"Neither can live while the other survives." This is all I can think of. On one hand, Israel has created what many have called an open-air prison. They've brutally cracked down and abused a...
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"Neither can live while the other survives."
This is all I can think of.
On one hand, Israel has created what many have called an open-air prison. They've brutally cracked down and abused a captive population. They trapped themselves in a situation in which anything less than the total annhilation of Gaza means the problem keeps getting worse. They try to help and the aid is used for terror attacks. They try to fight back with half-measures and create more terrorists than they kill.
On the other hand, the Arab population hates Jews. They are completely committed to Jihad and will not stop until all Jews are slaughtered.
As I mentioned, when Israel sends aid, it's immediately misappropriated and used in terror attacks. Hamas even used the water/irrigation pipes sent by the European Union to make rockets which they fired at Israel. In Palestine, there is a "Pay for Slay" policy in place - The Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund essentially pays a pension to anyone who kills Jews in the name of Islam/Palestine.
Clearly the Palestinians have many reasons to be angry and are fighting back the only way they really can. Meanwhile, the Israelis have no real choice either. If they let their guard down even slightly, Hamas will go back to committing hundreds of terror attacks per year within Israel's borders.
I really don't see how this ends with anything other than Palestine being wiped off the map, or Israel being wiped out if the power scales ever shifted drastically somehow. I'm not sharing any judgements in either direction, or rather, I'm judging everyone. While I hope for a more peaceful resolution, I don't see it happening anymore.
Edit: Yes, I am predicting genocide on one scale or another. Whether it's relocation and separation or outright murder, both sides are more than willing to do it at this point.
Edit 2: People seem to think I am taking sides or arguing in favor of violence. I feel I should clarify that I'm not calling for violence or promoting it in any way. I think if Israel and Palestine wanted to, they could negotiate a more peaceful solution. I sincerely hope for that. I'm only predicting that it won't happen in the next couple of decades. I think it'll be the total annihilation of Gaza or another quagmire akin to US involvement in Vietnam and the Middle East.
I'm upvoting your comment because I completely agree with you, but what positive ending do you see here? Both sides are openly calling for genocide and one side really, really means it while the...
I'm upvoting your comment because I completely agree with you, but what positive ending do you see here? Both sides are openly calling for genocide and one side really, really means it while the other side actually has the power to do it. Nevermind that Israel is pissed. Like, post-9/11 America levels of pissed.
Well, I wouldn't say Israel is openly calling for genocide, and while Hamas is, they're not exactly in a position to enact such a thing. Neither is Israel. Genocide isn't just a switch you flip....
Well, I wouldn't say Israel is openly calling for genocide, and while Hamas is, they're not exactly in a position to enact such a thing. Neither is Israel. Genocide isn't just a switch you flip. Gaza alone has 2.2 million Palestinians. It's not like you can just disappear them - is Israel really going to go door to door executing 2.2 million people?
There's a reason Israel withdrew from Gaza to begin with - it's a Gordian knot they can't cut, even allowing for the more evil ideas. In the West Bank, they're going for the more practical method of slowly displacing the residents with settlers, eventually outnumbering them, at which point the job is done. But Gaza is too volatile and violent for that.
All that being said, I think the attack by Hamas has doomed any chance of anything resembling peace, or a two state solution for this century. This attack kills the left (both literally and figuratively, given the demographics of the music festival) in Israel - their policy towards Palestine will be dominated by the conservatives for a long time. Equally, in Gaza, the upcoming reprisal from Israel will cause a new generation hyper-jaded and radicalized against Israel.
The Israeli government may not be calling for it, but interviews with some Israelis remind me of my interactions with right wingers in America after 9/11. Mostly they were saying, "carpet bomb them."
The Israeli government may not be calling for it, but interviews with some Israelis remind me of my interactions with right wingers in America after 9/11. Mostly they were saying, "carpet bomb them."
Exactly. From what I've seen, not necessarily the government, but the people seem to have the exact same foaming-at-the-mouth mindset as Americans (all the way from moderates to right-wingers)...
Exactly. From what I've seen, not necessarily the government, but the people seem to have the exact same foaming-at-the-mouth mindset as Americans (all the way from moderates to right-wingers) from around 2001 to 2008. Which was glass the whole fuckin' middle east, fuck 'em.
Not many governments openly call for genocide. People do all the time though. I feel like that was kind of a given.
Oh, in all but name, that's the general sentiment. People are saying horrific things online and the sec. of defense equates Hamas (and by extension Palestinians) to animals and people cheer. The...
Oh, in all but name, that's the general sentiment. People are saying horrific things online and the sec. of defense equates Hamas (and by extension Palestinians) to animals and people cheer. The government emphasizes that they're going to bring an end to Hamas, that they're going to "change the reality of the situation".
When an Israeli soldier goes into that building and sees people butchered, he won't even entertain the though of peace. But I think that made me realize that it's exactly the same for Gazans; people made orphans for seemingly no reason but the place they were born in would radicalize anyone.
I am terrified that this is going to permanently damage relations with Arab people, even just day to day. It's going to be increasingly dangerous as an Arab to stay surrounded by traumatized, potentially radicalized Israelis. Who's going to help them if they get attacked?
I'm no expert on Israeli domestic politics, but from what I've read I wouldn't be so sure of this. There appears to be at least some level of outrage towards Netanyahu over sabotaging peace...
their policy towards Palestine will be dominated by the conservatives for a long time.
I'm no expert on Israeli domestic politics, but from what I've read I wouldn't be so sure of this.
There appears to be at least some level of outrage towards Netanyahu over sabotaging peace negotiations. E.g. this video where the politician who crossed the aisle to give Netanyahu his government is berated out of a hospital. I don't know if it's widespread, but it's at least not what you'd expect to see in the presence of a strong rally-around-the-flag effect.
Aside from far right nutjobs, nobody in Israel is calling for genocide. Israel has tried multiple times to reach concessions and get to a 2 state solution, but every step of the way the...
Aside from far right nutjobs, nobody in Israel is calling for genocide.
Israel has tried multiple times to reach concessions and get to a 2 state solution, but every step of the way the palastinian leadership has refused any solution that doesn't wipe Israel off the map.
If Israel wanted genocide, do you really think it'd pull out of Gaza? Allow the PA to exist? Hell, Israel literally supplies Gaza with water and electricity.
This isn't a very meaningful statement when "apart from" refers to a minority of the population, and the government consists almost exclusively of "far right nutjobs". Israel has also...
Aside from far right nutjobs, nobody in Israel is calling for genocide.
This isn't a very meaningful statement when "apart from" refers to a minority of the population, and the government consists almost exclusively of "far right nutjobs".
Israel has tried multiple times to reach concessions and get to a 2 state solution, but every step of the way the palastinian leadership has refused any solution that doesn't wipe Israel off the map.
Israel has also systematically tried to prevent a two-state solution with illegal population transfers, encouraging the settlement program (also illegal under international law), generally trying to provoke the Palestinians (e.g. Ariel Shannon), Al-Aqsa shennanigans, etc.
I'm not doubting you by any means, but could you share examples of when Palestine has refused solutions? I ask not because I don't think it's true, but because I know people that are very...
I'm not doubting you by any means, but could you share examples of when Palestine has refused solutions?
I ask not because I don't think it's true, but because I know people that are very pro-Palestine and have denied such claims, ergo I would like some information to present to them :)
Here's a brief history. Basically it's been a non-starter since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2006. Yassar Arafat was really the last chance, before Hamas had fully taken control. Their...
Here's a brief history. Basically it's been a non-starter since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2006.
Yassar Arafat was really the last chance, before Hamas had fully taken control. Their retaliation terror attacks since the peace agreement in 1993 basically killed all the goodwill that had built since then.
The Land For Peace part of UN Resolution 242 comes to mind. This was rejected by Palestine. The Camp David Accords of 1978 were another solution. Also rejected by Palestine. I could go on, but...
The Land For Peace part of UN Resolution 242 comes to mind. This was rejected by Palestine.
I could go on, but those two are the first that immediately spring to mind. Worth noting Palestinian leaders weren't a part of those negotiations, but the proposed outcome of a full Palestinian state and Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, the West Bank and other occupied territories was the same.
If you want more context I'd read about the Six Days War and the 3 No's: No peace with Israel, No negotiation with Israel, No recognition of Israel. That was the result of a summit involving the major powers surrounding Israel after the Six Days War.
Man, that is a broad stroke. I hope you go spend some time in Israel one day and have the opportunity to spend time with some arabs and Palestinians while you're there. I've spend a few months...
On the other hand, the Arab population hates Jews. They are completely committed to Jihad and will not stop until all Jews are slaughtered.
Man, that is a broad stroke. I hope you go spend some time in Israel one day and have the opportunity to spend time with some arabs and Palestinians while you're there. I've spend a few months there in over the last decade and it's not the sentiment I get at all. Last September I attended the wedding of my very good Palestinian friend to her Jewish Israeli husband. People are complex. People are dynamic.
I'm just so sad reading comments like this, particularly at the top of a thread about what is potentially the start of very bloody total war in Gaza. For such a long time Tildes has been a place of patience, mutual respect, measured discussions, and mostly optimism. I've participated in some of the polarization during these events, so I'm to blame as well, but I'm just so so sad to see commentary like this here.
I genuinely don't want any more blood spilled between Palestine and Israel. And of course there are Palestinians who don't hate Jews. But come on, let's at least try to be honest about this. 87%...
I genuinely don't want any more blood spilled between Palestine and Israel. And of course there are Palestinians who don't hate Jews.
I mean, the Palestinians as a whole support Hamas as well, and you can't say that Hamas has ever been shy about hating Jews. Hamas was elected by the people.
I don't think it's fair that you demand optimism from me here. I'm not optimistic for the future of Palestine. You just said yourself this is possibly the start of a very bloody total war. Why would the war be so bloody if Israelis and Palestinians were actually getting along just fine?
I haven't called for violence or said I want war. But I also don't think this is a situation where everyone is secretly just wanting to get along either. I'm not preaching intolerance, I'm just observing it where it already exists in a deeply complicated situation.
is a huge jump to: It's all problematic but you ending with Is also problematic. We don't live in a bubble and we have other examples to draw from. In the case of WW1 we punished the Germans at...
People hate Jews because of the way Jews behave.
is a huge jump to:
They are completely committed to Jihad and will not stop until all Jews are slaughtered
It's all problematic but you ending with
I really don't see how this ends with anything other than Palestine being wiped off the map, or Israel being wiped out if the power scales ever shifted drastically somehow.
Is also problematic. We don't live in a bubble and we have other examples to draw from. In the case of WW1 we punished the Germans at the Treaty of Versailles. We took their land, we destroyed them economically, and we saddled them we an insurmountable debt. Sounds familiar. 20 years of brewing later the Nazi find themselves at the helm of a population that is open revenge and terror on an incredible scale. You can use a similar proxy for what the US did in Afghanistan that cemented the place of the Taliban or in Iraq that caused the rise of ISIS. We know the outcomes of decimating a place and people: radicalization and violence.
We also know what happens when you provide able and adequate support. We took literal Nazis after WW2 and through the financial and resource support of the Marshall Plan made Germany into a progressive world power. We took our greatest enemy, literally the one still used today when you need an unequivocal baddy, and turned them into one of our greatest allies. US tax dollars did that, we literally paid for them to be better off. The same goes for Japan. There are still some vestiges of the truly problematic those regimes believed but by and large they are mitigated and controlled by a happy, stable population.
In Israel, they have had the opportunity to turn this around for decades, to enact a plan that tamps down embitterment and aggression. That provides opportunity and hope. And even now, they can still do that. I agree that this will be a blood bath, but wiping them off the face of the map isn't necessary and I find it odd that we've all decided that it's the only avenue left. There are plenty of non-violent, proven methods for de-escalation. We've had this level of embitterment, racism, and violence before; it's not something we can't undo.
I feel like my comment keeps being taken as "genocide is the only viable option and I don't blame Israel for doing it." What I really meant by my comment was, "Israel has brutally oppressed...
I feel like my comment keeps being taken as "genocide is the only viable option and I don't blame Israel for doing it."
What I really meant by my comment was, "Israel has brutally oppressed Palestine to the point that they became a terrorist state, and now their genuinely horrific terrorist attacks provide the justification needed to wage all-out war on Palestine. Both sides are full of vitriol and hatred, both sides are calling for genocide, and neither side seems like they're willing to talk anymore."
I don't see how this ends other than Palestine ceasing to exist. I see how it could, but I don't see that happening personally. I hope I'm wrong.
I appreciate that, sorry for getting up in arms about it. To me, "Palestine" is already about pretty abstract concept, it isn't a recognized nation and they have wildly different...
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I appreciate that, sorry for getting up in arms about it.
To me, "Palestine" is already about pretty abstract concept, it isn't a recognized nation and they have wildly different lives/freedoms/experiences depending if you're talking about Palestinians in Gaza, West Bank, or living within Israel.
There are still lots of groups talking and trying to find peace, even if it isn't the majority. Usually it's a combination of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. I think the hopelessness that people in Gaza feel is driving their aggression and I think if there were a way to get jobs/education/resourcing into Gaza it was let off pressure. Currently if you live in Gaza you don't even have a passport to travel abroad or look for asylum. Just making that change, giving them some sort of international status would be a huge start.
As long as we keep with the narrative of there is nothing to be done but war, that's the reality we'll live in. There are other options and I think collective pressure could go a long way in making that happen.
No apologies necessary from anyone. This is a tough topic. It's nearly impossible to add enough qualifiers to avoid sounding like a heartless jerk in one direction or the other. I hear you and I...
No apologies necessary from anyone. This is a tough topic. It's nearly impossible to add enough qualifiers to avoid sounding like a heartless jerk in one direction or the other.
I hear you and I think there is something to what you're saying. I am reflecting on this and considering if the hopelessness being discussed is merely an observation or if it also affects the outcome.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I think we're all getting bombarded by inflammatory headlines and hot takes and it's taking a toll. This discussion is hard to have over text based mediums...
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I think we're all getting bombarded by inflammatory headlines and hot takes and it's taking a toll. This discussion is hard to have over text based mediums without context, ability to explain or clarify, or even understand tone. I really appreciate you engaging with me and having the patience to find mutual understanding.
It should be noted that pacification of militaristic societies, like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, could not begin until they were utterly beaten into total submission through overwhelming...
It should be noted that pacification of militaristic societies, like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, could not begin until they were utterly beaten into total submission through overwhelming force—utterly far beyond what the US or Israel has employed in modern history—and at the cost of millions of military and civilian lives—exponential magnitudes greater than the losses suffered by either Palestine or Israel.
It is my hope that modern humanity can devise a strategy that does not require such. But history points otherwise.
You're making it sound like this is up to the victors. It seems like the history of this conflict is all about the Palestinians refusing to admit defeat and continuing to fight on in a way that's...
You're making it sound like this is up to the victors. It seems like the history of this conflict is all about the Palestinians refusing to admit defeat and continuing to fight on in a way that's rather unusual after losing a war? (In part due to outside support for fighting on regardless.)
I think traditionally that might work if it were nation v nation. But it isn't, it's nation v ethnicity. Palestine isn't a recognized nation and they don't have a clear, cohesive government....
I think traditionally that might work if it were nation v nation. But it isn't, it's nation v ethnicity. Palestine isn't a recognized nation and they don't have a clear, cohesive government. Compounding that, they have wildly different lives/freedoms/experiences depending if you're talking about Palestinians in Gaza, West Bank, or living within Israel.
I guess I'd throw the question back to you. What would you do if you lived in a country that passed regulations that target and diminish your economic freedoms. To live in a place where you are a second class citizen. The Palestinians living in Israel who have given up fighting live that reality every day. Many chose that route. But again, they aren't a cohesive nation so factions can continue to be violent.
There may not be "victors" but there is a stable well resourced nation and groups of people living in inflicted destitute conditions. If both parties want peace than the well resourced group needs to step up.
(In part due to outside support for fighting on regardless.)
Personally, I would emigrate to another part of the world as soon as I could, and that goes for living in Israel too. The stories of immigrants resonate more with me, and running from a war zone...
Personally, I would emigrate to another part of the world as soon as I could, and that goes for living in Israel too. The stories of immigrants resonate more with me, and running from a war zone rather than fighting seems more sensible.
Yes, it's impossible now (I assume), but I meant leaving any time in the last several decades, by any route available. But putting ourselves in their shoes is clearly not going to work for making...
Yes, it's impossible now (I assume), but I meant leaving any time in the last several decades, by any route available.
But putting ourselves in their shoes is clearly not going to work for making predictions. If people there thought like me, the birth rate would be zero, because I'd consider it an entirely unsuitable place to raise a family. It's not about what I think.
Israel is not the good guys, but Palestine is definitely the bad guys. That being said, I'm not happy this war is taking place. I've seen footage from the Gaza strip and the people there are just...
Israel is not the good guys, but Palestine is definitely the bad guys.
That being said, I'm not happy this war is taking place. I've seen footage from the Gaza strip and the people there are just trying to live and their world is getting blown up.
Not sure how you can characterize Palestine as the bad guys and then say you feel for average citizens of Gaza. Unless you meant Hamas in which case I see your point. There really are no heroes...
Not sure how you can characterize Palestine as the bad guys and then say you feel for average citizens of Gaza. Unless you meant Hamas in which case I see your point.
There really are no heroes here, at least not in either sides leadership.
I'll be the first one to say I don't know enough to voice an opinion on the matter, but about half of the population of Gaza are underage children and youth. Half of the country have experienced...
