So I suppose it's just back to the status quo? What has really changed that will make a difference in 2-3 years from now? Israel has sowed a whole fresh generation of "I will sacrifice everything to wipe Israel" Palestinian youth.
The entirety of Hamas leadership is gone, Hamas will most likely not going to have control in Gaza (still being debated which mechanism will govern, this is part of the deal), the crossing to Egypt will be handled by foreign countries which will prevent weapon smuggling. And in the broader spectrum, hizballah is not more, Assad is no more, all of Iran’s proxies can no longer support Hamas’ ambitions which basically means the “mokawamma” is dead.
So in short, the entire Middle East have changed.
You still have millions of people in Gaza and Lebanon who got bombed by Israel. Whether it's the existing groups or new groups going forward, the grievances are still there and bigger than ever. Let's wait a few before we declare anything changed.
All of my Lebanese friends, quite young, have stories about the wars with Israel. The helicopters and bombs over Beirut. Waking up in fear in the night. They have been grieved in regards to Israel their whole life. In this respect not much has changed.
All Israelis have stories about rockets over Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Be'er Sheba. Waking up in fear in the night, for over a year now, and before that in previous rounds. At least the Lebanese see that the targets were military, and strikes were, more or less, precise.
Peace between Israel and Lebanon is a necessity for both sides, and both sides suffered greatly over the many years of conflict. There is no real reason for there not to be peace between these two countries, except for latent animosity, mostly on the Lebanese side. I hope they can overcome it.
I think that was the above poster's point. None of us would like to become a target because of the foreign policy of the country we live in and our allies.
Yes but Hezbollah and Hamas caused enough grievances on their own. They were violent, far-right, Iran-backed terrorists that suppressed any sort of grassroots self-organization. Isreal wanted them there, they were easy to control, easy to use as an excuse to do whatever they pleased. I doubt the youth of Gaza or Lebanon are stupid enough to fall for the same trick twice.
I doubt the Palestinian people are going to just sit and watch Israel slowly usurp what remains of their homeland. It's never a good idea to underestimate the price a people are willing to pay for their freedom. The French learned that in Algeria, the British in Ireland, and the US in Veitnam.
The unfortunate truth is that, compared to Hamas, arabs are more free under Israeli rule. Its a terrible trick, but creating a despotic enemy, making yourselves out to be the land of reason and civilization, its all part of their game plan.
That isn't true. israel is an apartheid state, there are many documentaries showing their treatment of people who are non-Jews as second or third class citizens, or even Jews who have a darker skin color. We saw how they force steralized Etheopian jews for instance. We saw how they literally spit on christians.
This isn't true. Where, for instance, is the Arab right of return?
It also heavily reeks of the insinuation that Hamas imposes sharia law which is not the case.
But really, how can you claim "arabs are more free" while Israeli settlers evict arabs from their homes at gunpoint with the aid of the IOF? While the IOF kidnaps and kills children indiscriminately?
It's not even true to say all Jews enjoy the same freedom under Israel. Ask the Beta Israelis.
> A hidden camera in a local health clinic recorded a Ethiopian woman being told by a nurse that this shot is given “primarily to Ethiopian women because they forget, they don’t understand, and it’s hard to explain to them, so it’s best that they receive a shot once every three months… basically they don’t understand anything.”
How is the right of return has anything to do with Arabs IN Israel? The right of return is only for immigration rights, which is relevant only for non citizens.
And every other example is anecdotal, and does not signify less rights for Arabs. You might as well say that black people have less rights than white in USA.
> How is the right of return has anything to do with Arabs IN Israel? The right of return is only for immigration rights, which is relevant only for non citizens.
Lets break this down.
> How is the right of return has anything to do with Arabs IN Israel?
The original claim was that "arabs are more free under Israeli rule". Denying 750,000 people the right to return to the house they were forced out of under threat of death doesn't sound like "freedom" to me.
> The right of return is only for immigration rights, which is relevant only for non citizens.
