relatively calm, Israel continued to expand the settlements and continued to oppress the Palestinians in numerous unnecessary ways. The Palestinians rightly don't believe that if they just stop attacking Israel that eventually they'll get their state.
How do you see there being a positive resolution in the long-term?
> Israel took U.S. money and tech to develop that F-16 level jet (the Lavi),
Its development was started based on prior Israeli Jets so the technology was Israeli. Funding was given to keep an eye on the project and control. Israel had far superior avionics which eventually went into US jets as a result.
> and then covertly sold the design to the Chinese.
It's unclear if it was sold or stolen. Regardless the technology is ancient by today's standards. This was 20 years after the project was disbanded and possibly had reduced classification by then.
> Meanwhile, when the U.S. wanted to send Israeli produced, U.S. owned SPIKE missiles to Ukraine, Israel blocked the transfer.
I agree that's pretty terrible. Israeli governments did a lot of shitty moves like that and still does. But it's not alone in that sense.
First, this is pretty standard stuff when selling weapons. You can't sell them to 3rd parties without permission. This is true for US weapons that are sent to Israel and any country selling weapons.
The main logic behind this is that Israel is concerned about escalating against Russia. There are many Jews in Russia which might be on the receiving end of retaliation and there is deep Russian presence in the middle east (notably Syria). I can understand that concern and we don't know all the facts since a lot of it has to do with information that isn't exposed to the public.
But I'm 100% with you that Israel should have been more helpful to Ukraine. It set up a field hospital and helped later on with some knowledge transfer but not much beyond that. At least not publicly.
Back to the main subject though. Israel is sharing a ton of information with the USA using spy networks. There's a lot of collaboration in preventing nuclear armament in Iran, Syria and Iraq.
Israel did a lot of the dirty work the USA just can't do. After Afghanistan and Iraq it is pretty clear that the USA is losing its deterrence and Israel can do the stuff the USA doesn't want to do officially. It can wag its finger publicly but approve of the result in some of these cases. E.g. the Hezbollah people that Israel killed in Lebanon had US bounties on their heads. Furthermore, the level of destruction is indeed horrible, but it's deterrence. The US can then enjoy both sides: It has the higher moral ground of avoiding the dirty work and chastising Israel. But it still gets the impact of "you mess with the west and we can get you anywhere".
> Yes but the settlement with Egypt where land was returned was 45 years ago. Israel is not the same country it was back then.
The settlement with Jordan was 30 years ago. The Oslo accord with the Palestinians is still in effect today.
Yes, I sadly agree Israel moved to the right. That is exactly what I would like to fix. The problem is that a lot of the well meaning people are doing more damage than good.
You can't stop a war by taking weapons, it will just make the war FAR more violent since you need to make every bomb count. I very much agree there should be pressure on Israel but it needs to be the right nuanced type of pressure.
> > Israel wants a Palestinian state and tries to achieve that. > > Based on Israel's actions, and the statements of Netanyahu and a couple of ministers, I don't believe this. I think that they've given up and intend to remove the Palestinians from the occupied territories.
Sadly that might make more sense in the past tense at the moment. Still, despite all the violence and terrible government there are still Israelis who have hope for a two state solution.
This is exactly my point. How do we change things back so Israelis will have hope again in a two state solution?
The first ingredient is time. Right now we've got a war going on. It's terrible for everyone and should end as soon as possible. If Hamas survives this war in any functional way then the Palestinians will be f*ed. It will do this all over again and things will end up worse. It's in its nature.
But if it's a shell of its former self then there is a chance. There's now a border wall which keeps Israel out as much as it keeps Palestinians in. There are offers such as the Saudi deal which can pave a way for a long term deal. Netanyahu is old by now and since he eliminated any competitor on the right, there is no heir apparent.
> the demographics of Israel have changed and continue to change in a direction towards more right-wing nationalism.
Sadly this is very true. Even worse... Due to the success of the Oslo accord young Israelis don't meet Palestinians and vice versa. It creates a detachment between the people and lets both sides develop antagonism.
Unfortunately when speaking to foreigners the opinions are either you're evil or you're 100% right. Both are the wrong answer. E.g. a friend of mine was living in Ashdod which gets lots of Hamas rockets. About a decade ago we had lunch and he was furious. He told me about the panic in his kids eyes, the started bed-wetting from the fear. They lived like that for a decade with no end in sight.
He said something along the lines of "I don't care what they bomb in Gaza, they're coming after my kids". My answer was roughly "you're right, but that would only make a father in Gaza feel the same way". That worked well.
Looking at things like US funding contributing to the war is problematic. Israelis blame the US for this whole mess. It left Gaza because of US pressure. It didn't go back in because of US pressure. Cutting funding or weapons would be the ultimate betrayal and authorization to do "anything". I think it will make everything worse.
> This is exactly my point. How do we change things back so Israelis will have hope again in a two state solution?
I have no idea. I also have no idea how you'd get the Palestinians to have hope either. Even if Israel were willing to do a two state solution, they would undoubtedly ask for a very limited sovegerenty that would require the Palestinian state to be demilitarized, which would mean that Israel would have to control ports and border crossings to check for weapons, which means they could also do things like they have done in the past like prohibit the import of concrete.
What the Palestinians see is the Israelis constantly expanding the settlements, and so they see that their only alternative to losing their land inch by inch is armed resistance, futile as that may be.
As an American, I don't really see how the U.S. is positively influencing the situation, or can positively influence it. If you look at what's happened in Gaza, yes, Israel is legitimately furious over Oct 7, but the response has killed something like 28,000 noncombatant Palestinians. For all of that, they've managed to get the release of, or rescue 60 or so hostages.
As an American and as a Dad, I don't want to buy bombs so that Israel can kill Palestinian kids. The sense in the media is that Israel expects us to view Israeli lives as being worth 1000x as much as Palestinian lives, but as a gentile American, I view them as equally valuable.
If there were some credible plan that would lead to a resolution of the issue from the Israeli side, it would be a different matter, but all I can see is endless carnage, and I do not want to be a party to it.
> I also have no idea how you'd get the Palestinians to have hope either. Even if Israel were willing to do a two state solution, they would undoubtedly ask for a very limited sovegerenty that would require the Palestinian state to be demilitarized, which would mean that Israel would have to control ports and border crossings to check for weapons, which means they could also do things like they have done in the past like prohibit the import of concrete.
I'm pretty sure a demilitarized state is the only option for everyone involved. I think that seeing the destruction in Gaza might be the incentive that lights a fire under both sides to compromise.
Israel will control border crossings regardless. The west bank can bring in products from Jordan but I'm guessing Israel would demand oversight. That would probably force Israel to tame its expectations. Also as time moves and the deal proves itself Israel could relax, I doubt Hamas will let it relax too much but I'm hopeful on that front.
I hope this can be done as part of a wide region Saudi deal. Biden has been pushing for that and it's the smart move. A Saudi peace agreement will change the region and validate Israels right to exist, it would put a huge damper on Hamas's ambitions.
> What the Palestinians see is the Israelis constantly expanding the settlements, and so they see that their only alternative to losing their land inch by inch is armed resistance, futile as that may be.
That conflates the two situations. Palestinians in Gaza don't have settlements. Palestinians in the west bank (who specifically aren't joining in the war), have settlements.
That's part of the insanity of the Israeli right wing... Hamas is evil so they get no settlements and what is effectively their own country. West bank is mostly moderate so they get settlements and restrictions. This is obviously over simplified but just bonkers.
The Palestinians in the west bank understand the violence when you're the weaker side eventually hurts them. That doesn't mean there are no attacks there (there are), but they are driven by Hamas offshoots and small forces. Palestinian resistance in the west bank is mostly political which makes a lot more sense and IMHO far more damaging to Israel in the long term. I hope Israelis will be able to climb out of their bubble and disassociate the two approaches.
Settlements in the west bank get constructed as response to violence from Hamas. That's an insane policy by an insane government. Things like that can be reverted though, most of these settlements are illegal by Israeli law.
> As an American, I don't really see how the U.S. is positively influencing the situation, or can positively influence it. If you look at what's happened in Gaza, yes, Israel is legitimately furious over Oct 7, but the response has killed something like 28,000 noncombatant Palestinians. For all of that, they've managed to get the release of, or rescue 60 or so hostages.
I see that and I mostly agree (although none of us know the exact number of noncombatant casualties but even one is tragic). That's why Biden's pressure for a hostage deal is so important. I wish pro-Palestinian protesters would march with both flags calling for a deal which is in everyone's interest at this point.
> As an American and as a Dad, I don't want to buy bombs so that Israel can kill Palestinian kids. The sense in the media is that Israel expects us to view Israeli lives as being worth 1000x as much as Palestinian lives, but as a gentile American, I view them as equally valuable.
Don't cast that as a racist war. Yes, Israel has racist just like any place. Also no one on the Israeli side is targeting kids. It's also not about balance (and the number isn't 1000x right now even based on larger estimates it's around 20-40x).
> If there were some credible plan that would lead to a resolution of the issue from the Israeli side, it would be a different matter, but all I can see is endless carnage, and I do not want to be a party to it.
That is understandable, neither do I. But picking up and going home can lead to far worse consequences as the USA saw in Afghanistan. That was tragic on a whole different level and is a continuing disaster to everyone who lives there. America broke the middle east on multiple occasions, right now the options are between bad and worse.
If the USA stops weapon shipments this will:
* Force Israel to use more less accurate armaments
* Let the right-wing claim that "Jews are abandoned again", "we can trust no one"... Then proceed to do whatever they want to do with no concequences
* If it runs out of weapons it might use nuclear weapons for deterrence
As a parent myself I always threaten my kids with punishment if they misbehave. The problem is that when you actually punish them (e.g. throwing away a toy or deleting a game), then you're fed. You no longer have the leverage of the threat and need to either move to more extreme threats or lose any control over them.
Biden is in that position. Obviously threatening Israel with war isn't on the table... But if he does anything, it can seriously backfire. Furthermore, the impact is *much* bigger. Israel is part of a proxy east/west war against Iran/Russia/China. If there's even a hint Israel isn't getting the full support of the USA it can have dire consequences to Ukraine/Taiwan.
Yes, bad people within the Israeli government are abusing that and the US elections to get away with terrible stuff. I very much liked the Biden set of sanctions against settlers. I think they can go further with action like that but it's a delicate needle to thread.
Their slogan in Arabic is "from the river to the sea Palestine will be Arab", the river and the sea are the borders of Israel and its tantamount to "kill all the Jews".
There are many variants of the slogan of course, but for some reason you're picking one of the more uncommon (and more virulent) versions. However, he "official" versions (for example from the PLO) use the phrase to call for a single democratic state for Arabs and Jews, that would replace Israel, and from which nobody will be expelled.
This is of course also in line (albeit in somewhat simplified form) with the version one sees almost uniformly on the streets these days, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", and if you ask people what they mean by that, most of them will tell you something equivalent to the PLO version.
Meanwhile since 1977 Likud has used essentially the same slogan, but in reverse, minus any aspirations of democratic equality, and with racial supremacy baked in: "Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty."
> However, he "official" versions (for example from the PLO)
The PLO recognizes that Israel has a right to exist and has abandoned official "armed resistance" approaches. They understand that this never worked and ultimately only hurt the Palestinian people.
I'm explicitly talking about Hamas and making a clear distinction between them and the Palestinian people at large.
> use the phrase to call for a single democratic state for Arabs and Jews
That was suggested in the past and has gone back in vogue for some extreme liberals but it's probably not what any side wants. I don't think it's something that's workable. See Lebanon as a case in point where three different conflicting cultures are constantly violently clashing.
> This is of course also in line (albeit in somewhat simplified form) with the version one sees almost uniformly on the streets these days, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", and if you ask people what they mean by that, most of them will tell you something equivalent to the PLO version.
Well... What *some* people mean doesn't really mean anything. There was a Nordic Journalist who recorded pro-Palestinian demonstrations and the Arabic slogans people yelled were VERY different.
But even without that. Hamas is looking at these protests and seeing them as Israel losing support. So they keep fighting, keep holding hostages and keep sending children as carriers. Netanyahu points at these demonstrations as how the world is turning anti-semetic so Israelis MUST fight for their home. And yes, Israelis 100% hear "Palestine will be free of Jews". Trump is pointing at them as a failure of the liberals...
These protests are only helping bad people and increasing strife. If they were indeed pro-Palestinian they would carry both flags in support of a two state solution. They would also support the cause of returning the hostages. They are now for peace, they are anti-Israel protests.
> Meanwhile since 1977 Likud has used essentially the same slogan, but in reverse, minus any aspirations of democratic equality, and with racial supremacy baked in: "Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty."
That was not an official slogan but yes people on the more extreme right did sing it. People still do and also say worse things. There are several big problems with whataboutism... Palestinians are the weaker part of this situation, violence will always end up worse for them. That's why the PLO abandoned that approach (at least officially excluding lynch mobs), it doesn't help Palestinians to keep that rhetoric.
Also the Likud was the party that voted to leave Gaza. That included Netanyhau who signed that law. A PM who originated from the Likud offered a Palestinian state in 2008.
I'm aware of just one "official" Hamas formulation of the slogan, via the 2017 charter as quoted below. Can you point to any others? We do have that quote from Khaled Meshaal as well, but one doesn't hear it so often.
https://forward.com/fast-forward/568788/from-the-river-to-th...Regarding the nicer-sounding variants that "nobody wants / aren't workable": That may be, but it is significant that the variant that most folks in their camp at least pretend to believe in (as an "aspiration") is at least nominally non-genocidal. And that the genuinely genocidal variants -- just aren't on display that often.
(Might get back to the other stuff you wrote later)
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea
من المية للمية / فلسطين عربية, "from the water to the water / Palestine is Arab"
Notice that this is nitpicking since the intention is clear to Israelis/Palestinians even in the moderate version of the slogan.
This hurts Palestinians because it discourages their leaders from compromises that might have ended this conflict (see the 2000 and 2008 statehood rejections). It also strengthens the sense within Israelis that there's no partner for peace on the other side.
It's like using the N-word. Once you said that you have that label and feeling, nothing you say will matter to any side.
> As long as Hamas exists in a functioning form there can be no peace.
I think the big problem with this approach is that actions taken now, which lead to deaths, lead to the friends & family of said people becoming more radicalised and thus to more terror attacks/wars in the future.
I read recently in the FT that 60% of current Hamas fighters have lost family to previous conflicts, suggesting that this isn't going to end.
And more generally, it's basically impossible for conventional armies to defeat guerilla fighters who have the support of the population (c.f. Irish/English conflicts, Iraq, Afghanisation (multiple times) etc).
Like, fundamentally the only way this can end is through either extermination or negotiation. Given the relative power imbalances, it'll be extermination of the Palestinians, which would be terrible (and incredibly depressing given that a lot of Israeli citizens are descended from survivors of the Holocausts and the various pogroms in European history).
I used to be of that mindset and no longer am. Hamas killed more people in a single day than the IRA killed in its entire existence. The Irish conflict which is more similar to the conflict Israel has in the west bank, is mostly a territorial conflict.
If it were true that violence breeds violence then Jews would have blown up post war Germany with suicide vests. It was still filled with Nazis and their collaborators.
Hamas is a different story, there's no amount of negotiations or compromise that will placate a fanatic. They will probably keep doing these things forever just like Isis didn't fully go away. But once the leadership got cut down Isis found it much harder to pull off the same level of terror.
I agree that this needs to be a dual motion. Young frustrated people are kindle for these organizations and this won't work without a peace process that would give hope to the people. That's why I don't have any faith in the current Israeli government. I hope it can be replaced so there would be a parallel process that would help rebuild and pave a way for peace again.
I agree that the Irish conflict is more like the West Bank (but that's super super bad and has been for a long time) and that October 7th was much more destructive than anything in the Troubles.
Like, it's worth noting that the core of the nationalist and unionist terrorists still live in Ireland and engage in a bunch of criminality. These organizations don't disband, they just die off/become politicians.
The big problem with Israel making peace is that it appears a solid majority don't want that, which depresses the hell out of me.
A solid majority is for peace and has been for a while. Oct 7th might have screwed the numbers, but they will bounce back. The Oslo accords wouldn't have happened with out a solid majority. Netanyahu himself had to make a speech where he specifically supported the idea of a Palestinian state in order to get elected (see the Bar Ilan Speech).
There are many peace activists on both sides but also a lot of fatigue and disillusionment. Don't let that get you down too. I think once the dust settles things could change. The pendulum always swings to the other side, we just need patience and to set an environment receptive for that. If Trump wins this election things will probably get much worse before they get better. But I think that they will get better even in that worst case scenario.
Israel offered a Palestinians a country which included east Jerusalem twice based on US pressure.
On which occasions?
There were two separate offers made by Barak to Arafat in 2000 and by Olmert to Abu Mazen in 2008.
So kind of them to offer freedom, and sovereignty, both taken by themselves. What a moral high ground they have! Did they offer reparations too, for the ethnic cleansing in Jaffa, and Haifa, and numerous other villages and cities? I am sure they would even respawn the murdered Palestinian children.
[flagged]
> Most of the Palestinians who fled in 1948 did so because of Arab armies who urged them to move so they can kill the Jews more easily. That backfired. Those who stayed are Israeli citizens and always have been. Those who fled couldn't come back because the borders were sealed due to a war their leaders chose to start.
You mention 1948....but what happened in 1946, and 1947? Aren't those years also relevant? Things like the bombing of the King David Hotel (by Zionist militias) and the Deir Yassin Massacre (same militias again), precede intervention by neighboring Arab states. Palestinians were already fleeing from murder, and they couldn't return to homes which had been demolished by the Zionist militias, and with the rubble mined to prevent people returning.