Not sure how you can characterize Palestine as the bad guys and then say you feel for average citizens of Gaza.
I'll be the first one to say I don't know enough to voice an opinion on the matter, but about half of the population of Gaza are underage children and youth. Half of the country have experienced three wars in their lifetimes. It's not at all strange to have sympathy for these people.
There are children living in Palestine. I would assume that for adults even if you do not like Hamas and do not like war with Israel you'd be putting yourself in danger by opposing Hamas as a...
There are children living in Palestine. I would assume that for adults even if you do not like Hamas and do not like war with Israel you'd be putting yourself in danger by opposing Hamas as a Palestinian. There are also a lot of terrible people living there that really want to commit genocide against Jews. But Israel can't tell the difference between them when they shoot artillery into Gaza.
That's not the point I was making, but yes you're correct. I was more saying that I don't understand how you can say Palestine is the bad guys when they're the ones being occupied. Of course...
That's not the point I was making, but yes you're correct. I was more saying that I don't understand how you can say Palestine is the bad guys when they're the ones being occupied. Of course resistance to an armed occupation that turns your home into an open air prison is violent, they tried the alternative and got nothing for decades.
I don't disagree that Hamas leadership wants to genocide the Jewish people, that much is true. But remember that Hamas doesn't exist in a vacuum - 'moderate' Palestinians (i.e. people who literally just want to live their lives normally) don't exist in any real sense anymore because any of them with the ability have long since left Gaza.
When you ignore people asking for basic decent concessions, literally just their human rights to not be trampled, for decades, for generations, this is what you get. Israel is the side with all the power here. They chose this.
What do you think the the other choices on the menu were for them, given that the bad blood and distrust of their neighbors goes back to before there was an Israel? Like I agree that we're not in...
Israel is the side with all the power here. They chose this.
What do you think the the other choices on the menu were for them, given that the bad blood and distrust of their neighbors goes back to before there was an Israel?
Like I agree that we're not in a world where Israel made the best possible set of choices they could have. But just because they're militarily advantaged doesn't mean they have "all" the power here. They can't simply warp reality to suit them. The Palestinians have had agency all along as well, and they also chose to continue the violence instead of accepting the existence of Israel as a state.
Sure it's a prisoner's dilemma, but the key thing there is each side in the prisoner's dilemma is choosing not to cooperate. Regardless of everything else, no one side can stand down until both sides stand down. The onus is on both of them, not either one.
I'd really say Hamas has chosen to maintain the suffering because they are refusing to accept the fundamental reality of the situation, which is that Israel exists, Israel militarily outmatches them, and the fact that Gaza is not glassed after a provocation comes down mostly to Israel's own beneficence. Is there a way to make them make a different choice? Probably not. Has Israel made good faith efforts at encouraging a different choice? Definitely not. But I just don't lay the onus of responsibility as squarely in one place. We keep acting like it's an inevitability that the occupied people will resist in the most violent ways available to them but then act like it's not an inevitability that a powerful military will react in the the ways available to them. Are they just supposed to accept that their people should accept a higher rate of victimization by violence to even things out and make it fair?
Israel had any time from the 67 war to the first intifada to bargain in good faith with the Palestinians. Instead they decided to slowly strangle Palestine through settler-colonialism. The maps...
Israel had any time from the 67 war to the first intifada to bargain in good faith with the Palestinians. Instead they decided to slowly strangle Palestine through settler-colonialism. The maps are public record, you can just Google what the west bank and gaza look like today vs. 1967.
The idea that Hamas would be willing to bargain with them is laughable. Would you bargain with a bully that has spent the last 50 years totally promising they're behaving in good faith and undermining you at every step? Again, Hamas is so radical because all of the moderates that just wanted to live their lives and not have their homes stolen are long gone. They already chose their only peaceful option: leave. Hamas has no real options left for a free Palestine left, the only one with even a tiny chance of success is to make Israel totally unliveable through terror. The international community has made it clear they will support Israel no matter how barbaric they are, so the Israeli right wing has no reason to ever concede.
This is a no win situation for average Palestinians and Israelis and I weep for them, but the idea that Palestinians have even one tenth the international support that Israel has is absurd to me. Any incursion into Israel by Egypt or Jordan or Saudi Arabia would be immediately crushed by an international coalition of probably half of Western Europe.
Any realistic solution would require Israel to accept concessions and they will never need to so long as NATO supports them, and Palestinians would need to trust that Israel wouldn't renege immediately (not to mention you'd need to drown out the voices of the Palestinian hardliners because as much as they are allowed to believe that Israel is an illegitimate state it doesn't change the fact that millions already have lived their whole lives in the modern state of Israel and its hardly fair to them to displace them - this would require bringing back the Palestinian diaspora and good luck with that) which would also never happen so long as NATO supports Israel. This is why I put the onus on Israel because they have the backing of the international community nearly wholeheartedly, not to mention in military terms they totally outmatch the Palestinians.
This is simply not true. Arab-nationalist militias of many ideological persuasions began cropping up long before Israel was a thing, basically immediately after the head got cut off the Ottoman...
Again, Hamas is so radical because all of the moderates that just wanted to live their lives and not have their homes stolen are long gone.
This is simply not true. Arab-nationalist militias of many ideological persuasions began cropping up long before Israel was a thing, basically immediately after the head got cut off the Ottoman administration. This wasn't a peaceful people radicalized by Israeli aggression. This was two violent people, one of whom won but not decisively enough to fully consolidate their wins and, consequently, continue duking it out with the foe who doesn't want to accept that it's over and will never have to as long as there's a base of support from international organizations backing them.
Hamas didn't become radical due to Israeli aggression. They were always motivated by an irredentist, eliminationist ideology. They continued from precursor Islamist movements that were themselves motivated by similarly noxious right-wing ideologies. They also weren't the only violent or racist Arab movements. Baathists were also prone to violence and quite racist towards non-Arabs.
The idea that Hamas would be willing to bargain with them is laughable. Would you bargain with a bully that has spent the last 50 years totally promising they're behaving in good faith and undermining you at every step?
If anything, it was Fatah that was undermined to favor Hamas. The Israeli right knows that as long as the terrorism threat remains support for militaristic expansionism will remain. These two groups feed each other. I don't understand the presumption that only one faction has agency here.
Any realistic solution would require Israel to accept concessions and they will never need to so long as NATO
NATO support isn't all that makes Israelis hold back on concessions, worry about car bombings and mass shootings if they loosen their grip at all is.
This is why I put the onus on Israel because they have the backing of the international community nearly wholeheartedly
The international community backs them because the international community doesn't like terrorists. And not even all of the international community does, most of the Muslim world is extremely supportive of Palestine and that's where the resources and financing that keep the insurgency alive come from. The West/NATO aligned world supports Israel. That's different. Even India, up until this latest attack, tended to lean more towards Palestine than Israel in terms of where it directed its sympathies.
Actually I don’t know enough to define a moral gradient. And yes this seems like the natural result to what Israel has done. I will add though that you don’t get a moral pass for killing people...
Actually I don’t know enough to define a moral gradient. And yes this seems like the natural result to what Israel has done. I will add though that you don’t get a moral pass for killing people because you’ve had land stolen from you.
Not a pass, no. And certainly not because their stated goal is the eradication of all Jews, that's just ridiculous. I'm not trying to moralize it here, I'm more pointing out that if you ignore...
Not a pass, no. And certainly not because their stated goal is the eradication of all Jews, that's just ridiculous.
I'm not trying to moralize it here, I'm more pointing out that if you ignore peaceful resistance then violent resistance is all that's left.
I am no terrorism apologist. But, It’s really not fair to boil the situation in Palestine down to people who are simply angry about their people losing their homeland.
I am no terrorism apologist. But, It’s really not fair to boil the situation in Palestine down to people who are simply angry about their people losing their homeland.
What level of responsibility does a people have for the actions of their elected government? Remember, Hamas isn't just some terrorist group that happens to be in Gaza. They're literally the Gazan...
What level of responsibility does a people have for the actions of their elected government? Remember, Hamas isn't just some terrorist group that happens to be in Gaza. They're literally the Gazan government; the Gazan people voted them in,multiple times. Even calling them a terrorist group is really a misnomer. What kind of "terrorist group" can stage a coordinated combined arms invasion, with thousands of fighters, openly under the same banner? That's not a terrorist group, that's a damn army. We just don't like to call Hamas an army because Gaza isn't a recognized independent state, and because no one wants to extend the Geneva convention to Hamas. The Gazans aren't allowed to form a formal military recognized under international law, so their military is labeled a terrorist group.
So again, what responsibility does a people have for their actions of the military and government they repeatedly voted for? And Hamas appears to be quite popular among the Gazan population, polling quite high. It seems the Gazan people effectively voted to declare total war against Israel. They voted for this. They wanted this. And now they'll reap the whirlwind.
Sorry, you think a vote in 2006 (i.e. 17 years ago) means that all the citizens in the Gaza strip back the attack on Israel so it's OK if the Israelis kill lots of people who had nothing to do...
So again, what responsibility does a people have for their actions of the military and government they repeatedly voted for? And Hamas appears to be quite popular among the Gazan population, polling quite high. It seems the Gazan people effectively voted to declare total war against Israel. They voted for this. They wanted this. And now they'll reap the whirlwind.
Sorry, you think a vote in 2006 (i.e. 17 years ago) means that all the citizens in the Gaza strip back the attack on Israel so it's OK if the Israelis kill lots of people who had nothing to do with the attack? the Israeli response to Hamas' attack has already killed more than 1,350 Palestinians (these are Reuters' figures) among them hundreds of children, who with great certainty had no clue that Hamas was planning this attack. If Hamas kills thousands of Israeli civilians, how does killing thousands of Palestinian civilians help?
I could just as well ask if you think it would be justified to start blowing up sewage systems in the US to cause the same proportionate level of devastation in the US as the US did in Iraq, arguing that by voting for Bush all US citizens are directly responsible for all the actions of the US government in that war.
You're trying to pretend Gaza is a state (which is it not) so that you can say, well they declared war on Israel, they've got what is coming to them. I don't think Palestinian civilians deserve to...
You're trying to pretend Gaza is a state (which is it not) so that you can say, well they declared war on Israel, they've got what is coming to them. I don't think Palestinian civilians deserve to be massacred, in the same way that Israeli civilians don't either.
Repeat after me: Gaza is not a state. It does not have any sovereignty or control over its borders. When Israel (as it regularly does) sends bulldozers into Gaza they don't call it a "declaration of war" or an "invasion" they call it an "anti-terrorist operation". Israel does not recognise Hamas as a state actor or a government.
Because Gaza is not a state, this is not a war between states. This is (if we look purely at outcomes) a war between an occupying coloniser and an armed group resisting this. It's much closer to Algeria when it was under French control – not a state (as all state machinery was controlled by France), but wanting to become one.
I don't understand your fetish for "total war" and the good-old fashioned days of wars that we've "forgotten" about, but this is not a WW2 kind of war, or a war between nation states.
Gaza is not a state => Israel cannot declare war on Gaza as a state actor!!!
Whether it is or is not a state seems like a bit of special pleading based on semantics. Like state or not, there is functionally an army doing a military operation. They're not very sophisticated...
Whether it is or is not a state seems like a bit of special pleading based on semantics. Like state or not, there is functionally an army doing a military operation. They're not very sophisticated about it, but the intent is still clear. Counter-insurgencies are still wars they just have to operate on different rules and criteria for success. When Sri Lanka was contesting with the Tamil Tigers, or the government of Colombia was fighting with FARC those were still wars even though one of the belligerents wasn't fully a state.
It does not have any sovereignty or control over its borders.
Suzerainty means you're a state that's dependent on another sovereign entity for your borders and foreign or military policy. They're still distinct states, but they have a strong dependency on a separate country. The Princely States in India under the British Raj are examples of this. Sikkim was another one until they joined the Indian Republic later on.
If an insurgency starts in a territory under your control, then what you are running is a counter insurgency, NOT a war. All the people running around saying "random Palestinians are a valid...
If an insurgency starts in a territory under your control, then what you are running is a counter insurgency, NOT a war. All the people running around saying "random Palestinians are a valid target because they are military infrastructure and we are fighting a war with another country" are high on bath salts or something.
I don't think this sort of semantic hair splitting is all that useful here. What's the practical difference between these two classes of armed groups attempting to use violence to secure strategic...
then what you are running is a counter insurgency, NOT a war.
I don't think this sort of semantic hair splitting is all that useful here. What's the practical difference between these two classes of armed groups attempting to use violence to secure strategic objectives that makes a meaningful difference here? Because I don't think the level of legitimacy and formalism around the belligerent faction's governance structure is something most people care about. We tend to hold sophisticated governance structures (such as organized militaries) to more account because they have the capacity to enforce higher standards. Insurgent groups have less organizational capacity, but they certainly have enough to not cold-bloodedly execute civilian families with no further objective in mind but ticking down the counter on the number of Jews on Earth.
Have you read the comment chain? The original comment made the argument that civilians living in the Gaza strip have what is coming to them, because they chose their 'government' (in 2006, sort...
Have you read the comment chain? The original comment made the argument that civilians living in the Gaza strip have what is coming to them, because they chose their 'government' (in 2006, sort of), their 'government' decided to launch a terrorist attack on Israel, and therefore the Israelis are justified in cutting off water supplies and bombing them to high heaven.
You're now making a totally different argument which is "Hamas is not justified in massacring Israeli civilians" (which is correct but also not a very insightful argument) and is rather orthogonal to what it being discussed in this thread (which is the above, in the previous paragraph).
There's a difference between "they have what is coming to them" and "cutting off water supplies and carper bombing is unjustified." The moral universe of war is inherently one of least worst...
The original comment made the argument that civilians living in the Gaza strip have what is coming to them, because they chose their 'government' (in 2006, sort of), their 'government' decided to launch a terrorist attack on Israel, and therefore the Israelis are justified in cutting off water supplies and bombing them to high heaven.
There's a difference between "they have what is coming to them" and "cutting off water supplies and carper bombing is unjustified."
The moral universe of war is inherently one of least worst options. In general, nobody has that coming to them. (For the most part, not even the guys on the ground do, most soldiers are barely adults.) But "justification" is a messier question of how dirty are you willing to get your hands to secure the strategic outcome. I'd agree with you that I think Israel can find another way besides cutting off access to necessities for life. But I also don't really have the imagination or understanding of the ground realities to understand what the alternative mechanism for fighting a foe like Hamas is since they're so deeply grafted into the institutions that support normal civilian life. They're digging up water-pipes to make improvised rockets, for example. I don't know how someone starves out Hamas without starving out the people.
There are lots of examples of how to run a counter insurgency without killing all the civilians. One important principle of counter-insurgency is to avoid making the local population hate you even...
There are lots of examples of how to run a counter insurgency without killing all the civilians. One important principle of counter-insurgency is to avoid making the local population hate you even more.
Even then, from a deontological position I find it hard see how starving ~2 million people can ever be "justified".
Well fortunately I'm not a deontologist. I subscribe more to the Walzer idea around this which sort of jives with my virtue-centered view on ethics in general. In that sense, I don't trust...
Even then, from a deontological position I find it hard see how starving ~2 million people can ever be "justified".
Well fortunately I'm not a deontologist. I subscribe more to the Walzer idea around this which sort of jives with my virtue-centered view on ethics in general.
In that sense, I don't trust Likudniks at all to exercise appropriate judgement about how much to dirty ones hands or why. But I also don't think it's categorically out of line for even a virtuous person to determine that the hands must be dirtied to some level. But in that case, my argument wouldn't be that the action is bad, it's that the people doing it are sickos who I don't trust to exercise that power prudently.
One important principle of counter-insurgency is to avoid making the local population hate you even more.
I think the ship has sailed on that one unfortunately. I recently read a book about the Comanche called Empire of the Summer Moon and came away feeling rather conflicted. On the one hand of course I wanted to cheer about Comanche resistance to the expanding American empire. But on the other it's hard to look at the Comanche way of life and think it would have been desirable or even justifiable to simply accept a society of raiders for whom a substantial portion of their livelihood involved raiding, raping, and enslaving Americans. Even as those Americans encroached on and occupied "their" land, the accounts of babies being speared at their mothers' breasts are hard to accept. And it was basically for sure that if people hadn't settled on their lands then the borders of the Comanche Empire would have simply extended until they began to encroach on even less contested territory. So what should the USA have done? Obviously there were lots of atrocities committed by the settlers, but the Comanche way of life was simply incompatible with living peacefully with their neighbors (and that included their American Indian neighbors). So then living in peace means one or the other is forced to accept conditions that were, to them, unacceptable. At that point I don't know if a moral calculation is even possible, the sides are simply committed to smashing against each other until one of them falls down. I'm not a categorical foreign policy realist, but in circumstances like this, it's hard to see any other option over the long term.
It seems that way now in Israel. Even Egypt and Jordan have been burned by adopting Palestinian refugees because the population itself is simply too radicalized. The PLO tried to launch a coup and depose the Jordanian government when they allied with them. Even Egypt, which has generally been a staunch defender of the Palestinian cause, seems to be leery of actually admitting any large numbers of Gazan refugees into the country because they're concerned about it inflaming internal tensions by empowering domestic Islamists. Neither of these countries can really seem to normalize relations with Israel because of the relative extremism of even the moderate Palestinian groups, who will rile up opposition among sympathetic Arab groups, Leftist parties, and the Muslim world more broadly.
