I appreciate the nuance offered here, it must have been hard to figure out where to stop with historical context. Most of the takes I've seen don't seem to grasp that maybe there isn't a good...
I appreciate the nuance offered here, it must have been hard to figure out where to stop with historical context.
Most of the takes I've seen don't seem to grasp that maybe there isn't a good country and an evil country.
It's a mess and I've said in other comments on Tildes (to a lot of criticism) that I don't expect a peaceful resolution. Many Palestinians want Israel burned to the ground. Many Israelis want...
It's a mess and I've said in other comments on Tildes (to a lot of criticism) that I don't expect a peaceful resolution.
Many Palestinians want Israel burned to the ground. Many Israelis want Palestine nuked off the map. Religion and foreign countries get involved to make it even more complicated. There has been enough violence for either side to justify any actions they take as self-defense or payback.
I think most people are peaceful. But I don't think they have a chance in hell at being left alone while the angry people stay angry.
I think if Hamas hadn't taken hostages it would be very different. Right now Israel can claim they are doing hostage recovery, which doesn't justify things but gives them a certain level of...
I think if Hamas hadn't taken hostages it would be very different. Right now Israel can claim they are doing hostage recovery, which doesn't justify things but gives them a certain level of understanding from the west.
Honestly the time for action and sanctions was years ago.
I don't think it would be that different. To me it seems like with the last Hamas attack Israeli allies fully realized that even if Israel changed their policies right now (and you're right that...
I think if Hamas hadn't taken hostages it would be very different.
I don't think it would be that different. To me it seems like with the last Hamas attack Israeli allies fully realized that even if Israel changed their policies right now (and you're right that the time to pressure them in that regard was years ago and not now), there's no real future for Gaza as long as Hamas exists. And due to the character of the urban landscape in Gaza and Hamas tactics, none of them have a better way to achieve that than what Israel is doing. So they only attempt to force Israel to be more cautious, instead of pressuring it towards something else altogether.
Yes? There's a shit ton of evidence of this? 9/11 for the American sphere where we arguably attacked countries not even involved, but it's hardly the only example of retaliatory attacks harming...
Do you think most other Democratic governments would sanction the killing of so far 11,000 civilians, mostly children, in response to an attack that killed ~800-900 of their own?
Yes? There's a shit ton of evidence of this? 9/11 for the American sphere where we arguably attacked countries not even involved, but it's hardly the only example of retaliatory attacks harming civilians and that were arguably not involved.
Do you think what Israel is undertaking is moral at this point?
No, but I don't think moral matters at this point. Despite what some people seem to believe, there is no moral war. Be it invading the nazi's or starting the revolution or whatever, you always have horrific acts and casualties among the masses. The masses, mostly, want to be left the fuck alone, but when you have other people killing your family and your friends, that changes fast, and moral has little to do with it.
Saying that morality doesn't matter, with all due respect to you as a person, is mindnumbingly dumb and nihilistic. We can have long debates about what is right or wrong, but morality always...
Saying that morality doesn't matter, with all due respect to you as a person, is mindnumbingly dumb and nihilistic. We can have long debates about what is right or wrong, but morality always matters in conflict. Full stop. The civilian deaths in allied bombing of Germany may be critiqued, but ultimately were necessary to prevent the Nazi war and genocide machine from killing many more people. It is simply false that Israel's offensive in Gaza won't delay peace and incite violence against many more Palestinians and Israelis. Netanyahu and his extremist cabinet is literally on record for saying they view Hamas as an asset and are disinterested in peace. This debate begins and ends with the fact that Netanyahu literally supported Hamas to undermine the PA. These are domestic terrorists and both the Israeli and Palestinian people are their victims.
If you say it like that without any context, possibly not. But the context is that they're fighting terrorists that use civilians as human shields, openly say that they don't care about protecting...
Do you think most other Democratic governments would sanction the killing of so far 11,000 civilians, mostly children, in response to an attack that killed ~800-900 of their own?
If you say it like that without any context, possibly not.
But the context is that they're fighting terrorists that use civilians as human shields, openly say that they don't care about protecting them, ignore rules of war (so even if Israel is doing so too, which I'm not convinced it is, it's done by both sides of the conflict), the only reason why their death toll is so low is because Israel has highly technologically advanced defenses (I don't believe that "letting our people die so that the death toll is more similar" would make them any more moral)... And on top of that Israel has been pretty much constantly under threat by one or more of its neighbors, so this is not the only enemy it has to deal with. Plus there's no real future for the civilians as long as the terrorists exist because ending the conflict would end any motivation for the civilians to support them and dying civilians is how they get international support.
With a context like this, yes, I think that a response that is broadly similar would be quite plausible if not likely.