Israeli historians have written extensively on this period. Benny Morris's book can be read on the Internet Archive or downloaded on VK ( https://vk.com/wall-52136985_11295 ). I don't have an electronic source for Ilan Pappe's book, but here is an article he wrote which seems like an abridged version: ( https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/jps/vol36-141/vol36-141... ). Pappe's article covers Plan Dalet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Dalet
[flagged]
> Sure. E.g. in the 1940s Palestinians went to Hitler and asked him to take care of the Jews.
Was that the same time the Jews went to Hitler and asked him to take care of the English?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_(militant_group)
There's a lot of slop in playing skewed hot takes on history.
Sure. Lehi and Shamir are indeed awful and that's why the Hunting Season was justified. There was no similar ability to unify against the extremist voices in the Palestinian side which is the main point I'm making here.
This isn't history. You see the same patterns happening right now. Arafat and Abu Mazen were unable to control Hamas in the same way the Jews were able to control their extremists.
You could argue that the Irish were unable to control the IRA which would be a very accurate comparison. But the scale would be different. Hamas killed in one day more than the IRA killed in its entire existence. Hamas enjoys the backing of Iran, Qatar, Turkey and others. It's used as a puppet to force a regional war that goes against the interests of the Palestinian people. At least the ones who don't want to die in a holy war.
It's good to see a contraction from "Palestinians" to Shamir and Hamas.
We can also contract Jews to IDF and perhaps discuss how they kill 10x more than Hamas by most accounts.
The killing is the extreme behaviour. The insidious cause is the constant slow creeping pushing out of the other, the dispossesions and land captures that continue unabated.
Some see it. Other refuse to acknowledge it.
> We can also contract Jews to IDF and perhaps discuss how they kill 10x more than Hamas by most accounts.
Why is killing more of the enemy a "bad thing"?
> The killing is the extreme behaviour.
Yes. However, you fail to offer an alternative. Israel left Gaza, Israel made attempts to form a Palestinian state. Palestinians had the opportunity to end the cycle and Israel made that step...
Last time Israel left Gaza Hamas took over. It killed MANY Palestinians then started preparing for war, building rockets, tunnels etc. Israel didn't return to Gaza and tried to limit retaliation. That clearly didn't work.
> The insidious cause is the constant slow creeping pushing out of the other, the dispossesions and land captures that continue unabated.
This I actually agree with. I think the settlements in the west bank, especially the deep ones are a huge mistake. Guess what enables them...
> Some see it. Other refuse to acknowledge it.
Goes both ways sir. What do you expect Israel to do?
I wish the current conflict wasn't as violent. I wish more planning was given for "the next day". I wish Israel worked with the Palestinian authority and used this as an opportunity for that. I wish it would clear the deep settlements in the west bank instead of expanding them.
Unfortunately, Israel has a terrible government and Hamas/Iran knew that when they initiated Oct 7th. I hope that after this is all over Israel would elect a more reasonable government. It would probably still be very right-wing since violence tends to push people in that direction, but hopefully it would be reasonable. A right-wing government cleared settlements in Gaza, made peace with Egypt etc. So everything is possible.
> Why is killing more of the enemy a "bad thing"?
Okay. Wow. I hadn't realised you were on board with Hamas killing more Jews.
Or are you saying all Palestinians are "the enemy"?
Currently there's a lot of legit credentialed journalists being killed with evidence that some are being specificly targetted. That's a straight up war crime .. although as unlikely to be prosecuted, just as Kissinger skated.
> However, you fail to offer an alternative.
It's on me? Perhaps act in good faith, eg:
> Israel left Gaza, Israel made attempts to form a Palestinian state.
Israel also continued displacing and taking land via settlements in defiance of International law, etc.
> Guess what enables them...
Is the answer Netanyahu and his scaly mates? They do seem to offer a lot of incentives.
> What do you expect Israel to do?
Act in accordance with the people that have acquired power .. for now I expect Israel to act in the worst way possible and it hasn't disappointed .. years of pushing limits have rebounded much as many predicted and now those that sought permission to go all out have that in spades.
It'd be nice albeit a little fanciful, if the people of Israel could put better people in power .. but that's a whole other slice of alternative history.
> Okay. Wow. I hadn't realised you were on board with Hamas killing more Jews.
That's a ridiculous strawman argument. Do I seriously need to explain how wars work?
It's fair to be a pacifist, but it's unrealistic and deadly. PLO killed many Israelis, children etc. But their goal was statehood so they stopped and moved forward. Hamas's goal is ending Israel. Wars work towards goals.
> Currently there's a lot of legit credentialed journalists being killed with evidence that some are being specificly targetted.
That is terrible. But you know what's also terrible? Hamas literally kept hostages in the house of a Journalist. Many so called Journalist were part of the October 7th attack. They used UNWRA as a puppet as part of their attacks and money laundering.
They used ambulances, hospitals etc. as cover. There's some point where using an ID as a get out of jail free card is a problem.
> That's a straight up war crime .. although as unlikely to be prosecuted, just as Kissinger skated.
That is a huge problem. Unfortunately the UN has zero credibility at this point. It came up with more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined. More than Russia, Sudan, China, Iran etc.
That's a problem because I would like to know if Israel is committing actual war crimes and I would like an objective body to be in control of that. The UN is not objective by any stretch of the imagination.
Luckily the US has Leahy. If there is actual evidence of a war crime being committed then a lawsuit against Israel in the USA can stop financial support for Israel. Even if the lawsuit is thrown out the facts would still be out. Yet such a lawsuit isn't prosecuted.
> > Guess what enables them... > > Is the answer Netanyahu and his scaly mates? They do seem to offer a lot of incentives.
How did Netanyahu get into power and keep it for so long?
During the 90's Israel tried to go through with the Oslo accords. Hamas blew up busses filled with civilians in the middle of Tel Aviv. Many busses. They shot up coffee shops and did everything they could to stop the peace process.
Netanyahu used that and built his power base around it. He went to every such attack site and gained traction. Without Hamas he would have been an anonymous secondary "also ran" politician. Hamas made him. This symbiotic relationship continues to this day to such an extent that the right-wing extremists defined Hamas as an asset. Following October 7th they expanded settlements in the West Bank as "retaliation" which is stupid and evil. But again, zero-sum entities act like that.
The difference here is that Israel is the stronger side. When Palestinians pick a zero-sum approach to solving a conflict it is a suicidal death cult.
> > What do you expect Israel to do? > > Act in accordance with the people that have acquired power ..
That isn't an answer. Israel tried to do that. It tried to offer statehood. It tried "just leaving". You can argue that this wasn't "genuine" or wasn't enough... But baby steps are required in this case and Hamas proved the problematic nature of this approach.
> years of pushing limits have rebounded much as many predicted and now those that sought permission to go all out have that in spades.
This shows deep misunderstanding of the situation. Hamas is a zero-sum player, it wants an all out war because it wants everything from the river to the sea. It objects to the very notion of peace with Israel.
See https://twitter.com/ABZayed/status/1784565074964664531
> It'd be nice albeit a little fanciful, if the people of Israel could put better people in power .. but that's a whole other slice of alternative history.
Israel did put better people in power. Notice how the whole world including Europe and the states are seeing a surge in the right-wing?
Why is that? Because unfortunately the extreme left has become delusional in its extreme stances.
There's a huge difference between wanting peace and refusing to fight a war. You're completely dismissing Israeli attempts at peace and mis-labeling Hamas attacks as territorial when they are religious, fanatic and proxy driven.
In the US the majority of people want to deport all immigrants. These are people who contribute to the economy and do nothing wrong. Is it a surprise that Israelis moved to the right as a result of Hamas attacks?
Is it a surprise that these right-wing politicians use that to further their agenda in the west-bank?
I think Israel is naturally liberal and will move back to the left when it is no longer under threat. The problem is that as long as Hamas is a threat this just can't happen. One of the reasons the settlements are expanding is to block such motion to the left, this is where US pressure could help but it's a delicate needle to thread. If the UN had any credibility it could help, unfortunately it doesn't when it comes to Israel.
In 1940s the Palestinians went to Hitler and asked him to take care of the Jews.
So you're using Amin al-Husseini as a stand-in for all Palestinians, which I suppose is about as cool as using Netanyahu as a stand-in for all Israelis. Or as the other commenter pointed out, when referring to the occasion when agents from Stern Gang met with Nazi officials to discuss the possibility of an anti-British alliance, we might as well just say simplify and say "the Jews" did so, collectively.
But never mind that. Just tell us, please: what did Amin ask Hitler to do, specifically?
Referencing the transcript we all have of their sole meeting in November 1941, of course.
> So you're using Amin al-Husseini as a stand-in for all Palestinians
Nope, not what I'm saying. I'm saying you can pick any historical point in time and show why things happened in a particular way. Palestinians bemoan that Israel exists and that Jews were "given" statehood (I quote given because there was a war and it was paid for with blood). But if you look at the history it's pretty clear why the UN felt Jews deserved a home in Israel. They were on the right side of history in this particular conflict and fought besides the allies.
This is a repeating pattern for Palestinian leadership. Unwillingness to compromise and victim-hood, that doesn't work well for them. I'm not saying they're not victims or even not saying that Israel isn't to blame for a lot of their problems. I am saying that their leadership bares a LOT of that responsibility too, the choices they made brought them to this point and they continue to make similar choices which make matters worse.
Right now it's obviously too late since the last big choice they had was in 2008 when they rejected a statehood deal. Hamas had a choice during that time of recognizing Israel and negotiating, but it's Hamas so it obviously wasn't much of a choice.
I hope there will be another such fork in the road, I doubt they will get anything remotely as good as the 2008 offer. Knowing history I doubt Palestinian leadership will take it and again they will blame Israel.
> Sure. E.g. in the 1940s Palestinians went to Hitler and asked him to take care of the Jews.
Yes. Both the Jews and Palestinians courted relationships with Hitler and Mussolini.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement
https://archive.is/nioNH (Haaretz)
I guess we have to "snap the chalk-line" somewhere. I didn't explicitly establish this but in debates I often snap it at the end of WW2. The period 1914-1945 was full of so much chaos and bloodshed globally, I think the end of WW2 was when people REALLY tried to catch a breather and try to build a newer, better world.
> The initial Jews that came into the area were under constant attacks by Palestinians in the area so they formed militias of their own. These became very successful and split into 3 groups. Hagana which was the moderate one ended up becoming the IDF. The two others were the ones that performed those attacks and indeed performed terrorism (moderate by today's standard but still terrorism).
When you refer to Jews "coming into the area", do you mean the post-WW2 immigration, or some other timespan? Because the Irgun, at least, was actively committing terrorism against the British, even outside of Palestine ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946_British_Embassy_bombing ), as early as 1946. This appears to be a mostly one-sided campaign (not targeting the Palestinian Arabs...yet) but definitely set the stage for their level of violence moving forward. Interestingly, neither Morris nor Pappe cover 1946 violence in particular detail (both focus on the Zionist leadership's planning for the following ethnic cleansing). I need to find additional sources for this period.
> Palestinians didn't have that capability of unity. They have very little in common other than hate towards Israel.
Where does that hate come from, though? It didn't coalesce in a vacuum.
> That is both unconfirmed
I'll be perfectly honest, it's really hard not to interpret that as anything other than "Holocaust denial" level delusion. Which, of course, is tragically ironic given the subject. Both authors I mentioned cite documents in IDF archives about the deliberate planning process for the destruction in this timeframe. If you are going to assert that the destruction, its specific methods, or the resulting movements of large numbers of civilians, is unconfirmed, you need to support that with some very robust evidence. I'm not sure what could be more authoritative than "primary source documents from the perpetrator".
> Then they couldn't return since there was a border.
Some of them tried to return (refugees from Huj, in one example from mid-late 1948), and were refused, after internal debates by the Israelis over whether it would "set a precedent". Those debates were documented, and are cited in Morris' book, pgs330-333. Those were deliberate decisions made by Israeli leadership.
> But Israel didn't choose that war, it was forced on them.
Actions have consequences. As an aside, I constantly see this use of the passive voice in discussing this conflict. Israel never does anything, it just has stuff happen to it. Once you notice it, it's a really obvious form of shaping the information environment to condition people to think that nothing could ever possibly be Israel's fault, that no one making decisions in Israel has ever done so with malicious intent. Things just....happen.
> Notice that Israel didn't take neither Gaza or the West Bank during that war. So why didn't the Palestinians finally have a state at that point? > Did anyone complain to Egypt/Jordan for denying the rights of the Palestinian people?
That's a good question, I'll add it to my list of RFIs as I continue to research.
> The fact is that this is purely because Jews were involved.
I watched a man hooked up to an IV bag in a field hospital BURN ALIVE after an Israeli airstrike. The perpetual victim complex just doesn't resonate with people anymore.
> But as far as this conflict goes, Israel acted WAY better than pretty much any other country in a similar situation. E.g. Turkey which keeps blasting Israel over and over just bombed civilians for a tiny attack. Crickets from the world police...
Yeah, because Turkish airstrikes haven't killed FORTY THOUSAND PEOPLE in less than a year. What a ridiculous deflection.
-----
At any rate, I hope this discussion has provided enough material for other HNers to educate themselves. The available Israeli sources are detailed and surprisingly candid. I don't expect either of us will illuminate any further understanding.
> I think the end of WW2 was when people REALLY tried to catch a breather and try to build a newer, better world.
I think discussing history is irrelevant. None of us were around back then so blaming some ancestor for something is just stupid posturing that doesn't solve anything.
The bottom line is that there are millions of people on both sides who were born in the region. They have nowhere to go and the idea that some would "just leave" is just stupid. There's only one solution and it's a two state solution, blaming history is redundant since both sides did some bad things.
We can review history to see what we can learn from it. Here the pattern is clear: Jews unified and strengthened their moderate base. Palestinians fragmented and moved towards violent approaches which didn't work well for them. With the exception of Oslo, but even there their leadership failed to compromise.
> When you refer to Jews "coming into the area", do you mean the post-WW2 immigration, or some other timespan?
19th century when the initial Jewish militias were formed.
> > Palestinians didn't have that capability of unity. They have very little in common other than hate towards Israel. > > Where does that hate come from, though? It didn't coalesce in a vacuum.
I'm not saying that Israel doesn't deserve some hate. But it's much easier to blame others for your problems instead of blaming yourself. Jordan and Egypt did pretty evil things to the Palestinians and didn't give them a country when they controlled these regions. Yet you don't see the same level of hate.
> I'll be perfectly honest, it's really hard not to interpret that as anything other than "Holocaust denial" level delusion
That is nonsense. You claimed "Palestinians were already fleeing from murder, and they couldn't return to homes which had been demolished by the Zionist militias".
Were there homes destroyed during the war?
Sure. Was it by Israelis? Possibly.
Was it with the purpose to prevent people from coming back? Maybe.
But you're presenting this as if all the Palestinian refugees or a significant amount of them escaped because of such actions. That is not something anyone can claim. The common narrative on the Israeli side is that the armies of surrounding countries orchestrated a strategic retreat. No one knows because there was no actual army in 1948. It was being formed from a militia and there was no organized standard/hierarchy. Also that particular war was remarkably deadly/violent for both sides. Record keeping wasn't exactly something you can count on.
Regardless, this is irrelevant. The fact that Palestinians keep going back to 1948 is part of the toxicity that prevents them from compromising on proposals for a Palestinian state.
> Some of them tried to return (refugees from Huj, in one example from mid-late 1948), and were refused, after internal debates by the Israelis over whether it would "set a precedent".
Could Jews who had to flee Arab countries and territories within that region return? Could they get their assets back?
This is not something new see: https://www.news18.com/opinion/opinion-why-muslim-world-shou...
"Ukraine was given territory from Poland, and the Polish minorities were expelled from Ukraine. In turn, Ukrainian minorities were expelled from Poland. While the Polish had to leave Lithuania and Belarus, the Lithuanians and Belorussians had to leave Poland. Also, Poland was given land from Germany, and the Germans were expelled from Poland. Many Hungarians had to leave from the Transylvania region of Romania. The Italians were expelled from what is Croatia today. In May 1945, the President of Czechoslovakia called on his people to “eliminate the German problem.” Nearly 2 million Germans were expelled from the country, and thousands of Germans died in the process."
Wars reshape regions and demographics. Especially in the 40's. Jews were victims of that through history too. I'm not excusing it, but it's not something special or unique in any way.
> > But Israel didn't choose that war, it was forced on them. > > Actions have consequences. As an aside, I constantly see this use of the passive voice in discussing this conflict. Israel never does anything, it just has stuff happen to it. Once you notice it, it's a really obvious form of shaping the information environment to condition people to think that nothing could ever possibly be Israel's fault, that no one making decisions in Israel has ever done so with malicious intent. Things just....happen.
Instead of proving that something is wrong you try to twist it. When the facts don't work in the favor of your argument then obviously the argument is redundant.
The fact is that Israel did seek peace and made a great deal of effort in that direction. But the standard Israel is held to is a standard that no country on earth would be able to hold to.
> I watched a man hooked up to an IV bag in a field hospital BURN ALIVE after an Israeli airstrike. The perpetual victim complex just doesn't resonate with people anymore.
You mean the hospital to which civilian hostages were taken and murdered there? Where Hamas literally had a base of operations?
I agree, it's awful. But what is the option here?
From now on firing rockets is OK as long as you do it on top of orphanages?
