Israel's response to Oct 7th has been a major blackpill.
Their strategy was, I think, as bad as it could possibly be. In fact, it really seemed, and still seems, like no strategy at all -- they lashed out wildly and extremely destructively, without a clear picture of what the post-war Gaza Strip will look like.
Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response that killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, which played directly into the dynamics of guerrilla warfare where a strong state's extreme actions against a weak opponent undermine its legitimacy.
Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation.
Yet, rather than adapting, Israel's network doubled down with censorship campaigns, crackdowns on protests, and weaponizing "anti-semitism" accusations to silence critics -- actions that have all backfired. Now international support is collapsing, the EU is pushing sanctions, and the US is slowly distancing itself. Israel's best option right now is to end the war as quickly as possible, and devote all of its efforts to repairing damaged relationships and mitigating the war's effects, before isolation accelerates to the level of sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa.
I'll also note that it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost. Hamas lost the shooting war, the people of Gaza have lost lives and livelihoods which may take more than a decade to rebuild, and Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this.
Sadly I think you are mistaken to paint it as an irrational Israel lashing out - that's too generous.
I think it's quite the opposite - there has been a very clear, cold, calculated strategy - which is to use the conflict as an cover for doing what some in the government have always wanted to do ( and been quite open about it ) - which is to create a greater Israel - drive out all Palestinians from the river to the sea ( Gaza and West Bank ), as well as push to the river in the north into Lebanon and take more of Syria.
Those in government understand the potential reputation loss - but see that as temporary and something that can be managed under the protection of the US, while viewing the gain of territory as permanent.
This is spot on. This has been a recurring practice of the Israeli regime - to take advantage of a terrorist attack or some other pretext in order to take over additional territory and remove the local population. This modus operandi has been practiced since right after the partition resolution at the end of 1947 to conquer Palestinian villages, remove their inhabitants and rase the houses to the ground, and is still practiced today in the occupied territories and Gaza. Like you said, Israel's recent military campaigns in Lebanon and Syria are also examples of the same strategy.
> One would think that if people don't want to lose land, they should not set out to make war.
What a perverse, meaningless justification. This statement reflects your own insecurity - you would never let someone say this if it was Israeli territory being contested. You would never have to say this if Israel didn't possess illegally claim, genocide and then colonize annexed territory in violation of international law.
Exactly. Unlike the US, there are no large oceans or seas surrounding Israel and keeping our enemies away. Our enemies are right on our borders, we are extremely insecure.
What deterrent do we have? Attack us, loose land. That's it. That's our only deterrent.
As long as you continue to call your immediate neighbours "enemies" you will always feel insecure and threatened by them.
Perhaps Israel could take a radically different path and aim to call their neighbours "friends" instead, or at minimum a healthy but neutral relationship?
Only a small number of bordering countries worldwide are sworn enemies and the world would be a better place for everyone if this fell to zero.
This is one of the most disingenuous posts I've read in this entire thread. Are you suggesting that Israel's neighbors are not the ones who consider themselves enemies of Israel? Did not upon the founding of Israel seven of our neighbors, including all four nations who border us, invade us? Have they not done this on numerous other occasions as well? Did Gaza not invade Israel at the beginning of the current conflict two years ago?
You might also be interested in this excerpt from our declaration of independence:
> WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
your words betray black and white thinking that demonstrates obvious externalization of responsibility. look up "splitting". it's a psychological defense mechanism.
if you were on the spiritual and moral ground you represent yourself as being on, no one else's actions or stance would change your opinion on whether they deserve love and a psychologically/relationally secure response from you. when someone is psychologically insecure, they overreact, hold double standards, externalize responsibility, and project their own insecurity as a moral flaw onto others. the term "narcissistic defenses" appears in literature. this is why it's so hard to talk to you. you are perpetuating the conflict by using the "logic" you are using. in reality you are displaying entitlement and grandiosity. and that prevents you from admitting it.
an eye for an eye makes the world blind, big man.
realistically, it's your own people and your own children and parts of yourselves that you are attempting to destroy and alienate. You're being used and you're using people.