Yeah the people kicked out in the Nakba are not citizens of Israel, so what is your point? I'm talking about the freedom of people terrorized out of their houses who are not recognized as citizens of the state of Israel. You nailed it bud. What are you misunderstanding?
So you agree that Arab citizens in Israel have the same right as Jewish citizens? And your only grievance is regarding which non citizen can get citizenship?
Palestinian Arabs within pre-1967 Israel are treated relatively well because Israel already dispelled enough of them in the Naqba to ensure that they will be demographically dominated by Jewish Israelis for the foreseeable future. The point is to ensure Jewish supremacy, which in a democracy requires Jewish plurality. The persecution of Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza is a deliberate process aimed at slowly enlarging the territory Israel can claim without losing a Jewish plurality.
This also explains why Israel has pursued genocide in Gaza. The Israeli project, in so far as it is a project to invert the population inequality between Jews and non-Jews in Palestine, is almost genocidal by definition. Once you maximize Jewish birth rates and incentivize Jewish immigration with birthright and similar policies, all that remains is to suppress Palestinian Arab birth rates and incentivize Palestinian Arab emmigration and yes, kill Palestinian Arabs--all that remains is genocide.
Its terrible, the Zionist simply didn't think there was an alternative after the Holocaust. One atrocities vs potential hundreds more over the millennia? It forecloses the possibility of a different kind of future, but its the only one that makes sense the way things are now. Its fear, all of it is fear for what might happen.
Also hundreds of millions of people outside of the Middle East who now very much do not support Israel. They've lost any goodwill they may have had and that's an understatement.
> None of this was a secret. In March 2019, Netanyahu told his Likud colleagues: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
As a WP editor, the anti-Israeli editors have become a very strong majority, making it a poor source of objective information. For example the first paragraph of the Zionism article now reads: "Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible."
The article you link to essentially boils down to the fact that Qatar funding for some (ostensibly) infrastructure and humanitarian aid projects in Gaza, with Israel facilitating it. It's not really support for Hamas, except in the sense that such Gaza aid projects require the involvement of its government.
I'm sure you could find 17 citations that Muhammad had sex with underage girls but that's not the first sentence of the Wikipedia article on Muhammad, is it?
Point being just because something is cited doesn't mean putting it in the first sentence is unbiased.
...what?? What should the first sentence of the Zionism article be if not the definition of Zionism and the goals of Zionists? What would an unbiased but complete introductory sentence look like?
If the foremost notable thing about Muhammad were that he had sex with underage girls, but instead the actual first sentence is about him being the founder of Islam, then you'd have a devastating point here.
> What would an unbiased but complete introductory sentence look like?
The goal of Zionism is to create a safe haven for Jewish refugees, to prevent another situation like the Holocaust where millions of Jewish refugees were murdered.
The issue is that the reality distortion field that is required to maintain the current Zionist narrative is just too strong and it quickly falls apart even just by following some basic rules on fair citation.
Jimmy Wales has no involvement in editing such articles. The Wikipedia Foundation doesn't involve itself in such matters either. For example, when concerns were raised about the ADL (a Jewish NGO) being banned as a source, they responded by (correctly) explaining that "neither the Board or the Foundation make content decisions on Wikipedia. A community of volunteers makes these decisions".
Such content matters are entirely community decisions, so of course a biased community results in biased decisions.
https://www.piratewires.com/p/how-wikipedia-s-pro-hamas-edit... - There is even an article that explains exactly how 'a powerful group of editors is hijacking wikipedia, pushing pro-palestinian propaganda, erasing key facts about hamas, and reshaping the narrative around Israel with alarming influence'
Who knows where the balance actually lies, but it's not just pro-Palestinians doing the propaganda here. Israel has engaged in far more propaganda than pretty much everyone (except maybe the United States) since the hasbara policy was first established following the public image fallout from the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
i think the key passage of this article is when they discuss the shortcomings of the wikipedia arbitration process (Arbcom) - however the wikimedia foundation is not exactly short on cash.