By accepting that narrative you're encouraging Hamas. Every time people talk about children dying in Gaza it creates a terrible incentive for Hamas. They use children as couriers because they know the IDF doesn't want to shoot them, but if they die they also win: https://www.timesofisrael.com/encouraging-our-children-to-ki...
> Yeah, because Turkish airstrikes haven't killed FORTY THOUSAND PEOPLE in less than a year. What a ridiculous deflection.
40,000+ most of which were Hamas terrorists. This was a response to an attack that killed 5 people. This is besides all the stuff that Erdogan is doing in Syria etc.
> At any rate, I hope this discussion has provided enough material for other HNers to educate themselves. The available Israeli sources are detailed and surprisingly candid.
The fact that you're surprised that Israel is honest indicates a lot about your core bias. Israel is a liberal democracy and tries to do better all the time. Its history isn't perfect, whose is?
Try criticizing Hamas in Gaza. You might get buried alive by your brother using a spoon...
> It is very clear that the current administration is backed into a corner and trying to make the best of the situation.
This does not seem clear at all. What has led you to think so?
There are two points here. The first is due to AIPAC. I would say the second is debatable.
That’s fair.
A slow and steady drumbeat of stories like these over the years:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/politics/joe-biden-interview-...
https://m.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-822306
It goes on and on. Escalating conflict in the ME, such as with Israel and Lebanon, regardless of who is at fault, is not in the interest of the US. The administration feels attempts to deescalate are falling on deaf ears, but is in a politically precarious situation.
>What ive always wondered is why the US hasn't put Israel on the security council, considering it is a nuclear armed state.
That isn't the criteria for being a council member, if it were they'd need to allow India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Plus, pretty sure the US does not officially recognize Israel as a nuclear power, it's one of those open secret things
Besides that, how would the US benefit from another country being able to veto anything they want to do in the UN? Sure, they'd probably agree with far more things than Russia or China, but the US wouldn't gain anything from them being there.
The thing is, Israel doesn’t protect U.S. interests in the middle east. All the U.S. has really ever wanted there is oil, and because of U.S. support for Israel, we’ve been the subject of two oil embargoes.
Israel provides us zero military bases, even when Arab countries provide us dozens. Despite all of the support we give them and have given them, they have repeatedly escalated conflicts when the U.S. asked them to stop. Today, we are unable to ship goods through the Red Sea because the Houthis are upset over Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Has the US asked for a base? They do have Site 512, not a typical base but still a base.
In many ways Israel does the US' dirty work, like crippling Hezbollah which is responsible for numerous attacks against US (and other Western) personnel.
The Houthis are squarely to blame for the disruption of Red Sea shipping; Israel's military operation in a different country isn't a legitimate reason to attack (almost) random ships.
I think you’re missing the point here. The only reason the U.S. cares about Hezbollah is because they attack Israel. The only reason Hezbollah exists is because of Israel. The reason the Houthis are attacking shipping is because the U.S. supports Israel. Being an ally to Israel has imposed huge costs on the U.S. and virtually no benefits.
Many in the U.S. feel that protecting Israel is a moral cause, but it is undeniably a strategic albatross for us.
> The only reason the U.S. cares about Hezbollah is because they attack Israel. The only reason Hezbollah exists is because of Israel
You can't know that. The Iranian Islamic revolution happened not because of Israel. Iran would have probably tried to gain influence through proxies and destabilize the Middle East regardless of Israel. It would have joined forces with Russia and China. It would have probably tried acquiring nuclear weapons and it would have hated the U.S (which it calls Big Satan to this day). In short Iran would have been a huge headache and security risk for the U.S and the West even if Israel didn't exist imo. The U.S is definitely strong enough to deal with Iran without Israel, but its helpful to have allies in a very very unstable neighborhood.
> The only reason the U.S. cares about Hezbollah is because they attack Israel.
No, another is that they are proxies of Iran, which the US has problems with that go beyond attacking Israel.
Now go back a few years and take into account the US meddling with Iran. You'll notice some cause -> effect with our intended consequences coming back to bite us for decades.
[dead]
Excellent point. But assuming you're not being facetious, the Security Council is largely a historical artifact: all five permanent members were the victors of WWII. (Why occupied France was included is something I never understood.)
Council came first for some, but they were also the first 5 nuclear powers.
In one case, Mainland China got the bomb in '64 and replaced Taiwan on the security council within a decade.
While it's true nuclear proliferation began with the five permanent members, at the time the UN and Security Council were founded in 1945, only the US had the bomb.
The USSR didn't test one until 1949, the UK in 1952, France in 1960, and China (as you mentioned) in 1964. The Soviet Union had an early start because of their spies in the Manhattan Project, while the UK contributed to it during the War. 15 years would pass before another permanent member caught up.
And Russia took the USSR's seat just as China did Taiwan's.
[flagged]
There are no Israelis in the cabinet as far as I know. Are you saying that Jewish Americans are secretly agents for Israel?
There’s plenty of non Jewish Zionists in the US as well. And I don’t think anyone is really being secretive here. The US is taking actions that benefit Israel to the detriment of America.
This is exactly what people are saying when they are referring to 'zionists', everything else is just a red herring. Unfortunately even well intentioned people are ignorant of this.
Blinken’s gf was an early supporter of Israel: https://www.nytimes.com/1986/07/15/obituaries/maurice-blinke....
Biden’s current “envoy” to Lebanon and Israel, Amos Hochstein, is a former IDF soldier born and raised in Jerusalem.
The UN is in need of serious reform.
For example, it's hard to comprehend how a country like Russia is not suspended?
A country which signed the Charter, and is member of the security council, is trying to annex a country of 40 million people, claiming they and their culture don't exist.
They don't even hide the genocide intent, and yet Guterres is visiting the BRICS conference in Russia legitimizing the regime. Despicable.
https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1849582050191266182
[dead]
Whatever Russia is doing pales in comparison with what Israel has done for the past 70 years.
And if you compare what Russia has done in the same time frame?
Oh well. We certainly didn't help it doing it or gave it diplomatic support, in any case.
Besides, ethnic cleansing and genocide are their own special kind of evil- I'm not sure Russia is guilty also of that.
You may find the following links very informative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov...
Try again.
Putin’s Russia is quite literally guilty of ethnic cleansing, and not only with Ukrainians.
Israel is has killed more innocent civilians in a year than the entire Russia Ukraine war fwiw
What is the point of this victim Olympics?
Both things could be bad at the same time.
So you're dismissing Ukrainian soldiers, who have no choice but to defend themselves, their country, and their families from genocide?
No I was comparing the deliberate targeting of civilians.
Would you consider medical facilities civilian targets? Hospitals, Maternities?
Because Russia has struck more than 1.500 medical facilities, including a Maternity and a Children's Hospital.
By the way, this is also a common tactic, which was recurrently used in Chechnya.
I'm comparing the number of people killed. I'm not here defending Russia.
One of these we have 0 control over (Russia). The other one (Israel) we're funding, supporting, aiding, and abetting.
We have control over Russia. We have not fully sanctioned them and in the past the US was more than willing to trade with Russia or even give them money.
I just don't think you are aware of the scale of the event.
Do you realize that in less than 3 years Russia has caused more than 1.000.000 casualties, Russia has kidnapped more than 25.000 Children, and made 10.000.000 people into refugees some of them filtrated in Russia?
It's like the destruction of +1,500 medical facilities, deliberately, isn't much of a big deal...
Both are horrible events but at completely different scales. We're talking about a country of 40.000.000 people who was at peace, posed no threat to anyone, and never attacked any neighboring country. There are several days of +1.000 casualties - these are human beings, I don't know why you're deliberately dehumanizing Ukrainians and Russians.
Europe hasn't seen anything like this since WW2, even after we witnessed the genocide of Chechens at the hands of Russia, another one.
you are perfectly correct, you are being downvoted because zionists hate facts that poke holes in their false narratives.
[flagged]
[flagged]
FYI I'm Catholic.
[flagged]
HN posts about this used to be 99% Pro-Zionist. There’s been a marked shift in opinion (or less bots) and I’m very, very glad that people are recognising the extent of war crimes being committed by Israel.
Maybe it's because social media has relayed the truth and Israel can no longer use its grip on western media to conceal its atrocities.
Maybe.
Worth considering that in terms of relative size, Israel has a population of 10 million, Jews in the world number ~14 million.
Whereas the Arab world, which tends to be relatively anti-Israel, numbers ~220 million. And Muslims, which tend to be anti-Israel as well, number 1.2 billion.
So just in terms of number of voices, the natural pro-Israel voices [1] are vastly outnumbered by the natural anti-Israel voices.
Think about how this impacts what you hear, how this impacts the votes in the UN (which is not democratic but votes are by country), how this impacts economic reactions (number of consumers), etc.
[1] This is a sweeping generalization, but it is statistically true that Jews are usually pro-Israel and Arabs and Muslims are usually anti-Israel. With other religions/ethnicities it's more complicated.
Though global populations show a larger anti-Israel sentiment, Western media and internet forums don't reflect this balance.
Western media often aligns with Israeli perspectives due to strategic alliances, lobbying influence, and media ownership dynamics, framing Israel’s actions as defensive while sidelining broader Arab or Palestinian views.
Online, pro-Israel narratives are reinforced by organized digital campaigns and moderation practices that shape public discourse. Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian voices lack comparable resources and organization in Western spaces, limiting their visibility. This creates a media and digital environment where Western audiences are exposed to narratives that don’t fully represent the global spectrum of perspectives.
> Though global populations show a larger anti-Israel sentiment, Western media and internet forums don't reflect this balance.
I'm not sure you're right. Isn't this a bit hard to judge without first deciding what is true and what constitutes bias? I'm fairly certain we don't agree with on either of these.
Most Israelis consider things like the BBC and the NYT to be biased against Israel. Are you sure they're wrong?
The NYT insisted that a veteran of the Israeli air force, with no prior reporting experience, conduct on the ground research for a massively-significant piece on Hamas sexual abuse allegations.
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new-york-times-anat-schw... The fear among Times staffers who have been critical of the paper’s Gaza coverage is that Schwartz will become a scapegoat for what is a much deeper failure. She may harbor animosity toward Palestinians, lack the experience with investigative journalism, and feel conflicting pressures between being a supporter of Israel’s war effort and a Times reporter, but Schwartz did not commission herself and Sella to report one of the most consequential stories of the war. Senior leadership at the New York Times did.
Why would you consider the NYT biased against Israel?
I’d say the media’s attitude towards Israel and Palestine is conveniently summarized in the Ta-Nehisi Coates interview with Tony Dokupil.
1. That's just one interview, I'm not sure it's actually representative.
2. Even if you think it is, that's just the US media specifically. I agree that they tend to be relatively pro-Israel, especially compared to other countries, but there are other countries.
3. If we accept that this is representative, can we also consider Ta-Nehisi Coates's book itself to be representative of the attitude of "intellectuals" in the US on Israel? As he himself said, he came into the topic biased against Israel, went to the West Bank to "study" the issue for 10 days only, chose not to talk to any Israeli at all to get any other side of the issue, and wrote what is likely to be the highest-selling book this year about the topic.
Not exactly a great example of journalistic rigor, IMO.
Sorry—I was focusing on bias in US media. (I live in the US)
> As he himself said, he came into the topic biased against Israel, went to the West Bank to "study" the issue for 10 days only, chose not to talk to any Israeli at all to get any other side of the issue
What is the other side of the issue? He and actually experts who study Israel call it apartheid. Is it not? If it is, is there a justification for implementing it? Or maybe I’m missing your point.
Some experts call it apartheid, most Israelis disagree (and Israel officially disagrees). [1]
> If it is, is there a justification for implementing it? Or maybe I’m missing your point.
Well, yes. That's exactly the other side of the issue, and is exactly what a real journalist talking about the Israel/Palestine situation should ideally explore.
This is an HN comment, not exactly the place for the history of the relations between the West Bank and Israel, but the short version is - most of the measures taking place in the WB are a direct result of terror attacks committed by the Palestinians, as a means of securing Israel from future attacks. You can see that relations were much better 40 years ago, it's not like Israel set out to have some kind of apartheid regime over the WB - people from Israel used to go far more freely into the WB, Palestinians used to work far more freely in Israel.
But as more and more attacks happened, Israel implemented various measures to stop terror - including the infamous checkpoints, including various border walls, including limiting work permits for Palestinians.
Looking at a snapshot of the WB now is looking at the end result of worsening relations over many years, with many of the things that seem "cruel" being direct measures to prevent terror attacks; and to prevent things like October 7th happening on a far larger scale, as would happen if it happened from the WB.
Most Israelis believe, probably correctly, that without these security measures, tens of thousands of Israelis would be killed. That would cause almost any country to do whatever it can to secure its "border".
[1] I personally don't care much for battles over semantics; if people agree on what is actually happening in the WB, then whether to call it apartheid or not seems irrelevant to me. There are lots of differences from the situation in South Africa, and lots of similarities.
I think it's worth keeping in mind that Palestinians are not Israeli citizens, and ostensibly the leadership of the Palestinians, which has a limited government role over the WB, is aiming to become a separate state; those circumstances make it seem, to me, that wondering why Palestinians don't have the same rights as Israelis is a category error, like wondering why Mexicans don't have the same rights as Americans.
Then again, it's also worth keeping in mind that whatever the goals of the Palestinians, in some respects Israel does, in fact, have control over the people of the WB, so in practice there are real problems here.
Finding justifications for apartheid will only be an exercise in racism.
Apartheid is a crime against humanity, illegal under international law, and countries have an obligation to prevent apartheid policies from persisting.
Israel’s policies in the West Bank has been ruled to be an apartheid by the ICJ, and Israel has been ordered (non-binding though) to stop apartheid practices, reverse the damage and pay reparations.
The accusation of apartheid against Israel makes no sense because of what Apartheid means -- institutionalized racism against country's own citizens.
If non-jewish citizens of Israel(that as you know DOES NOT include West Bank or Gaza) had different rights than jewish citizens, than you could argue Apartheid.
Again we are talking about Israel proper, not Westbank(controlled by Fatah) or Gaza(formerly controlled by Hamas).
Please tell me which rights do non-jewish citizens of Israel lack institutionally within Israel that Jewish citizens have?
Please tell us about the JNF, and what happens when non-Jewish citizens attempt to purchase or lease land from it.
After that, please tell us what happens when a non-Jewish citizen seeks to marry and obtain citizenship and residency rights for their spouse, and how this differs when a Jewish citizen makes the same application.
After that you can tell us about the Nation State Law, and the not-so symbolic language it contains.
And after that you can tell us about the 14,000 Palestinians annexed into Israel after the latter's illegal annexation of East Jerusalem, who were then forcibly expelled according to criteria determined by the occupying regime. If there's no apartheid in Israel, why weren't their rights protected?
Apartheid has a legal definition which does not include provision about citizenship. See the Rome Statute Article 7. Paragraph 2 (h): https://legal.un.org/icc/statute/99_corr/cstatute.htm#art.7
> "The crime of apartheid" means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime;
The word apartheid in popular discourse is not this clearly defined, but I’ve personally never heard this provision. After all, the prototypical case of Apartheid in South Africa insisted that their victims were actually citizens of independent Bantustans and thus not subject to equality under South African laws.
But even so, countries occupying territories have an obligation to protect the people of that territory, subjugating them to apartheid policies under such occupation is at best failure to protect them from apartheid, which is still a crime under international law, and has been ruled as such by the ICJ, which actually goes much further.
> Please tell me which rights do non-jewish citizens of Israel lack institutionally within Israel that Jewish citizens have?
Irrelevant, but I’ll do it anyway: https://www.adalah.org/en/law/index
> Looking at a snapshot of the WB now is looking at the end result of worsening relations over many years
Including the Nakba?
[flagged]
That is not what most Israelis think.
The fact that you so easily think this badly of an entire country speaks a lot about your own biased views.
Yeah those monsters that you're imagining are a brainchild of your echo chamber.
[flagged]
Isn't it too shameless to create a fake named zionistshill?
But Zionists have AIPAC and its equivalent in Europe and Australia.
I’ve always had a problem with this statistic. It is at best an irrelevant obfuscation of more plausible explanations, the most plausible—as well as simplest—being the one that your parent offered.
There are plenty of non-zionist Jews among those 10 million. A non significant number of are even anti-zionists (particularly in the USA). There is also plenty of non-jewish zionists. It wouldn’t surprise me actually if non-jewish zionists actually outnumber jewish zionists by a significant margin, maybe even an order of magnitute.
Then there is the deeply problematic aspect of assuming people’s politics based on their ethnicity. Yes there is a correlation, but correlation is not causation and offers no explaination. The 220 million Arabs and the 1.2 billion Muslims around the world probably have a similar opinion about Israel as most people around the world, I bet some of them—albeit a tiny minority—are even zionists.
Your footnote where you explained this does not offer justification. This is a misuse of statistics at best.
The simple explanation here is simply that people empathize with victims. Palestinians have been victims of colonialism for a long time, and are now victims of an ongoing genocide. The simple explanation here is that people follow the news and understand what is happening.
> I’ve always had a problem with this statistic. It is at best an irrelevant obfuscation of more plausible explanations, the most plausible—as well as simplest—being the one that your parent offered.
You think the world feels this way because of the "vast atrocities" committed by Israel.
The problem with this is that there are far, far worse atrocities all over the world, to which no one pays anywhere near this kind of attention. The Syrian civil war found 300,000 civilians killed, an order of magnitude more than in the Gaza war. Since WW2, there have been, I believe, 100 million refugees of ethnic cleansing worldwide. The Uyghurs in China being a recent example of persecution of an ethnic minority, allegedly far worse than anything Israel does.