Just for some agenda that you don't even understand but are all too willing to deploy propaganda to argue for. You remind me of a cult member or someone my grandparents fought against in WW2. Those "Arabs" are just taking your living room, aren't they?
> Those "Arabs" are just taking your living room, aren't they?
Those Arabs were actually in the living rooms of my friends and co-workers two years ago, yes in fact. Two women I know had their babies burned to death. My daughter's classmate was murdered along with both his siblings and both his parents in their living room. My son's camp counselor was dragged off to Gaza and murdered - pulled out of his bedroom. I could go on and on and on, these are just examples of people whom the Arabs were in their living rooms recently. In fact, one man that I would occasionally have breakfast with, though he wasn't a close friend, is still in Gaza today. He was dragged out of his own living room or bedroom, yes.
You have become worse than them.
Until you admit this, you will not be better. And I know that you don't care about being better anymore.
You're just a racist looking to wipe out an ethnic group, not even an ideology. It's in your words.
Shame on you. If and when history confirms that your self-entitlement was the cause of the attacks you would deny it for a long time, just as you are now.
By the way, you're talking to someone whose family is from there as well. You're not the only one who has lost people.
What you are doing is attempting to justify the perpetuation of an asymmetric response because you cannot admit your own falsehood, ignorance, and lack of relational depth.
If you really are the stronger and more justified party, you can chill out and allow justice to take its course. Instead, you have lost the support of your allies because you have become the murderers you decried.
This conflict will stop when you can admit that.
The obvious solution that you are proposing is the elimination of a group of people, not an ideology. And that is why you can go straight to hell.
Please don't comment like this on HN. The guidelines call on us to more thoughtful and substantive, not less, when a topic is divisive. This is clearly inflammatory, and not the right way to discuss difficult topics here.
None of that is unique to Israel. You need less generalizeable logic, if Syria started bulldozing the Golan Heights colonies then Netenyahu would go ballistic.
Correct, it's not unique to Israel. This is the way most nations in the Middle East treat each other, but the Americans and the Europeans don't seem to know this. They have no recollection of what constant threat from one's neighbors was like. Even though it's been less than a century since the Europeans had been in a similar situation.
Now go look at how every other Middle Eastern nation has dealt with the situation. Do I need to talk about Syrian brutality and gassing people in their own capital? Do I need to talk about Iraqi brutality and their gassing of the Kurds? Saudi Arabia, chopping people to bits in their embassies? Iran, Qatar, Egypt?
When one looks at Israel's neighbors, there is no way to not conclude that Israel has been the gentlest of the Middle Eastern Nations. But now we've taken the gloves off, after the 7th of October 2023. Welcome to the new Middle East.
Nothing excuses the slaughter of thousands of civilians - but if you really believed that like I do then you would direct your anger at Hamas and UNRWA, not Israel. Hamas and Gazan civilians poured over the border and slaughtered people. Burned babies to death, beheaded adults, left fetuses with knives in their heads. Phoned home to brag to parents "I just killed ten Jews with my bare hands". It's all recorded - by Hamas themselves!
Not to mention how many Gazans killed by IEDs and failed rocket attacks in the Gaza strip, and how Hamas stoots at people fleeing buildings and areas that the IDF warned they are targeting. Or shooting at people collecting humanitarian aid from distribution centres instead of paying Hamas for it in markets. Or their human shields. Every one of those dead is counted against Israel because in Muslim culture, a martyr dies for a cause no matter which side's hand killed them. And even with those deaths incorrectly attributed to Israel, the civilian:combatant death toll in the Gaza strip is lower than any conflict that NATO or UN forces have ever fought in - by NATO and UN numbers themselves.
> in a tiny strip of land that poses NO fucking existential threat at all to the overall security of Israel?
That tiny step of land was educated by UNRWA to believe that the highest honour in their society is to kill Jews. There is ample video evidence of children stating this as their life goal, and parents stating they want this for their children. That does not justify killing them, but it demonstrates that when they do start killing us there is no easy tactic to calm the situation. They used to infiltrate our communities, we built a wall. We tried moving out of the strip and living further away, they start shooting rockets at us. We build defensive interceptor rockets at extreme cost, they put over the border en mass to put babies in ovens, rape wowen and even in one case I know of an man, enter medical facilities and execute the entire staff and patients. All documented by Hamas themselves.