'''The charges are serious, and the evidence backing them up abundant. Nevertheless, seven months later the Arbcom case is still pending. The reason is systemic: in a lengthy request for arbitration on a separate PIA case, one of Wikipedia’s arbitrators noted that the final decision-making panel is staffed by 12 volunteers, only 10 of whom are active. “It is clear that AE [arbitration enforcement] has run out of steam to handle the morass of editor conduct issues in PIA,” the arbitrator wrote. “PIA is a Gordian knot; and AE has run short of knot detanglers.”
Electing more Arbcom members would require a massive overhaul of the site’s governing regulations, a task akin to the US government amending its constitution. And though Wikimedia Foundation, which owns the site, has around $500 million in assets, because of the air-gap between Wikipedia and WMF and the volunteer ethos of Wikipedia’s mission not a penny can be used to hire people to oversee contentious topics.'''
>In the article on “Jews,” for example, he removed the “Land of Israel” from a key sentence on the origin of Jewish people. He changed the article’s short description (a condensed summary that appears on Wikipedia’s mobile version and on site search results) from “Ethnoreligious group and nation from the Levant” to “Ethnoreligious group and cultural community.” Though subtle
It's pretty evident that the person who wrote your article is just complaining that wikipedia is at least somewhat resistant to being used as a platform for pushing zionist propaganda.
>It's pretty evident that the person who wrote your article is just complaining that wikipedia is at least somewhat resistant to being used as a platform for pushing zionist propaganda.
Thanks kernel_lover!
I don't think he did, he is a very civil person, by any standards. I get flagged occasionally, when talking about topics similar to that of this article, but don't think that Dang has anything to do with it.
(on the other hand, I got less involved with Hacker News, probably because I don't have much to say about AI/LLM and because of that discernible bias in middle east politics over here)
Israel approved money from
Qatar to flow into Gaza as a goodwill, trust establishing gesture, and as part of previous ceasefire agreements. It was supposedly used to pay salaries for the Gaza government.
Was it wrong in hindsight? Of course. Was it used to create division? No.
Fine, sure, I guess - the article is demanding an email address so I can’t read it, but I buy it.
I’m responding to the statement “Netanyahu was the one that helped put them there in the first place. He did this to try and derail the two state solution - famously delivering them thoses briefcases full of cash.”
This is a vastly different statement than “Israel has been funding anti PLO/PA efforts since the 80’s”. It’s referring to a specific (“famous”!) instance, and attributing it to a specific person (Netanyahu), and putting it at a specific time frame (before Hamas seized power) so as to have a specific consequence (Hamas’ acquisition of power) for a specific reason (to derail a two state solution). Very little of this is correct: Netanyahu was not the one responsible for putting them into power (he wasn’t prime minister at the time), the Qatari money being referenced was allowed into Gaza many years after Hamas was in power, it was unlikely to do much to prevent a two state solution as one hadn’t really been on the table since Arafat, and so on.
That other people in the Israeli government, at a different time, backed Hamas in different instances for different reasons does not warrant conflating the two events. It’s like saying Bush did 9/11 because the CIA funded Bin Laden in the 80s.
And Israel sold arms to Iran to use against Iraq in the 1980s. "My enemy's enemy" etc.
> Soon after taking office in 1981, the Reagan Administration secretly and abruptly changed United States policy." Secret Israeli arms sales and shipments to Iran began in that year, even as, in public, "the Reagan Administration" presented a different face, and "aggressively promoted a public campaign [...] to stop worldwide transfers of military goods to Iran". The New York Times explains: "Iran at that time was in dire need of arms and spare parts for its American-made arsenal to defend itself against Iraq, which had attacked it in September 1980", while "Israel [a US ally] was interested in keeping the war between Iran and Iraq going to ensure that these two potential enemies remained preoccupied with each other". Major General Avraham Tamir, a high-ranking Israeli Defense Ministry official in 1981, said there was an "oral agreement" to allow the sale of "spare parts" to Iran. This was based on an "understanding" with Secretary Alexander Haig (which a Haig adviser denied). This account was confirmed by a former senior US diplomat with a few modifications. The diplomat claimed that "[Ariel] Sharon violated it, and Haig backed away". A former "high-level" Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official who saw reports of arms sales to Iran by Israel in the early 1980s estimated that the total was about $2 billion a year
The 1980's were a very different era. The PLO was a terrorist organisation backed by the Soviet Union, and Israel was aggressive in trying to support any challenges to it.