Deradicalization would be nice, but it also isn't an easy thing to do and is basically impossible to do from the outside. Think about the extreme measures the Allied nations had to take to denazify Germany or make peace with the Empire of Japan. We literally rewrote a Shinto belief (the divinity of the Emperor)! And we had the advantage in the fact that we were a pretty values-driven alliance that didn't make a whole lot of irredentist, nationalist claims on the defeated powers ourselves (in contrast to Israel). I don't think anyone has actually been successful at this sort of deradicalization without having first established total and complete control over the territory and its people. And I'm not even sure it's possible to do in the Muslim world because of how strong non-state religious institutions are and how intertwined they are with political life.
At what point did I say or imply anything about "civilizing" anyone? I said there are mutually antagonistic interests and unless both sides come up with a different option set there's no option...
At what point did I say or imply anything about "civilizing" anyone? I said there are mutually antagonistic interests and unless both sides come up with a different option set there's no option but to fight until one can't fight anymore.
That's just the base reality of how the world works.
Hmm, you are correct. It seems they were only voted in once. Still, the people of Gaza voted for a party that openly in its formal platform included the complete destruction of Israel. But even in...
Hmm, you are correct. It seems they were only voted in once. Still, the people of Gaza voted for a party that openly in its formal platform included the complete destruction of Israel. But even in that case, wouldn't 1930s Germany be an apt comparison? The Nazis never even were elected with a clear majority, but they were elected. And after they took power, they then subverted the democratic process to keep themselves from losing power, including using mass violence. The German people voted them in, and then they failed to throw them out of power using peaceful or violent resistance. And the actions of the Nazis didn't exactly lack a base of popular support. Hamas has only been elected once, but all polls show they're quite popular in Gaza to this day.
Were the German people responsible for the actions of the Nazi party? To me, the Gazans seem to share a similar level of culpability as the broader German population did back in WW2.
Last election was 17 yrs ago, the majority of the people living in that are under 18 yrs old... you should some math....
Hmm, you are correct. It seems they were only voted in once. Still, the people of Gaza voted for a party that openly in its formal platform included the complete destruction of Israel.
Last election was 17 yrs ago, the majority of the people living in that are under 18 yrs old... you should some math....
And yet surveys of Palestinians show that they believe that Islamist groups like Hamas and PIJ are the one who should be leading the fight for independence, and that their rise is the best thing...
And yet surveys of Palestinians show that they believe that Islamist groups like Hamas and PIJ are the one who should be leading the fight for independence, and that their rise is the best thing that has occurred in Palestine since the Nakba.
That being said, this poll did give me more hope than I had before about Palestinian openness to a decline of armed groups, which seems likely to be necessary for any peace negotiations.
Hamas is the one feeding, educating, and housing the population it should be of little to no surprise if those same people look at them with a different lens than people from the outside world do.
And yet surveys of Palestinians show that they believe that Islamist groups like Hamas and PIJ are the one who should be leading the fight for independence
Hamas is the one feeding, educating, and housing the population it should be of little to no surprise if those same people look at them with a different lens than people from the outside world do.
You can't seriously equate the situation Palestinians are in relative to Israel with Nazi Germany, can you? Like... the history there is absolutely not remotely comparable, and even without much...
You can't seriously equate the situation Palestinians are in relative to Israel with Nazi Germany, can you? Like... the history there is absolutely not remotely comparable, and even without much knowledge of that history the recent treatment of Palestinians by Israel should be enough to dissuade such a loaded (and largely inapplicable) comparison.
To be fair, Likudniks and other Right-Wing Israelis have covertly (and sometimes overtly) tipped the scales in Hamas' favor by dismantling or delegitimizing the non-violent resistance movements in...
Still, the people of Gaza voted for a party that openly in its formal platform included the complete destruction of Israel.
To be fair, Likudniks and other Right-Wing Israelis have covertly (and sometimes overtly) tipped the scales in Hamas' favor by dismantling or delegitimizing the non-violent resistance movements in Palestine. They understand that militarizing the dispute by empowering the faction calling for a violent approach advantages them. Moving the dispute into the realm of politics and negotiation advantages the Israeli Left. So the Gazans aren't over there making unbounded choices.
And also by murdering other Israelis working towards peace negotiations.
To be fair, Likudniks and other Right-Wing Israelis have covertly (and sometimes overtly) tipped the scales in Hamas' favor by dismantling or delegitimizing the non-violent resistance movements in Palestine.
And also by murdering other Israelis working towards peace negotiations.
There hasn't been an election in about 17 years You should look up the average age of a a person in Gaza (hint the majority are minors) Any group that is providing aid and protection from what you...
There hasn't been an election in about 17 years
You should look up the average age of a a person in Gaza (hint the majority are minors)
Any group that is providing aid and protection from what you (as a citizen) see as an oppressor is going to be popular.
They voted for this. They wanted this. And now they'll reap the whirlwind.
I think you need to better look at your opinion on this one.
Right the majority are again minors - and children tend to idolize those who they see as protecting them. Hamas for all their faults are the one feeding, educating, and housing these people. While...
The people of Gaza haven't thrown them out of power through protest or violent revolution. And again, most don't want to.
Right the majority are again minors - and children tend to idolize those who they see as protecting them. Hamas for all their faults are the one feeding, educating, and housing these people. While the outside world can look at them objectively it's silly to expect those in their care to do so.
Israel isn't going anywhere; they're a nuclear power. Any attempts to drive Israel away or wipe them out in the last 50 years have been beyond futile.
That's an entirely different discussion, and is incredibly complicated. I don't think there is any benefit from me speaking my opinion on it.
If the Palestinians would simply chill the fuck out and stop trying to kill Israelis, the whole police state would be dismantled in time.
After reading this line of yours I'd suggest maybe you should also maybe refrain from speaking on the subject. It's fine to have an opinion IF it's informed, yours is clearly not. I'd suggest that rather than come out with statements like this take the time to go and educate yourself on the full history of the situation and then even after that maybe choose to simply be compassionate to the PEOPLE and stay out of the geopolitics of it which are way above what you can actually influence.
Imagine if in the next few years Tijuana in Mexico went off the deep end. Imagine they become a breakaway region from the Mexico City government, and the whole population became radicalized.
Again your ignorance is showing here on the history of the region if you think this is even a remotely close example.
How do you have a violent revolution against a violent terrorist movement? Like just logistically how would that work? They're already operating under the table because they're terrorists. So the...
The people of Gaza haven't thrown them out of power through protest or violent revolution. And again, most don't want to.
How do you have a violent revolution against a violent terrorist movement? Like just logistically how would that work? They're already operating under the table because they're terrorists. So the best you'd ever get is rival paramilitary gangs killing each other forever.
BUT the territory itself is basically completely blockaded. The reason Hamas is able to get the weapons and financing to be violent is because they have highly sophisticated links to international terrorist networks. Any anti-Hamas paramilitary will need to make do without those links. Where are they supposed to get their guns and money from? The only people with guns and money to give, and with the means to deliver them, would be the Israelis. But then even if the Israelis wanted to do that, how would they even know they're arming the "good" guys? They can't even send food or medical aid into Gaza without worrying that Hamas will intercept it to empower themselves, how are they gonna send guns?
I've been reading through your comments and I really don't understand how you can describe the deplorable conditions that Palestinians are subjected to but then turn around and act as though their...
I've been reading through your comments and I really don't understand how you can describe the deplorable conditions that Palestinians are subjected to but then turn around and act as though their actions come out of nowhere.
Imagine if in the next few years Tijuana in Mexico went off the deep end. Imagine they become a breakaway region from the Mexico City government, and the whole population became radicalized. Then imagine a terrorist group ran for office on a campaign of retaking stolen Mexican land and managed to win.
Why would that happen?*
It seems like that is the question that's not really being addressed here.
Mate your history teacher really failed you I think. Six million Germans were displaced and had to live in other countries - and live in fear because Germany was forced to take on the blame of...
Yes, Germany did have some legitimate complaints after the Treaty of Versailles. And they were relatively minor
Mate your history teacher really failed you I think.
Six million Germans were displaced and had to live in other countries - and live in fear because Germany was forced to take on the blame of WW1. Overall Germany lost 13% of its territory and 10% of its population (that's not counting all it's colonies).
Germany experienced hyperinflation and mass unemployment, and the populace was largely sent into poverty.
They were forced to import pretty much anything of value and were prevented from really exporting anything of value which kept them under the thumb of the Allies as they weren't able to pay the massive "fines" the Allies put on them (something like 500 billion of today's dollars).
Germany was forced to take the blame for the war (which isn't accurate), and had no say in the Treaty of Versailles.
The Treaty of Versailles ignored much of Wilson's 14 points, largely because France wanted to punish the Germans, and it looked even worse when you saw the Treaty of Lausanne and how it allowed the Turks to renegotiate the terms of a former peace treaty but the allies wouldn't grant that to the Germans.
None of those things are "minor". The Nazis were able to feed into racial resentment and were clearly terrible - however, even if the Nazis hadn't come to power Germany would have ended up in another war (possibly not to the scale of WWII) purely because of how the Treaty of Versailles punished them harshly.
You're original statement was: My reply was to show you that the impact wasn't "relatively minor" especially not to the german population. The impact was incredibly life altering and made it very...
You're original statement was:
Or think 1930s Germany. Yes, Germany did have some legitimate complaints after the Treaty of Versailles. And they were relatively minor, but still the Nazis found a way to whip up conspiracy theories and racial resentment.
My reply was to show you that the impact wasn't "relatively minor" especially not to the german population. The impact was incredibly life altering and made it very easy for a group to come in and via get people to but into many of the crazy ideas the Nazis put out there.
Which front got it worse in WWII doesn't weigh in at all on my point that regardless if the Nazis were the group that got people whipped up or if it was another Germany was primed to end up returning to war because the populace had been (in their minds) unjustly done and their lives massively impacted.
But I've said my view you've said yours - if you still disagree I wish you well as I now go back to my day.
I almost didn't respond to this but I'm actually infuriated that you have the gall to invoke the words of Arthur Harris about this. Really? If anyone here is reaping the whirlwind it's Israel, 15...
They voted for this. They wanted this. And now they'll reap the whirlwind.
I almost didn't respond to this but I'm actually infuriated that you have the gall to invoke the words of Arthur Harris about this. Really? If anyone here is reaping the whirlwind it's Israel, 15 years of the Netanyahu government undermining any attempt at peace and reconciliation is the cause of this mess. Those are the seeds that were sown. Remember that before 1948 Palestine was a land of arabs. I don't disagree with the existence of a Jewish homeland but let's not kid ourselves here. Israel as it was created after the Holocaust was just an outright mistake. It was a colonialist project by Western powers from the start. It's white supremacist to its core.
If this were really Gaza """reaping the whirlwind""" as you so venomously put bombarding innocent children in apartment blocks it would be one thing. But Gaza isn't a state. Gaza is an occupied territory that the Israelis can just decide at the drop of a hat to bombard indiscriminately. There are few words that come to mind to describe the modern Israel/Palestine conflict. One of the most accurate is "apartheid" for a reason.
This /r/AskHistorians thread has a good breakdown of the situation at the time and that doesn't seem accurate. 30% of it was Jewish in 1947, which would mean it was only slightly less Jewish than...
Remember that before 1948 Palestine was a land of arabs.
Palestine was a plural society, not an Arab or Muslim one. It was ruled by Muslims, but those guys were Turks and the only reason they were more local than the Ashkenazi settlers is because they had been there longer.
You seem to be predicting genocide. If that's not what you meant, you might want to rephrase that. I think it makes more sense to stop after "I don't see how this ends." Why would the Palestinian...
You seem to be predicting genocide. If that's not what you meant, you might want to rephrase that.
I think it makes more sense to stop after "I don't see how this ends." Why would the Palestinian conflict end? So far, if you bet that it would continue, off and on, you'd win your bet.
Yes, this is an atrocity, but not every attack counts as genocide. Pearl Harbor wasn't genocide. 9/11 wasn't genocide. The Russian invasion of Ukraine isn't genocide. Hamas doesn't appear to have...
Yes, this is an atrocity, but not every attack counts as genocide.
Pearl Harbor wasn't genocide. 9/11 wasn't genocide. The Russian invasion of Ukraine isn't genocide.
Hamas doesn't appear to have the military capacity for that. Maybe they would if they could? It's a hypothetical.
The forcible relocation and "Russification" of Ukrainian citizens does show certain hallmarks of genocide, according to the Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe. A link to the full document...
Russia has declared that Ukraine does not have a history nor its own culture, and that it is merely a part of Russia. This, coupled with documented abductions and reeducation of Ukrainian children, is tantamount to genocide.
The status of the conflict has nothing to do with whether or not Russia has committed acts of genocide, specifically the forced removal, relocation, and reeducation of Ukrainian children. These...
The status of the conflict has nothing to do with whether or not Russia has committed acts of genocide, specifically the forced removal, relocation, and reeducation of Ukrainian children. These acts are a direct result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, thus I attest that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a form of genocide against the Ukrainian people.
However, this thread has nothing to do with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and I don't feel it appropriate to discuss this further here; just wanted to add a correction. I simply hope that both conflicts are resolved as quickly as possible.
Based on the death count, this is the worst instance of Anti-Jewish killings since the Holocaust. While that alone isn’t irrefutable proof of genocide, you could make a credible argument it was a...
Based on the death count, this is the worst instance of Anti-Jewish killings since the Holocaust. While that alone isn’t irrefutable proof of genocide, you could make a credible argument it was a step toward it.
Maybe we could avoid the terminology dispute by distinguishing between intent to commit genocide and actually succeeding? But intent is a funny thing when there's no hope of succeeding. (Mass...
Maybe we could avoid the terminology dispute by distinguishing between intent to commit genocide and actually succeeding?
But intent is a funny thing when there's no hope of succeeding. (Mass murder of course happened.)
The Gaza Strip is essentially under complete Israeli control, to the extent that the mere fact that Israel seemed caught off guard by the Hamas attack became a major news story. It doesn’t really...
The Gaza Strip is essentially under complete Israeli control, to the extent that the mere fact that Israel seemed caught off guard by the Hamas attack became a major news story. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me, the idea that a persecuted people could “attempt a genocide” against their persecutors in any meaningful sense, even if they would want to.
I'm no expert in this stuff, but it seems like this was a surprise that showed that the Gaza Strip is not under complete control? But otherwise I agree. I would guess that it was a one-day thing...
I'm no expert in this stuff, but it seems like this was a surprise that showed that the Gaza Strip is not under complete control?
But otherwise I agree. I would guess that it was a one-day thing and Hamas probably has limited capacity to do more damage, particularly now that they've lost the advantage of surprise.
What other surprises could there be? What's in the tunnels? I guess we'll find out when Israeli soldiers arrive.
When an attack has no clear military objective, and the group behind it has genocide written as one of its EXPLICITLY WRITTEN goals, I don't see how you can call such an attack on innocent...
When an attack has no clear military objective, and the group behind it has genocide written as one of its EXPLICITLY WRITTEN goals, I don't see how you can call such an attack on innocent civilians anything other than attempted genocide.
Imagine I spend months posting on social media how I have it in for you and I intend to kill you. I post long screeds about how you have it coming, and how I will be justified in my brutal killing of you. I leave a paper trail a mile long establishing clear motive and intent.
Then one night, you wake to a loud crash beside your bed. You find me with a handgun, having tripped, fallen, and hit my head on the wall. I was just feet away from you, with a pistol, but I just happened to trip on something, hit my head, and collapse unconscious to the ground.
Do you think I'm going to get off with anything less than an attempted murder charge? Do you think I'll be charged with just trespassing and maybe unlawful possession of a firearm? Is the DA going to quibble about whether they can really prove I intended to kill you that night? Maybe I was just sneaking into your house so I could show you this cool new handgun I just bought, and I wanted it to be a surprise!
You need to come up with a scenario where nobody, not even yourself*, takes seriously the idea that you’d actually be able to succeed in committing the murder. Like, say, in a fit of passion you...
You need to come up with a scenario where nobody, not even yourself*, takes seriously the idea that you’d actually be able to succeed in committing the murder. Like, say, in a fit of passion you attacked skybrian with true murderous intent but the only weapon you had available to you was a pool noodle and you didn’t know how to use your hands.
I’m not going to discuss this further, because it really is just semantics. But, it’s very offensive to me what you are saying. You literally wrote a lengthy comment elsewhere where you explained how you fully expect Gaza to be ethnically cleansed by Israel. It was literally newsworthy that Hamas could possibly manage to successfully attack Israel without them knowing about it. How are these the people you are seriously accusing of “attempting a genocide”?
* so, if you say got caught in a sting operation literally trying to kill someone with a weapon that’s fake but you think is real and is totally capable of killing people, it’s not the same
Since both sides are openly or semi-openly calling for genocide, yes I predict that will happen. I am obviously of the opinion that they should make peace. Nothing would make me happier than for...
Since both sides are openly or semi-openly calling for genocide, yes I predict that will happen.
I am obviously of the opinion that they should make peace. Nothing would make me happier than for human beings to lay down their arms and commit to working together to share knowledge and culture.
Just not sure I see any other way for this to play out. My solution would be for Israel and the UN/EU to provide aid and try to kickstart Palestine's economy while policing Palestine in the meantime to keep Israel safe from terror attacks. You'd hope for a deradicalization and metamorphosis similar to what Japan experienced after World War 2, but that's what the world has been doing now in Palestine for a long time and it's not working at all. So what's next?