And if apartheid is what we're talking about - worth mentioning that Palestinians have very few rights in almost every ME country that they are in.
Now let's be clear - I'm not trying to "whatboutism" here - how Palestinians are treated elsewhere, and the existence of other bad things, does not and should not absolve Israel of anything bad it is doing.
But if your belief is that the world thinks badly of Israel because of what it's doing specifically, but there are 100 things that are far worse by almost any metric happening all the time that few people pay attention to - I think you need to reevaluate the real reason here. If you think the UN putting out more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined makes sense by the numbers - then you are just ignorant of what is happening all over the world.
But you are doing whataboutism. But even if we give you that, Israel’s crimes far outweigh those you mentioned, both in time, and in scale. If you want to find any population that has suffered as many atrocities as Palestinians in Gaza, you would have to go to Darfur. But the impunity in which Israel commits these crimes is not comparable to any other oppressor.
People’s reactions are not based on the criminal act void of any context, they look at the past, they look at consequences, etc. Bashar al-Assad’s mass atrocities were met with international condemnation. Israel’s were met with sympathy from our world leaders, and more weapons to continue and further their crimes. People take this into account.
Peoples opinion also reflects what they see. We see in our news everyday some of the worst crimes of the century being committed against a relatively small population. Every day there is another bomb that wipes out a whole family, including children, in Gaza. Every week there is a journalist or a doctor targeted and killed by Israel. We hear no such stories from East Turkistan, or at least not on the same scale nor horror.
> If you think the UN putting out more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined makes sense by the numbers - then you are just ignorant of what is happening all over the world.
I don’t think that, but it is worth noting the history here. In a nibling thread you wanted to go into the history to (seemingly) justify apartheid policies. I want to do the same except to justify the UN behavior here.
Palestine has explicitly been the UN problem since it was decolonized from Britain. The UN had (and still has) a policy of decolonization so this made sense. Unlike most former colonies, full decolonization was never realized for Palestine, so it is still an explicit UN problem. Here is the reason why the UN has focused so much on Israel. It is not helped by the fact that on UN security council member keeps vetoing any potential progress for furthering more decolonization efforts. Resulting in many half measures which ultimately don’t deliver any results towards Palestinian liberation.
I suspect you want to explain these things on a racial line. But I reject all such science. There exists much simpler explanations for these things which don’t require us to go on the dangerous path of racialized demographicial behavior.
> But you are doing whataboutism.
I'm not, because the debate is on the comparative feelings towards Israel vs. other countries, so actually comparing to other actions is specifically what is necessary.
> [...] Israel’s crimes far outweigh those you mentioned, both in time, and in scale.
I'll give a more detailed answer, but this is the most important point - you're wrong. I'm not even sure why you think this, since I gave specific numbers for those atrocities.
In what way is the scale of the civilians killed in the Syrian civil war smaller than that of Gaza? It is literally an order of magnitude more civilians killed, as I mentioned. That's 10x more.
In what way is the scale of what's happening to the Uyghurs smaller? An estimated 1 million have been arbitrarily arrested and put into forced labor, per Wikipedia.
However horrible you think what is happening in Gaza is, thinking that it is more horrible in scale than anything else is just wrong and easily disproven by any of a multitude of examples, including the ones I already wrote. What am I misunderstanding in your view here?
Btw, worth mentioning that many of the biggest examples of anti-Israel bias I'm talking about, e.g. the UN sanctions and a lot of ill-will around the world, were all happening before the Gaza war too.
> Bashar al-Assad’s mass atrocities were met with international condemnation. Israel’s were met with sympathy from our world leaders, and more weapons to continue and further their crimes. People take this into account.
I disagree with your characterization of what Israel is doing as crimes, at least not in general (I'm sure specific war crimes have been committed). It is a war. Unless you think war itself is a crime and never justified, in which case that's an entirely separate discussion (I wish I could agree).
In any case, yes, some leaders are standing up for Israel, because unlike many people, they are aware that this is a valid war that needs fighting, if not always agreeing with everything Israel does. I don't think whether the leaders of the US back Israel or not is very strong evidence of morality, but I definitely don't think it's evidence against the morality of the war, as you imply.
> Peoples opinion also reflects what they see. We see in our news everyday some of the worst crimes of the century being committed against a relatively small population.
Oh, I totally agree. People aren't reacting to reality - since these are not even close to "the worst crimes of the century". You could fill 10x the airtime given to what is happening to Gaza with similarly horrible things that have happened in other places (civilians killed in the Iraq war alone - ~120k).
But that's the thing. The news doesn't show anywhere near as much coverage of other "atrocities", which is why people have a skewed perspective of this. It's literally availability bias, and is caused for many reasons. But it simply doesn't reflect reality if you look at the actual numbers.
> Every week there is a journalist or a doctor targeted and killed by Israel. We hear no such stories from East Turkistan, or at least not on the same scale nor horror.
Yes, my point exactly.
> Palestine has explicitly been the UN problem since it was decolonized from Britain. The UN had (and still has) a policy of decolonization so this made sense. Unlike most former colonies, full decolonization was never realized for Palestine, so it is still an explicit UN problem. Here is the reason why the UN has focused so much on Israel.
I mean, yeah that's one explanation, though I don't think it's particularly correct. Mostly because I reject the idea of Israel never having been decolonized- it was, it turned into Jordan and later Israel.
But let's leave that aside and look again at what I think is more correct.
The UN is not a democracy - votes are by country. The Arab states, which have historically been anti Israel (including trying to wipe Israel out, multiple times) - number 22. They also hold a population of 220 million consumers, and vast oil wealth.
So Democracy-wise - they have far more "votes" and "voters". Capitalism-wise - they have far more consumers than Israel. Geo-politics-wise - they have far more importance than Israel because of that oil wealth and for other reasons.
Those are all very good reasons to explain why Israel, which makes up 0.1% of the middle east, is like the 150th country in size and population in the world, and by any objective standards does not commit "atrocities" on anywhere near the scale of other countries, even if you think it does commit atrocities - those are all very good reasons for Israel to have more resolutions against it than all other countries combined.
Plus, it's a convenient scapegoat for lots of countries.
Plus, I didn't even mention the rest of the majority Muslim countries, who tend to also be anti-Israel.
I mean, the effects of "democracy", capitalism and geo-politics certainly seem more relevant in my eyes to explain the UN, rather than some idealistic story about colonialism which doesn't even make sense.
> I suspect you want to explain these things on a racial line. But I reject all such science. There exists much simpler explanations for these things which don’t require us to go on the dangerous path of racialized demographicial behavior.
Just to be clear, I'm not making any racial statements here, unless you consider statements like "the Arab countries are historically against Israel". If you don't accept even statements like that - I don't really think you can analyze any history of politics, at all. (And you'll note I didn't even mention anything about antisemitism, which most people certainly think is at least part of the story here, but we can leave that aside.)
> I disagree with your characterization of what Israel is doing as crimes, at least not in general (I'm sure specific war crimes have been committed). It is a war.
So what is the threshold past which even Israelis would acknowledge that what Israel is doing is both morally repugnant and illegal? What would that look like, in terms of actions on the ground?
The problem is that the crimes do not appear to be one-offs, but systemic, especially when viewed in the context of public statements by senior leadership of the Israeli government explicitly advocating for violence and destruction.
It is not normal wartime activity for a bulldozer to drive over LIVING human beings: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/21/middleeast/gaza-war-israe...
It might be "normal" for soldiers to pose for pictures in a combat zone, but soldiers committing war crimes while doing so should be prosecuted in accordance with international law....and for some reason IDF soldiers do this quite often, from posing while burning down libraries, to scrawling graffiti such as "Nakba 2023" on walls with a smile, to making instructional videos on how to blow up mosques on TikTok.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/israeli-soldier-burning-bo...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Palestine/comments/1cuujzz/two_isra...
https://archive.is/HTC4J (NYT)
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2024/02/15/exp-amanpour...
It's a pattern of callous destruction that makes the razing of Lidice ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre ) look positively quaint.
> So what is the threshold past which even Israelis would acknowledge that what Israel is doing is both morally repugnant and illegal? What would that look like, in terms of actions on the ground?
I can't speak for Israelis in general. I certainly think some of the things Israel is doing are morally repugnant, especially some of the actions in the WB (or lack of stopping settlers from their actions), and especially any of the things Israel has done to withhold aid from Gaza.
I don't think that makes the war itself a crime or most of the things happening in it crimes. I do think, like most Israelis do, that one of the reasons the war is going on so long is because of Netanyahu's particular political needs, which is obviously extremely immoral.
It's war. It's complicated. There are no easy answers.
> The problem is that the crimes do not appear to be one-offs, but systemic, especially when viewed in the context of public statements by senior leadership of the Israeli government explicitly advocating for violence and destruction.
Some officials have made clearly awful and genocidal statements. Most of the ones in charge have not, except for the first few weeks after the Hamas attacks, and have made thousands more statements that explicitly speak against any kind of genocidal intent. I think it's important to look at statements in their totality.
> It might be "normal" for soldiers to pose for pictures in a combat zone, but soldiers committing war crimes while doing so should be prosecuted in accordance with international law....and for some reason IDF soldiers do this quite often, from posing while burning down libraries, to scrawling graffiti such as "Nakba 2023" on walls with a smile, to making instructional videos on how to blow up mosques on TikTok.
Those soldiers are obviously doing terrible and stupid things, and often face some form of military trials. This is unacceptable behavior in my mind and is rightly condemned.
Overall this is a pretty balanced take. I still think we have different interpretations of what is "normal" for a war but I don't expect we'll close the gap on that.
Now to introduce some levity into the conversation:
> It's war. It's complicated. There are no easy answers.
When I was a Senior Watch Officer at the Operations Center of a 3-star command, our Operations Chief was lifelong infantryman and Fallujah veteran. I haven't been in combat. But I used to frequently rant "Why do we always make this stuff so complicated?!?! It can't be this hard to kill people!" For those lacking context I'm complaining about how I felt that our approach to command & control was needlessly diffusing our core Marine Corps function of efficiently killing our enemies.
...and one time the Chief just looked at me and responded plainly: "Trust me, it's not."
Nothing here is “normal” war behavior, even by the standards of war. And people see that and correctly judge Israel for it.
I remember growing up in Europe during the Iraq war. Even though I was young, I got that USA was obviously on the wrong, and so did most people around me. I remember not just hating the American government for what they were doing, but Americans in general. When Bush was reelected in 2004 it was seen as a damning proof that it wasn’t just the American government that was bad, but every American. It took me personally a few years to erase this prejudges from my head.
I also remember being in Europe during the Syrian civil war. Syrian refugees had a huge sympathy from most people around me. This was compounded by how many European governments treated Syrian refugees horrible (and still do), such injustice only grew our sympathy for Syrian people.
I no longer live in Europe, but I see the same sentiment for Ukrainians who are obviously wronged by a heinous Russian invasion into their country.
Palestinians have had to suffer injustice for a long time, and awareness of this injustice has grown rapidly over, with the ongoing genocide, support for Palestinians among the people (not governments) has also grown massively. This is consistent with previous victims of war.
During the Iraq war Bush’s lies played a factor in anti-American sentiment, so did the Patriot act, the Guantanamo Bay prison, the Abu Ghraib torture revelations, and the number of massacres (particularly the Nisour Square massacre, and the “Collateral Murder” as leaked by Chelsea Manning).
During the Iraq war we heard of those atrocities on a weekly to a monthly basis, and they were all a big deal, and we all hated Americans for it. Compounded were with the emotion was the impunity in which these crimes were committed. Americans were very seldomly (and very selectively) punished for these crimes. Individual soldiers were arrested, tried, received minimal (if any) punishment, and later pardoned or acquitted. But we all knew the crimes were systemic and that generals, cabinet members, and presidents were equally, of not more guilty of those crimes. The problem was with American policy, and nobody was being arrested for that.
Now compare this to Gaza. Israel has been committing the crime of Apartheid for a very long time. They have been subjugating Palestinians with an illegal occupation, a border wall (in Europe we know all to well of the infamous Berlin wall), shooting at protestors with much more impunity than UK soldiers in Belfast. Gaza was illegally blockaded and systematically bombed every few years (something the reminded us all to well of Sarajevo).
And now during the Gaza genocide we see the same kinds of atrocities as during the Iraq wars (including torture and sexual abuses of prisoners) except now, instead of them being reviled every few weeks or months, we see every day another massacre, another neighborhood bombed, another hospital sieged, another torture camp exposed, etc. This is not normal, not acceptable, and people don’t accept it.
There was a time where Israel had it relatively good compared to other oppressors, that people made a fine distinction between the government and the people (unlike with America). But I don’t think this is true any more. The crimes of Israel are far to severe, and the impunity far too great. Hardly any of these soldiers committing the crimes are ever prosecuted, none of the war crimes are investigated, no general is questioned, and no politician is impeached. People see this and (IMO correctly) judge Israeli society along with their government for the impunity of how those crimes are committed.
> However horrible you think what is happening in Gaza is, thinking that it is more horrible in scale than anything else is just wrong and easily disproven by any of a multitude of examples, including the ones I already wrote.
Every single Palestinian in Gaza has lost their home, a family member, or a limb. This is not the case in the Syrian civil war (as horrible as that was) nor among Uyghurs in East Turkistan. As horrible as those atrocities are (particularly the Syrian Civil war) it is still dwarfed by the atrocity which Israel is inflecting on Gaza. Bashar al-Assad never committed a genocide (ISIS tried but were beaten). Israel has been committing a genocide for over a year now, with no end in sight. And we are talking about the Syrian civil war here. One of the worst wars in this century, if this is our baseline of what is acceptable, something horrible is wrong. But even in the Syrian Civil War, which caused millions to flee their homes (by some very plausible estimates half the country), most Syrians kept their homes, family members, and limbs. Like I said, the only comparable scenario is in Darfur, where mass hunger against civilians is used as a weapon and where most people have lost somebody they know in the ongoing genocide.
> Btw, worth mentioning that many of the biggest examples of anti-Israel bias I'm talking about, e.g. the UN sanctions and a lot of ill-will around the world, were all happening before the Gaza war too.
This was also true of South Africa and Rhodesia (the latter of which was met with so much anti-Rhodesian bias that it no longer exists) despite neither of which going on a full on genocidal rampage against their victims of apartheid. Israel has been committing similar crimes against Palestinians for decades now, and sympathy has increased as more and more people are made aware of their crimes. The ongoing genocide only furthers this anti-Israel bias past the scale we ever saw against Rhodesia or Apartheid South Africa. The world’s reaction against Israel is consistent with previous cases of apartheid (outside of superpowers like the USA).
> Mostly because I reject the idea of Israel never having been decolonized- it was, it turned into Jordan and later Israel.
What are you saying here? It sounds like you are saying that the nation or territory of Palestine does not exist, and that Israel’s (unambiguously) illegal occupation of Palestinian territory is not just justified, but also complete and absolute. I hope that is me misunderstanding, because if that is what you mean, than you are advocating for the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and on the West Bank.
> "the Arab countries are historically against Israel".
This is factually incorrect. Most Arab countries (as do most countries in the UN, and the UN it self) favor a 2-state solution with an independent Palestine along the 1967 line and a capital in East Jerusalem. There was a short period where this was not true, that most Arab countries wanted a single Palestinian state without the mass-immigration of European Jewish settlers. However that hasn’t been true for a long time and is largely irrelevant to any current discussions. The three or four of decades where this was true have no relevance over the 80 years of the existence of independent Israel. Throughout majority of the existence of Israel, most Arab countries are against the illegal occupation of Israel, and are fine with the existence of Israel.
Today, and for all of this century, and a significant part of the end of the last century Arab countries stance on Israel mirrors what most countries today say. That Israel should end its illegal occupation, and grant Palestine independence with a capital in East Jerusalem.
EDIT: Just to ring the point home about the scale of the atrocities Israel is committing in Gaza. I just saw these numbers on Al Jazeera https://aje.io/18noxx?update=3278807 :
- 87% of all housing units in Gaza are damaged or destroyed.
- 80% of all commercial facilities are damaged
- 68% of all cropland is damaged
- 17/36 hospitals in Gaza are only partially functioning, the rest are shut down.
- 68% of all the road network is damaged
- 87% of the schools in Gaza are damaged.
Even if we zoom in the worst affected city of the Syrian Civil war like Aleppo, or Raqqa, you don’t get anywhere near this level of destruction.
EDIT 2: Compare this to Aleppo, which has been (IMO accurately [until Gaza]) described as the worst urban warfare of our century. Aleppo was under siege for four years, with mass atrocities committed on a weekly bases, including bombings of residential neighborhoods, hospital and mosques.
This should absolutely not be a benchmark for what is acceptable in warfare. But even still, a staggering 33,500 of the cities housing units were damaged or destroyed. This was unprecedented before the Gaza genocide. In Gaza we have 87% of the housing units damaged or destroyed.
The battle of Aleppo killed at least 30,000 people, including over 20,000 civilians. Such high civilian casualty numbers were also unprecedented in modern warfare, until the Gaza genocide where over a much shorter period we have at least 42,000 confirmed deaths (most likely a significant undercount), most of whom women or children. So even if we go only by confirmed deaths, and only count women and children as civilians, the civilian deaths after a year of genocide is still greater than the 4 years of the worst urban fighting of our century until Gaza.
https://web.archive.org/web/20161224165001/https://www.washi...
Look. We're discussing horrible things here. I want to make sure it's clear that I think every civilian death is a tragedy. Hell, almost every non-civilian death is a tragedy too - Hamas militants were born in a pretty awful situation, all things considered. I'm taking a pro-Israel side in these comments, because I honestly disagree with your characterization of most things Israel is doing, especially as compared to other wars. (Though I do thank you for discussing fairly horrible topics in a civil manner.)