> As the Hamas leadership pointed out, this objective failed.
Israel's objective from day one has not been to expel Hamas from Gaza (that's virtually impossible), but to remove it from power. And if the rumors about the ceasefire are true (and if the ceasefire is going to be respected), that's what's going to happen.
You make it sound like Hamas was passive in this. Baiting your enemy into attacking you in order to galvanize your side still requires them taking the bait. It’s a legitimate strategy, just not a very nice one. See also: US/Japan relations ahead of WW2.
> What has really changed that will make a difference in 2-3 years from now?
The whole Iranian anti Israel coalition has been badly beaten!
Hezbollah barely exists anymore. The Assad regime is toppled. Iran itself has learned that Israel can attack them at will. The Houthis are still active, but too far away to do real damage.
Hamas itself still exists, but in a deeply degraded form. Their leaders are dead. Their armed forces have taken huge losses. Their amazing tunnel network is destroyed.
Israel will never again be invaded by surprise.
Hamas will probably start shooting rockets into Israel again, and kill the occasional civilian, but Israel is used to that and can deal with it.
Of any of Israel's wars in recent history none has decimated their regional enemies as much as this. Every way you cut it they are in a much more secure position militarily. Iran (aka Lebanon/Syria) losing so badly is more important than Hamas surviving because that was the cludgle that threatened them from punishing Gaza too harshly (for ex: America pushed Israel very hard not to provoke Lebanon after Oct 7 and we saw how that turned out).
Any future Hamas actions will inherently be less secure as their external help is now crippled.
Israel is weaker politically and internationally than it has ever been, dramatically so. It can only have military superiority as long as western nations are supplying it with weapons and political cover.
Disagree. Israel historically was in a worse state. The U.S. didn’t always support Israel. Additionally Israel, a nation of Jews, has seen its people in much, much, much, worse. Including pre 49.
This is just even remotely close to being true. 1948 was as weak as they have ever been. They're stronger now then they've been in a long time. I wouldn't be surprised to see diplomatic recognition with Saudi Arabia and Lebanon in the next few years.
Ignoring that Hamas is still in power, the best outcome of this war is destruction of Hizbollah. That was a boogie man that everyone was afraid. Of course it took decades of preparation but the outcome is magical. It's hard to believe that only 1 year ago IDF was afraid to touch a tent that Hizbollah setup right on the border and now it freely bombs them without any response.
Israel was in an extremely secure position on October 6th. They blew it by getting soft on border security, a mistake they won’t make again. There was absolutely zero reason a single hamas fighter should’ve been able to escape Gaza.
Yes reading about the insecurity of the military outposts near the border, one only filled with all-female 20yr old comms people and only a couple guards with rifles, another base full of unarmed students in training, and the general slow response of some of the QRF was pretty shocking. Proper military response took hours to show up in some cases. It's not like the giant Ukraine border, it should be easier to manage. But I'm no expert...
I don't think this is a symmetrical situation. Life in Israel is quite comfortable. Young people have hopes and dreams beyond sacrificing themselves in an eternal war. Palestinians in Gaza have an extremely bleak outlook on the future and effectively no hope that anything meaningful will change in their lifetime, and they feel collectively humiliated by decades of occupation. Sacrificing "everything" is a lot easier when everything looks a lot like nothing.
Did you know that Gaza has shopping malls and waterfront resorts? Did you know that Israel had been opening up more and more jobs for Palestinians within Israel? Until they decided to throw all that progress away on October 7th.