I don't think there are any good guys here personally. And I think the latest attack might kickstart the beginning of the end of Palestine.
This scenario depends on what you think Israel is capable of. Regardless of what some people might say, would they go so far as the deaths of millions as revenge for the deaths of thousands? Yes,...
This scenario depends on what you think Israel is capable of. Regardless of what some people might say, would they go so far as the deaths of millions as revenge for the deaths of thousands? Yes, it’s a war, but that would go far beyond what ordinarily happens during a war.
I’m no Israeli expert, but it doesn’t sound particularly plausible, and I don’t know why you’ve chosen to focus on this particular dark scenario over others.
It seems hard to predict at what point Israel’s revenge will stop, though.
I think you’re right that some kinds of atrocities could very well happen. Aren’t they already starting? But the specifics don’t seem particularly realistic. Why imagine Egyptian soldiers mowing...
I think you’re right that some kinds of atrocities could very well happen. Aren’t they already starting?
But the specifics don’t seem particularly realistic. Why imagine Egyptian soldiers mowing down people with machine guns when that border is already closed? They don’t need to do anything.
It seems like there are many scenarios. Most of them are terrible, but there’s no particular reason to focus on the worst ones.
Walls only work if you protect them, otherwise they will fall, and fall quickly. This exact scenario happened when the Berlin wall fell: through a small but serious miscommunication from a high...
Why imagine Egyptian soldiers mowing down people with machine guns when that border is already closed?
Walls only work if you protect them, otherwise they will fall, and fall quickly.
This exact scenario happened when the Berlin wall fell: through a small but serious miscommunication from a high government official, thousand of people from east Berlin came to the checkpoints to west Berlin demanding from the east German border guards to be let through. The border guards only options where to open fire or let the people out. Remember, the Berlin wall was a serious piece of fortification, you couldn't just walk through or over it. But within 6 hours it went from looking like this, to looking like this.
The demographic trends actually point the other way, with Israel shrinking in population until it no longer has the manpower to maintain the posture of never-ending vigilance and military...
I really don't see how this ends with anything other than Palestine being wiped off the map.
The demographic trends actually point the other way, with Israel shrinking in population until it no longer has the manpower to maintain the posture of never-ending vigilance and military readiness necessary to sustain the status quo. So once that dam breaks. . .
Is Israel shrinking? Wikipedia tells me in 2023 they had 2.9 births/woman which I think would be the highest fertility rate in the West by a fair margin. Not sure how long that has been the case...
Is Israel shrinking?
Wikipedia tells me in 2023 they had 2.9 births/woman which I think would be the highest fertility rate in the West by a fair margin. Not sure how long that has been the case however.
Israel's annual population growth rate stood at 2.0% in 2015, more than three times faster than the OECD average of around 0.6%.[5] With an average of three children per woman, Israel also has the highest fertility rate in the OECD by a considerable margin and much higher than the OECD average of 1.7.[6]
The real issue for Israel is that really a vast amount of this increase is down to Haredi Jews who have a fertility rate of 6.6 (children/woman). There is already a lot of hate between non-Haredi...
The real issue for Israel is that really a vast amount of this increase is down to Haredi Jews who have a fertility rate of 6.6 (children/woman). There is already a lot of hate between non-Haredi and Haredi Jews (an Israeli friend tells me that you wouldn't be able to print most of what the secular Israeli press prints about the Haredi in the UK without falling foul of hate speech legislation), mostly due to the fact that Haredi Jews tend not to work (fewer than half of Haredi Jews ever enter the labour force in Israel) and go to Torah school for which they receive state subsidy.
A big increase in a population who are incredibly insular, who don't want to study maths/English, don't who want to perform any labour is very bad news for Israel. They also don't want to serve in the military. Current projections suggest that 1/2 Jewish Israelis will be Haredi by 2065. It's also problematic for Israels reputation as more democratic, and less religiously fanatic – Haredi leaders (and also a lot of Haredi Jews) aren't big on women's rights and are very conservative.
How good are they at retaining that conservatism among subsequent generations? Like we have these hard fundamentalist movements with much higher fertility in the US, but despite the higher...
Current projections suggest that 1/2 Jewish Israelis will be Haredi by 2065. It's also problematic for Israels reputation as more democratic, and less religiously fanatic – Haredi leaders (and also a lot of Haredi Jews) aren't big on women's rights and are very conservative.
How good are they at retaining that conservatism among subsequent generations?
Like we have these hard fundamentalist movements with much higher fertility in the US, but despite the higher fertility they don't really grow out of proportion because their kids don't stay ultra-conservative. They tend to either soften up or defect from that sort of life entirely.
Granted, most of those kids are still going to public schools in the US, and being inculcated into general societal values as a result. If the Haredi Jews aren't doing that maybe that stops that cross-pollination.
Very interesting, thanks for the context. Pretty crazy when the figures I find for today put them at around 13% of the population. I'm assuming these are napkin projections that assume everyone...
Very interesting, thanks for the context.
Current projections suggest that 1/2 Jewish Israelis will be Haredi by 2065.
Pretty crazy when the figures I find for today put them at around 13% of the population. I'm assuming these are napkin projections that assume everyone born into a Haredi family remains following the Haredi way of life? Is that really an accurate assumption?
The data I know of came from The Economist. They are well known for being incredibly secluded – e.g. if you marry outside the community people stop talking to you, if you leave nobody will speak...
Pretty crazy when the figures I find for today put them at around 13% of the population.
I'm assuming these are napkin projections that assume everyone born into a Haredi family remains following the Haredi way of life? Is that really an accurate assumption?
They are well known for being incredibly secluded – e.g. if you marry outside the community people stop talking to you, if you leave nobody will speak to you. Haredi Jews often can't speak English, don't have any (non-religious) education, so it's really tough for them to leave.
It's pretty common knowledge that orthodox Jews don't fight in the army. They instead tell others to fight for their religious rights. When I went to Israel in 2014 on my Birthright trip, that was...
It's pretty common knowledge that orthodox Jews don't fight in the army. They instead tell others to fight for their religious rights.
When I went to Israel in 2014 on my Birthright trip, that was the summer the three Israeli boys went missing and were found dead in the West Bank. The Orthodox Jews were calling for the heads of the Palestinians then, while also refusing to actually fight.
They're the biggest problem Israel faces with respect to the majority secular Israelis who want to just live their lives in peace and want everyone to have equal rights. They don't work, they don't assimilate into the rest of Israeli life and they are the biggest warmongers there are in the country.
I think the comparison wouldn't be against OECD countries but between Arab Israelis and Palestinians against Jewish Israelis. Once that demographic tilts the balance of power will too. But I just...
I think the comparison wouldn't be against OECD countries but between Arab Israelis and Palestinians against Jewish Israelis. Once that demographic tilts the balance of power will too.
But I just looked it over and it seems the fertility gap between Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis has basically equalized as of the last few years, due to improving living conditions and opportunities for Arab Israelis and persistently high fertility among ultra-orthodox Jews. So that's good news for equilibrium there assuming the right wingers don't cause other problems.
And as Biden quite famously(infamously?) said during his time as vice president, "If Israel didn't exist, we'd have to invent it". Ignoring any morale angle to the entire conflict, strategically,...
And as Biden quite famously(infamously?) said during his time as vice president, "If Israel didn't exist, we'd have to invent it".
Ignoring any morale angle to the entire conflict, strategically, israel is extremely valuable to its allies in a region without many others alternatives, and so even though there are issues like the demographic trend, I'm not sure how much strategic influences can stem that tide.
Israel has a growing population, so I don't know what you're on about. Even if Gaza has triple Israel's population, do you really think it matters? Modern bombs and rifles could easily kill waves...
Israel has a growing population, so I don't know what you're on about.
Even if Gaza has triple Israel's population, do you really think it matters? Modern bombs and rifles could easily kill waves of people, if they try to "flood" the borders as you suggest.
If anything, I'd expect the population in Gaza to reduce over time, but they must be having a blast over there seeing how many babies they're having.
Israel has two choices; aim to create a two state solution, cease all colonization efforts, leave the land they seized. Or second option is work to create a unified state that grants Palestinians...
Israel has two choices; aim to create a two state solution, cease all colonization efforts, leave the land they seized. Or second option is work to create a unified state that grants Palestinians the same rights as Israelis (including right of return) and incorporates them into a single society that isn't divided on lines of ethnicity and religion. It would be the end of a jewish/zionist state, but that region has never truly been a completely jewish region, to treat it as such is what causes these problems.
The latter is now the more realistic option, as Netanyahu and other hardliners have screwed things up so bad there's no real way for a two-state solution any longer.
Palestine ob the other hand, has no power, and thus no choice. It's not really a state in any meaningful sense. Israel has all the economic, military and territorial control. It's their responsibility to create a context in which true integration can occur, not genocide.
I think the latter is missing the critical middle step. People talk about it: Current open-air prison situation where both sides resent the other, and the Palestinian side has proclaimed and...
I think the latter is missing the critical middle step. People talk about it:
Current open-air prison situation where both sides resent the other, and the Palestinian side has proclaimed and demonstrated its desire for genocide
?????
Single unified society
The immediate step after integration would be rife with mass violence. It would be horrific and unacceptable to the Israeli electorate. Palestine does have power through its Arab and Iranian allies/benefactors and international sympathizers. It also has the responsibility to socioculturally accept coexistence with Jews as a first step toward any integration. It's politically impossible for Israeli to unilaterally initiate an integration process that would result in tens or hundreds of thousands of Israeli deaths.
It should be noted that though Rwanda is in a relatively good state now, the Rwanda genocide was ended brutally. The Tutsi rebels captured the capital, and a million Hutus fled to neighboring countries (and started international conflicts and insurgencies there, resulting in millions more deaths). The new government then conducted the mass arrest and incarceration of Hutus who perpetrated or sympathized with the genocide, and then carried out a mass reconciliation and rehabilitation process.
There are no good options here, I share the top commenter's fatalism. To move forward in Gaza you need to start with, at an extremely bare minimum, to make it habitable by a) distributing aid and...
?????
There are no good options here, I share the top commenter's fatalism. To move forward in Gaza you need to start with, at an extremely bare minimum, to make it habitable by a) distributing aid and b) not bombing it.
Hamas desires war with Israel, I think that's pretty clear. Last weekend's events were intended to provoke a strong response. So they do their utmost to make the above goals impossible. They capture any foreign aid that manages to arrive and use it to kill Israelis and/or barter for power and popularity. They conduct operations and store weapons in schools and mosques so that Israel is forced to strike them.
The two groups seem to want to try and kill each other rather than try and move forward with any solution, so I'm not sure how it's even possible to break that cycle.
Extremists on both sides sabotage any progress at peace, sometimes resorting to assassinations of their countrymen. There's also demographic destiny: religious extremists literally outbreed the...
Extremists on both sides sabotage any progress at peace, sometimes resorting to assassinations of their countrymen.
There's also demographic destiny: religious extremists literally outbreed the religiously moderate and secular, and in Israel the Haredim get to enjoy the rights and privileges of citizenship (defense, welfare, suffrage) with none of the responsibilities (military service, paying taxes, contributing to the economy).
This is a bug in democracy, and there's little way for Israel to democratically correct this.
First step would be; stop indiscriminately bombing children. Israel needs to stop and never do this again, that's the first step until they commit to that and give up on apartheid nothing else...
First step would be; stop indiscriminately bombing children. Israel needs to stop and never do this again, that's the first step until they commit to that and give up on apartheid nothing else will be possible.
Palestine has no power, to assert it does is a lie. The people in Gaza especially are completely blockaded. Within a day Israel was able to completely cut off water, food and fuel. Hospitals are now running on fumes and will soon be mass graves. Try and tell me with a straight face that Palestine has the power to do that to Israel. There is no comparison here. Israel has the power and the responsibility to take steps to resolves this and to cease conflating civilians with Hamas terrorists.
Gaza has the power of chilling out. They cannot win and they need to simply accept that. Refusal to accept their fate as a vassal state of Israel is the reason their lives are hell. The US has...
Gaza has the power of chilling out. They cannot win and they need to simply accept that. Refusal to accept their fate as a vassal state of Israel is the reason their lives are hell. The US has many states which have very different goals and laws, but it works because they aren't trying to fucking murder each other constantly. Gaza could exist as a region of Israel, bound to their laws but able to live their lives. The citizens would be able to migrate and mingle. It is the absolute hatred in Gaza that keeps them locked in as any amount of reduction in restrictions leads to them commiting murders. You simply can't have a peaceful relationship with a people hell bent on murder, and Gaza will never be an independent state as long as Israel exists.
Do you think if at the very least all Israeli settlers left the West Bank, and the Yesha Council was outlawed, it would really lead to immediate and widespread violence? If these things happened...
Do you think if at the very least all Israeli settlers left the West Bank, and the Yesha Council was outlawed, it would really lead to immediate and widespread violence? If these things happened in, say, 2010, do you think tensions today would be higher or lower?
I love the idea but I don't believe that Hamas and the Palestinians would ever, ever allow this to happen. You have to understand that they hate Jews, and why wouldn't they? But even if you...
I love the idea but I don't believe that Hamas and the Palestinians would ever, ever allow this to happen.
You have to understand that they hate Jews, and why wouldn't they? But even if you sympathize with them, even if you straight up agree with them, you can understand why Israel can never integrate them. Can you begin to imagine the century of car bombs and mass shootings that would follow?
This is a holy war and while the Israelis may be willing to make some concessions, the Palestinians as a whole absolutely will not at this point.
We wouldn't know, Israel has done nothing but brutalize the people of Gaza, literally half of the population there are under 18. Israel has the power to determine this, not Palestine. There is no...
We wouldn't know, Israel has done nothing but brutalize the people of Gaza, literally half of the population there are under 18. Israel has the power to determine this, not Palestine. There is no genetic disposition among Palestinians that makes them hate jews.
I think this is a poor use case of an exemplary comment. This dichotomy with a binary mindset and expectations of no in-between possibilities is always perplexing to see.
I think this is a poor use case of an exemplary comment. This dichotomy with a binary mindset and expectations of no in-between possibilities is always perplexing to see.
Most of the 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip have no electricity and no water. And, with hundreds of Israeli strikes raining down on their tiny enclave, they have nowhere to run.
The Palestinian territory, one of the most crowded places on Earth, has been under siege since Saturday in a near-constant bombardment that Gazan health officials say has killed more than 1,000 people. The blitz is retaliation for a devastating attack on Israel by Gaza's ruling group Hamas which the Israeli military says killed more than 1,200 people.
Gaza's sole power station, which had been working intermittently for days, cut out on Wednesday after running out of fuel. Without power, water can't be pumped into houses. At night there's nearly total darkness punctuated by fireballs and the pin-pricks of light from phones used as flashlights.
"I lived through all the wars and incursions in the past, but I have never witnessed anything worse than this war," said Yamen Hamad, 35, a father-of-four, whose home had been destroyed by Israeli strikes on the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.
With the strip's only other border, to Egypt, blocked by Egyptian authorities, the people said they were trapped. They feared the worst was yet to come, including a possible ground invasion, as Israel seeks retribution for the deadliest Palestinian militant attack in the country's 75-year history.
The solution seems fairly simple to me Israel is going after Hamas, big time. If you believe the headlines, trying to finish it off for real this time. So, as a Gazan, you have to decide which one...
The solution seems fairly simple to me
Israel is going after Hamas, big time. If you believe the headlines, trying to finish it off for real this time.
So, as a Gazan, you have to decide which one is more important to you, keeping your terrorist overloads in power and die in the name of Jihad, or renounce Hamas and help Israel remove it from power.
As the situation stands, any resources pumped into Gaza is only going to serve Hamas' efforts and will only serve to keep them in power. If a new peaceful group rises from the people seeking a true hope and change for the Palestinian people rises, I am sure everyone will help them and aid their efforts.
But historically the People in Gaza have chosen terrorism and hate over peace and quiet. And so I'm afraid they might have to suffer for their chosen leadership's choices.
The murder of innocent civilians is terrible, but unfortunately it's the only time anyone seems to pay any attention to Palestine. Need I remind you Israel has murdered many more innocent...
The murder of innocent civilians is terrible, but unfortunately it's the only time anyone seems to pay any attention to Palestine. Need I remind you Israel has murdered many more innocent Palestinian civilians.
The international community doesn't care about Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank, nor does it care about the open air prison of Gaza, people only seem to care when Israeli's are killed.
I don't think it is fair to draw a moral equivalency there by reducing it to the number of deaths. The intention and context does also matter. When Hamas targets Israel they deliberately target...
I don't think it is fair to draw a moral equivalency there by reducing it to the number of deaths. The intention and context does also matter. When Hamas targets Israel they deliberately target civilians. Either by firing missiles at a civilian population or infiltrating and personally murdering, raping and kidnapping women, men, kids and the elderly. They then deliberately store munitions, launchers and militants in schools, hospitals and hearts of neighborhoods. When Israel targets Hamas they go after these militants and munitions, not the civilians. The civilians are collateral damage not the target and they are put in that danger by the Hamas.
The international community doesn't care about Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank
What war crimes does the international community care about? Because it's sure as hell not China's, Saudi Arabia's, Yemen's, North Korea's or even US's. I would argue that out of all of them, Israel-Palestine is the thing the international community cares about the most.
The context and intention doesn't matter to the dead innocents. Israel are bombing the area with a disregard for human life, how many civilian deaths are justified per Hamas soldier? When Israel...