But as a disclaimer for everything else - I consider myself firmly in the Israeli left, possible far-left. I think Israel has done a lot of morally wrong things for (at least) the last 15 years. And while I think the war's aims are absolutely legitimate, I think it has gone on far, far longer than it should and that Israel has done many immoral things as part of that war. (And to make this all worse - I think one of the main reasons it has gone on this long isn't even because it's good for Israel - it's just that it's good for Netanyahu personally.)
That all said, I will answer your specific points that I disagree with -
> Every single Palestinian in Gaza has lost their home, a family member, or a limb. This is not the case in the Syrian civil war (as horrible as that was) nor among Uyghurs in East Turkistan. As horrible as those atrocities are (particularly the Syrian Civil war) it is still dwarfed by the atrocity which Israel is inflecting on Gaza.
To parse what you're saying here - you honestly think killing 600k civilians is not worse than killing ~30k civilians? Because there are less total civilians so this needs to be measured in percentage of the population? I don't agree with that kind of calculus, at all.
Also, Israel is not targeting civilians, as opposed to many of the other situations I mentioned. This doesn't matter much to the civilians killed, but it is very different morally speaking.
And yes, most Gazans know someone who was killed. That's awful and will absolutely traumatize them even more. I wish it were possible to wipe stop Hamas with no one dying. Hamas has made it impossible. They've said so, in their own words, many times - which is why most Gazans despise Hamas at this point.
But you know what - many if not most Israelis know someone who was killed on October 7th too, and everyone hears daily of the 100 hostages still in Gaza. That's awful too. But I don't think that is proof that the number of dead Israelis is somehow a bigger atrocity than other things, just because Israel is small. Lives are lives.
> Bashar al-Assad never committed a genocide (ISIS tried but were beaten). Israel has been committing a genocide for over a year now, with no end in sight.
I don't agree with your characterization of what Israel is doing. But even if you think it is a genocide - that's not a separate claim to what you were saying above. You're saying, as I parse it - Israel has killed far fewer civilians than in other situations, but it is doing a genocide so that makes it worse. But that's nonsensical - the death of the civilians is what genocide means.
And btw, you call it an ongoing genocide, which I really disagree with. There are very few civilians killed on an ongoing basis right now, and there hasn't been for months. It's certainly an ongoing case of mass displacement, which I really hope is temporary as Gaza is rebuilt.
And it really is relevant to say - Israel has lost hundreds of soldiers in Gaza. It could easily lose zero soldiers by attacking more from the air, with a 10x higher civilian death toll. That is relevant to considering whether killing civilians is Israel's goal - because it could easily do so with minimal losses if it didn't care about civilian casualties.
> But even in the Syrian Civil War, which caused millions to flee their homes (by some very plausible estimates half the country), most Syrians kept their homes,
It is true that one of the main things Israel has done in Gaza that is objectively worse is the destruction of much civilian infrastructure and homes. That's bad. A lot of it is because of the cynical use Hamas has made of civilian spaces, making it impossible to stop Hamas without destroying massive civilian infrastructure. But it's entirely possible that Israel has gone far beyond this in the destruction it has wrought.
I personally think lives are more important than property, so looking at the actual civilian death toll is a far more important metric.
> > Mostly because I reject the idea of Israel never having been decolonized- it was, it turned into Jordan and later Israel.
> [...] It sounds like you are saying that the nation or territory of Palestine does not exist, and that Israel’s (unambiguously) illegal occupation of Palestinian territory is not just justified, but also complete and absolute. I hope that is me misunderstanding, because if that is what you mean, than you are advocating for the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and on the West Bank.
I'm absolutely not advocating any such thing, and I have no idea how you got there.
Historically speaking, there was no nation of Palestine. That's not a POV - that's a historical fact. The territories Israel occupies were not Palestinian territories - they were Jordan's and Egypt's territories at the time that Israel captured them. That is Israel's position on why this isn't an occupation, iirc - that the countries don't want those territories back.
That all said, of course a relatively new and distinct national identity of Palestinian now exists, they existed in the territories of Palestine before, and they deserve to have their national aspirations met, which is why I am a big advocate for a two-state solution. It is the obvious and only solution to the conflict - two peoples with legitimate claims on the same territory, so they should each have a state on that territory.
> > "the Arab countries are historically against Israel".
> This is factually incorrect. Most Arab countries (as do most countries in the UN, and the UN it self) favor a 2-state solution with an independent Palestine along the 1967 line and a capital in East Jerusalem.
I was more referring to how they vote in terms of the UN and how their people perceive Israel, which influences a lot of policy etc.
And I don't think favoring a 2-state solution is being against Israel, btw - it's just common sense.
I do completely agree that Israelis tend to overlook the real progress made in relations with the Arab world. Israel is no longer quite as surrounded by enemies as it used to be, and that's a huge and important shift that most Israelis have not internalized, IMO.
My university background is not in CS but it psychology and statistics, and even though I’m an expert in neither, I know at least one thing, that humans are horrible at statistics. We don’t think neither in absolute terms nor in proportional terms (although between the two we are more likely to think in [heavily biased; and nonsensically; inconsistently non-linear] proportional terms). What the human mind likes to do is to zoom in on the most extreme parts, and apply that to the whole population, that is we love to think in details, find patterns, and extrapolate. Like I said, humans are very bad at statistics.
In the Syrian civil war this manifested in use zooming in on cities like Aleppo or Raqqa, see the horrors there and apply those to the rest of Syria. So when we see the horrors in Gaza, we are not comparing 600k vs. 40k. nor 10% of the housing units in Aleppo vs. 85% of the housing units in Gaza. What we see is the absolute horrors that was Aleppo, and see it repeat in Gaza and think, this is unacceptable, and people don’t accept it.
Even though humans are very bad at statistics, humans are also smart. We are very good at spotting patterns and we can tell when we are being lied to, and we don’t like it. The Israeli government has been constantly lying to us throughout the genocide. They have been lying to us about about Hamas’ command centers, about their war goals, about their concerns for the hostages, etc.
We humans see that and can easily spot it, and it makes us mad. When the Israeli government tells us that all this destruction is because of Hamas’ presence there, we don’t believe it, that all those civilian deaths are just collateral damage we don’t believe that either. We know what collateral damage looks like, and see that Gaza does not fit it. Instead we see that civilians aren’t just accidentally killed, but they are actually targeted. I’ve seen interviews with experts on the news (mainly Democracy Now!) and they pretty much all agree that you don’t see this level of death and destruction among civilians unless they are actively targeted. This was also true of Aleppo btw.
We also spot the rhetoric among Israeli officials, and see similarities with history, we spot the racism and the hatred and it rings alarm bells. That is why we call this a genocide. Humans are good at spotting patterns, and the conduct of Israel is consistent with the patterns of genocide, so we call it a genocide. A case in point. As we were debating this, the Israeli Knesset voted overwhelmingly in favor of banning the main avenue for Palestinians to get aid. The only reason I personally see for this is genocidal intentions among 92 of the 120 members of the Israeli Knesset. That pretty much the whole Israeli legislator is on board with an ongoing genocide. The lies about UNWRA being connected with terrorism compounds mine (and most people’s) reaction, which further our anti-Israel bias. And you personally downplaying the history of the nation of Palestine also plays into this. Though not as extreme as what I initially feared (nor as extreme as the rhetoric of your government) it is still pretty damning and speaks of the complicity of the whole nation of Israel (not just the government) in the ongoing genocide.
It is not unusual for citizens of perpetrators of genocide to deny that genocide. I psychology this is called cognitive dissonance. Many Serbians today deny that the Bosnian genocide happened (or deny the very obvious Serbian involvement in it). Indonesians deny the genocide in East-Timor (despite the fact that there has been a political revolution in Indonesian since then). We even have quite a few Americans that deny the horrors of slavery, and probably most Europeans who deny (or downscale) the horrors of European colonialism.
Now, lets move away from peoples perception and the reason for why anti-Israel bias is increasing in the public consciousness, and onto the future and international law.
Like the the human brain, international law doesn’t compare atrocities with statistics. International law actually goes further and doesn’t compare them at all. International law takes into account which agreements a country has signed on to, and judges whether or not the country is in violation of those. This is the reason why the international community is giving Iran shit about their nuclear program but not Israel, despite the latter being a far worse offender. Iran has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treat, but Israel hasn’t so international law can’t do anything about the latter.
Israel is however a member of quite a few treaties of international humanitarian rights, and has been in violation of quite a few of them for a long time (the most obvious example being the apartheid wall on the West Bank). Very few countries (except superpowers like the USA or China) have disregarded international law for such a long time with impunity. And since the Gaza genocide, Israel has only doubled down in this behavior, the UNWRA ban is a prime example of this. I very much doubt the in 2026 Israel will remain a member of the UN if it keeps doing this (which [as a human] I think they will).
We are probably seeing Israel’s last moments as a non-pariah state. The anti-Israel bias is increasing among the public consciousness plus blatant disregard of international law is Israel’s own doing, and the time of impunity has come to an end. This prediction is consistent with the fate of other (non-superpower) oppressors and violators of international law.
I think it has a lot to do with tiktok's rise to power, for the first time there is a platform that is not controlled by the west (Pro-Zionist), which would completely censor out news like Facebook and Instagram does.
>Jews control the media
Bad, terrible, anti-semitic
>Israel controls the media
Good, woke, socially conscious
Then again Zuck recently donated $125000 to Zaka, the Zionist org responsible for the lies about beheaded babies. Facebook also has several ex-members of the IDF's Unit 8200 on its board.
What are you talking about?
It’s woke to say Israel controls the media?
The first statement is plainly anti-semitic. (Talking about a people and culture) The second is, arguably, against the Israeli state. Israel is a social and political construct. You can change your mind about being Zionist, for example. It’s not an inherent trait like skin color.
[flagged]
Unlikely, I sampled the hn users in this discussion. Most are a few years old, and have karma.
Hn is not important enough to warrant a multi year psyops, so these are probably actual humans.
That’s not what I was suggesting.
Just as well as it could be “less bots” promoting one side, to “more bots” promoting the other. What types of war would you not consider a crime?
Is there actual evidence than hearsay?
Cameras are everywhere. It should be trivial to prove these claims.
[dead]
99% pro Zionist ...can you show me even one example of such a post? I don't think you can.
Anything critical of Israel is usually flagged by users and removed from the front page.
[flagged]
I find it curious that your only engagement on HackerNews is defending Israel and never engaging on other technical topics.
[flagged]
You are posting on a forum for technical discussion.
Something tells me its my being pro Israeli that actually bothers you and not my ratio of tech to non tech engagement...
Also - genuinely curious what made you click on this article? And then engage me in it? If you're here only for tech news that is.
This very post would seem to belie that. In fact, the only times Israel ever rises to the front page is when the article is biased and critical, as is this one.
The only posts labeled "flagged" here are those who are nuanced about Israel at all with the exception of one overtly anti-Semitic post.
Here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=weatherlite&next=417...
[flagged]
"Israel has also said that UN forces are being used as a human shield by Hizbollah fighters, which it is fighting near several Unifil posts along the border. It has demanded the UN evacuate its peacekeepers from southern Lebanon for their own safety. Unifil, and the 50 countries that contribute troops to its ranks, have unanimously refused."
Why aren't the UN troops keeping the peace? Did they let Hezbollah fire rockets into Israel unimpeded? What is the point of the troops being there?
Unifil has been there since the '70s, apparently. Their role was to monitor Israel's withdrawal and to assist the Lebanese government, to patrol the Blue Line and various humanitarian tasks. They're not a counterinsurgency force or an occupying army - as I understand it, they're a tripwire for treaty enforcement.
Also, you don't get to shoot through human shields. It's still immoral to kill noncombatants, just as it's immoral to hide behind noncombatants. You don't gain moral high ground, you're just sinking to the level of the enemy.
> Also, you don't get to shoot through human shields.
I am not saying it’s morally correct but from a war crime standpoint, I think you actually do. As longs as it’s proportional, you can attack combatants hiding under civilians, even if you kill civilians by doing that. At least that’s my understanding.
Yes, that seems correct: "The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations." - https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v2/rule97
What seems more relevant today is that UNIFIL was supposed to support the implementation of UNSC 1701, which was a complete failure, with Hezbollah ignoring it outright and the Lebanese army not doing much to stop them.
In war, you care more about losing/winning than a moral high ground - an imaginary prize for the “superior” nation who chooses to appear weak.
“You don’t get to shoot through human shields.” I don’t have a POV w.r.t. this conflict, but I’d like to understand what you mean by this statement generally. In the extreme it seems to imply, “if you have a human shield you are invincible.”
It’s a messed-up calculus to have to make but I feel like there must be some middle ground.
Take a step back and observe you've erected a mental block for yourself. We've got a false dichotomy here - either we shoot through human shields or we do nothing.
If there are insurgents among civilians, they either have logistics and communication networks to conduct operations, or they're unable to operate effectively. Weapons do not materialize from nowhere, they must be smuggled into the country and distributed. Operations do not materialize from nowhere, they must be coordinated.
If they have logistics, we can leverage that against them. We saw this when Israel expected their pager attack. They've already proven that they can exercise their creativity to conduct effective attacks with great precision.
If they lack logistics and communication networks - then they can't conduct effective operations against us. There's little to fear and no reason to shoot through human shields.
This is some armchair strategy a nonexpert came up with on the spot. Consider that real military strategists and intelligence agencies are better at coming up with ways to find and kill their enemies than we are.
Do not accept that these people cannot solve these problems without bulldozing through human shields. Do not accept the notion that a powerful military and intelligence apparatus is helpless. They could prosecute this war differently. They have made a choice not to.
> Take a step back and observe you've erected a mental block for yourself. We've got a false dichotomy here - either we shoot through human shields or we do nothing.
No, you're the one making imaginary false dichotomies. See your last paragraph:
> Do not accept that these people cannot solve these problems without bulldozing through human shields. Do not accept the notion that a powerful military and intelligence apparatus is helpless. They could prosecute this war differently. They have made a choice not to.
You're now making a false dichotomy - Israel can choose to prosecute the war differently, but it doesn't, implying that they are choosing to kill human shields on purpose.
The reality is that you're coming up on the spot with a dozen ways to defeat an insurgency, without taking into account that they are just as smart and just as motivated as you, and planned for years to make them impossible to hit without significant civilian casualties. This is incredibly well documented.
Sure, you can pretend there is always a secret third option - and there sometimes is. And there sometimes isn't. And the more you let militants using civilians as human shields deter you, the more the militants are incentivized to use human shields, so even in a best case scenario, you're kicking the can down the road.
None of this is to say that Israel's actions are perfect or even good - that's a separate argument. But imagining that Israel has a magic way to do what it wants to do and eliminate Hamas - which many people support it doing and agree it has a right to do - imagining there is some magic way this could get done without hurting civilians is, frankly, incorrect.
>None of this is to say that Israel's actions are perfect or even good - that's a separate argument. But imagining that Israel has a magic way to do what it wants to do and eliminate Hamas - which many people support it doing and agree it has a right to do - imagining there is some magic way this could get done without hurting civilians is, frankly, incorrect.
The way isn't "magic" or "secret". It's a combination of the following:
1. Restrict the types of ordnance used to prosecute air attacks on Gaza. Emphasize cannon fire and Hellfires from AH-64s attack helicopters, as well as UAVs. These are utilized to engage insurgents on the surface, in dynamically-tasked missions with timely and accurate observation of insurgent heavy armaments.
2. Employ proper usage of restrictive fire support coordination measures to protect sensitive sites such as aid distribution locations, hospitals, and places of worship. Bombing them is bad publicity. Reference No-Fire Areas and Restrictive Fire Areas, page B-7, here: https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/MCWP%203-25%2...
3. Establish a large number of checkpoints along the Gazan-Israeli border. Establish refugee areas INSIDE OF ISRAEL for the Gazan population. Distribute leaflets, social media messages, etc...welcoming the entire Gazan population into Israeli borders, provided they come to the checkpoints unarmed and only with the belongings they can personally carry.
4. After conditions are set (which needs to be determined, how much of the population Israel will allow to remain in place/not cooperate before it attacks)....then go into Gaza with a drastically larger (easy given Israel's ability to rapidly mobilize) but primarily light-infantry / dismounted force, slowly moving house-to-house with small arms in an incremental clear & hold approach. This is SIGNIFICANTLY less destructive on both the civilian population AND the urban infrastructure, but does incur much higher casualties for the attacking force.
This would probably cost thousands of additional Israeli (military) lives.....but save tens of thousands of Palestinian lives. And also save Israel's international reputation.
I can't speak to the more military/combat aspects of this - I honestly know very little about it personally. I'm leaning on analyses done by people who do know, and have spoken about what Israel is doing.
Regarding your point of putting refugees inside of Israel - I don't know if there's any practical way to do this. It is impossible to tell apart Hamas militants and normal civilians. Even if you somehow made a vast area inside of Israel to house the refugees, you're all but guaranteeing thousands of Hamas operatives getting into Israel as well.
Do you similarly support the idea of letting the refugees into Egyp in a similar manner? Cause that seems like the obvious solution to the problem from my perspective (and is the "usual" solution in urban war situations). Except Egypt absolutely refused to allow this, and almost no one pushed them on this, often claiming it was an attempt at more ethnic cleansing from Israel. (Apparently sacrificing Palestinian lives to prevent ethnic cleansing, without asking them, is somehow moral?)