Their own state. This is what people keep missing in discussions about this conflict: you don't get your own state by having the world, or Israel, or the US, or Iran "grant" it to you. You get your own state by building it - having functional institutions, developing an economy, reaching out to build peaceful international relations.
Hamas chose to take all that steel and concrete, donated in the billions by the entire world, and build tunnels and rockets instead of universities and civilian infrastructure.
> you don't get your own state by having the world, or Israel, or the US, or Iran "grant" it to you.
They are 100% dependent on Israel granting them their state. Take electricity for example. Before the current fighting, Gaza was on a rolling blackout schedule where each region only has electricity for a few hours each day. They have one diesel power plant (Israel enforces that all diesel is bought through Israel; it completely controls the supply), and the vast majority of the rest of their electricity needs were met by Israeli power lines (they also bought a little bit from Egypt).
Whatever economic activity they develop that is dependent on electricity (that is, nearly every modern economic activity) must be "granted" to them. Israel can (and has, and currently does) cut off electricity supply to Gaza at will, as a negotiating tactic or as punishment.
Yet, over a million israelis left, and their media complains about it. And yet, we see the pride of the Palestinian people in them facing one of the most brutal regimes in history, they stand tall and strong.
Honest question, but why haven't there been "I will sacrifice everything to wipe [country]" generations sowing havoc on neighbors after Dresden, Nagasaki, Nanjing or others?
Aid to Germany after World War II under the Marshall Plan totaled $14 billion ($60 billion in today’s value), averaging $272 per capita across participating nations over four years. In contrast, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have received $1,330 per capita since 1993, or $161 annually, more than twice the per-capita annual aid under the Marshall Plan
That's a laughable comparison. Israel has been systematically undermining the economic and political independence of the West Bank and Gaza during that timeframe. Gaza had been under siege since 2006. The Marshall Plan in contrast was a concerted effort to rebuild and integrate Germany into the European economy.
To be fair Germany would have recovered economically on its own with or without the Marshall plan (ECSC was much more impactful than the Marshall plan..)
Most Arab states generally don’t do that well economically even without any foreign power undermining their independence. Unless they have massive amounts of oil but often even then (Iraq/Iran)
Your characterisation of Arab states is totally baseless. There is no control case of an Arab state that developed without either large oil resources or significant foreign intervention during the modern period. Name one.
You mention Iran, but Iran is not Arabic, but Persian, and the Persian Safavid Empire was formidable from 1501 to 1722. Then Iran was a plaything of the British and Russian empires for many years, culminating in British-Russian occupation during World War II and the 1953 CIA/MI6-orchestrated coup that overthrew democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh after he nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew the US-backed Shah, Iran has struggled under heavy economic sanctions orchestrated by the United States.
Iraq was part of the Ottoman Empire from 1534 to 1918, when Britain took over after WWI, maintaining substantial power over Iraq despite the latter's nominal independence in 1932. The British-established monarchy wasn't overthrown until 1958, after which the Soviets and the West exploited the instability to compete for influence.
I think you're underestimating just how pervasive Western colonialism was and is.
> significant foreign intervention during the modern
Same applies to pretty much every western country besides perhaps Switzerland and to a lesser extent Sweden.
Anyway I think you’re going back far too much. Countries like Algeria, Morocco, Tunis, Jordan and even Egypt or Syria were mostly left to their own devices since the ~50-70s (most instability in those countries that led to foreign intervention had internal causes).
Where are they now? Compare them with South Korea or Taiwain (which were both very poor and run by extremely oppressive regimes until the 80s). Same applies to much of Eastern Europe.
Dresden and Nagasaki, we managed to convince them they were at fault to some degree.
Nanjing, well, Chinese sentiment is still very anti-Japan because of that and all the other atrocities. And proportionally to size/population, the destruction visited on Gaza in the past year and a quarter goes far beyond what Japan did in China.
I believe the reason was that the Nazis were forced to repent due to the Allied occupation. They also had to pay billions in reparations to Jews affected by the Holocaust. If that hadn't happened and the NSDAP had been allowed to continue to dominate German politics, I bet millions of Jews who lost their loved ones in the Holocaust would seek revenge on the Germans. Similarly, if the Zionist regime were toppled and replaced with one that treated Palestinians as humans, rather than as animals, feelings of deep hatred would dissipate.