The context and intention doesn't matter to the dead innocents. Israel are bombing the area with a disregard for human life, how many civilian deaths are justified per Hamas soldier? When Israel cut the supply of electricity and water to a population of 2 million, that's also okay because some of them are Hamas?
Does a line even exist for you? If Israel starts intentionally targeting hospitals, is it still justified?
Edit: 5 days after commenting this and Israel bombs a hospital...
I agree, Israel should not have cut food water and electricity supply to Gaza. Full stop. Again, Israel is targeting munitions, launchers and militants who are hiding in the heart of civilian...
I agree, Israel should not have cut food water and electricity supply to Gaza. Full stop.
Again, Israel is targeting munitions, launchers and militants who are hiding in the heart of civilian population deliberately. What would you have them do? Accept attacks on their country because the launches are placed in a school? Is Israel ever justified in defending itself to you?
Israel bombed a refugee camp the other day, clearly it's not surgically attacking Hamas infrastructure. There's also reports of the use of white phosphorous. I can support Israel fighting Hamas...
Israel bombed a refugee camp the other day, clearly it's not surgically attacking Hamas infrastructure. There's also reports of the use of white phosphorous.
I can support Israel fighting Hamas militants on their soil, I don't support the bombing of Gaza. This may appear short sighted, but even if Gaza is levelled Hamas won't disappear.
I frequently see the argument that Hamas actions are counterintuitive and will only lead to more bloodshed. Is the same not true for Israel's actions? Will bombing Gaza not also inflame even more revolutionaries? Why do we pretend this will be some tactical operation, where Hamas disappears and Israel no longer faces a terrorist threat?
What is Palestine supposed to do in response to Israeli settlement in the West Bank? I don't think viral Tiktok dances are going to stop the Israeli government.
I think it's difficult for me to conceptualize Israel's actions as self defense knowing that the West Bank is being actively occupied. It's viewed as self defense because of the recent actions of Hamas.
To add to the difference in approach to civilian casualties, the IDF have apparently been practicing -when appropriate- "roof knocking", where they drop undersized or inert bombs on civilian...
To add to the difference in approach to civilian casualties, the IDF have apparently been practicing -when appropriate- "roof knocking", where they drop undersized or inert bombs on civilian buildings before they level the building 15 minutes later. To give civilians a chance to bugger out. They're expending military resources to give civilians a chance, and in doing so the enemy has a chance to get their people and some of their stuff out as well.
The degree and kind of disregard for human life is not the same on both sides here.
Airstrikes have already been wider than in the past, and the army has abandoned engagement rules like “roof knocks,” a tactic by which the Israeli air force delivers warnings by firing nonexplosive or low yield devices on buildings before destroying them.
There was at least one recent event where they did that, afaict. Not going to link reddit's main wartime gore subreddit, but an apartment building in the backdrop of a news reporter was hit by a...
There was at least one recent event where they did that, afaict. Not going to link reddit's main wartime gore subreddit, but an apartment building in the backdrop of a news reporter was hit by a big firecracker and was later completely leveled. I guess a better source for that event is the WP article that I linked, which talks about it too. Apparently that was the very early days of the recent conflict, so might well be they abandoned those ROE since.
I don’t know what you’re expecting. We are effectively only observers. (Yes, the US government strongly backs Israel, but when do we get a chance to vote on that?) It’s horrific, but I see no...
I don’t know what you’re expecting. We are effectively only observers. (Yes, the US government strongly backs Israel, but when do we get a chance to vote on that?)
It’s horrific, but I see no point in the average person beating themselves up over it. It would be unhealthy, unproductive doomscrolling.
You can essentially use this line of reasoning for any political issue, by this logic we're observers to climate change too. We can start by not branding anyone who is sympathetic to the...
You can essentially use this line of reasoning for any political issue, by this logic we're observers to climate change too.
We can start by not branding anyone who is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause as a terrorist sympathizer.
I think it’s largely true of climate change too. There are some things you can do personally, but individual action won’t move the needle. Preparing for more extreme weather events seems realistic...
I think it’s largely true of climate change too. There are some things you can do personally, but individual action won’t move the needle. Preparing for more extreme weather events seems realistic and sensible.
The world is a lot bigger than us. It’s healthy to have a realistic understanding of what you can do. We can support people who are doing good things.
With respect to the Palestinian issue, who or what should we support? There don’t seem to be any good options.
Do you know what the worst thing really is to this? I don't think it's a shoulder shrug at all, I think we're all just collectively too fucked to recognise how awful it is. I think if you asked...
The international community doesn't care about Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank, nor does it care about the open air prison of Gaza, people only seem to care when Israeli's are killed.
Do you know what the worst thing really is to this?
I don't think it's a shoulder shrug at all, I think we're all just collectively too fucked to recognise how awful it is. I think if you asked the average person, doing their 9-5 grind? They'd tell you "It sucks, but what can I do?"
So few of us have any power to really change systems, or help those who need it.
I think it's more insidious than that when major news outlets report "dead Palestinians" vs "killed/murdered Israelis". We are being conditioned to accept a narrative, it's manufactured consent....
I think it's more insidious than that when major news outlets report "dead Palestinians" vs "killed/murdered Israelis". We are being conditioned to accept a narrative, it's manufactured consent.
Have a look at this NYT article (archive link) that I was made aware of through a reddit thread.
No modern government — not even the world’s most brutal, like those in Russia or North Korea — has used hostages in this way: as human shields, under threat of public execution.
The IDF themselves used human shields per their own admission, and what is this comparison to Russia and North Korea? Why would North Korea be using Human Shields? Who are they actively fighting?
Both sides know that Israel is on the verge of a full-scale invasion of Gaza, intended to destroy Hamas and prevent future attacks. Israelis seem largely united behind this goal, despite their political divisions: Hamas’s attacks have killed at least 1,200 Israelis — relative to population size, the equivalent of around 44,000 Americans.
What the fuck is this? Population adjusted death tolls? I guess 1,200 dead Israelis are equivalent to 186,000 dead Indians? I never see Palestinian deaths getting population adjusted.
I really feel terrible for the deaths of innocents on both sides, I think the fools celebrating Hamas atrocities are awful people, but we can't pretend that Israel has some moral high ground and I refuse to entertain the idea.
You're right. Honestly (and I've said this everytime), the entire situation is shameful, full of sorrow and such a waste of human lives on both sides. War just sucks. I get all the reasons, all...
I really feel terrible for the deaths of innocents on both sides, I think the fools celebrating Hamas atrocities are awful people, but we can't pretend that Israel has some moral high ground and I refuse to entertain the idea.
You're right. Honestly (and I've said this everytime), the entire situation is shameful, full of sorrow and such a waste of human lives on both sides.
War just sucks. I get all the reasons, all the logic, all the rationalising, all the emotive responses. But it still absolutely sucks.
Although the real data is still just as horrific, I believe the source above groups together civilian and non-civilian casualties, and is also slightly out of date.
Although the real data is still just as horrific, I believe the source above groups together civilian and non-civilian casualties, and is also slightly out of date.
I think you need to look again. Hamas exists because of how Israel treated the Palestinians. They have been pushed and rolled over and neglected. We're in this situation thanks to Israel, they...
But historically
I think you need to look again.
Hamas exists because of how Israel treated the Palestinians.
They have been pushed and rolled over and neglected.
We're in this situation thanks to Israel, they starved and beat a dog and now the dog needs to be put down because it bit it's owner.
Telling them they have to lean to roll over is obtuse as it gets
I'm not sure how this is practical – are you recommending that civilians in Gaza should actively try to fight Hamas, reveal the locations of its fighters, despite the risk that Hamas will...
I'm not sure how this is practical – are you recommending that civilians in Gaza should actively try to fight Hamas, reveal the locations of its fighters, despite the risk that Hamas will torture/execute them if they do?
If a new peaceful group rises from the people seeking a true hope and change for the Palestinian people rises, I am sure everyone will help them and aid their efforts.
I think I am a bit more cynical than you on this one.
But historically the People in Gaza have chosen terrorism and hate over peace and quiet. And so I'm afraid they might have to suffer for their chosen leadership's choices.
I think this is a really tough position to argue – do you also believe that all US citizens are responsible for the Iraq war, and it would therefore be justified to dismantle every sewage system in the US in order to cause a similar level of excess deaths in the US as there were in Iraq?
In a single village they have deliberately slaughtered 40 kids along with their parents. Babies with their heads cut off. A friend who was at the music festival that got attacked told me they...
In a single village they have deliberately slaughtered 40 kids along with their parents. Babies with their heads cut off.
A friend who was at the music festival that got attacked told me they gathered people up in a big circle and just machine-gunned them.
I know we're used to hear about violence and in some ways are desensitized to it, but let this really sink in.
I don't know any country that would sit on their hands and accept it.
I agree that violence isn't the answer and fear the deaths that are to come. I hate this fucking country and the amount of suffering they're inflicting on one another.
There has never been any confirmation, video proof or elaboration on this. It was said by a live reporter on Israeli television as something one of the soldiers told her, and then Israeli military...
In a single village they have deliberately slaughtered 40 kids along with their parents. Babies with their heads cut off.
There has never been any confirmation, video proof or elaboration on this. It was said by a live reporter on Israeli television as something one of the soldiers told her, and then Israeli military straight up told that they don't have any reports of 40 beheaded babies. But it sure does make a nice headline.
There is now confirmation. The images are also floating around on the internet now, I recommend avoiding them. I don’t understand why people thought the reporters were lying about this? Hamas...
The Jerusalem Post can now confirm based on verified photos of the bodies that the reports of babies being burnt and decapitated in Hamas's assault on Kfar Aza are correct.
The images are also floating around on the internet now, I recommend avoiding them.
I don’t understand why people thought the reporters were lying about this? Hamas already looks terrible here, there is no need for exaggeration to make them look worse.
To be honest I sort of assumed if it wasn't the case it would have been a game of telephone from garbled grammar under stress. Something like "They killed and beheaded them. Women and children...
I don’t understand why people thought the reporters were lying about this?
To be honest I sort of assumed if it wasn't the case it would have been a game of telephone from garbled grammar under stress. Something like "They killed and beheaded them. Women and children too." And from it not being clear what verb is referring to what object it's easy to interpret it multiple ways, the most lurid interpretation has legs and gets boosted through social media since, apparently, nobody confirms things before going to print anymore.
No, the reporter had witnessed it herself. What would you have them do, post videos of their beheaded babies online? Are you equally skeptical about the reported Palestinian death toll? But fine,...
No, the reporter had witnessed it herself. What would you have them do, post videos of their beheaded babies online? Are you equally skeptical about the reported Palestinian death toll?
But fine, how about this headline?
I don't know if the baby thing has been confirmed, but it doesn't really matter, Hamas would've totally done that. They raped and tortured their way through the south, and I'm sure there's...
I don't know if the baby thing has been confirmed, but it doesn't really matter, Hamas would've totally done that. They raped and tortured their way through the south, and I'm sure there's hundreds of bone chilling stories that are going to come out of this, like in Bucha.
But it doesn't change the fact that 300,000 Gazans have been displaced, or that food and medicine can no longer enter the strip, or that Israel is openly not adhering to the rules of war. Yes, Hamas attacks from schools and hospitals, and yes they use human shields, so civilian casualties will be higher. But this is different. Israel is indiscriminately bombing dense urban centres, without a single care of any innocent civilian casualties.
"Neither can live while the other survives."
This is all I can think of.
On one hand, Israel has created what many have called an open-air prison. They've brutally cracked down and abused a captive population. They trapped themselves in a situation in which anything less than the total annhilation of Gaza means the problem keeps getting worse. They try to help and the aid is used for terror attacks. They try to fight back with half-measures and create more terrorists than they kill.
On the other hand, the Arab population hates Jews. They are completely committed to Jihad and will not stop until all Jews are slaughtered.
As I mentioned, when Israel sends aid, it's immediately misappropriated and used in terror attacks. Hamas even used the water/irrigation pipes sent by the European Union to make rockets which they fired at Israel. In Palestine, there is a "Pay for Slay" policy in place - The Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund essentially pays a pension to anyone who kills Jews in the name of Islam/Palestine.
Clearly the Palestinians have many reasons to be angry and are fighting back the only way they really can. Meanwhile, the Israelis have no real choice either. If they let their guard down even slightly, Hamas will go back to committing hundreds of terror attacks per year within Israel's borders.
I really don't see how this ends with anything other than Palestine being wiped off the map, or Israel being wiped out if the power scales ever shifted drastically somehow. I'm not sharing any judgements in either direction, or rather, I'm judging everyone. While I hope for a more peaceful resolution, I don't see it happening anymore.
Edit: Yes, I am predicting genocide on one scale or another. Whether it's relocation and separation or outright murder, both sides are more than willing to do it at this point.
Edit 2: People seem to think I am taking sides or arguing in favor of violence. I feel I should clarify that I'm not calling for violence or promoting it in any way. I think if Israel and Palestine wanted to, they could negotiate a more peaceful solution. I sincerely hope for that. I'm only predicting that it won't happen in the next couple of decades. I think it'll be the total annihilation of Gaza or another quagmire akin to US involvement in Vietnam and the Middle East.
This is dangerously fatalistic.
I'm upvoting your comment because I completely agree with you, but what positive ending do you see here? Both sides are openly calling for genocide and one side really, really means it while the other side actually has the power to do it. Nevermind that Israel is pissed. Like, post-9/11 America levels of pissed.
Well, I wouldn't say Israel is openly calling for genocide, and while Hamas is, they're not exactly in a position to enact such a thing. Neither is Israel. Genocide isn't just a switch you flip. Gaza alone has 2.2 million Palestinians. It's not like you can just disappear them - is Israel really going to go door to door executing 2.2 million people?
There's a reason Israel withdrew from Gaza to begin with - it's a Gordian knot they can't cut, even allowing for the more evil ideas. In the West Bank, they're going for the more practical method of slowly displacing the residents with settlers, eventually outnumbering them, at which point the job is done. But Gaza is too volatile and violent for that.
All that being said, I think the attack by Hamas has doomed any chance of anything resembling peace, or a two state solution for this century. This attack kills the left (both literally and figuratively, given the demographics of the music festival) in Israel - their policy towards Palestine will be dominated by the conservatives for a long time. Equally, in Gaza, the upcoming reprisal from Israel will cause a new generation hyper-jaded and radicalized against Israel.
Things will only get worse, violence-wise.
The Israeli government may not be calling for it, but interviews with some Israelis remind me of my interactions with right wingers in America after 9/11. Mostly they were saying, "carpet bomb them."
Exactly. From what I've seen, not necessarily the government, but the people seem to have the exact same foaming-at-the-mouth mindset as Americans (all the way from moderates to right-wingers) from around 2001 to 2008. Which was glass the whole fuckin' middle east, fuck 'em.
Not many governments openly call for genocide. People do all the time though. I feel like that was kind of a given.
Oh, in all but name, that's the general sentiment. People are saying horrific things online and the sec. of defense equates Hamas (and by extension Palestinians) to animals and people cheer. The government emphasizes that they're going to bring an end to Hamas, that they're going to "change the reality of the situation".
When an Israeli soldier goes into that building and sees people butchered, he won't even entertain the though of peace. But I think that made me realize that it's exactly the same for Gazans; people made orphans for seemingly no reason but the place they were born in would radicalize anyone.
I am terrified that this is going to permanently damage relations with Arab people, even just day to day. It's going to be increasingly dangerous as an Arab to stay surrounded by traumatized, potentially radicalized Israelis. Who's going to help them if they get attacked?
I'm no expert on Israeli domestic politics, but from what I've read I wouldn't be so sure of this.
There appears to be at least some level of outrage towards Netanyahu over sabotaging peace negotiations. E.g. this video where the politician who crossed the aisle to give Netanyahu his government is berated out of a hospital. I don't know if it's widespread, but it's at least not what you'd expect to see in the presence of a strong rally-around-the-flag effect.
Edit: Context for the politician in the video.
Aside from far right nutjobs, nobody in Israel is calling for genocide.
Israel has tried multiple times to reach concessions and get to a 2 state solution, but every step of the way the palastinian leadership has refused any solution that doesn't wipe Israel off the map.
If Israel wanted genocide, do you really think it'd pull out of Gaza? Allow the PA to exist? Hell, Israel literally supplies Gaza with water and electricity.
This isn't a very meaningful statement when "apart from" refers to a minority of the population, and the government consists almost exclusively of "far right nutjobs".
Israel has also systematically tried to prevent a two-state solution with illegal population transfers, encouraging the settlement program (also illegal under international law), generally trying to provoke the Palestinians (e.g. Ariel Shannon), Al-Aqsa shennanigans, etc.
I'm not doubting you by any means, but could you share examples of when Palestine has refused solutions?
I ask not because I don't think it's true, but because I know people that are very pro-Palestine and have denied such claims, ergo I would like some information to present to them :)
Here's a brief history. Basically it's been a non-starter since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2006.
Yassar Arafat was really the last chance, before Hamas had fully taken control. Their retaliation terror attacks since the peace agreement in 1993 basically killed all the goodwill that had built since then.
The Land For Peace part of UN Resolution 242 comes to mind. This was rejected by Palestine.
The Camp David Accords of 1978 were another solution. Also rejected by Palestine.
I could go on, but those two are the first that immediately spring to mind. Worth noting Palestinian leaders weren't a part of those negotiations, but the proposed outcome of a full Palestinian state and Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, the West Bank and other occupied territories was the same.
If you want more context I'd read about the Six Days War and the 3 No's: No peace with Israel, No negotiation with Israel, No recognition of Israel. That was the result of a summit involving the major powers surrounding Israel after the Six Days War.