You need to decide if you feel as strongly about protecting civilians as you do about destroying Israel. Because if you really feel that your ambition is to protect civilians (or at least to defend their cause online) then you need to reevaluate your position on the current conflict. Not because Israel is perfect, but because Israel is fighting to save human life and the Gazans are fighting to destroy it.
I have yet to even mention the hostages, dozens of whom are still in Gaza including people I know personally, which itself is justification for contributing the war no matter the cost to the aggressors. And when the aggressors decide that the civilians of the Gaza strip have suffered too much - the civilians they as the governing body are charged to protect - they can release the hostages and the war will be over.
> I have yet to even mention the hostages .... which itself is justification for contributing the war no matter the cost to the aggressors.
I'm sorry, but from the outside events would suggest that Bibi has little interest in the return, indeed welfare, of all the hostages. `Indeed he seems to have actively sabotaged efforts that would have returned them, in order to continue the war and the wider aims.
Many ex-hostages and families of hostages seem to agree.
> If you sincerely believe the grotesquely distorted nonsense you've written above, you're as much a deluded, fanatical lunatic
You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to. The guidelines call on us us to make our points without using abusive terms like this. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
I actually fail to see how the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank violates international law (not that international law means anything), aside from the obvious fact that they weren’t outright annexed after 1967, when Israel was on rock-solid legal ground to just annex the entire place (nothing in the international law prohibits a country from annexing territory won in a _defensive_ war).
Where in the world have you found any indication that any international law makes any distinction between defensive and offensive war in terms of annexation of land?
That rule was brought about by the UN Security Council Resolution 242.
And funnily enough, nobody objected when Egypt annexed Gaza, and Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1948.
As far as the international law is concerned, Israel was completely in the clear to annex the entire place until 22nd of November, 1967. After that it gets a bit murky.
That still doesn't change the fact that the entire idea of an independent Palestinian state happened because Israel just didn't annex it all in 1967.
But going back to the UNSC Resolution 242.
> Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force
There are still no recognized boundaries of Palestine, and there sure as hell weren't in 1967. The original UN Partition Plan for Palestine was adopted, but the problem with its adoption is the fact that it was a General Assembly resolution, and the problem with General Assembly resolutions is that they are notoriously non-binding, and thus not worth the paper they are printed on.
Which brings me back to my initial point that the international law just doesn't matter, because technically speaking, the original Partition Plan was settled international law. Worked out great in practice.
> And funnily enough, nobody objected when Egypt annexed Gaza, and Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1948.
What many people don't realize is that, though no nation objected to the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank, no nation acknowledged it either. The Jordanian annexation of the West Bank was accepted by one nation in the entire planet: Iraq. Note worthy that Iraq's king and Jordan's king were brothers.
Noteworthy as well, that while the West Bank was in the hands of Arabs, there were no calls for establishing an independent Palestinian state there. Same in the Gaza strip.
And while I'm on this soapbox, I might as well mention that Jordan was part of the Mandate for Palestine. The Mandate for Palestine divided the land into two entities: Mandatory Palestine which was decided by the British to be the 23% of Palestine designated for the Jews, and Jordan which was the 77% of Palestine designated for the Arabs - the same idea of partition that the UN came up with 27 years later. Only difference being that the UN plan partitioned the 23% designated for the Jews further. And yet in both cases the Jews accepted and the Arabs violently ethnically cleansed the lands of Jews. And before anybody mentions the racist idea "it's Arab land" (is Great Britian white man's land?) it should be clear that Jerusalem was Jewish majority for a century before that time.
Nobody called for a Palestinian state in the West Bank during 1948 to 1967 because everyone in power at the time was aware that there already was a Palestinian state in the Land of Palestine: The Kingdom of Jordan.