> I can't speak to the more military/combat aspects of this - I honestly know very little about it personally. I'm leaning on analyses done by people who do know
While it's been over a decade since I've controlled live aircraft or built an Air Tasking Order, I've managed rather complex dynamic airspaces in exercises within the past few years. Points #1 & #2 are basic stuff that would be incorporated into how the USMC and Joint Services conduct air operations. I haven't worked with the IAF but I assume their approach to battlespace management is roughly analogous to a NATO nation.
The sheer amount of ordnance dropped in the first few weeks after October 7th was indicative of a completely permissive air campaign. In other words, it was conducted with NO concern for collateral damage, probably against a bunch of pre-planned targets from a Prioritized Target List that was refined over a period of years prior. And almost certainly with little or no terminal control (i.e. nobody looking at the targets on the ground minutes/seconds prior to ordnance release to ensure there were no civilians at the target, or to even verify that they destroyed what they meant to destroy).
> Even if you somehow made a vast area inside of Israel to house the refugees, you're all but guaranteeing thousands of Hamas operatives getting into Israel as well.
Yes, there are some risks involved. Saving lives is a hard decision. But even if Hamas operatives end up inside new Israeli camps, you are separating them from their military infrastructure, heavy ordnance, and logistics supply chains. You are also extending an olive branch in a very real and tangible way, which would make inroads in giving them a different perspective of Israel besides "these are the people who have killed my relatives/destroyed my home".
> Do you similarly support the idea of letting the refugees into Egypt in a similar manner? Cause that seems like the obvious solution to the problem from my perspective
No. Why should Egypt be forced to allocate resources to mitigate the consequences of a disaster that entirely derives from Israeli actions? The Palestinians were not driven out of homes in Egypt, they were driven out of homes in Haifa, Jaffa, Ashkelon, etc. Gaza is starving and without healthcare because the Israeli Air Force, not the Egyptian Air Force, has bombed the place back to the stone age.
Israel could at any moment decide "Hey you know what we're just gonna honor the 1967 borders and recognize a two-state solution too. From now on we expect to diplomatically deal with the Palestinian State via your capital in Eastern Jerusalem. Also we are lifting our maritime blockade so you can conduct international trade via ports in Gaza once you build them....and once you start exporting gas from your Gaza Marine 1/2 offshore gas fields....lemme know if you want to hire some Israeli engineers to help build all that though." You don't have to give them hand-outs, make them borrow money (probably from Qatar or Iran, but still...) to pay for Israeli services like any other trade deal...but normalize their economic opportunities. That would radically change the circumstances of the Palestinian people....regardless of Egypt's position on the matter.
The Palestinian refugee problem is entirely a creation of Israel; it is Israel's burden to bear. Under no circumstances should the neighboring countries reward Israel with what the far-right in the Likud Party want: to be the sole inhabitants and controllers of what was originally "Mandatory Palestine".
You may consider these actions a complete non-starter. At some point Israelis will need to come to terms with reality: their state in its current incarnation is dependent on maritime trade imports, even to keep their most pivotal military branch (the Air Force) supplied with munitions. That munitions supplier and principal political benefactor is also beginning a period of pretty severe imperial decline. You are surrounded by increasingly well-equipped adversaries who are refining their skills at modern protracted/attritional warfare....a style of warfare that Israel does not have the population to sustain. It is likely that continuing to "massacre your way to security" will no longer be a viable course of action. As the timeline extends further to the right....prognosis negative.
It's an interesting variation on the "iron triangle" problem: distinctly Jewish state, liberal democracy, multi-ethnic/multi-religious population. Pick two. I think Israelis would lean towards the first two....but that requires either killing or expelling almost the entire Palestinian population, which obviously the rest of the planet is no longer interested in tolerating.
> The sheer amount of ordnance dropped in the first few weeks after October 7th was indicative of a completely permissive air campaign. In other words, it was conducted with NO concern for collateral damage, probably against a bunch of pre-planned targets from a Prioritized Target List that was refined over a period of years prior.
Yes, this seems accurate. And this caused a large amount of the civilian deaths.
However, I think this is actually one of the most defensible actions Israel took. This started after an invasion of Israel in which thousands of militants roamed around inside the country and literally took over towns, a military base and a police station. It also happened while Israel was being daily bombarded with rockets multiple times a day.
Israel was literally shut down for a couple of weeks because of the massive rocket fire. The economy was completely shut down, schools were shut down, etc, as we ran into safe rooms 3-5 times a day.
And in the background, for the first three weeks, we waited to hear if Hezbollah would join in the action, which was clearly the goal of Hamas. Had they done so, we suspected it could lead to a massive war with huge losses. We've since seen that the situation was even worse than most of us suspected - if you're following along with what the IDF is uncovering in Southern Lebanon, Hezbollah apparently had stockpiles of weapons and massive tunnels primed to attack Israel, in a move that could've made October 7th look like a picnic.
This is a situation that no country in the world would countenance. You can't invade and shut down a country without a massive retaliatory strike. And it is entirely possible, and I would say likely, that only the massive Israel strike on Gaza prevented Hezbollah from joining in the war. Had they done so, I have little doubt the death toll in all countries would be much higher.
> Yes, there are some risks involved. Saving lives is a hard decision. But even if Hamas operatives end up inside new Israeli camps, you are separating them from their military infrastructure, heavy ordnance, and logistics supply chains. You are also extending an olive branch in a very real and tangible way, which would make inroads in giving them a different perspective of Israel besides "these are the people who have killed my relatives/destroyed my home".
I think there was no realistic way to do this inside of Israel logistically. We're talking about a massive population here - how in the world would you be able to secure this.
I think Israel should've done a lot of other things to earn good will among Gazans, like being the ones securing and giving out aid to the people ASAP, etc.
> Why should Egypt be forced to allocate resources to mitigate the consequences of a disaster that entirely derives from Israeli actions? The Palestinians were not driven out of homes in Egypt, they were driven out of homes in Haifa, Jaffa, Ashkelon, etc.
I was talking about a temporary solution that could save lives.
> Israel could at any moment decide "Hey you know what we're just gonna honor the 1967 borders and recognize a two-state solution too. From now on we expect to diplomatically deal with the Palestinian State via your capital in Eastern Jerusalem. Also we are lifting our maritime blockade so you can conduct international trade via ports in Gaza once you build them....and once you start exporting gas from your Gaza Marine 1/2 offshore gas fields....lemme know if you want to hire some Israeli engineers to help build all that though."
We've seen that this does not work. Israel tried the route of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza - "honoring the '67 borders" - and they elected Hamas, which promptly started shooting rockets at Israel and spent the billions they receive in aid money building up attacks against Israel.
Had Israel done the equivalent of the Gaza withdrawal in the West Bank, deciding to unilaterally leave all Palestinians lands without any negotiation, without any agreements on what things would look like the day after... we'd have just had October 7th, but much worse.
There is no alternative to a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Unfortunately most Israelis believe that it can't happen, since the last time Israel sincerely made the effort to achieve peace, those efforts were met with terrorism (and in Gaza, the election of Hamas).
But I agree with you completely - a negotiated two state solution is the only viable way forward. I just have no idea if it can actually be done.
> This is a situation that no country in the world would countenance. You can't invade and shut down a country without a massive retaliatory strike.
The most difficult and perhaps most important skill for a soldier is knowing when NOT to pull the trigger. Here's an interview with Delta operator Dale Comstock, when he had an opportunity to shoot a gunman but didn't because he knew he'd hit the civilian BEHIND him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iSUUWl8nes
"You have to make good decisions, because you have to live with them."
The problem isn't the "What" Israel is doing, it's the how. We know Israel has the tools at its disposal to conduct an air campaign differently. It has the aviation platforms, the munitions, the surveillance assets, the AI models to assist with information processing. All of that can combine to produce a Master Air Attack Plan and supporting Air Tasking Orders, managed by an Air Operations Center with a robust Fires Cell that should be capable of significantly suppressing Hamas's rocket artillery without rendering Gaza uninhabitable.
But that isn't what the IAF did. So they are either incompetent, or malevolent. Given that the IAF has a multi-decade reputation for being VERY competent, that kinda narrows it down.
> And it is entirely possible, and I would say likely, that only the massive Israel strike on Gaza prevented Hezbollah from joining in the war.
Israel's munitions stockpile is not large. It is quite possible that at the tail end of surged bombing missions against Hamas, the IAF would not have had enough ordnance to be decisive against Hezbollah. I think Iran is adroitly avoiding putting Israel into a situation where it feels existentially threatened until Iran has some sort of solution to the Samson Option. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
Hezbollah didn't initiate a massive cross-border invasion because Iran doesn't want Israel to panic and nuke the entire Middle East. The overwhelming violence unleashed against Gaza doesn't impact that decision space in Tehran.
>I was talking about a temporary solution that could save lives.
We've seen "temporary" displacement of Palestinians turn into permanent displacement often enough that no one is willing to give Israel the benefit of the doubt on this again.
>We've seen that this does not work. Israel tried the route of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza - "honoring the '67 borders" - and they elected Hamas, which promptly started shooting rockets at Israel and spent the billions they receive in aid money building up attacks against Israel.
Aid money != domestic economic independence. It's the difference between teaching a man to fish, and giving him fish. These two things are not the same, so it is fallacious to say that this has been tried already. Would Hamas have been pissed off enough to shoot rockets into Israel if they were instead enriching the population by collecting revenue from...say...the Gaza Airport Terminal, which was the pride of the Palestinian people? Gee, what ever happened to the Gaza Airport? Oh right, it was completely razed by the IDF. With no indications there was any military necessity to doing so.
>But I agree with you completely - a negotiated two state solution is the only viable way forward. I just have no idea if it can actually be done.
Perhaps a massive UN peacekeeping force needs to man DMZs between Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon, with large contributions from India and China (non-US, non-Muslim states interested in burnishing their global influence). Then implement a regional Armament Treaty for all involved parties/states. I would emphasize that all parties can maintain robust air-defense arsenals but are restricted on offensive strike systems: so the masses of Hezbollah rocket artillery needs to go away....but so does most of the IAF's fixed wing aircraft and large bombs. Israel needs to formally declare its nuclear arsenal and join the NPT. Basically make it so everyone doesn't really have the ability to do anything more than annoy each other. People will still die but we've got to get the violence back down to manageable levels so that economic development solutions can have an opportunity to bear fruit.
Even this is probably an unpalatable solution....I don't think Iran will tolerate a nuclear-armed Israel without having SOME means to make Israel think twice about using it. But it's a start.
the israeli "human shields" narrative is pure hasbara and israeli projection anyway
"The Israeli military has used Palestinians as human shields in Gaza, soldier and former detainees say" [https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/24/middleeast/palestinians-h...]
"Over the years, the israeli military practiced an official policy of using Palestinians as human shields" [https://www.btselem.org/topic/human_shields]
"Israel has taken human shields to a whole new criminal level" [https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/10/20/israel-has-tak...]
> the israeli "human shields" narrative is pure hasbara and israeli projection anyway
Saying this is, frankly, ridiculous. There is massive, extensive documentation of the vast tunnel networks and terrorist infrastructure hiding beneath and as part of civilian areas in Gaza (and in Lebanon, now). There are hundreds if not thousands of examples of Hamas cynically using actions that are bound to hurt civilians.
You don't have to like Israel or how it's acting, and you disagree with the legitimacy of the war or how it is conducted, but you should at least be grounded in reality. If you're just wholesale denying the well-documented evidence of how Hamas acts, you're not really criticizing the IDF, because you're not connecting with reality. You're criticizing an imaginary IDF fighting an imaginary Hamas that acts completely differently to how it's acting, and that makes your criticisms meaningless.
(And for the record, the cases of the IDF using human shields in the manner you linked above are pretty well documented too, as far as I can say, and I personally think they should be condemned and the IDF has to answer for that. I do try to be centered in reality and see things as they really are.)
> There are hundreds if not thousands of examples of Hamas cynically using actions that are bound to hurt civilians.
Correct, this is how guerrilla forces have always worked. Either their fighters get protection, or the colonial/occupying (from their perspective) power gets loads of bad PR.
I mean, when you look at the relative arms strength of the two forces, they'd be crazy not to do this.
Is this moral? 100% not. Is it understandable? Strategically, again 100%. yes.
My view is the ethnicity of the human shields in question shouldn't factor into your decision making. You shouldn't shoot through an Egyptian aid worker or Lebanese child if you wouldn't have shot through an Israeli hostage in their place.
> you wouldn't have shot through an Israeli hostage in their place
Well actually, to give Israel some kind of credit, they have also done that, as hostages have indeed been killed in their attacks. In general they have shown a similar disregard of human life towards their own people who have been hostages, so there's that.
I suppose you're suggesting that one shouldn't value "us" over "them". Is a logical extension of this that you shouldn't shoot someone else if you wouldn't shoot yourself?
I'm suggesting we should value civilian casualties equally. You're free to shoot at soldiers.
I mean, you can also just value all human life equally, and not shoot at soldiers unless there's a really good reason to do so. You really shouldn't target civilians, almost ever, cause there's never a good reason to do so by definition.
In extreme situations it might be acceptable to involve innocents, but that's a very far cry from what has been happening
[flagged]
Israel is always accusing people of what Israel itself does already.
Tons of Israeli military bases and weapons manufacturing his placed directly under or very close to civilian domiciles.
> Tons of Israeli military bases and weapons manufacturing his placed directly under or very close to civilian domiciles.
This is nonsense propaganda that keeps getting repeated.
Israel has some army bases in or close to civilian areas, as do most countries - e.g. the Pentagon. The reason is that some army bases are used for intelligence, software development or other administrative tasks, which usually involves older officers and many civilians, so it makes sense to have these be in cities.
But note key differences between this and what Hamas is accused of doing:
1. These are administrative buildings. These are not weapons storage facilities, combat factilities, etc. And it's especially not where missile launch sites or things of a similar nature are located.
Shooting missiles from within houses, as e.g. Hezbollah does, or from under refugee camps, as Hamas does, is a different thing entirely - because to stop the actual rockets being shot at Israel, Israel has to shoot at them, which kills civilians. That is not what Israel does with those bases.
2. Israeli bases are not built under civilian buildings. Yes, the same army HQ or intelligence etc bases that are built in cities have sections underground, for obvious reasons - but under the bases, not under people's houses!
Close to? Yes, to some extent that's unavoidable in countries as small as Israel.
But under? Do you have a source for that?
The straightforward thing with UNFIL would be to negotiate change at the UN
It's unlikely that Israel decided just now to go attack Hezbollah, and even if they did, it's not like there's been any big status quo change, so they could go to the UN first, if they think the UN is in the way
Wait till you find out where the mossad HQ is located!
It's a fair target to hit then — on both sides, military operations are fair to hit. It just hasn't happened to the Mossad HQ, despite attempts.
you think that's the narrative Israel and its allies would go with? Never.
Israel and its allies would cry and whine as if a second holocaust occurred. They would pretend like they haven't done something similar thousands of times before to their enemies and that this retaliation on the Mossad HQ is some sort of uniquely evil and unprecedented event in human history.
Israelis always prefer using the most absurd victim narratives possible. Only Israel can be the biggest bully while also roleplaying as the biggest victim, but it's not surprising considering that even the mossad's motto[0] is "By way of deception you shall engage in war."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By_Way_of_Deception
I don’t think speculating on how you think Israel would react is helpful or productive.
Of course Israel would “cry and whine.” I agree with you.
Obviously, Palestine also “cries and whines” — they have a narrative when their military operations are hit, too, and it’s not “fair play.”
War is an ugly, awful thing. I wouldn’t expect anybody involved to treat it so rationally. Hopefully we can view things more objectively and fairly given our distance.
> Is it? Hamas and Hezbollah deliberately place their military infrastructure among civilians.
I'm not eager to defend Hamas or Hezbollah, but for Gaza, is there a lot of free space?
Using human shields anyhow, does NOT mean it's the other's fault if you bomb then.
It's entirely your own decision, if you know that they're there.
Do you really think there was no other way, to deal with the problem?
Personally, for me the most absurd aspect of the situation is that you're creating an enormous amount of members for the Hamas' of the future.
However good a person is, and however quiet by nature, they wouldn't be human if a percentage of them wouldn't look for revenge, after having all their relatives killed, endured surgeries without anesthetics, and seen there was no good justification for that.
Which is what some Israeli politicians would probably like, anyhow, to give them arguments for the future elections.
Nothing will be solved. Unless you kill them all? Well, I think there would be a lot of Arabs who'd seek revenge for them, if so.
By the way, with using shields the Israeli might well just mean mean having a tunnel passing under a condo, or that an Hamas member sleeps there rather than, where? Hamas barracks? Along with your family, forever, with a target on your back?
CNN [1] today said:
> There is ample evidence for it: weapons located inside homes, tunnels dug beneath residential neighborhoods and rockets fired from those same neighborhoods in the densely packed territory.
I don't think that's what people think about, when hearing about human hostages.
Furthermore, the IDF seems to wait for the targets to be at home, just because there they're easier to target [2] .
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/24/middleeast/palestinians-h... [2] https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
> for me the most absurd aspect of the situation is that you're creating an enormous amount of members for the Hamas' of the future.
This has become a very common argument, and is indeed true, but it's also hypocritically incomplete.
You're creating an enormous amount of members for the Hamas of the future and they will be right in fighting you. Exactly as the current Hamas members are right in fighting you today.
> I don't think that's what people think about, when hearing about human hostages.
Indeed, they think more about something like this: https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/6/23/israeli...