Well the Khartoum resolution was ditched pretty soon by Sadat.
There doesn't need to be a foreseeable positive outcome. Just being imaginative and attentive to the alternatives would go a long way.
Man, that is a broad stroke. I hope you go spend some time in Israel one day and have the opportunity to spend time with some arabs and Palestinians while you're there. I've spend a few months there in over the last decade and it's not the sentiment I get at all. Last September I attended the wedding of my very good Palestinian friend to her Jewish Israeli husband. People are complex. People are dynamic.
I'm just so sad reading comments like this, particularly at the top of a thread about what is potentially the start of very bloody total war in Gaza. For such a long time Tildes has been a place of patience, mutual respect, measured discussions, and mostly optimism. I've participated in some of the polarization during these events, so I'm to blame as well, but I'm just so so sad to see commentary like this here.
I genuinely don't want any more blood spilled between Palestine and Israel. And of course there are Palestinians who don't hate Jews.
But come on, let's at least try to be honest about this. 87% of Palestinians surveyed agreed that "people hate Jews because of the way Jews behave.". As mentioned in my previous comment, there is an official state policy to pay Palestinians a pension for committing acts of terror.
I mean, the Palestinians as a whole support Hamas as well, and you can't say that Hamas has ever been shy about hating Jews. Hamas was elected by the people.
I don't think it's fair that you demand optimism from me here. I'm not optimistic for the future of Palestine. You just said yourself this is possibly the start of a very bloody total war. Why would the war be so bloody if Israelis and Palestinians were actually getting along just fine?
I haven't called for violence or said I want war. But I also don't think this is a situation where everyone is secretly just wanting to get along either. I'm not preaching intolerance, I'm just observing it where it already exists in a deeply complicated situation.
is a huge jump to:
It's all problematic but you ending with
Is also problematic. We don't live in a bubble and we have other examples to draw from. In the case of WW1 we punished the Germans at the Treaty of Versailles. We took their land, we destroyed them economically, and we saddled them we an insurmountable debt. Sounds familiar. 20 years of brewing later the Nazi find themselves at the helm of a population that is open revenge and terror on an incredible scale. You can use a similar proxy for what the US did in Afghanistan that cemented the place of the Taliban or in Iraq that caused the rise of ISIS. We know the outcomes of decimating a place and people: radicalization and violence.
We also know what happens when you provide able and adequate support. We took literal Nazis after WW2 and through the financial and resource support of the Marshall Plan made Germany into a progressive world power. We took our greatest enemy, literally the one still used today when you need an unequivocal baddy, and turned them into one of our greatest allies. US tax dollars did that, we literally paid for them to be better off. The same goes for Japan. There are still some vestiges of the truly problematic those regimes believed but by and large they are mitigated and controlled by a happy, stable population.
In Israel, they have had the opportunity to turn this around for decades, to enact a plan that tamps down embitterment and aggression. That provides opportunity and hope. And even now, they can still do that. I agree that this will be a blood bath, but wiping them off the face of the map isn't necessary and I find it odd that we've all decided that it's the only avenue left. There are plenty of non-violent, proven methods for de-escalation. We've had this level of embitterment, racism, and violence before; it's not something we can't undo.
I feel like my comment keeps being taken as "genocide is the only viable option and I don't blame Israel for doing it."
What I really meant by my comment was, "Israel has brutally oppressed Palestine to the point that they became a terrorist state, and now their genuinely horrific terrorist attacks provide the justification needed to wage all-out war on Palestine. Both sides are full of vitriol and hatred, both sides are calling for genocide, and neither side seems like they're willing to talk anymore."
I don't see how this ends other than Palestine ceasing to exist. I see how it could, but I don't see that happening personally. I hope I'm wrong.
I appreciate that, sorry for getting up in arms about it.
To me, "Palestine" is already about pretty abstract concept, it isn't a recognized nation and they have wildly different lives/freedoms/experiences depending if you're talking about Palestinians in Gaza, West Bank, or living within Israel.
There are still lots of groups talking and trying to find peace, even if it isn't the majority. Usually it's a combination of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. I think the hopelessness that people in Gaza feel is driving their aggression and I think if there were a way to get jobs/education/resourcing into Gaza it was let off pressure. Currently if you live in Gaza you don't even have a passport to travel abroad or look for asylum. Just making that change, giving them some sort of international status would be a huge start.
As long as we keep with the narrative of there is nothing to be done but war, that's the reality we'll live in. There are other options and I think collective pressure could go a long way in making that happen.
No apologies necessary from anyone. This is a tough topic. It's nearly impossible to add enough qualifiers to avoid sounding like a heartless jerk in one direction or the other.
I hear you and I think there is something to what you're saying. I am reflecting on this and considering if the hopelessness being discussed is merely an observation or if it also affects the outcome.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I think we're all getting bombarded by inflammatory headlines and hot takes and it's taking a toll. This discussion is hard to have over text based mediums without context, ability to explain or clarify, or even understand tone. I really appreciate you engaging with me and having the patience to find mutual understanding.
It should be noted that pacification of militaristic societies, like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, could not begin until they were utterly beaten into total submission through overwhelming force—utterly far beyond what the US or Israel has employed in modern history—and at the cost of millions of military and civilian lives—exponential magnitudes greater than the losses suffered by either Palestine or Israel.
It is my hope that modern humanity can devise a strategy that does not require such. But history points otherwise.
You're making it sound like this is up to the victors. It seems like the history of this conflict is all about the Palestinians refusing to admit defeat and continuing to fight on in a way that's rather unusual after losing a war? (In part due to outside support for fighting on regardless.)
I think traditionally that might work if it were nation v nation. But it isn't, it's nation v ethnicity. Palestine isn't a recognized nation and they don't have a clear, cohesive government. Compounding that, they have wildly different lives/freedoms/experiences depending if you're talking about Palestinians in Gaza, West Bank, or living within Israel.
I guess I'd throw the question back to you. What would you do if you lived in a country that passed regulations that target and diminish your economic freedoms. To live in a place where you are a second class citizen. The Palestinians living in Israel who have given up fighting live that reality every day. Many chose that route. But again, they aren't a cohesive nation so factions can continue to be violent.
There may not be "victors" but there is a stable well resourced nation and groups of people living in inflicted destitute conditions. If both parties want peace than the well resourced group needs to step up.
Lastly, this could be said for either side.
Personally, I would emigrate to another part of the world as soon as I could, and that goes for living in Israel too. The stories of immigrants resonate more with me, and running from a war zone rather than fighting seems more sensible.
But never mind that, it's not about me.
Ditto, count me in as a fellow fleer.
I think trying to get out from Gaza in pretty difficult though. Doubly during an event like this.
Yes, it's impossible now (I assume), but I meant leaving any time in the last several decades, by any route available.
But putting ourselves in their shoes is clearly not going to work for making predictions. If people there thought like me, the birth rate would be zero, because I'd consider it an entirely unsuitable place to raise a family. It's not about what I think.
There are apparently millions of Palestinians in other countries. The history of Palestinians in Jordan is complicated.
Israel is not the good guys, but Palestine is definitely the bad guys.
That being said, I'm not happy this war is taking place. I've seen footage from the Gaza strip and the people there are just trying to live and their world is getting blown up.
Not sure how you can characterize Palestine as the bad guys and then say you feel for average citizens of Gaza. Unless you meant Hamas in which case I see your point.
There really are no heroes here, at least not in either sides leadership.
I'll be the first one to say I don't know enough to voice an opinion on the matter, but about half of the population of Gaza are underage children and youth. Half of the country have experienced three wars in their lifetimes. It's not at all strange to have sympathy for these people.
There are children living in Palestine. I would assume that for adults even if you do not like Hamas and do not like war with Israel you'd be putting yourself in danger by opposing Hamas as a Palestinian. There are also a lot of terrible people living there that really want to commit genocide against Jews. But Israel can't tell the difference between them when they shoot artillery into Gaza.
That's not the point I was making, but yes you're correct. I was more saying that I don't understand how you can say Palestine is the bad guys when they're the ones being occupied. Of course resistance to an armed occupation that turns your home into an open air prison is violent, they tried the alternative and got nothing for decades.
I don't disagree that Hamas leadership wants to genocide the Jewish people, that much is true. But remember that Hamas doesn't exist in a vacuum - 'moderate' Palestinians (i.e. people who literally just want to live their lives normally) don't exist in any real sense anymore because any of them with the ability have long since left Gaza.
When you ignore people asking for basic decent concessions, literally just their human rights to not be trampled, for decades, for generations, this is what you get. Israel is the side with all the power here. They chose this.
What do you think the the other choices on the menu were for them, given that the bad blood and distrust of their neighbors goes back to before there was an Israel?
Like I agree that we're not in a world where Israel made the best possible set of choices they could have. But just because they're militarily advantaged doesn't mean they have "all" the power here. They can't simply warp reality to suit them. The Palestinians have had agency all along as well, and they also chose to continue the violence instead of accepting the existence of Israel as a state.
Sure it's a prisoner's dilemma, but the key thing there is each side in the prisoner's dilemma is choosing not to cooperate. Regardless of everything else, no one side can stand down until both sides stand down. The onus is on both of them, not either one.
I'd really say Hamas has chosen to maintain the suffering because they are refusing to accept the fundamental reality of the situation, which is that Israel exists, Israel militarily outmatches them, and the fact that Gaza is not glassed after a provocation comes down mostly to Israel's own beneficence. Is there a way to make them make a different choice? Probably not. Has Israel made good faith efforts at encouraging a different choice? Definitely not. But I just don't lay the onus of responsibility as squarely in one place. We keep acting like it's an inevitability that the occupied people will resist in the most violent ways available to them but then act like it's not an inevitability that a powerful military will react in the the ways available to them. Are they just supposed to accept that their people should accept a higher rate of victimization by violence to even things out and make it fair?
Israel had any time from the 67 war to the first intifada to bargain in good faith with the Palestinians. Instead they decided to slowly strangle Palestine through settler-colonialism. The maps are public record, you can just Google what the west bank and gaza look like today vs. 1967.
The idea that Hamas would be willing to bargain with them is laughable. Would you bargain with a bully that has spent the last 50 years totally promising they're behaving in good faith and undermining you at every step? Again, Hamas is so radical because all of the moderates that just wanted to live their lives and not have their homes stolen are long gone. They already chose their only peaceful option: leave. Hamas has no real options left for a free Palestine left, the only one with even a tiny chance of success is to make Israel totally unliveable through terror. The international community has made it clear they will support Israel no matter how barbaric they are, so the Israeli right wing has no reason to ever concede.
This is a no win situation for average Palestinians and Israelis and I weep for them, but the idea that Palestinians have even one tenth the international support that Israel has is absurd to me. Any incursion into Israel by Egypt or Jordan or Saudi Arabia would be immediately crushed by an international coalition of probably half of Western Europe.
Any realistic solution would require Israel to accept concessions and they will never need to so long as NATO supports them, and Palestinians would need to trust that Israel wouldn't renege immediately (not to mention you'd need to drown out the voices of the Palestinian hardliners because as much as they are allowed to believe that Israel is an illegitimate state it doesn't change the fact that millions already have lived their whole lives in the modern state of Israel and its hardly fair to them to displace them - this would require bringing back the Palestinian diaspora and good luck with that) which would also never happen so long as NATO supports Israel. This is why I put the onus on Israel because they have the backing of the international community nearly wholeheartedly, not to mention in military terms they totally outmatch the Palestinians.
This is simply not true. Arab-nationalist militias of many ideological persuasions began cropping up long before Israel was a thing, basically immediately after the head got cut off the Ottoman administration. This wasn't a peaceful people radicalized by Israeli aggression. This was two violent people, one of whom won but not decisively enough to fully consolidate their wins and, consequently, continue duking it out with the foe who doesn't want to accept that it's over and will never have to as long as there's a base of support from international organizations backing them.
Hamas didn't become radical due to Israeli aggression. They were always motivated by an irredentist, eliminationist ideology. They continued from precursor Islamist movements that were themselves motivated by similarly noxious right-wing ideologies. They also weren't the only violent or racist Arab movements. Baathists were also prone to violence and quite racist towards non-Arabs.
If anything, it was Fatah that was undermined to favor Hamas. The Israeli right knows that as long as the terrorism threat remains support for militaristic expansionism will remain. These two groups feed each other. I don't understand the presumption that only one faction has agency here.
NATO support isn't all that makes Israelis hold back on concessions, worry about car bombings and mass shootings if they loosen their grip at all is.
The international community backs them because the international community doesn't like terrorists. And not even all of the international community does, most of the Muslim world is extremely supportive of Palestine and that's where the resources and financing that keep the insurgency alive come from. The West/NATO aligned world supports Israel. That's different. Even India, up until this latest attack, tended to lean more towards Palestine than Israel in terms of where it directed its sympathies.
Actually I don’t know enough to define a moral gradient. And yes this seems like the natural result to what Israel has done. I will add though that you don’t get a moral pass for killing people because you’ve had land stolen from you.
Not a pass, no. And certainly not because their stated goal is the eradication of all Jews, that's just ridiculous.
I'm not trying to moralize it here, I'm more pointing out that if you ignore peaceful resistance then violent resistance is all that's left.
I am no terrorism apologist. But, It’s really not fair to boil the situation in Palestine down to people who are simply angry about their people losing their homeland.
Please tell me more. I'm here to learn.
What level of responsibility does a people have for the actions of their elected government? Remember, Hamas isn't just some terrorist group that happens to be in Gaza. They're literally the Gazan government; the Gazan people voted them in,
multiple times. Even calling them a terrorist group is really a misnomer. What kind of "terrorist group" can stage a coordinated combined arms invasion, with thousands of fighters, openly under the same banner? That's not a terrorist group, that's a damn army. We just don't like to call Hamas an army because Gaza isn't a recognized independent state, and because no one wants to extend the Geneva convention to Hamas. The Gazans aren't allowed to form a formal military recognized under international law, so their military is labeled a terrorist group.So again, what responsibility does a people have for their actions of the military and government they repeatedly voted for? And Hamas appears to be quite popular among the Gazan population, polling quite high. It seems the Gazan people effectively voted to declare total war against Israel. They voted for this. They wanted this. And now they'll reap the whirlwind.
Sorry, you think a vote in 2006 (i.e. 17 years ago) means that all the citizens in the Gaza strip back the attack on Israel so it's OK if the Israelis kill lots of people who had nothing to do with the attack? the Israeli response to Hamas' attack has already killed more than 1,350 Palestinians (these are Reuters' figures) among them hundreds of children, who with great certainty had no clue that Hamas was planning this attack. If Hamas kills thousands of Israeli civilians, how does killing thousands of Palestinian civilians help?
I could just as well ask if you think it would be justified to start blowing up sewage systems in the US to cause the same proportionate level of devastation in the US as the US did in Iraq, arguing that by voting for Bush all US citizens are directly responsible for all the actions of the US government in that war.
You're trying to pretend Gaza is a state (which is it not) so that you can say, well they declared war on Israel, they've got what is coming to them. I don't think Palestinian civilians deserve to be massacred, in the same way that Israeli civilians don't either.
Repeat after me: Gaza is not a state. It does not have any sovereignty or control over its borders. When Israel (as it regularly does) sends bulldozers into Gaza they don't call it a "declaration of war" or an "invasion" they call it an "anti-terrorist operation". Israel does not recognise Hamas as a state actor or a government.
Because Gaza is not a state, this is not a war between states. This is (if we look purely at outcomes) a war between an occupying coloniser and an armed group resisting this. It's much closer to Algeria when it was under French control – not a state (as all state machinery was controlled by France), but wanting to become one.
I don't understand your fetish for "total war" and the good-old fashioned days of wars that we've "forgotten" about, but this is not a WW2 kind of war, or a war between nation states.
Gaza is not a state => Israel cannot declare war on Gaza as a state actor!!!
Whether it is or is not a state seems like a bit of special pleading based on semantics. Like state or not, there is functionally an army doing a military operation. They're not very sophisticated about it, but the intent is still clear. Counter-insurgencies are still wars they just have to operate on different rules and criteria for success. When Sri Lanka was contesting with the Tamil Tigers, or the government of Colombia was fighting with FARC those were still wars even though one of the belligerents wasn't fully a state.
Suzerainty means you're a state that's dependent on another sovereign entity for your borders and foreign or military policy. They're still distinct states, but they have a strong dependency on a separate country. The Princely States in India under the British Raj are examples of this. Sikkim was another one until they joined the Indian Republic later on.
If an insurgency starts in a territory under your control, then what you are running is a counter insurgency, NOT a war. All the people running around saying "random Palestinians are a valid target because they are military infrastructure and we are fighting a war with another country" are high on bath salts or something.
I don't think this sort of semantic hair splitting is all that useful here. What's the practical difference between these two classes of armed groups attempting to use violence to secure strategic objectives that makes a meaningful difference here? Because I don't think the level of legitimacy and formalism around the belligerent faction's governance structure is something most people care about. We tend to hold sophisticated governance structures (such as organized militaries) to more account because they have the capacity to enforce higher standards. Insurgent groups have less organizational capacity, but they certainly have enough to not cold-bloodedly execute civilian families with no further objective in mind but ticking down the counter on the number of Jews on Earth.
Have you read the comment chain? The original comment made the argument that civilians living in the Gaza strip have what is coming to them, because they chose their 'government' (in 2006, sort of), their 'government' decided to launch a terrorist attack on Israel, and therefore the Israelis are justified in cutting off water supplies and bombing them to high heaven.