This, for Israel it was a perfect pretext. Netanyahu financed Hamas through Qatar for years because he knew that Hamas is a destructive force for Palestinians and their struggle for nationhood. It was a cold, cynical decision. He exploited the anger and emotions of the people after October 7th to justify what he is doing now.
> Netanyahu financed Hamas through Qatar for years because he knew that Hamas is a destructive force for Palestinians and their struggle for nationhood
It's probably as simple as Netanyahu's branded himself as Israel's protector, and if Palestine were to become less threatening, his political prospects sink.
In an interview with Politico in 2023, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that "In the last 15 years, Israel did everything to downgrade the Palestinian Authority and to boost Hamas." He continued saying "Gaza was on the brink of collapse because they had no resources, they had no money, and the PA refused to give Hamas any money. Bibi saved them. Bibi made a deal with Qatar and they started to move millions and millions of dollars to Gaza." At a Likud party conference in 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu said:
"Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas ... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
Gershon Hacohen, former commander of the 7th Armored Brigade and an associate of Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 2019 in an interview:
“Netanyahu’s strategy is to prevent the option of two states, so he is turning Hamas into his closest partner. Openly Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, it’s an ally.”
I presume boosting Hamas over leftist/revolutionary groups meant less support for Palestinian liberation within the population of Europe and maybe in part the US. The reality of religious fundamentalism in Gaza is heavily exploited in Israeli propaganda, it's an effective deterrent still. If Gaza was held by an organization like the YPG/YPJ (Kurdish autonomy regions) Israel would have had far more, earlier resistance from western governments/populations, I think.
hamas started as islamic charity/community support organization. this is when Israel supported it. when it became political and moved to terrorism - israel stopped supporting it. we are talking early 80s here.
This is factually incorrect. Israel officially supported Hamas up until Hamas actually attacked Israel violently, but the hostile/violent intent was known beforehand. Later Israel supported Hamas covertly through Qatar.
If you're willing to invest ten minutes and a tenth of a cent, you can spin up a virtual server in an American server farm and set up a SOCKS proxy with `ssh -D 8080 -nNT <user>@<host>`. Then in the Network Settings dialogue (at the bottom of General Settings), Firefox will let you proxy your traffic through it.
I've come around to the possibility that there is a lot more here under the surface than what we general public/plebs are aware of. Hamas is Muslim Brotherhood. MB itself is the poster child of a movement hijacked by Western spook agencies.
They want a heroic victory for MB because the West knows there are going to be numerous billions of Muslims and they can't kill them all so the best thing is to 'control' the religion as they own and run MB.
October 7 completely undermined the non-MB resistance. Hamas jumped the gun, Israel 'stood down', and the axis of resistance was caught like deers in a headlight. They have been 'reacting' ever since and have been losing every step of the way.
Now the question is: Is Qatar/MB upset about all this? ...
Here's a thought experiment to underline that, in case there's any confusion.
Q. How many times did any Countries hold islamic-only real-estate expos in Mosques for the former and future homes and territories of Jewish peoples either already dispossessed or planned to be dispossessed due to fundamentalist islamic occupation? _Zero_
Q. How many times did any Countries held jewish-only real-estate expos in Synagogues for the former homes and territories of Muslim peoples either already dispossessed or planned to be dispossessed due to zionist occupation? _Countless_
They're now at the point where they're paying their contractors $1,500 a house demolished, and constantly inciting violent engagement so as to get the IDF involved and sanitise the area - most notably near the supposed humanitarian relief distribution points they're so fond of double-tap bombing.
N.B. Israel is now concentrating on the remaining medical facilities, and has carried out at least 17 attacks on or in the vicinity of healthcare facilities in Gaza City since 16 September. (https://www.bmj.com/content/391/bmj.r2078)
Three healthcare facilities—Al Quds Hospital, Al Rantisi Children’s Hospital, and the Medical Relief Health Centre—have all been directly hit, while further strikes were recorded in the vicinity of two more, Al Shifa Medical Complex and Al Ahli Hospital.
Currently, across the Gaza Strip, only 2000 hospital beds remain available, for a population of over 2 million people.