Oh because the a lot of the apparatchiks of the Nazi and Imperial Japanese regimes were absorbed into the western countries (operation paperclip, unit 731 amnesties, ratlines => colonia dignidad, jakarta method masterminded by Nazis mindset in the CIA) and the remaining nazis were propped up by the allies in west germany to continue their reign after all the dust was settled after which they eventually and successfully absorbed east germany. Note; Germany was never denazified.
Ok now a double honest question, why do zionists have unlimited justifications for committing a holocaust over the last 15 months+? And how many oceans of Palestinian children's blood does it take to wash away German guilt?
Fascinating! Now imagine how offensive it is to normal people for zionists to actually commit a holocaust and make unlimited justifications for it while crying victim!
This is exactly what the Nazis did, they tried to justify the mass industrial slaughter of the whole by claiming to be attacked unprovoked by a subset of uprisers and making antisemetic justifications while crying about bankers. Gas and Cry is what the Nazis did. Main difference is that now flying demons vaporize children into a thin instead with 2000lb American bombs.
Just as Nazis don't get to reductively define nazism (as simply the right to an Ubermensch Lebensraum) after 15 years of atrocities and 1 holocaust, zionists do not get to reductively define zionism (as simply the the right to a Jubermensch Lebensraum) [I'm impressed that you've reduced it even more as merely "the right for Jews to exist", nice try] after 76 years of atrocities and 1 holocaust. Both are defined by their victims!
All these narrative traps do not work anymore. There is no justification for committing a holocaust. Not now. Not then. Not ever. No matter claims as to who controls what, no matter why rose up against whom, no matter whose religion says what.
Truly embarrassing for humanity that that has to be said.
And speaking of a ratio to 300:1, that is the death ratio that Israel has exacted upon the population of Gaza per Lancet. Surprisingly that ratio did not apply to the Germans, as per demonic Israeli calculator there are currently 1.8bn (300 * 6m) too many Germans alive today. Quite forgiving to the Germans for some reason (see: Otto Skorzeny).
"unlimited justifications". The justification is a massive assault by the Palestinians against Israeli civilians and the daily rocket attacks. They aren't justifying a Holocaust, because again, this is not only nowhere near it in scale, but they also aren't targeting civilians. You are welcome to review hundreds of videos of militants being targeted on the IDF's website or via other sources.
The rest of your post is unhinged racism and insanity and really has no place here.
I do not take the Israeli Einsatzgruppen Force's word for anything the same way I don't take the Nazis word for why they felt they needed to do Auschwitz.
Your whole engagement in this conversation is truly unhinged racism and insanity and holocaust denialism and justification and really has no place here.
Realistically, West Bank will be gone (totally settled, all Palestinians removed) in 15 years. Gaza will further be ghettoized and, pessimistically, will be basically gone in 50 years or so.
That's indeed the current trajectory, but then what exactly will happen with the Palestinian population in that scenario? All 5+ million crammed into Gaza? Driven into Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan by force? (which are already refusing to take them today, by threat of military action) What else?
That's not realistic at all. Israel has no apparent plans to settle the major Palestinian population centers in the West Bank like Nablus, Ramallah etc. and evict Palestinians from there.
Indeed, life will probably continue getting worse for West Bank Palestinians under the Israeli apartheid regime, but there's no reason to believe they'll be literally exterminated.
The point is that they are NOT starting with Israel proper first, where Arabs are and have been citizens for a long time. Palestinians have been elected to the Israeli parliament, and there is an Arab Justice on the Israeli Supreme Court.
Just in case you are unaware, there are two million Arab Muslims citizens in Israel. Some of them consider themselves Palestinians (which is really a nationalist movement), some do not - but they are the same people / ethnic group that was there during the 48 war. These are full citizens, full members of Israeli society, not the Palestinian non-citizens in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.