Unfortunately I simply don't have time to fully respond to this, I'll be quite busy for at least a few days and responding to a wall of links simply takes a ton of time. I may return to it maybe...
Exemplary
Unfortunately I simply don't have time to fully respond to this, I'll be quite busy for at least a few days and responding to a wall of links simply takes a ton of time. I may return to it maybe on Sunday if it seems like it's worth it.
The gist would be that
You're not responding to what I said apart from my claim that imo Israel likely isn't committing war crimes. Some of your links may be legitimate in that aspect, some I see as dubious: attacking hospitals or civilian infrastructure that is used to hide military infrastructure is not a war crime. On the contrary, using hospitals to hide military infrastructure or combatants is a war crime. And the reality of the situation is that we have examples of Hamas hiding behind both and that in many cases there is no realistic way to immediately confirm whether Israeli strikes did hit Hamas targets or not. Therefore claiming that striking civilian targets or hospitals like that is definitely a war crime is in my opinion disingenuous or ignorant, it may just as well be reacting to a war crime. Morality is a different matter.
Israel is not monolithic. Some of its extremists are terrible. So is Netanyahu. But it's currently under a government of national unity, which causes the extremists to have much less power than they had before. They're going to scream hateful things, that's what they do, but that is often not relevant to what the army is actually doing at all. One of your links also literally cites Netanyahu telling his ministers to stop being stupid and tone it down.
The exception for me being settlers in the West bank. No disagreements there.
In general, you're talking about what Israel is doing, or about Gazan civilians, but not about what Hamas is doing or has done. Firstly, you cannot accurately describe the conflict without that. You can make any action in a war seem completely inhumane if you omit why it was done and what it reacts to. Secondly, if you want to be objective and separate the action of civilians and its government, it's also important to mention that the number of Palestinians in Gaza who supported attacks against Israeli civilians was much larger than the amount Israelis who supported Netanyahu's government. IIRC about 70% (the polls were done usually after one such attack was committed).
You're also not proposing any solution to the problem with Hamas. I don't think that letting it exist is realistic or even moral, because as long as it does, the Gaza situation will never improve - it is against Hamas' interests to improve relations. It would continue killing both Israeli and in a smaller number Gazan civilians directly, and a much larger number indirectly through deliberately provoking Israel, because that's simply what they do.
You're also using the G word, but I'm not going to react to that because the current, imo rather unfortunate, policy is that using it is fine but reacting to that is forbidden.
The reason the death toll is so high in Gaza is because the Israeli military is engaging in indiscriminate bombing campaigns and leveling the entire city block by block.
This is also what Hamas has been attempting since 2005. Lower intensity, but on and off for almost 20 years now. They launched almost 10k rockets only since the Oct. 7 strike. If Israel didn't have air defense, the result would be very similar over the time period. And like I said, I don't think that just letting that happen would make Israel more moral.
Hamas insurgents have been caught on footage firing an RPG from a hospital entrance. There is a video showing a hospital that IDF forces have taken control of, with weapons in the basement and...
Hamas insurgents have been caught on footage firing an RPG from a hospital entrance. There is a video showing a hospital that IDF forces have taken control of, with weapons in the basement and evidence that hostages were held there (it's in English, so I recommend it).
I don't understand why you insist that Hamas is a source to be trusted. The organization routinely threatens civilians who try to speak out against the regime with extreme violence. This is and has been their MO since 2005; lying without end to the media through the guise of civilians. There are videos showing terrorists dressed in jeans and tshirts carrying a god damn RPG, filmed by the terrorists themselves.
You can believe that Israel isn't handling this war correctly - I don't think there has been a war in Israel's history that was handled correctly - but you need to know the facts from the field instead of relying on the words from an organization that wants nothing more than for global moral panic. Fuel, incubators, and equipment to treat newborn babies are being delivered to Shifa hospital by the initiative of the IDF, Gazans that are cooperating with the army are getting water and safe passage to the south. This is all documented if you go to the IDF's media sites through videos, not through second hand accounts.
There are enough things to criticize Israel for without just blatantly ignoring how they're trying to minimize casualties, even if you feel like they're not doing enough.
Edit: as I wrote this comment the IDF revealed another video from Shifa hospital's MRI ward.
Sorry to jump in, but I think that, yes. If you polled people with "should we kill 10x as many of them in revenge?" you might get the "no" you want (maybe), but that's not how it works in...
Do you think most other Democratic governments would sanction the killing of so far 11,000 civilians, mostly children, in response to an attack that killed ~800-900 of their own?
Sorry to jump in, but I think that, yes. If you polled people with "should we kill 10x as many of them in revenge?" you might get the "no" you want (maybe), but that's not how it works in practice. Whenever a disaster happens, democratic leaders are under intense pressure to take action and not so much pressure to stop and think. The bodies get counted later, if at all.