There was no need to hold real estate expos because the ethnic cleansing was a bit more direct during the Armenian and Assyrian genocide.
It was atrocious then and it's atrocious now. There's almost something worse about zionst making it a business now. It's one thing to ethnically cleanse an area out of hatred, it's sick on a whole new level to try and turn a buck in the process.
1 Samuel 15 in the Old Testament describes this situation perfectly. According to the Bible God told Saul and the Israelites to destroy the Amalekites (a familiar term if you’ve listened to Israel refer to the Palestinians as “Amalek”) and all of their cattle as well.
“But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves[b] and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.”
Now this could be interpreted as a direct instruction not to profit from the conflict. Something Israel is planning on doing once the Palestinians have been removed from Gaza and they build luxury hotels on top of uncountable dead bodies of children. You could argue that even if you grant Israel religious justification for destruction of Gaza, they would not be granted religious justification for profiting from it.
It’s a pointless thing to bring up other than that I think it exposes this whole thing for the colonialist enterprise it really is, and calls into question how much religious belief is really driving the decision making over there.
That’s an odd synchronicity to say the least. I haven’t opened a Bible in years (unless you count googling verses online) but for whatever reason I’ve been thinking about this specific passage ever since I heard about Israeli govt officials referencing it. So it’s definitely swirling around in the collective unconsciousness of “the west”.
This is fantasy. Israel (or any country really) ability to expand is limited by its neighbors. Egypt, Jordan and the GCC are more powerful than the 60s and the recent UAE message of pulling of the Abraham accord is a clear signal that they have real weight in Washington. Israel cannot, in the current circumstances, expand.
So I agree with your parent. What Israel currently is doing is non-sense and plays in the hands of Hamas (who is not losing, as civilian lost lives do not count in Hamas counter).
Right now - the evidence on the ground is that Gaza is pretty much fully occupied and largely uninhabitable.
Despite agreeing to leave under the brokered peace deal, Israel are still in southern Lebanon and show no sign of leaving. The flagrant breach of the original cease fire agreement appears to have no consequences.
The effective seige and annexation of the West bank appears to be gathering pace.
Smotrich said back in April that their campaign in Syria will end 'when Syria is dismantled' - they show no sign of leaving, and are still running operations in and around Damascus, and appear to be running the classic divide and conquer strategy.
While the countries you mention may be stronger - Syria and Lebanon are both very weak and very dependent on US 'aid'.
And in terms of US support, which I agree is critical in all this, they appear to have carte blanc from the current US administration.
Also criticism from EU countries is much more muted than their populations would like - for example the UK government is spending more effort on trying to lock up it's own protesting citizens ( for 14 years under anti-terror laws for doing nothing more that holding up a sign ) than doing anything to stop Israel.
Long term - who knows - but right now the plan does appear to be working.
Also - in terms of Egypt - the current leader came to power in a 2013 coup, and there has not been any free and fair election since ( elections yes - free and fair no ).
Jordan and Egypt are 3 and 4 behind Ukraine and Israel in terms of being the recipient of US aid.
I doubt El-sisi could remain in power for long if that aid was withdrawn - if you are kept in power by the military but can no longer afford the wages....
Expansion is relative: consolidating the assimilation of Gaza and the West Bank is a project that has been progressing for decades, not a recent military development.
Ridiculous escalations like invading the Sinai peninsula would be considered "expansion"; the current ethnic cleansing is perceived as an internal Israeli matter.
Israel's main best option is to give Palestinians, at least those unambiguously born under Israel's control, the right to vote in Israeli federal elections.
A government that can kick down the door of the house you were born in has a duty to give you voting rights.
(And if your ethnic group is denied voting rights, you have a basic duty to your fellow man to raise hell until you get those rights, because arbitrary starvation is always on the table for your children until you get them.)
International law forbids the occupying power to give voting rights to occupied regions.