You're now making a totally different argument which is "Hamas is not justified in massacring Israeli civilians" (which is correct but also not a very insightful argument) and is rather orthogonal to what it being discussed in this thread (which is the above, in the previous paragraph).
There's a difference between "they have what is coming to them" and "cutting off water supplies and carper bombing is unjustified."
The moral universe of war is inherently one of least worst options. In general, nobody has that coming to them. (For the most part, not even the guys on the ground do, most soldiers are barely adults.) But "justification" is a messier question of how dirty are you willing to get your hands to secure the strategic outcome. I'd agree with you that I think Israel can find another way besides cutting off access to necessities for life. But I also don't really have the imagination or understanding of the ground realities to understand what the alternative mechanism for fighting a foe like Hamas is since they're so deeply grafted into the institutions that support normal civilian life. They're digging up water-pipes to make improvised rockets, for example. I don't know how someone starves out Hamas without starving out the people.
There are lots of examples of how to run a counter insurgency without killing all the civilians. One important principle of counter-insurgency is to avoid making the local population hate you even more.
Even then, from a deontological position I find it hard see how starving ~2 million people can ever be "justified".
Well fortunately I'm not a deontologist. I subscribe more to the Walzer idea around this which sort of jives with my virtue-centered view on ethics in general.
In that sense, I don't trust Likudniks at all to exercise appropriate judgement about how much to dirty ones hands or why. But I also don't think it's categorically out of line for even a virtuous person to determine that the hands must be dirtied to some level. But in that case, my argument wouldn't be that the action is bad, it's that the people doing it are sickos who I don't trust to exercise that power prudently.
I think the ship has sailed on that one unfortunately. I recently read a book about the Comanche called Empire of the Summer Moon and came away feeling rather conflicted. On the one hand of course I wanted to cheer about Comanche resistance to the expanding American empire. But on the other it's hard to look at the Comanche way of life and think it would have been desirable or even justifiable to simply accept a society of raiders for whom a substantial portion of their livelihood involved raiding, raping, and enslaving Americans. Even as those Americans encroached on and occupied "their" land, the accounts of babies being speared at their mothers' breasts are hard to accept. And it was basically for sure that if people hadn't settled on their lands then the borders of the Comanche Empire would have simply extended until they began to encroach on even less contested territory. So what should the USA have done? Obviously there were lots of atrocities committed by the settlers, but the Comanche way of life was simply incompatible with living peacefully with their neighbors (and that included their American Indian neighbors). So then living in peace means one or the other is forced to accept conditions that were, to them, unacceptable. At that point I don't know if a moral calculation is even possible, the sides are simply committed to smashing against each other until one of them falls down. I'm not a categorical foreign policy realist, but in circumstances like this, it's hard to see any other option over the long term.
It seems that way now in Israel. Even Egypt and Jordan have been burned by adopting Palestinian refugees because the population itself is simply too radicalized. The PLO tried to launch a coup and depose the Jordanian government when they allied with them. Even Egypt, which has generally been a staunch defender of the Palestinian cause, seems to be leery of actually admitting any large numbers of Gazan refugees into the country because they're concerned about it inflaming internal tensions by empowering domestic Islamists. Neither of these countries can really seem to normalize relations with Israel because of the relative extremism of even the moderate Palestinian groups, who will rile up opposition among sympathetic Arab groups, Leftist parties, and the Muslim world more broadly.
Deradicalization would be nice, but it also isn't an easy thing to do and is basically impossible to do from the outside. Think about the extreme measures the Allied nations had to take to denazify Germany or make peace with the Empire of Japan. We literally rewrote a Shinto belief (the divinity of the Emperor)! And we had the advantage in the fact that we were a pretty values-driven alliance that didn't make a whole lot of irredentist, nationalist claims on the defeated powers ourselves (in contrast to Israel). I don't think anyone has actually been successful at this sort of deradicalization without having first established total and complete control over the territory and its people. And I'm not even sure it's possible to do in the Muslim world because of how strong non-state religious institutions are and how intertwined they are with political life.
I mean this is basically colonial thinking – "they're all savages, so we are justified in doing anything to civilise them".
At what point did I say or imply anything about "civilizing" anyone? I said there are mutually antagonistic interests and unless both sides come up with a different option set there's no option but to fight until one can't fight anymore.
That's just the base reality of how the world works.
I did a few searches and it appears that there hasn’t been an election in Gaza since 2006. Do you know something different?
I understood that they elected once, the PA ignored the result, and they seized power in the battle of Gaza. When else have they been voted in?
Hmm, you are correct. It seems they were only voted in once. Still, the people of Gaza voted for a party that openly in its formal platform included the complete destruction of Israel. But even in that case, wouldn't 1930s Germany be an apt comparison? The Nazis never even were elected with a clear majority, but they were elected. And after they took power, they then subverted the democratic process to keep themselves from losing power, including using mass violence. The German people voted them in, and then they failed to throw them out of power using peaceful or violent resistance. And the actions of the Nazis didn't exactly lack a base of popular support. Hamas has only been elected once, but all polls show they're quite popular in Gaza to this day.
Were the German people responsible for the actions of the Nazi party? To me, the Gazans seem to share a similar level of culpability as the broader German population did back in WW2.
Last election was 17 yrs ago, the majority of the people living in that are under 18 yrs old... you should some math....
And yet surveys of Palestinians show that they believe that Islamist groups like Hamas and PIJ are the one who should be leading the fight for independence, and that their rise is the best thing that has occurred in Palestine since the Nakba.
Edit: a majority of Gazans still hold a positive opinion of Hamas https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/polls-show-majority-gazans-were-against-breaking-ceasefire-hamas-and-hezbollah
That being said, this poll did give me more hope than I had before about Palestinian openness to a decline of armed groups, which seems likely to be necessary for any peace negotiations.
A terrible situation all around.
Hamas is the one feeding, educating, and housing the population it should be of little to no surprise if those same people look at them with a different lens than people from the outside world do.
You can't seriously equate the situation Palestinians are in relative to Israel with Nazi Germany, can you? Like... the history there is absolutely not remotely comparable, and even without much knowledge of that history the recent treatment of Palestinians by Israel should be enough to dissuade such a loaded (and largely inapplicable) comparison.
To be fair, Likudniks and other Right-Wing Israelis have covertly (and sometimes overtly) tipped the scales in Hamas' favor by dismantling or delegitimizing the non-violent resistance movements in Palestine. They understand that militarizing the dispute by empowering the faction calling for a violent approach advantages them. Moving the dispute into the realm of politics and negotiation advantages the Israeli Left. So the Gazans aren't over there making unbounded choices.
And also by murdering other Israelis working towards peace negotiations.
I think you need to better look at your opinion on this one.
Right the majority are again minors - and children tend to idolize those who they see as protecting them. Hamas for all their faults are the one feeding, educating, and housing these people. While the outside world can look at them objectively it's silly to expect those in their care to do so.
That's an entirely different discussion, and is incredibly complicated. I don't think there is any benefit from me speaking my opinion on it.
After reading this line of yours I'd suggest maybe you should also maybe refrain from speaking on the subject. It's fine to have an opinion IF it's informed, yours is clearly not. I'd suggest that rather than come out with statements like this take the time to go and educate yourself on the full history of the situation and then even after that maybe choose to simply be compassionate to the PEOPLE and stay out of the geopolitics of it which are way above what you can actually influence.
Again your ignorance is showing here on the history of the region if you think this is even a remotely close example.
How do you have a violent revolution against a violent terrorist movement? Like just logistically how would that work? They're already operating under the table because they're terrorists. So the best you'd ever get is rival paramilitary gangs killing each other forever.
BUT the territory itself is basically completely blockaded. The reason Hamas is able to get the weapons and financing to be violent is because they have highly sophisticated links to international terrorist networks. Any anti-Hamas paramilitary will need to make do without those links. Where are they supposed to get their guns and money from? The only people with guns and money to give, and with the means to deliver them, would be the Israelis. But then even if the Israelis wanted to do that, how would they even know they're arming the "good" guys? They can't even send food or medical aid into Gaza without worrying that Hamas will intercept it to empower themselves, how are they gonna send guns?
I've been reading through your comments and I really don't understand how you can describe the deplorable conditions that Palestinians are subjected to but then turn around and act as though their actions come out of nowhere.
Why would that happen?*
It seems like that is the question that's not really being addressed here.
Mate your history teacher really failed you I think.
Six million Germans were displaced and had to live in other countries - and live in fear because Germany was forced to take on the blame of WW1. Overall Germany lost 13% of its territory and 10% of its population (that's not counting all it's colonies).
Germany experienced hyperinflation and mass unemployment, and the populace was largely sent into poverty.
They were forced to import pretty much anything of value and were prevented from really exporting anything of value which kept them under the thumb of the Allies as they weren't able to pay the massive "fines" the Allies put on them (something like 500 billion of today's dollars).
Germany was forced to take the blame for the war (which isn't accurate), and had no say in the Treaty of Versailles.
The Treaty of Versailles ignored much of Wilson's 14 points, largely because France wanted to punish the Germans, and it looked even worse when you saw the Treaty of Lausanne and how it allowed the Turks to renegotiate the terms of a former peace treaty but the allies wouldn't grant that to the Germans.
None of those things are "minor". The Nazis were able to feed into racial resentment and were clearly terrible - however, even if the Nazis hadn't come to power Germany would have ended up in another war (possibly not to the scale of WWII) purely because of how the Treaty of Versailles punished them harshly.
You're original statement was:
My reply was to show you that the impact wasn't "relatively minor" especially not to the german population. The impact was incredibly life altering and made it very easy for a group to come in and via get people to but into many of the crazy ideas the Nazis put out there.
Which front got it worse in WWII doesn't weigh in at all on my point that regardless if the Nazis were the group that got people whipped up or if it was another Germany was primed to end up returning to war because the populace had been (in their minds) unjustly done and their lives massively impacted.
But I've said my view you've said yours - if you still disagree I wish you well as I now go back to my day.
I almost didn't respond to this but I'm actually infuriated that you have the gall to invoke the words of Arthur Harris about this. Really? If anyone here is reaping the whirlwind it's Israel, 15 years of the Netanyahu government undermining any attempt at peace and reconciliation is the cause of this mess. Those are the seeds that were sown. Remember that before 1948 Palestine was a land of arabs. I don't disagree with the existence of a Jewish homeland but let's not kid ourselves here. Israel as it was created after the Holocaust was just an outright mistake. It was a colonialist project by Western powers from the start. It's white supremacist to its core.
If this were really Gaza """reaping the whirlwind""" as you so venomously put bombarding innocent children in apartment blocks it would be one thing. But Gaza isn't a state. Gaza is an occupied territory that the Israelis can just decide at the drop of a hat to bombard indiscriminately. There are few words that come to mind to describe the modern Israel/Palestine conflict. One of the most accurate is "apartheid" for a reason.
This /r/AskHistorians thread has a good breakdown of the situation at the time and that doesn't seem accurate. 30% of it was Jewish in 1947, which would mean it was only slightly less Jewish than America is Protestant. I don't know how many of those were Ashkenazi vs Mizrahi, I'm guessing it was a little skewed towards the Ashkenazi.
Palestine was a plural society, not an Arab or Muslim one. It was ruled by Muslims, but those guys were Turks and the only reason they were more local than the Ashkenazi settlers is because they had been there longer.
You seem to be predicting genocide. If that's not what you meant, you might want to rephrase that.
I think it makes more sense to stop after "I don't see how this ends." Why would the Palestinian conflict end? So far, if you bet that it would continue, off and on, you'd win your bet.
Yes, this is an atrocity, but not every attack counts as genocide.
Pearl Harbor wasn't genocide. 9/11 wasn't genocide. The Russian invasion of Ukraine isn't genocide.
Hamas doesn't appear to have the military capacity for that. Maybe they would if they could? It's a hypothetical.
The forcible relocation and "Russification" of Ukrainian citizens does show certain hallmarks of genocide, according to the Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe.
A link to the full document can be found here.
Further reading here.
Russia has declared that Ukraine does not have a history nor its own culture, and that it is merely a part of Russia. This, coupled with documented abductions and reeducation of Ukrainian children, is tantamount to genocide.
Edited for clarity.
I suppose, but there's no sign of this succeeding, in general. It's currently a stalemate in what's generally known as a war.
The status of the conflict has nothing to do with whether or not Russia has committed acts of genocide, specifically the forced removal, relocation, and reeducation of Ukrainian children. These acts are a direct result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, thus I attest that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a form of genocide against the Ukrainian people.
However, this thread has nothing to do with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and I don't feel it appropriate to discuss this further here; just wanted to add a correction. I simply hope that both conflicts are resolved as quickly as possible.
Based on the death count, this is the worst instance of Anti-Jewish killings since the Holocaust. While that alone isn’t irrefutable proof of genocide, you could make a credible argument it was a step toward it.
Maybe we could avoid the terminology dispute by distinguishing between intent to commit genocide and actually succeeding?
But intent is a funny thing when there's no hope of succeeding. (Mass murder of course happened.)
The Gaza Strip is essentially under complete Israeli control, to the extent that the mere fact that Israel seemed caught off guard by the Hamas attack became a major news story. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me, the idea that a persecuted people could “attempt a genocide” against their persecutors in any meaningful sense, even if they would want to.
I'm no expert in this stuff, but it seems like this was a surprise that showed that the Gaza Strip is not under complete control?
But otherwise I agree. I would guess that it was a one-day thing and Hamas probably has limited capacity to do more damage, particularly now that they've lost the advantage of surprise.
What other surprises could there be? What's in the tunnels? I guess we'll find out when Israeli soldiers arrive.
When an attack has no clear military objective, and the group behind it has genocide written as one of its EXPLICITLY WRITTEN goals, I don't see how you can call such an attack on innocent civilians anything other than attempted genocide.
Imagine I spend months posting on social media how I have it in for you and I intend to kill you. I post long screeds about how you have it coming, and how I will be justified in my brutal killing of you. I leave a paper trail a mile long establishing clear motive and intent.
Then one night, you wake to a loud crash beside your bed. You find me with a handgun, having tripped, fallen, and hit my head on the wall. I was just feet away from you, with a pistol, but I just happened to trip on something, hit my head, and collapse unconscious to the ground.
Do you think I'm going to get off with anything less than an attempted murder charge? Do you think I'll be charged with just trespassing and maybe unlawful possession of a firearm? Is the DA going to quibble about whether they can really prove I intended to kill you that night? Maybe I was just sneaking into your house so I could show you this cool new handgun I just bought, and I wanted it to be a surprise!
You need to come up with a scenario where nobody, not even yourself*, takes seriously the idea that you’d actually be able to succeed in committing the murder. Like, say, in a fit of passion you attacked skybrian with true murderous intent but the only weapon you had available to you was a pool noodle and you didn’t know how to use your hands.
I’m not going to discuss this further, because it really is just semantics. But, it’s very offensive to me what you are saying. You literally wrote a lengthy comment elsewhere where you explained how you fully expect Gaza to be ethnically cleansed by Israel. It was literally newsworthy that Hamas could possibly manage to successfully attack Israel without them knowing about it. How are these the people you are seriously accusing of “attempting a genocide”?
* so, if you say got caught in a sting operation literally trying to kill someone with a weapon that’s fake but you think is real and is totally capable of killing people, it’s not the same
I think that's a state-of-mind thing, though? He thought it was a real truck bomb and he had the capacity to use it.
Since both sides are openly or semi-openly calling for genocide, yes I predict that will happen.
I am obviously of the opinion that they should make peace. Nothing would make me happier than for human beings to lay down their arms and commit to working together to share knowledge and culture.
Just not sure I see any other way for this to play out. My solution would be for Israel and the UN/EU to provide aid and try to kickstart Palestine's economy while policing Palestine in the meantime to keep Israel safe from terror attacks. You'd hope for a deradicalization and metamorphosis similar to what Japan experienced after World War 2, but that's what the world has been doing now in Palestine for a long time and it's not working at all. So what's next?
I don't think there are any good guys here personally. And I think the latest attack might kickstart the beginning of the end of Palestine.
This scenario depends on what you think Israel is capable of. Regardless of what some people might say, would they go so far as the deaths of millions as revenge for the deaths of thousands? Yes, it’s a war, but that would go far beyond what ordinarily happens during a war.
I’m no Israeli expert, but it doesn’t sound particularly plausible, and I don’t know why you’ve chosen to focus on this particular dark scenario over others.
It seems hard to predict at what point Israel’s revenge will stop, though.
I think you’re right that some kinds of atrocities could very well happen. Aren’t they already starting?
But the specifics don’t seem particularly realistic. Why imagine Egyptian soldiers mowing down people with machine guns when that border is already closed? They don’t need to do anything.
It seems like there are many scenarios. Most of them are terrible, but there’s no particular reason to focus on the worst ones.
Walls only work if you protect them, otherwise they will fall, and fall quickly.
This exact scenario happened when the Berlin wall fell: through a small but serious miscommunication from a high government official, thousand of people from east Berlin came to the checkpoints to west Berlin demanding from the east German border guards to be let through. The border guards only options where to open fire or let the people out. Remember, the Berlin wall was a serious piece of fortification, you couldn't just walk through or over it. But within 6 hours it went from looking like this, to looking like this.
The demographic trends actually point the other way, with Israel shrinking in population until it no longer has the manpower to maintain the posture of never-ending vigilance and military readiness necessary to sustain the status quo. So once that dam breaks. . .