Huh interesting. My understanding (from conversation with some Israelis) was that Arabs were not drafted as the rest of the population are. Obviously they were mistaken though.
Ah ok, thanks for the education. I guess that's really where I was coming from. I get the complexities, but it's hard to see another democratic state having such policies.
You'd think so, I have been told that being Palestinian is arrestable offence in Israel. Some people are very delusional about the actual situation on hand, as evident by some of the comments here.
One of the many things that helps in thinking clearly about this conflict, and the perspectives one has already encountered, is to distinguish Arab Muslim Israeli citizens from Palestinians who reside in Gaza or West Bank.
That is not likely to happen. Arabs with Israeli citizenship (who may or may not identify as “Palestinian”) are only like 20% of the population. Palestinians without Israeli citizenship are not allowed to live in Israel except in some edge cases like people in East Jerusalem which was annexed.
Israel is never going to annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip and give the people there full citizenship rights, instead they will continue carving up the WB with Jewish-only settlements that are in practice part of Israel but not officially annexed and which Palestinians are not allowed to live in.
This doesn't make sense on multiple levels. First of all, why wouldn't Israel want Gazans to go away? All of them somehow moving to Egypt or Syria might in fact be the dream outcome for Israel.
As it stands, the track record of Gazans avoiding "oppression" by joining their co-religionists is being kicked out of Jordan for being a disruptive influence, and then playing the main role in turning Lebanon into a failed state. No wonder Egypt doesn't want them!
Given that many Gazans do migrate individually, it might even get worse with time - the more capable and less political a Gazan is, the more likely they would be to migrate away, leading to a vicious cycle on the margins
The problem is unsolvable. You have two sets of people with sets of claims on the same land. Both sides have an unshakable resolve that they are in the right and nothing is going to change that.
The former solves the problem but isn't really on the table. The later doesn't settle the question. Both sides would have to come up with a mutually agreeable solution and that isn't on the table.
In genuinely morbid moment of being nerd snipped… I wonder if the ordinance dropped per square meter on Gaza is higher than the ordinance dropped be square meter on Vietnam… which was famously bombed so hard that detailed maps needed to be updated in order to accommodate how heavily cratered parts of the country were with heavily cratered hills and slopes literally shifting like a form of mechanical erosion by bombing.
Vietnam has an area of 331,000 square km. America dropped over 5 million tonnes of bombs on it over a ten year period.
That's 1.51 tonnes/km2/year.
Gaza has an area of 365 square km. Israel dropped over 85,000 tonnes of bombs dropped on it over one year [0].
That's 232.88 tonnes/km2/year. Over 150x more.
Don't forget! Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world - about 50 times more densely populated than 1970 Vietnam. 50% of whom are children.
So, Israel dropped 150x the bombs per year on Gaza, an area 50x more densely populated. Proportionally, Israel's bombardment is 7,500 times worse than Vietnam, on an area that's fully half children.
This last year has delegitimized the West's claims to any moral high ground, ever, far, far more than we yet realize.
Vietnam is a slightly misleading comparison here I think, because big parts are jungle (counting the whole area downplays the severity of bombing significantly).
If you compare heavily bombed WW2 targets, you see similar/higher bomb loads, like 4000 tons for Dresden over 3 days (<10 km^2), or ~18000 tons for the Leuna works (synthfuel refinery, <20 km^2, within 1 year).
> counting the whole area downplays the severity of bombing significantly
That's fair, I think.
Dresden was horrific, and ought to be formally acknowledged as a war crime. Still, I don't think you can say it was worse than what is happening to Gaza, from any perspective except maybe in horror per day. They are similarly sized, but Gaza is more densely populated. If you had the terrible choice between nearly 4000 tons over 3 days, or 85,000+ tons over 14 months, I think I know what you would choose.
I would also point out that global awareness of what was happening in Dresden was many orders of magnitude lower than awareness of Gaza's bombing, and the military 'justification' far worse.