Its also a bit unclear what you mean by "unambiguously under Israeli control" since Palestinians in occupied palestinian territories aren't unambigiously under Israeli control, they had little control over the inside of Gaza until recently, and have some power in the west bank that is shared with the PA. Neither is "unambiguous control". The only group unambigiously under their control are the Palestinians inside Israel proper who as far as i understand do have full voting rights.
If you think military presence should equal voting rights, than i think that would imply that Iraq should be able to vote in US presedential elections.
I think "if their authorities can kick down the door of the house you were born in" is a good enough guide here to see the problem as distinct from other military interventions, not like the invasion of Iraq was a good idea.
The US was not established in Iraq long enough for generations of adults born in Iraq to have grown up under US control.
The border between US and Iraq is not like the border between two suburbs, and there were never Iraqis crossing that border daily to drive a taxi or clean someone's house or see a doctor.
They had enough control over Gaza before October 7th to deny Gaza a port, an airport, and even the right to do peaceful commercial fishing without getting their boats lit up.
And for whatever limited access their law enforcement institutions had to Gaza for kicking in doors, they just did missile attacks on cars or apartments instead of kicking in doors, because they had no reason to care how many bystanders they killed.
> I think "if their authorities can kick down the door of the house you were born in" is a good enough guide here to see the problem as distinct from other military interventions, not like the invasion of Iraq was a good idea.
The US had troops in iraq that were going around kicking in doors. I'm not trying to make any claim as to wether the invasion was a good or bad thing (actually i think it was a bad thing), but it clearly meets your definition of when people should get a vote.
At the same time i think most americans would view the proposition that iraqis should vote in us federal elections absurd.
> The US was not established in Iraq long enough for generations of adults born in Iraq to have grown up under US control.
This is a bit of a goal post move but what time frame do you think is relavent? America invaded iraq in 2003. They left briefly but then came back. They still have a small number of troops there right now. There is a generation of iraqis who have grown up never knowing a time where american troops werent in their country.
> The border between US and Iraq is not like the border between two suburbs, and there were never Iraqis crossing that border daily to drive a taxi or clean someone's house or see a doctor.
I'm not sure the relavence. Most borders in europe are like this, they dont vote in each others elections. I don't think at present this would describe the border situation in Israel/Palestine.
> They had enough control over Gaza before October 7th to deny Gaza a port, an airport, and even the right to do peaceful commercial fishing without getting their boats lit up.
Sure, and that's an argument people use to claim that the territory is under Israeli occupation (or sometimes they argue that would not be enough to start an occupation but its enouth to make the occupation not terminate). I think everyone agrees that Israel exerts significant military control over occupied Palestinian territories. That is why they are called "occupied".
International law forbids a lot of things Israel already does. If it respected international law it would withdraw to its internationally recognized borders.
The point of making voting from occupied territories illegal is that this discourages settlers from the occupying nation to move into the occupied territories before the conflict is over. Otherwise the occupying power could send settlers into another country and pretend that it is merely defending its own citizens, when in reality it is still engaged in offensive war.
Israel's internationally recognized borders are the borders of Mandatory Palestine. The 1948 borders were ceasefire lines - the fact that they were not internationally recognized borders was for decades the justification for cross-border attacks.
> The settlements were declare illegal by a UN resolution that did not specify what law was being broken.
I think this is a bit unfair. Whether you agree or disagree, opponents of Israel have been pretty clear that they think the settlements violate article 49 of the fourth geneva convention. Specificly "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
Sometimes people also argue that the pipelining of Israeli law into settlements violates the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. I think the argument is that you can only distinguish between citizens and non-citizens on your own territory and thus the way Israeli law is applied in settlements but not outside them is a violation. I'm not super familiar with the argument so i might be mis-stating it. I also think its a bit of a catch-22 since Israel isn't allowed to legislate for the Palestinians either. Regardless it is a rule that they point to.
So i don't think its fair to say opponents of Israeli settlements just claim illegality without pointing to which laws. They do point to laws and rules.
But see, we are already past the "they don't ever say which rule" and on to, they do say which rule but their interpretation is incorrect (and hey i even agree with you on that part some of the time).