Don't you just love how the brave soldiers of the IDF fight all their wars remotely. 2000lb bombs dropped from the skies, Lavender AI to remove accountability. The kids in the IDF go directly from video games at school to a real war turned into another virtual reality. Without their US-funded military superiority those IDF zombies wouldn't stand a chance in one-on-one combat with a Palestinian resistance fighter.
> “Also, you don't get to shoot through human shields.”
When the human shields are serving willingly as human shields, I will say that yes, you get to shoot through them and keep your moral high ground.
Not only those UN troops have no reason to be there, but there are numerous reports that several of their members are working together and aiding Hezbolah.
Israel has lied repeatedly countless times, like the tunnels under hospitals that never show up, or when they say the didn't kill the journalists they did end up admitting to. Or the claims of rape and beheaded babies that were all fake. You can not take anything they say as serious.
Don't forget that it's been extensively documented that Israel uses human shields:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/24/middleeast/palestinians-human...
https://www.btselem.org/topic/human_shields
Even the NYT took time away from repeating Israel's lies to report on it! https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/world/middleeast/israel-g...
I love how their rationale for blowing up a hospital is that there were tunnels underneath it. As if that’s justification for blowing up a hospital.
They have also been blowing up buildings in Lebanon because they claim that there is Hezbollah money and gold in them. Human life be damned.
To all appearances, it looks as if the US is allowing Israel to rewrite the rules of war. This is incredibly dangerous. Whether or not the US supports Israel's objectives should not be the deciding factor in supporting these kinds of justifications.
Then thre's the time a former Israeli PM admitted they build the "bunker" under Al Shifa. Whoops. If anyone had been paying attention or properly reporting on that, it might have looked bad.
https://www.newsweek.com/israel-built-bunker-shifa-hospital-...
Israel hasn't blown up a hospital.
Not disputing general truthfulness of Israeli government, but specifically as to the latter two examples you listed: A) There is no direct evidence that Israeli government publicly stated that babies were beheaded. That claim came from a single journalist, spread like wildfire on social media (as did tons of videos and footage of the attacks), and was exacerbated by a statement Biden made.
B) there is very credible evidence that rape did occur as part of the atrocities Hamas committed on Oct. 7th attack. https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-sexual-violence-...
Just wanted to point that out, because regardless of the moral standing of either side, I think the facts do matter if there is ever going to be a resolution. Obviously the actions committed by Hamas do not absolve Israel from following ethical rules of war, and there are plenty of issues with how Israel is waging war in the current conflict as well; for example using machine learning algorithms to track targets with what appears to be a reckless disregard for non-combatants: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
The bigger problem is that these lies spread “like wildfire” via Western media outlets - with zero fact checking or confirmation. These images were then used to justify the rampage in Gaza.
As far as I am aware, not a single Western media rag has issued an apology for this. In many of our eyes, never again will they be able to claim credibility or professionalism in their reporting.
In addition, Western rags took Israeli statements as gospel, platformed way more guests from the Israeli side, and intensively questioned all pro-Palestine guests on their position on Oct 7 (while treating Israeli guests with more respect than necessary for a media interview).
It’s better now - but that’s easy to do after a year of atrocities and 100k+ deaths. In the US at least, there still is a clear bias against inviting Palestinians on primetime slots, or allowing Palestinians to operate freely within news organizations.
What do you think the Israeli response to Oct 7 should have been?
I think they could start with not destroying hospitals and schools and doing better than “at least 1/3 of the 40k people killed were militants.” Israel , the most moral army in the world /s, thinks that two citizens killed for every militant killed is an acceptable ratio, it’s not.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/12/05/middleeast/israel-hamas-m...
What's the acceptable ratio? I'm not claiming this reality isn't horrific I'm just not seeing many examples of wars fought better. Did the U.S do it better in Vietnam or Iraq? The U.S wasn't even fighting for its survival, it was fighting to "defeat communism" or to keep oil prices low because of the invasion of Kuweit or 9-11 etc etc. None of these reasons were as strong as what happened to Israel.
Vietnam and Iraq are two nation states and had populations between 25-30m at the time US waged war in those countries. Gaza is a narrow strip of 139 square miles of land with 2mn people packed together like sardines, who have no sovereignty, have been under an economic blockade since 2007, and whose rulers Hamas have no conventional military to speak of. These two are not comparable, I don't know why people keep pointing to the destruction of Nazi Germany and Japan as the benchmark of whats acceptable in Gaza, its quite insane tbh.
Why does the land area matter? Israel is also a tiny and crowded country and is threatened from all fronts. What was the threat against the U.S again , was Vietnam about to invade? was Iraq?
Hamas had enough weapons to kill 1200 Israelis in one day so it's not some helpless entity. It was armed to its teeth. It's only after almost 800 additional dead Israeli soldiers and a very bloody war that Hamas lost most of its power.
I think many people also forget the second intifada suicide bombings, and numerous rocket barrages over the proceeding decades after, to which Hamas was a major belligerent. Despite the more primitive designs of these rockets, without modern defense systems there would likely be more Israeli civilian deaths. I see this context missing from a lot of the discussions of the current iteration of this conflict. Israeli civilians have faced decades of risk (which I think also benefits the right wing of Israeli politics), and this is not a new conflict. October 7th comes on the heels of many other direct and indirect attacks on Israeli civilians. I cant help but think that the current military response might fall under a “never let a crisis go to waste” strategy by Netanyahu’s coalition, which had recently been receiving less support.
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
Feel free to share your objections to what I wrote.
Unfortunately, it is hard to discern legitimate interest vs. someone wanting to engage in a debate for the sake of it. And I am not interested in wasting my time figuring out which is the case.
I did not say or imply that I have objections to what you wrote.
Your comment strongly implied that you think that Israel overreacted to Oct 7. So I am curious what you think their response should have been.
> Unfortunately, it is hard to discern legitimate interest vs. someone wanting to engage in a debate for the sake of it. And I am not interested in wasting my time figuring out which is the case.
Is curiosity "legitimate interest"?
Israel has not overreacted to Oct 7, they have just applied the same policy that they have used for many decades "at least ten of theirs for each one of ours".
This policy is an effective deterrent against enemies, but it should be obvious that with such a policy it will never be possible to end any conflict unless absolutely all enemies and all their relatives or friends are killed.
There have been times when the relations between the parties in this conflict had improved a lot and there was some hope for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Nevertheless on both sides, but especially in Israel, there are people who benefit a lot from the existence of the conflict, so any opponents have been removed by any means possible, including assassination, until the mutual relationships have become as bad as today, when no hope for any kind of peace remains.
Most people in Israel are quite nice, but they are deeply scared by the thought that that at any time someone coming from the neighbors of Israel could come and cut their throats, so they work continuously very hard at their jobs, believing that they must provide thus their individual contributions so that Israel will maintain its military and economic dominance over their enemies, in order to ensure their safety. The workers of Israel have worked all the time since WWII pretty much as hard as those of USA during its short participation to WWII.
Workers from other countries would be very unlikely to work willingly so hard as those of Israel. This is very profitable for the upper class of Israel, for whom an end of the conflict would have caused serious losses, when the workers could not have been motivated any more by patriotic slogans.
> Israel has not overreacted to Oct 7, they have just applied the same policy that they have used for many decades "at least ten of theirs for each one of ours".
The interesting thing is that Hamas seems to share Israel's view that Israelis are more valuable than Palestinians. Whenever there is a prisoner exchange Hamas tends to demand an order of magnitude or more Palestinians be released for each Israeli released.
For example in 2011 Hamas got over 1000 in exchange for a single Israeli.
Or could it also have something to do with Israel having an order of magnitude more Palestinian prisoners (thousands of whom have yet to be charged for years) than Hamas has Israeli soldiers ? If Hamas has 10 Israeli hostages and while Israel holds 10,000, does asking for thousands in return mean you value your people less? Or is that just common sense? And I don't even know what the point of bringing this up is.
>This policy is an effective deterrent against enemies, but
Why do you consider this an effective strategy, when the same strategy has been used for decades yet the violence keeps getting worse?
I would expect any response to (among other things):
a) adhere to international law (which we now know is a complete farce thanks UNSC veto)
b) not involve ethnic cleansing/forced displacement of Palestinians for a 3rd time in the last 75 years - the only reason it didn’t work this time is because the Egyptians strongly pushed back
c) not involve the deliberate targeting of civilians, the mass punishment of a civilian population, and the denial of access to aid to a civilian population (under occupation no less)
d) not result in the highest proportion of children fatalities and injuries of any modern war - and not involve redefining or rewriting the meaning of the word “child” to give themselves some wiggle room
e) not involve the deliberate targeting of journalists, academics, aid workers, and hospital staff - even if the Israelis claim to have “proof” of them being Hamas members (imagine immediately defunding a UN organization because the Israelis claim a few dozen employees were Hamas members)
f) adhere to Israel’s responsibilities under IHL as an occupying force
Fighting a war against guerillas in an urban context is challenging. Mass & targeted bombing of a densely populated occupied territory containing an enemy with no air force and no air defenses is not only genocidal, but also outright cowardly behavior.
>Your comment strongly implied that you think that Israel overreacted to Oct 7. So I am curious what you think their response should have been.
How about a reaction that wouldn't lead the ICC issuing arrest warrants for the government officials leading the response for crimes against humanity ?
I'm not sure what people act so daft, pretending the Israeli response of the last year was just a totally normal and standard military operation and not a clinical live streamed genocide.
[flagged]
But beheaded babies and babies in ovens portrays a different level of atrocities being committed. This kind of fictional atrocity dissemination is very similar to the approach used during the Gulf War[1].
More importantly, the point is that Western media outlets - who have always proclaimed to be arbiters of truth, objectivity & journalistic integrity - neither did the absolute basic fact checking required before publishing such information, nor apologized later for doing so once the dust settled.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
I'm not going to disagree with you about the media sucking, but for what it's worth, I think every side thinks that. I am pro-Israel and have the same feelings about other stories that were rushed, not vetted, wrong, and never apologized for.
Just one thing: you mentioned the "girls" (in fact soldiers) with "bloody pants" in your previous comment. It's quite a stretch to go from bloody pants to "victim of rape".
Indeed, this picture came out much later:
https://www.instagram.com/israelmfa/p/C7Q1v38tKql/
Shows what appears to be the famous "bloody pants" soldier sitting on the floor close to other presumably injured soldiers after some sort of combat. Isn't that the most obvious way of getting "bloody pants"? Why the leap from those to unfounded rape accusations?
> there is very credible evidence that rape did occur
> FIRST ACCOUNT PANTS PULLED DOWN
>But it turns out that what Otmazgin thought had occurred in the home at the kibbutz hadn’t happened.
> SECOND ACCOUNT: EVERYTHING WAS CHARRED
> Yossi Landau, a longtime ZAKA volunteer, was also working in Be’eri when he entered a home that would produce the second debunked story
I urge people to read the article rather than take the parents claim that it presents evidence of rape on October 7th at face value. It presents no evidence for such a claim through the entire article. It covers debunked claims of sexual violence on October 7th, it does contain a reference to one hostage who was sexually assaulted during her kidnapping who was since thankfully successfully released
From the article:
“The United Nations and other organizations have presented credible evidence that Hamas militants committed sexual assault during their rampage. The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, said Monday he had reason to believe that three key Hamas leaders bore responsibility for “rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes against humanity.”
I’m not going to dig up and post links to videos showing Hamas parading female captives with blood on their pants, or partially disrobed bodies. Videos which were filmed by Hamas members themselves I might add. Here is an article instead from BBC with testimony from survivors: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181.amp
I don’t want to assume that you are arguing in bad faith, but there are numerous reputable sources showing that other atrocities occurred beyond the murder of civilians. It’s bad enough that Hamas directly targeted and killed over 700 civilians.
https://www.oct7factcheck.com/index
[flagged]
That article you linked does not support your claims at all. The UN was pressured by Israel to send a delegation, but they would not cooperate fully and refused a full investigation.
From the UN report [1]:
>In the medicolegal assessment of available photos and videos, no tangible indications of rape could be identified.
>The mission team examined several allegations of sexual violence. It must be noted that witnesses and sources with whom the mission team engaged adopted over time an increasingly cautious and circumspect approach regarding past accounts, including in some cases retracting statements made previously. Some also stated to the mission team that they no longer felt confident in their recollections of other assertions that had appeared in the media.
>It was determined by the mission team that the crime scene had been altered by a bomb squad and the bodies moved, explaining the separation of the body of the girl from the rest of her family. Allegations of objects found inserted in female genital organs also could not be verified by the mission team due in large part to the limited availability and low quality of imagery.
How does any of this information from the report lead you to believe that the allegations of mass rape are 'very credible'?
See this interview from Pramila Patten who is the special representative that wrote this report [2]
>“May I just ask, why not put the responsibility and blame the atrocities quite simply on the perpetrators and say, ‘it was Hamas who did it?’” the host demanded.
>Patten replied that the mission of her visit to Israel was “only for the purpose of gathering and analyzing information,” not for attributing alleged crimes to any perpetrator.
>“It is pretty clear who did it, after talking to survivors who returned – it wasn’t the Belgians who did it,” chortled the host.
>“I think it’s up to your government to give access, and that was one of my first recommendations,” Patten responded.
I would suggest you stop peddling these baseless allegations as these lies are being used to justify civilian massacres to this day.
[1] https://tinyurl.com/2px6tp6v
[2] https://tinyurl.com/bddbu29s
You are cherry picking text out of the report, and removing it from the overall context. The UN investigators visited multiple locations, some of which did not contain evidence, and some of which did. See sections 58/60/61/66/68.
The conclusion of the report itself reads: “Overall, based on the totality of information gathered from multiple and independent sources at the different locations, there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred at several locations across the Gaza periphery, including in the form of rape and gang rape, during the 7 October 2023 attacks. Credible circumstantial information, which may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including genital mutilation, sexualized torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, was also gathered.”
At this point I don’t see any further point in discussing this subject. I’m only replying in case someone reads these comments, and doesn’t dig deeper into the report. I find it concerning that you glossed over those sections and the conclusion of the report, while only presenting text that supports your viewpoint. It’s bad enough that ~700-800 civilians were murdered in the first place, and it’s horrible that civilians continue to die in Gaza through the present. Please have a good day.
Of course you don't want to talk about it, when you have zero evidence to back up any of your claims. You wrote all that but you could not produce a single piece of evidence besides a few sentences to indicate unproven rapes might have occurred based on very selective information given to them by the Israelis during guided propaganda tours. The claims are "mass rapes" have occurred (not that there were no instances of SA), not a single piece of evidence has been produced, every testimony that came out was proven to be fabricated and here you are trying to peddle your unsubstantiated propaganda as if its something already proven beyond reasonable doubt.
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
>And what oil money exactly?
He's probably referring to how Iran props up these places, and Iran's main source of funding is oil.
Nope, Iran does not really prop up Palestinians. Maybe Saudi Arabia and their donations sure but Iran does not fund more than military assets, and mostly in Lebanon
> Why aren't the UN troops keeping the peace?
They're basically observers when there are any other armed troops present. They have small arms, everybody else has rockets, missiles, or tanks.
UN peacekeeper should be treated as civilians - even when armed.
Why are they there then? Seems they are willingly serving as human shields to prevent Israel from retaliating against Hezbollah attacks.
Judging from your other comments it seems you’ve bought into the narrative that anyone who would ordinarily be protected by the laws of war is not when their presence inconveniences the IDF. I don’t think I can help you.
It's all on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Interim_Force_i...
There's absolutely no evidence of UN forces being used as human shields. There's clear evidence, including that cited in the article, of the situation being very different from the claims/report of the IDF.
The most credible reason for Israel wanting Unfil to vacate is less impartial observers.
The most credible reason for Israel to want UNIFIL to vacate is that UNIFIL’s mission is to help keep unauthorized military forces out of South Lebanon, and Israel’s invasion force is decidedly unauthorized.
Given they targeted observation posts and monitoring cameras first, I suspect they don't want witnesses observing war crimes. Local witnesses are outright killed or smeared with accusations of belonging to militant groups, as it's being done to journalists in Gaza. They just put targets on the backs of the few surviving journalists that are still documenting the siege of northern Gaza. See: https://www.aljazeera.com/program/inside-story/2024/10/24/wh...
That trick is harder to pull when the witnesses are external UN observers.
Well, UNIFIL for the last twenty years pretty much ignored the other unauthorized military force in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah, so why they should care about IDF?
Hezbollah is part of the elected government within the in internationally recognized borders of Lebanon. It might be illegal for them to fire at Israel, but it's not illegal for them to be present. It is illegal for Israel to be present within Lebanon's borders.
Being part of the government doesn’t usually grant you the right to maintain your own army. Imagine if every political party had an army.
Shouldn't that be an internal political problem for Lebanon to solve?
> Imagine if every political party had an army.
Well, the People's Liberation Army is not technically the army of the nation of China....it is actually the armed wing of the Communist Party of China. Just the PRC is a de-facto one-party state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army
Hezbollah's presence might not be illegal under Lebanese law, but it is illegal under UNSC 1701.
Israel's current presence might technically also be illegal under UNSC 1701, but Israel has a very strong casus belli from self-defense, having been bombarded for the past year.
The whole reason the UN is there was to assist the Lebanese government in disarming Hezbollah....
They care about Israel Bulldozing UN's bases (walls and towers)
Israel is being openly threatening UNIFIL, and they aren't retailating in any way. I am 100% sure the white hats have never had any capacity to do anything beside being witness. Hezbollah was ok with that, Israel is not ok with that.
I would think that a people that was close to extinction through genocide only 80 years ago, cares little about what other people authorizes them to do in order to protect themselves.