Do you think what Israel is undertaking is moral at this point?
(Making a separate thread as to not derail discussion) I think there are definitely signs that significant pressure is being asserted internationally from normally staunch Israeli allies,...
(Making a separate thread as to not derail discussion)
I am so frustrated by the Biden administration continuing to support Israel and bolster them
I think there are definitely signs that significant pressure is being asserted internationally from normally staunch Israeli allies, presumably including the United States.
Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen said in a briefing with reporters that Israel has international legitimacy for "another 2-3 weeks of fighting" in Gaza. "We sense that there is international pressure on Israel. It is not strong but it is getting stronger", he said
I'm going to start removing the arguments about the definition of "genocide". Having it in every single thread about the subject is incredibly tedious, tends to take over the entire discussion,...
I'm going to start removing the arguments about the definition of "genocide". Having it in every single thread about the subject is incredibly tedious, tends to take over the entire discussion, and almost always leads to me needing to lock the thread.
I appreciate the nuance offered here, it must have been hard to figure out where to stop with historical context.
Most of the takes I've seen don't seem to grasp that maybe there isn't a good country and an evil country.
It's a mess and I've said in other comments on Tildes (to a lot of criticism) that I don't expect a peaceful resolution.
Many Palestinians want Israel burned to the ground. Many Israelis want Palestine nuked off the map. Religion and foreign countries get involved to make it even more complicated. There has been enough violence for either side to justify any actions they take as self-defense or payback.
I think most people are peaceful. But I don't think they have a chance in hell at being left alone while the angry people stay angry.
How can I get around the region lock?
Yeah the region lock on LWT is stupid. I can't access either. The weird thing is that they'll occasionally release a video that isn't region locked.
I think if Hamas hadn't taken hostages it would be very different. Right now Israel can claim they are doing hostage recovery, which doesn't justify things but gives them a certain level of understanding from the west.
Honestly the time for action and sanctions was years ago.
I don't think it would be that different. To me it seems like with the last Hamas attack Israeli allies fully realized that even if Israel changed their policies right now (and you're right that the time to pressure them in that regard was years ago and not now), there's no real future for Gaza as long as Hamas exists. And due to the character of the urban landscape in Gaza and Hamas tactics, none of them have a better way to achieve that than what Israel is doing. So they only attempt to force Israel to be more cautious, instead of pressuring it towards something else altogether.
With 1200, mostly civilians, dead? I doubt it. What country in the world would allow that and not have an extreme response?
Yes? There's a shit ton of evidence of this? 9/11 for the American sphere where we arguably attacked countries not even involved, but it's hardly the only example of retaliatory attacks harming civilians and that were arguably not involved.
No, but I don't think moral matters at this point. Despite what some people seem to believe, there is no moral war. Be it invading the nazi's or starting the revolution or whatever, you always have horrific acts and casualties among the masses. The masses, mostly, want to be left the fuck alone, but when you have other people killing your family and your friends, that changes fast, and moral has little to do with it.
Saying that morality doesn't matter, with all due respect to you as a person, is mindnumbingly dumb and nihilistic. We can have long debates about what is right or wrong, but morality always matters in conflict. Full stop. The civilian deaths in allied bombing of Germany may be critiqued, but ultimately were necessary to prevent the Nazi war and genocide machine from killing many more people. It is simply false that Israel's offensive in Gaza won't delay peace and incite violence against many more Palestinians and Israelis. Netanyahu and his extremist cabinet is literally on record for saying they view Hamas as an asset and are disinterested in peace. This debate begins and ends with the fact that Netanyahu literally supported Hamas to undermine the PA. These are domestic terrorists and both the Israeli and Palestinian people are their victims.
So by extension if the offensive would stop the violence it would be moral?
If you say it like that without any context, possibly not.
But the context is that they're fighting terrorists that use civilians as human shields, openly say that they don't care about protecting them, ignore rules of war (so even if Israel is doing so too, which I'm not convinced it is, it's done by both sides of the conflict), the only reason why their death toll is so low is because Israel has highly technologically advanced defenses (I don't believe that "letting our people die so that the death toll is more similar" would make them any more moral)... And on top of that Israel has been pretty much constantly under threat by one or more of its neighbors, so this is not the only enemy it has to deal with. Plus there's no real future for the civilians as long as the terrorists exist because ending the conflict would end any motivation for the civilians to support them and dying civilians is how they get international support.
With a context like this, yes, I think that a response that is broadly similar would be quite plausible if not likely.
Unfortunately I simply don't have time to fully respond to this, I'll be quite busy for at least a few days and responding to a wall of links simply takes a ton of time. I may return to it maybe on Sunday if it seems like it's worth it.