Leuna works was a key strategic target with a 13 square km area; I wouldn't see it as an appropriate comparison.
I'm unsure about the justification angle for strategic bombing in general.
I honestly believe there is not enough honest consensus globally (or even within the US/EU) to declare this off-limits-- given the choice between strategic bombing (with large collateral damage) or breaking resistance one-MG-nest at-a-time by throwing your infantry at it, basically every modern nation would make the same decision I believe...
In my view, what makes the current situation particularly bad for Gaza/the Hamas side is that their goals are not limited to their own freedom and independence-- a lot of them want Israel/Jews gone in general, a position that deprives them of much international support and protection (especially western) that would otherwise be in fairly easy reach.
Basically, Hamas is a clear underdog/victim from a military power perspective, but they have made it very clear (October 7th) that if the positions were reversed, they would drop bombs immediately themselves. This costs them a lot of international sympathy; Israel would never have gotten away with this without the October attack.
Thank you for taking the time to do the grim maths…
Also, holy ** I thought it was bad and probably going to be maybe 10-25 times higher… based on the utter devastation I have seen in satellite imagery… but over 150 times more…
The proportionality math for population density is just… ghastly.
I appreciate the thanks... Looking at the horror honestly does take a toll.
Still, I'm glad you asked. It's better to have perspective on these things.
For anyone who wants to visualize what 85,000 tonnes of bombs looks like, it's about 5.7x the nuke dropped over Hiroshima (Hiroshima is 2.5x bigger than Gaza, and was 16x less densely populated than modern Gaza in 1945).
This comparison also helps put Vietnam into perspective - 333x Little Boy over ten years.
That’s one potential mitigating factor, but they were also using large bombs like 2000 pounders on targets that I’ve not seen any reputable military commentators agree as justifying such a large bomb…
like the typical comment are things like before and after satellite image comparisons and taking it at face value the claimed target exists for the sake of arguing the point… and they would say things like “that building needed 1000 pounds max and that’s probably overkill, you would probably want to just use two 500 pound bombs one on the first pass, and one on the second if it was still standing, heck I’d probably have argued for three 250 pounders bombs with penetration aids and have flow the sortie in a staggered pass so after each drop the next pilot can confirm if the target is still standing and drop theirs if necessary, but using a 2000 pound bomb is nuts on a target that size, they have air superiority and significant ground control to ensure minimal SAM risk from MANPADS, if I had suggested a sortie like this when I was a [whatever their rank was/is], it would have severely hurt my career due to how recklessly wasteful I would have appeared”
And that kind of commentary came up a lot in certain circles. Not even arguing the validity of the targets like the whole “hidden bunker under every second building” stuff… just legitimately tactical assessment of construction typical of the region, the cumulative seismic and shock load damage from prior nearly weapon detonations, and the honest appraisal that it was extremely overkill to use bombs that size… it was morbidly educational in a way.
Estimates of Hamas membership originating from Israeli state sources should be taken with a grain of salt.
I expect the Israeli regime's blood thirst to be counter-balanced by the desire to free hostages, but apparently not. I don't think bombing hospitals and refugee camps serve any military purpose.
In normal circumstances it doesn't. But Hamas had no shame using non-military sites as cover for military operations. Dead children is the fuel that powered Hamas's international support.
And trust me, these guys just tell themselves those children will be blessed by Allah as martyrs, no biggie.
~20k civilians dead in this war (started by the Palestinians, all civilians were collateral damage thanks to Palestinian militants using civilians as shields) vs 12 million killed in Nazi camps. Maybe you shouldn't diminish far greater horrors in order to attack Israel.
How does this square with the Palestinians inside Israel with citizenship having the same rights as Jewish Israeli ones? Execution issues and favoritism of the ethnostate majority aside.
Assad fell as a result of Israeli actions. Leadership of the entire axis of resistance is dead. Syria, Lebanon, and the West Bank learned what the price will be for “FAFO”. Gazan citizens have started to have a negative sentiment in Hamas, but do not express it given they and their families will be killed