They were attacked from Lebanon, they retaliate. It’s quite simple.
So Hamas is authorized?
[flagged]
> What is the point of the troops being there?
Let's assume they are completely useless at peacekeeping - does this justify them being attacked?
> Why aren't the UN troops keeping the peace?
They’re outnumbered by 10:1.
By Hezbollah?
"Israel has also said.."
Come on..!?
[flagged]
Part of the story here, really, is that the UN has been co-opted by Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Another part of the story is: where was the UN when Hezbollah launched rockets from Lebanon this week?
Unless the UN starts doing serious counter-terrorism, Israel is not going to particularly care about their presence in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has launched over 10,000 rockets at Israel since Oct 7 last year. While under the watch of the UN. But apparently Israel is supposed to just do nothing about it and accept it going on for as long as Hezbollah likes. Absolutely no other country on this planet would. So many people seem to have a special set of double standards they apply to Israel for some reason.
Which attack came first? Who is responding to who? It just doesn't matter any more. Hezbollah and Israel need to calm the fuck down.
And one more thing. I get to criticize the living fuck out of Israel because as an American I am paying for most of it's weapons.
> Which attack came first? Who is responding to who? It just doesn't matter any more.
As a fellow taxpayer, fuck no. As the initiator, Hezbollah can stop shooting the rockets at any moment, give up the Oct 2023 attackers and everyone actively involved. I don't see why that wouldn't stop Israel from going further.
This can not work for Israel, because they are responsible for bringing these fucks to justice.
>As the initiator, Hezbollah can stop shooting the rockets at any moment, give up the Oct 2023 attackers and everyone actively involved.
I don't think Hezbollah has any of the Oct 2023 attackers. Those attackers all came from Gaza, and were in Hamas. Hezbollah just decided to join in on the side of Hamas by shooting rockets, but they weren't the ones who did the Oct 2023 attack.
> decided to join in on the side of Hamas by shooting rockets
You answered your own objection then.
No, I didn't: your assertion still doesn't make sense. No Oct 2023 attackers came from Lebanon (it's quite a long distance away from southern Israel after all), so how exactly are they supposed to "give them up"? They're all in Gaza. Hezbollah doesn't control Gaza.
So basically they would just have to stop shooting rockets at Israel and it would be over?
I suppose; I'm simply addressing the part about "giving up" the Oct 2023 attackers. They aren't in Lebanon anywhere, so there's no way to "give them up".
Probably not, at this point. Israel left it to the UN, which failed to maintain peace and order. I imagine the intent would be to smash Hezbollah like Hamas.
Which came first in your mind? Are you trying to go back to 1948 here? I mean why stop there we could say this is all stems from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand leading to the invasion of and break up of the Ottomon empire. But we have to live in the reality we have today.
In this reality Hezbollah started attacking Israel after Oct 7 in support of Hamas’s attack on Israel. But for that happening Israel would not be invading southern Lebanon to try and put and end to these attacks now.
There is nothing at all wrong with criticizing Israel, I am deeply annoyed with a lot they do, the right wing element and the West Bank settlers are really ruining the ability to reach a two state solution. (Palestinian leaders also share blame in not reaching this outcome too sadly.)
The problem is that people so often have double standards and expectations of Israelis they would never apply to anyone else. And they definitely never seem to have similar expectations for Hezbollah or Hamas. This isn’t constructive and gets kind of antisemitic after a while (Jews are different, hence unrealistic expectations, they should just take the rocket fire and never respond). It’s a weird lack of empathizing with Israelis as also being real humans behaving as real humans anywhere would. This really doesn’t help bring about any kind of peace.
Just because other countries started by brutally colonizing the natives does not mean we should let Israel continue doing it. A true solution requires some admission of guilt on their end for the past century of death and destruction and a path forward that creates a state that is not tied to Jewish identity. Much like other western nations, they will have to learn to deal with a diverse population by abandoning their previous culture and religion.
Israel is simply not going to decide to cease to exist. People living in Israel are not going to up and leave. They’re not going to say “sure take my house” any more than you would. This kind of thing is entirely magical thinking that can only happen because you aren’t able to generate any kind of empathy for people living in Israel.
Kids born in the West Bank or Gaza today are not helped to have a better future by this kind of thinking you’re pushing here.
People living in Israel are not going to up and leave.
Which is fine, because the parent isn't suggesting that they do anything of the sort.
The parent is suggesting a single state solution and giving this is the context of Hezbollah, the right of return. (Hezbollah is not in Palestine.)
Nobody on this planet would make that deal with groups who have the goal of destroying your country. If Hamas had been a peaceful group, democracy had taken hold in Gaza, it had existed peacefully with Israel, had never had the aim of destroying Israel, then yeah, you might be able to imagine a future where the two merge and live harmoniously. But that is not reality today.
You're projecting more into the commenter's words than is actually to be found in them, it seems.
It's quite cleare Hamas needs to be marginalized and taken out of the picture (along with its spiritual companions in the 37th Government) before anything can move forward, but that's a separate issue.
What are they saying then? I am interpreting them in the context of this discussion which is on Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel and Israel’s response.
You seem to imply they are pointing to internal matters to Israel, not Hezbollahs aims. In which case it’s a total non sequitur comment. Or are you or they, suggesting Hezbollahs aims (given Hezbollah is what we are discussing) simply to reform internal issues within Israel and that is their reason for launching 10,000 rockets at them? I think you know that’s not the case.
My reading of their post is that it was putting the current Hezbollah context to the side and addressing the bigger picture in terms of what, in their view, Israel should do (if it wants to have a just and lasting peace and other nice things).
Israel launched way more attacks agaibst Lebanon than hezbollah ever did.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/976/cpsprodpb/bfa9/liv...
Stop lying. You are comparing a paramilitary with an literally commiting a holocaust, with shaban Al-dalou as a clear example.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/15/shaban-al-dalou-th...
A regime*
This times 10^6. Nicely said.
There is a staggering amount of ignorance present in the other comments here.
I was ignorant too. But I spent a good amount of time educating myself this year. I hope others do the same so they can make completely informed assessments. I worry about tribalism and politics driving too much of the thinking.
What are the repercussions? If there is no reaction from the international community, did this action really happen?
Every reaction from the international community is vetoed by the United States of America. A veto power it has used on behalf of Israel to protect it from international scrutiny more than it has for literally any other country on earth. Over half of all US vetoes in the Security Council have been on behalf of Israel.
https://globalaffairs.org/bluemarble/how-us-has-used-its-pow...
> The U.S. has vetoed resolutions critical of Israel more than any other council member – 45 times as of December 18, 2023, according to an analysis by Blue Marble. The U.S. has vetoed 89 Security Council resolutions in total since 1945, meaning slightly over half of its vetoes have been used on resolutions critical of Israel. Of the vetoed resolutions, 33 pertained to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories or the country’s treatment of the Palestinian people.
> The first time the U.S. used its veto to support Israel was in September of 1972, when it vetoed a resolution that called on Israel to cease its aggression in Lebanon.
There's a mechanism for bypassing the Security Council by the GA during deadlocks caused by vetoes (Emergency Special Sessions convened under Uniting for Peace—5 of the 11 convened so far have concerned the Arab/Israeli conflict, including one of the two that is currently open, which is now on its 27th year), but no combination of countries otherwise willing to act to constrain the conflict has the capacity to effectively act against both Iran and its proxies and the Israel (directly) backed by the US.
There is no enforcement power for outcomes of those.
There is the same enforcement power as there is for Security Council resolutions, the coordinated action of member states.
UNEF, the first UN peacekeeping mission, was deployed under a GA resolution passed under Uniting for Peace in an Emergency Special Session called due to British and French vetoes creating a deadlock over the Suez Crisis.
Did what action actually happen? Those reported in the article? If so, clearly yes. They've been widely reported and confirmed repeatedly. The initial international outrage appears to have subsided. I'd guess partly mainly due to the obvious support of the US, who gave up on being outraged when it became obvious there was no one listening on the Israeli side.
Well, they might have listened if the weapon sales stopped
[dead]
It's fascinating to read multiple comments openly justifying attacks on the UN, saying that if they haven't stopped hezbollah themselves that they are the same as terrorists. Even among this group of generally logical mathematical thinkers, reason is left by the wayside when identity is involved.
These "attacks" amount to whining, speculation, and exaggeration. UN soldiers were exposed to smoke in an active warzone. what exactly were they expecting? Same with driving a tank through a gate for cover during a firefight.
There is a clear slant to how the majority of these stories are conveyed. There are probably some real attacks too. that's part of war, its messy.
I have been flagged in this thread by merely re-iterating points mentioned in the Financial Times article. @dang — I doubt you’ll see this, but I would appreciate some help. This is pretty sad.
Me too, for giving context that the article elided. Flagging is supposed to mean "breaks guidelines" not "disagrees with my outlook". Strange that this is the only topic that inspires such zeal.
Not sure what ware you writing about in this thread. But this does happen in other topics as well.
This was flagged. Whether you're pro- or anti-, be honest: does this contravene any guidelines? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41941235
Israel has a pretty compelling argument. I wish the article had mentioned it. That they did not leads me to believe the article is biased.
The argument goes like this: UNIFIL had one mission, which was to disarm and disband any military force in Lebanon south of the Litani River that was not Lebanon's army. UNIFIL has not done this. This is known and well-documented. Hezbollah regularly fires rockets and missiles into Israel. Hezbollah has built bunkers within sight of UNIFILs own posts. If true, this is not only a clear, systemic failure of their mission, but such an egregious failure that their presence is actually dangerous to civilians.
> UNIFIL has not done this.
...and therefore they deserve to be shot at, maimed or killed?
>> UNIFIL has not done this.
>...and therefore they deserve to be shot at, maimed or killed?
You quoted the wrong part. Here, let me fix that for you.
>> If true, this is not only a clear, systemic failure of their mission, but such an egregious failure that their presence is actually dangerous to civilians.
>...and therefore they deserve to be shot at, maimed or killed?
There. That's better. Now I can properly answer.
In my opinion, no, of course not. However, in light of their failure to accomplish their mission, and actually hindering peace, Israel asked them to leave. They did not. They have chosen to remain in an active war zone. So, "deserve" doesn't really come into play.
> However, in light of their failure to accomplish their mission, and actually hindering peace, Israel asked them to leave.
Asked them to leave a whole other country, that is not Israel or Israeli territory. Would this be reasonable to you if it were Ethiopia asking UN troops to leave Eritrean territory for failure to keep the peace, while there are active skirmishes between the 2 countries? This is an astounding ask for any country, and an affront to any semblence of a "rules-based order"
You're not addressing the most difficult point. The UN has failed spectacularly in their one single mission while giving cover to terrorists. You might disagree with Israel's response, but the scandal is with the UN. How is it possible that Hezbollah operated unimpeded for decades (e.g that Hezbollah dug a bunker tunnel mere 100 meters from a UN observation post)?
Frankly, I think Israel's reaction is way overdue. 40 years of Hezbollah firing rockets while the "peace keepers" sit on their thumbs. Facilitate terrorism, get the stick.
I suppose, by the same measure, that you approve of Israel's recent directive to the residents of northern Gaza to leave, for the nth time, or be considered a target?
I’m curious what’s exactly UN troops doing there?
And why they keep closing blind eye on the largest terrorist army in the world violating UN’s own agreements?
Also I wonder who benefits from them intentionally not moving out of harms ways and preventing israel from doing _their_ job of eliminating terrorists?
Genuine questions, not taking any sides.
Their remit for the last 20 years has been to support the Lebanese government in disarming Hezbollah. Israel is not Lebanon.
The sad truth is that Lebanon never went to disarm Hezbollah and the UN didn't care. However, UNIFIL also wants to keep Israel out of Lebanon and track their intrusions. This brought UNIFIL and Israel into conflict
Why do you think unifil is so crazy about israel even if they’re doing their jod for free?
they have multiple jobs. 1) help disarm Hezbollah, 2) make sure Israel stays out of Lebanon. The area is supposed to be a DMZ and is a warzone instead.
Israel's presence highlights the hollow promises and lies of the UN mediated ceasefire that ended the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war.
They failed 1. Which left israel no choice. And now why don’t they use israel help to rix 1? Which would then lead to 2 naturally.
They dont get to make these choices. The UN could vote to have them do it, but it wont support Israel.
As it stands Helping Israel is against UNIFIL rules. It can only help the Lebanese government. If the Lebanese gov asked UNIFIL to attack Hezbollah, they could. But the Lebanese gov wont do that either.
This leads to the current state. A UN force too small to do anything hiding in their bases and whining about Israel not staying on their side of the boarder.
Reasonable questions. I wish I had answers.
[flagged]
[flagged]
Although you rightly condemn the IDF's terrorist origins, you fall into the trap of labelling genuine resistance movements as terrorist. Was the French Resistance a terrorist organisation? Or the Polish Resistance? Given the brutal occupation executed by Israel in Palestine why is armed resistance, in your eyes, taboo? This is not a football match between two equal sides. This is, and always has been, asymetric warfare where one side is armed to the teeth by the west. Where is Hezbollah's air force? Or its tanks?
You have it precisely inverted. Hezbollah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood are not "freedom fighters". They are a supremacist, revanchist, Islamist movement hiding behind the notion of "occupation", funded by the government of Iran. The French and Polish resistance movements in WWII aimed to liberate their countries from Nazi occupation and restore legitimate governments, operating with support from the Allied forces as part of a recognized war effort. Their tactics targeted military objectives, respecting international humanitarian laws. In contrast, Hezbollah and Hamas have broader ideological goals, including regional control and, for Hamas, the eradication of Israel, using tactics such as rocket attacks and civilian-targeted violence, which violate international law. Unlike WWII resistance fighters who returned to civilian life post-conflict, Hezbollah and Hamas retain military power within their political structures, acting as armed entities beyond immediate defense. Hezbollah and Hamas are internationally designated as terrorist organizations, unlike the WWII resistance movements, which had legitimate standing under international law.
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
Is that the same UN that has its secretary-general António Guterres shaking hands with Putin and Lukashenko this week?
Let's be honest, UN is one of the most useless organization in the world (and been for a while, look at history of their Africa operations). By now their presense on ground with inability to actually do anything or help anybody is a liability (eg can't stop Hezbollah from launching rockets and using them as a shield)
The biggest issue we are facing now, it is that the same has happened ot the previous organization, League of Nations Union, which became useless to prevent WW II, UN was born after the war with the goal to be a better organisation than it predecessor.
And here we are, at the edge of WW III, with an useless UN.
How would you imagine useful UN? Or do you just want to be without it?
First of all, one whose army is actually useful, there are plenty of examples of genocides where UN troops were present and nothing was done to prevent that.
A weapon only works as dissuasion if the agressor isn't sure it might be used, otherwise they might as well be holding paper sticks.
They being there has been informative. We know of israel attacking UN bases. We are yet to see Hezbolla militants holding white hats at gunpoint. Or at least hiding in a tunnel under a UN base
There have been thousands rockets fired from southern Lebanon into Israel. So, Israel doesn't need permission from the UN or the international community or the US to invade and take out Hezbollah. Certainly not UNIFIL, who have been entirely useless as peace keepers.
> Or at least hiding in a tunnel under a UN base
You should balance your news consumption, because here is a terror tunnel within view of a UNIFIL observation center: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KPLphHpQfA
This nonsense has been going on for years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rpCIMs0Xpo
Thanks for the links. Unfortunately, the telegraph is not a serious source of information (visit the frontpage anytime for proof). The other video is even worse.
I personally wait until CNN publishes such information. It is the only Israel biased news source I deem above fakenews.
If you think of CNN as pro-Israel, no wonder you're so anti-Israel. Bypass the middle men altogether! Listen to Hamas directly! Listen to Israeli officials directly! Listen to everyone you can without preconceptions. Each party says very clearly exactly what they believe and what they are doing and what they want and how they plan to achieve it. Look for consistency and straight-forward statements of fact. Watch out when something affirms your preconceptions because that's when you are most vulnerable to being manipulated. When you listen to a Westerner, especially an American journalist, explain what Hamas, Palestine, Israel, Hezbollah or Iran is doing, they are filtering it through their own biases and preconceptions and are almost certainly flat-out incorrect.
Heck. Unfiltered man in the street interviews. You can't get more direct than that. Here are some. https://www.youtube.com/@CoreyGilShusterAskProject/videos
Listen to the Israelis and Palestinians. They say very clearly and directly what they want.
[flagged]
You can't post flamewar comments like this to HN or use the site primarily for ideological battle—it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
We have to ban accounts that post like this, so please don't do it again.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
I understand my comment was made in anger, but where is the ideological battle?
I am trying to ask people to discuss non-tech-related politics elsewhere, as per guidelines. How else am I supposed to do that? Flagging doesn't work, politically inclined people just unflag it.
The parent post is the definition of off-topic; if you won't delete it, maybe you need a new guideline, where in garbage posts like this garbage comments like mine are allowed then? :D I think a good approach would be if posts like this were allowed to accumulate comments and then deleted completely, destroying all the dubious "contribution" and thus disincentivising it?
I do hate both ideologies fwiw; as applied to HN however, only one tends to create and promote off-topic political posts like this, or at least I never see the other kind of garbage in the RSS feed.
"Dear butt-hurt lefties" is about as clear a marker of ideological battle as exists!
Now that I read your comment more closely I see that you intended it differently than I thought. I'm sorry I didn't get it right the first time. On the other hand, the way you phrased it guaranteed that a lot of readers (like me) wouldn't get it right, so I'd say the expected value* of the comment remains negative even though you intended it more positively than that.
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...