The gist would be that
You're not responding to what I said apart from my claim that imo Israel likely isn't committing war crimes. Some of your links may be legitimate in that aspect, some I see as dubious: attacking hospitals or civilian infrastructure that is used to hide military infrastructure is not a war crime. On the contrary, using hospitals to hide military infrastructure or combatants is a war crime. And the reality of the situation is that we have examples of Hamas hiding behind both and that in many cases there is no realistic way to immediately confirm whether Israeli strikes did hit Hamas targets or not. Therefore claiming that striking civilian targets or hospitals like that is definitely a war crime is in my opinion disingenuous or ignorant, it may just as well be reacting to a war crime. Morality is a different matter.
Israel is not monolithic. Some of its extremists are terrible. So is Netanyahu. But it's currently under a government of national unity, which causes the extremists to have much less power than they had before. They're going to scream hateful things, that's what they do, but that is often not relevant to what the army is actually doing at all. One of your links also literally cites Netanyahu telling his ministers to stop being stupid and tone it down.
The exception for me being settlers in the West bank. No disagreements there.
In general, you're talking about what Israel is doing, or about Gazan civilians, but not about what Hamas is doing or has done. Firstly, you cannot accurately describe the conflict without that. You can make any action in a war seem completely inhumane if you omit why it was done and what it reacts to. Secondly, if you want to be objective and separate the action of civilians and its government, it's also important to mention that the number of Palestinians in Gaza who supported attacks against Israeli civilians was much larger than the amount Israelis who supported Netanyahu's government. IIRC about 70% (the polls were done usually after one such attack was committed).
You're also not proposing any solution to the problem with Hamas. I don't think that letting it exist is realistic or even moral, because as long as it does, the Gaza situation will never improve - it is against Hamas' interests to improve relations. It would continue killing both Israeli and in a smaller number Gazan civilians directly, and a much larger number indirectly through deliberately provoking Israel, because that's simply what they do.
You're also using the G word, but I'm not going to react to that because the current, imo rather unfortunate, policy is that using it is fine but reacting to that is forbidden.
This is also what Hamas has been attempting since 2005. Lower intensity, but on and off for almost 20 years now. They launched almost 10k rockets only since the Oct. 7 strike. If Israel didn't have air defense, the result would be very similar over the time period. And like I said, I don't think that just letting that happen would make Israel more moral.
Hamas insurgents have been caught on footage firing an RPG from a hospital entrance. There is a video showing a hospital that IDF forces have taken control of, with weapons in the basement and evidence that hostages were held there (it's in English, so I recommend it).
I don't understand why you insist that Hamas is a source to be trusted. The organization routinely threatens civilians who try to speak out against the regime with extreme violence. This is and has been their MO since 2005; lying without end to the media through the guise of civilians. There are videos showing terrorists dressed in jeans and tshirts carrying a god damn RPG, filmed by the terrorists themselves.
You can believe that Israel isn't handling this war correctly - I don't think there has been a war in Israel's history that was handled correctly - but you need to know the facts from the field instead of relying on the words from an organization that wants nothing more than for global moral panic. Fuel, incubators, and equipment to treat newborn babies are being delivered to Shifa hospital by the initiative of the IDF, Gazans that are cooperating with the army are getting water and safe passage to the south. This is all documented if you go to the IDF's media sites through videos, not through second hand accounts.
There are enough things to criticize Israel for without just blatantly ignoring how they're trying to minimize casualties, even if you feel like they're not doing enough.
Edit: as I wrote this comment the IDF revealed another video from Shifa hospital's MRI ward.
Sorry to jump in, but I think that, yes. If you polled people with "should we kill 10x as many of them in revenge?" you might get the "no" you want (maybe), but that's not how it works in practice. Whenever a disaster happens, democratic leaders are under intense pressure to take action and not so much pressure to stop and think. The bodies get counted later, if at all.
Nope.
(Making a separate thread as to not derail discussion)
I think there are definitely signs that significant pressure is being asserted internationally from normally staunch Israeli allies, presumably including the United States.
I'm going to start removing the arguments about the definition of "genocide". Having it in every single thread about the subject is incredibly tedious, tends to take over the entire discussion, and almost always leads to me needing to lock the thread.
There's also already an active topic devoted specifically to that subject here: https://tildes.net/~misc/1c2x/from_a_scholar_of_genocide_both_israel_and_palestinian_supporters_accuse_the_other_side_of_genocide
Fair enough. I've been avoiding these threads a lot of the time so apologies for resurrecting an old argument.
I don't have a good feeling about the way this is being handled right now. As is, it leaves the claim standing, and makes impossible any rebuttal.
Leaving a link to the thread after the deleted comment is a decent solution.