Is Israel shrinking?
Wikipedia tells me in 2023 they had 2.9 births/woman which I think would be the highest fertility rate in the West by a fair margin. Not sure how long that has been the case however.
Edit: It appears you are incorrect.
The real issue for Israel is that really a vast amount of this increase is down to Haredi Jews who have a fertility rate of 6.6 (children/woman). There is already a lot of hate between non-Haredi and Haredi Jews (an Israeli friend tells me that you wouldn't be able to print most of what the secular Israeli press prints about the Haredi in the UK without falling foul of hate speech legislation), mostly due to the fact that Haredi Jews tend not to work (fewer than half of Haredi Jews ever enter the labour force in Israel) and go to Torah school for which they receive state subsidy.
A big increase in a population who are incredibly insular, who don't want to study maths/English, don't who want to perform any labour is very bad news for Israel. They also don't want to serve in the military. Current projections suggest that 1/2 Jewish Israelis will be Haredi by 2065. It's also problematic for Israels reputation as more democratic, and less religiously fanatic – Haredi leaders (and also a lot of Haredi Jews) aren't big on women's rights and are very conservative.
How good are they at retaining that conservatism among subsequent generations?
Like we have these hard fundamentalist movements with much higher fertility in the US, but despite the higher fertility they don't really grow out of proportion because their kids don't stay ultra-conservative. They tend to either soften up or defect from that sort of life entirely.
Granted, most of those kids are still going to public schools in the US, and being inculcated into general societal values as a result. If the Haredi Jews aren't doing that maybe that stops that cross-pollination.
Very interesting, thanks for the context.
Pretty crazy when the figures I find for today put them at around 13% of the population. I'm assuming these are napkin projections that assume everyone born into a Haredi family remains following the Haredi way of life? Is that really an accurate assumption?
The data I know of came from The Economist.
They are well known for being incredibly secluded – e.g. if you marry outside the community people stop talking to you, if you leave nobody will speak to you. Haredi Jews often can't speak English, don't have any (non-religious) education, so it's really tough for them to leave.
If they wont enter the workforce, do you think they would enter the army to fight for israel?
It's pretty common knowledge that orthodox Jews don't fight in the army. They instead tell others to fight for their religious rights.
When I went to Israel in 2014 on my Birthright trip, that was the summer the three Israeli boys went missing and were found dead in the West Bank. The Orthodox Jews were calling for the heads of the Palestinians then, while also refusing to actually fight.
They're the biggest problem Israel faces with respect to the majority secular Israelis who want to just live their lives in peace and want everyone to have equal rights. They don't work, they don't assimilate into the rest of Israeli life and they are the biggest warmongers there are in the country.
Good question! I don't know.
I think the comparison wouldn't be against OECD countries but between Arab Israelis and Palestinians against Jewish Israelis. Once that demographic tilts the balance of power will too.
But I just looked it over and it seems the fertility gap between Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis has basically equalized as of the last few years, due to improving living conditions and opportunities for Arab Israelis and persistently high fertility among ultra-orthodox Jews. So that's good news for equilibrium there assuming the right wingers don't cause other problems.
And as Biden quite famously(infamously?) said during his time as vice president, "If Israel didn't exist, we'd have to invent it".
Ignoring any morale angle to the entire conflict, strategically, israel is extremely valuable to its allies in a region without many others alternatives, and so even though there are issues like the demographic trend, I'm not sure how much strategic influences can stem that tide.
Israel has a growing population, so I don't know what you're on about.
Even if Gaza has triple Israel's population, do you really think it matters? Modern bombs and rifles could easily kill waves of people, if they try to "flood" the borders as you suggest.
If anything, I'd expect the population in Gaza to reduce over time, but they must be having a blast over there seeing how many babies they're having.
Israel has two choices; aim to create a two state solution, cease all colonization efforts, leave the land they seized. Or second option is work to create a unified state that grants Palestinians the same rights as Israelis (including right of return) and incorporates them into a single society that isn't divided on lines of ethnicity and religion. It would be the end of a jewish/zionist state, but that region has never truly been a completely jewish region, to treat it as such is what causes these problems.
The latter is now the more realistic option, as Netanyahu and other hardliners have screwed things up so bad there's no real way for a two-state solution any longer.
Palestine ob the other hand, has no power, and thus no choice. It's not really a state in any meaningful sense. Israel has all the economic, military and territorial control. It's their responsibility to create a context in which true integration can occur, not genocide.
I think the latter is missing the critical middle step. People talk about it:
The immediate step after integration would be rife with mass violence. It would be horrific and unacceptable to the Israeli electorate. Palestine does have power through its Arab and Iranian allies/benefactors and international sympathizers. It also has the responsibility to socioculturally accept coexistence with Jews as a first step toward any integration. It's politically impossible for Israeli to unilaterally initiate an integration process that would result in tens or hundreds of thousands of Israeli deaths.
It should be noted that though Rwanda is in a relatively good state now, the Rwanda genocide was ended brutally. The Tutsi rebels captured the capital, and a million Hutus fled to neighboring countries (and started international conflicts and insurgencies there, resulting in millions more deaths). The new government then conducted the mass arrest and incarceration of Hutus who perpetrated or sympathized with the genocide, and then carried out a mass reconciliation and rehabilitation process.
There are no good options here, I share the top commenter's fatalism. To move forward in Gaza you need to start with, at an extremely bare minimum, to make it habitable by a) distributing aid and b) not bombing it.
Hamas desires war with Israel, I think that's pretty clear. Last weekend's events were intended to provoke a strong response. So they do their utmost to make the above goals impossible. They capture any foreign aid that manages to arrive and use it to kill Israelis and/or barter for power and popularity. They conduct operations and store weapons in schools and mosques so that Israel is forced to strike them.
Which is not to say Israel isn't culpable either. Netanyahu deliberately strengthened Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian Authority to help prevent the two state solution from moving forward. Israel's religious hard right have consistently sabotaged the peace process for decades.
The two groups seem to want to try and kill each other rather than try and move forward with any solution, so I'm not sure how it's even possible to break that cycle.
Extremists on both sides sabotage any progress at peace, sometimes resorting to assassinations of their countrymen.
There's also demographic destiny: religious extremists literally outbreed the religiously moderate and secular, and in Israel the Haredim get to enjoy the rights and privileges of citizenship (defense, welfare, suffrage) with none of the responsibilities (military service, paying taxes, contributing to the economy).
This is a bug in democracy, and there's little way for Israel to democratically correct this.
First step would be; stop indiscriminately bombing children. Israel needs to stop and never do this again, that's the first step until they commit to that and give up on apartheid nothing else will be possible.
Palestine has no power, to assert it does is a lie. The people in Gaza especially are completely blockaded. Within a day Israel was able to completely cut off water, food and fuel. Hospitals are now running on fumes and will soon be mass graves. Try and tell me with a straight face that Palestine has the power to do that to Israel. There is no comparison here. Israel has the power and the responsibility to take steps to resolves this and to cease conflating civilians with Hamas terrorists.
Gaza has the power of chilling out. They cannot win and they need to simply accept that. Refusal to accept their fate as a vassal state of Israel is the reason their lives are hell. The US has many states which have very different goals and laws, but it works because they aren't trying to fucking murder each other constantly. Gaza could exist as a region of Israel, bound to their laws but able to live their lives. The citizens would be able to migrate and mingle. It is the absolute hatred in Gaza that keeps them locked in as any amount of reduction in restrictions leads to them commiting murders. You simply can't have a peaceful relationship with a people hell bent on murder, and Gaza will never be an independent state as long as Israel exists.
Do you think if at the very least all Israeli settlers left the West Bank, and the Yesha Council was outlawed, it would really lead to immediate and widespread violence? If these things happened in, say, 2010, do you think tensions today would be higher or lower?
I love the idea but I don't believe that Hamas and the Palestinians would ever, ever allow this to happen.
You have to understand that they hate Jews, and why wouldn't they? But even if you sympathize with them, even if you straight up agree with them, you can understand why Israel can never integrate them. Can you begin to imagine the century of car bombs and mass shootings that would follow?
This is a holy war and while the Israelis may be willing to make some concessions, the Palestinians as a whole absolutely will not at this point.
We wouldn't know, Israel has done nothing but brutalize the people of Gaza, literally half of the population there are under 18. Israel has the power to determine this, not Palestine. There is no genetic disposition among Palestinians that makes them hate jews.
I think this is a poor use case of an exemplary comment. This dichotomy with a binary mindset and expectations of no in-between possibilities is always perplexing to see.
A bad situation seems to be getting worse
The solution seems fairly simple to me
Israel is going after Hamas, big time. If you believe the headlines, trying to finish it off for real this time.
So, as a Gazan, you have to decide which one is more important to you, keeping your terrorist overloads in power and die in the name of Jihad, or renounce Hamas and help Israel remove it from power.
As the situation stands, any resources pumped into Gaza is only going to serve Hamas' efforts and will only serve to keep them in power. If a new peaceful group rises from the people seeking a true hope and change for the Palestinian people rises, I am sure everyone will help them and aid their efforts.
But historically the People in Gaza have chosen terrorism and hate over peace and quiet. And so I'm afraid they might have to suffer for their chosen leadership's choices.
The people of Palestine have chosen resistance over being subsumed by a Jewish ethnostate.
There are many ways of resistance. Choosing to murder innocent civilians isn't a moral or acceptable one.
The murder of innocent civilians is terrible, but unfortunately it's the only time anyone seems to pay any attention to Palestine. Need I remind you Israel has murdered many more innocent Palestinian civilians.
The international community doesn't care about Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank, nor does it care about the open air prison of Gaza, people only seem to care when Israeli's are killed.
I don't think it is fair to draw a moral equivalency there by reducing it to the number of deaths. The intention and context does also matter. When Hamas targets Israel they deliberately target civilians. Either by firing missiles at a civilian population or infiltrating and personally murdering, raping and kidnapping women, men, kids and the elderly. They then deliberately store munitions, launchers and militants in schools, hospitals and hearts of neighborhoods. When Israel targets Hamas they go after these militants and munitions, not the civilians. The civilians are collateral damage not the target and they are put in that danger by the Hamas.
What war crimes does the international community care about? Because it's sure as hell not China's, Saudi Arabia's, Yemen's, North Korea's or even US's. I would argue that out of all of them, Israel-Palestine is the thing the international community cares about the most.
The context and intention doesn't matter to the dead innocents. Israel are bombing the area with a disregard for human life, how many civilian deaths are justified per Hamas soldier? When Israel cut the supply of electricity and water to a population of 2 million, that's also okay because some of them are Hamas?
Does a line even exist for you? If Israel starts intentionally targeting hospitals, is it still justified?
Edit: 5 days after commenting this and Israel bombs a hospital...
I agree, Israel should not have cut food water and electricity supply to Gaza. Full stop.
Again, Israel is targeting munitions, launchers and militants who are hiding in the heart of civilian population deliberately. What would you have them do? Accept attacks on their country because the launches are placed in a school? Is Israel ever justified in defending itself to you?
Israel bombed a refugee camp the other day, clearly it's not surgically attacking Hamas infrastructure. There's also reports of the use of white phosphorous.
I can support Israel fighting Hamas militants on their soil, I don't support the bombing of Gaza. This may appear short sighted, but even if Gaza is levelled Hamas won't disappear.
I frequently see the argument that Hamas actions are counterintuitive and will only lead to more bloodshed. Is the same not true for Israel's actions? Will bombing Gaza not also inflame even more revolutionaries? Why do we pretend this will be some tactical operation, where Hamas disappears and Israel no longer faces a terrorist threat?
What is Palestine supposed to do in response to Israeli settlement in the West Bank? I don't think viral Tiktok dances are going to stop the Israeli government.
I think it's difficult for me to conceptualize Israel's actions as self defense knowing that the West Bank is being actively occupied. It's viewed as self defense because of the recent actions of Hamas.
To add to the difference in approach to civilian casualties, the IDF have apparently been practicing -when appropriate- "roof knocking", where they drop undersized or inert bombs on civilian buildings before they level the building 15 minutes later. To give civilians a chance to bugger out. They're expending military resources to give civilians a chance, and in doing so the enemy has a chance to get their people and some of their stuff out as well.
The degree and kind of disregard for human life is not the same on both sides here.
It seems that policy has been abandoned:
Israel says it will end Hamas rule in Gaza as casualties soar (Washington Post)
There was at least one recent event where they did that, afaict. Not going to link reddit's main wartime gore subreddit, but an apartment building in the backdrop of a news reporter was hit by a big firecracker and was later completely leveled. I guess a better source for that event is the WP article that I linked, which talks about it too. Apparently that was the very early days of the recent conflict, so might well be they abandoned those ROE since.
I don’t know what you’re expecting. We are effectively only observers. (Yes, the US government strongly backs Israel, but when do we get a chance to vote on that?)
It’s horrific, but I see no point in the average person beating themselves up over it. It would be unhealthy, unproductive doomscrolling.
You can essentially use this line of reasoning for any political issue, by this logic we're observers to climate change too.
We can start by not branding anyone who is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause as a terrorist sympathizer.
I think it’s largely true of climate change too. There are some things you can do personally, but individual action won’t move the needle. Preparing for more extreme weather events seems realistic and sensible.
The world is a lot bigger than us. It’s healthy to have a realistic understanding of what you can do. We can support people who are doing good things.
With respect to the Palestinian issue, who or what should we support? There don’t seem to be any good options.
Do you know what the worst thing really is to this?
I don't think it's a shoulder shrug at all, I think we're all just collectively too fucked to recognise how awful it is. I think if you asked the average person, doing their 9-5 grind? They'd tell you "It sucks, but what can I do?"
So few of us have any power to really change systems, or help those who need it.
I think it's more insidious than that when major news outlets report "dead Palestinians" vs "killed/murdered Israelis". We are being conditioned to accept a narrative, it's manufactured consent.
Have a look at this NYT article (archive link) that I was made aware of through a reddit thread.
The IDF themselves used human shields per their own admission, and what is this comparison to Russia and North Korea? Why would North Korea be using Human Shields? Who are they actively fighting?
What the fuck is this? Population adjusted death tolls? I guess 1,200 dead Israelis are equivalent to 186,000 dead Indians? I never see Palestinian deaths getting population adjusted.
I really feel terrible for the deaths of innocents on both sides, I think the fools celebrating Hamas atrocities are awful people, but we can't pretend that Israel has some moral high ground and I refuse to entertain the idea.
You're right. Honestly (and I've said this everytime), the entire situation is shameful, full of sorrow and such a waste of human lives on both sides.
War just sucks. I get all the reasons, all the logic, all the rationalising, all the emotive responses. But it still absolutely sucks.
Although the real data is still just as horrific, I believe the source above groups together civilian and non-civilian casualties, and is also slightly out of date.
I think you need to look again.
Hamas exists because of how Israel treated the Palestinians.
They have been pushed and rolled over and neglected.
We're in this situation thanks to Israel, they starved and beat a dog and now the dog needs to be put down because it bit it's owner.
Telling them they have to lean to roll over is obtuse as it gets
There's a clue you're under thinking it
Not just that, but they actively helped to create it.
I'm not sure how this is practical – are you recommending that civilians in Gaza should actively try to fight Hamas, reveal the locations of its fighters, despite the risk that Hamas will torture/execute them if they do?
I think I am a bit more cynical than you on this one.
I think this is a really tough position to argue – do you also believe that all US citizens are responsible for the Iraq war, and it would therefore be justified to dismantle every sewage system in the US in order to cause a similar level of excess deaths in the US as there were in Iraq?
In a single village they have deliberately slaughtered 40 kids along with their parents. Babies with their heads cut off.
A friend who was at the music festival that got attacked told me they gathered people up in a big circle and just machine-gunned them.
I know we're used to hear about violence and in some ways are desensitized to it, but let this really sink in.
I don't know any country that would sit on their hands and accept it.
I agree that violence isn't the answer and fear the deaths that are to come. I hate this fucking country and the amount of suffering they're inflicting on one another.
There has never been any confirmation, video proof or elaboration on this. It was said by a live reporter on Israeli television as something one of the soldiers told her, and then Israeli military straight up told that they don't have any reports of 40 beheaded babies. But it sure does make a nice headline.
There is now confirmation.
The images are also floating around on the internet now, I recommend avoiding them.
I don’t understand why people thought the reporters were lying about this? Hamas already looks terrible here, there is no need for exaggeration to make them look worse.
To be honest I sort of assumed if it wasn't the case it would have been a game of telephone from garbled grammar under stress. Something like "They killed and beheaded them. Women and children too." And from it not being clear what verb is referring to what object it's easy to interpret it multiple ways, the most lurid interpretation has legs and gets boosted through social media since, apparently, nobody confirms things before going to print anymore.
No, the reporter had witnessed it herself. What would you have them do, post videos of their beheaded babies online? Are you equally skeptical about the reported Palestinian death toll?
But fine, how about this headline?
I don't know if the baby thing has been confirmed, but it doesn't really matter, Hamas would've totally done that. They raped and tortured their way through the south, and I'm sure there's hundreds of bone chilling stories that are going to come out of this, like in Bucha.
But it doesn't change the fact that 300,000 Gazans have been displaced, or that food and medicine can no longer enter the strip, or that Israel is openly not adhering to the rules of war. Yes, Hamas attacks from schools and hospitals, and yes they use human shields, so civilian casualties will be higher. But this is different. Israel is indiscriminately bombing dense urban centres, without a single care of any innocent civilian casualties.