> The 49th article of the fourth Geneva convention is the usual answer to that question, but it is wrong. Israel does not "deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies", every single Jew in the West Bank got up and returned to or moved to the West Bank of their own accord.
While i agree it is not clear cut in the geneva convention, generally the argument is voluntary transfer is still a transfer. The prohibition is not just about preventing people from being moved against their will but also about preventing attempts to change the demographic composition of an area. See also what the red cross says about it
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule130
I'm not really here to argue these points, i don't necessarily even agree with all of them, i just think you're being a bit straw-many. Arguments are more powerful if you engage with the strongest form of the counter-argument, not the weakest.
> Arguments are more powerful if you engage with the strongest form of the counter-argument, not the weakest.
Your are correct, thank you. I'll emphasize that there was no international concern expressed when Jordan changed the demographic composition of Jerusalem and the West Bank by expelling the Jews. Only when Jews moved back to Jerusalem and the West Bank, after 19 years of absence, is there suddenly concern the demographic composition of of the city.
Who cares? My point is the international community regards the settlements as illegal and if Israel cared about that they would immediately and completely withdraw.
And my point is that the international community, which mostly comprise of Arab nations, Muslim nations, or nations that rely on Arab oil, has been shown to levy accusations and resolutions against the state that the Arab and Muslim nations are united to destroy.
If there was merit to the claim that Jews building houses in the West Bank is illegal, they would have stated which law is being transgressed.
Out of curiosity, do you think Israel could 'find a law being broken' if thousand of Palestinians started building houses, towns, farms, and exclusive roads inside Israel - all protected by Palestinian soldiers?
Or would it just be so obviously illegal to adults?
First, the easy one. The only exclusive roads are exclusive to Palestinians. There are no Jew-only roads, despite our enemies saying it again and again.
Second, the other easy one. Your question is predicated on the assumption that those building houses, towns, and farms are doing so against the will of the body which administrates the territory. Jews in the West Bank build in Area C - other than a tiny extremist minority whose structures are then wiped away by the Israeli authorities. I'm certain if you're partaking in this conversation then you are familiar enough with the administrative divisions of the West Bank to know that Area C was designated by agreement with the Palestinian Authority for Israeli civil development.
There's two ways you could counter my argument - I'm interested to see which one you choose! The Shabbat is coming in soon, so I'll answer you on Sunday or Monday. Shabbat Shalom.
What's wrong with that? Does the United States not have US-only roads (that Mexican citizens in Mexico) can't drive on.
Those roads link Areas C. Either you know what that means so I don't need to explain it, or you don't know enough about the agreements between the PA and the state of Israel to discuss this. Just in case you are in the later camp, as I stated, there are Palestinian-only roads in Areas A. Those are found throughout the West Bank, everywhere. Only in a single place exists the Israeli-only road. So the argument about "Jew-only roads" is not only a lie, it is an inversion of true state of affairs.
the comparison id imagine is the highway from Washington to alaska.
the americans paid to build it, but its a canadian road going through canadian territory and its canada who decides who drives on it, and thats not by citizenship but by licence. people with recognized licences can drive on it.
If I'm not mistaken, and please correct me if I am mistaken because I've not been to that area, the road in question connects Area C to Jerusalem. There is no utility for anybody to use that road who is not entering or leaving Area C.
Here's the third way - acknowledging that Israel’s settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission.
It demands that Israel stop such activity and fulfill its obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention. These settlements are in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and in breach of international declarations.
That the resolution did not include any sanction or coercive measure and was adopted under the non-binding Chapter VI of the United Nations Charter is simply a matter of real politik dealing with Genocide, and is irrelevant to the overall judgement.
* The International Court of Justice
Israel sleigh-of-hand in designating "occupied" territories as "disputed" by virtue of the fact that "there were no established sovereigns in the West Bank or Gaza Strip prior to the Six Day War" was roundly rejected in the International Court of Justice over 20 years ago
//The Court notes that, according to the first paragraph of Article 2 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, when two conditions are fulfilled, namely that there exists an armed conflict (whether or not a state of war has been recognized), and that the conflict has arisen between two contracting parties, then the Convention applies, in particular, in any territory occupied in the course of the conflict by one of the contracting parties.//
I'll address only the first page of that document, it should be enough.
> Guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations,
and reaffirming, inter alia, the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by
force,
This is the most nuanced line of the document, as Jordan attacked Israel. Up until about two years ago, even Arabs (Gazans and West Bankers) would clearly state that Egypt started the war - that narrative is now that Israel started the war with Egypt. Let's settle on it being in dispute - if you're familiar with the events then we could argue either way. If you're not familiar with the events, then I'll win that part based on causus belli. In either case, Jordan attempted to acquire territory by invading Israel. Israel won on the Jordanian front, but it was the Jordanians who were fighting to acquire territory.
If you consider that a weak argument, then consider also that the internationally recognized borders of the state of Israel were the borders of Mandatory Palestine by principal of Uti possidetis juris. This was justification for cross-border raids for decades - both before and after the 1967 war. The Israeli-Jordanian frontier was a cease-fire line, not an international border. Thus, the world did not recognize the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank as legal - only Iraq did (the kings of Jordan and Iraq were brothers). Thus, Israel did not "acquire territory" on the Jordanian front, rather they recovered the occupied West Bank (occupied by Jordan). OK, actually, Israel did actually acquire some territory on the east side of the river. We left that area in I think 1994 or so when we made peace with Jordan.
> Reaffirming the obligation of Israel, the occupying Power, to abide
scrupulously by its legal obligations and responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva
Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of
12 August 1949, and recalling the advisory opinion rendered on 9 July 2004 by the
International Court of Justice,
Here is where legitimate condemnation of Israel can begin. Israel did not annex the territory it recovered. The reasons is quite clear - despite repeated cries to the contrary, Israel does generally not expel populations. Yes, there were expulsions, I'm not blind to that. But you are aware that the Israeli side states that the Arabs who left Israel in 1948 did so at the beheast of Arab politicians requets - and there is ample evidence of this. Yet, many didn't leave and Israel became 20% Arab. Contrast with the West Bank, which Jordan ethnically cleansed of Jews after the 1948 war. Yet you hear no cries about that ethnic cleansing - only cries when Jews return to the farms they were evicted from by the Jordanians.
> Condemning all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition,
character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East
Jerusalem, including, inter alia, the construction and expansion of settlements,
transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and
displacement of Palestinian civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law
and relevant resolutions,
This is where people should start opening their eyes. Jerusalem had already been Jewish majority for decades even before the British Mandate for Palestine started. Jordan completely altered the demographic composition, character and status of Jerusalem when it ethnically cleansed the Jews after the 1948 war - so for 19 years out of 3000 years there were no Jews in that area. Yet, when the Jews return (after only 19 years) that is considered us altering the demographic composition,
character and status? Any objective observer sees the farce.
> Expressing grave concern that continuing Israeli settlement activities are
dangerously imperilling the viability of the two-State solution based on the 1967
lines,
This is true. Jews building houses on the West Bank does imperil the ability to form a racist, no-Jew-allowed ethnostate on the West Bank. Why progressive leftists think that such a state is the proper solution to the conflict is beyond me.
> Recalling the obligation under the Quartet Roadmap, endorsed by its
resolution 1515 (2003), for a freeze by Israel of all settlement activity, including
“natural growth”, and the dismantlement of all settlement outposts erected since
March 2001,
This document is from 2015, no? So because seventy years prior to the writing of the document there were 19 years of no Jews in the West Bank, all Jews who returned must stop building houses? And dismantle the prior 14 years' worth of building, even though those houses were built in areas that the Palestinian leadership and Israel agreed are set aside for Israeli civil development, and in return the Palestinians got areas for their own civil development (which there is no call to dismantle)? As an objective outsider, how does this even make sense to you?
> Recalling also the obligation under the Quartet roadmap for the Palestinian
Authority Security Forces to maintain effective operations aimed at confronting all
those engaged in terror and dismantling terrorist capabilities, including the
confiscation of illegal weapons
Did any member of the Quartet (UN, USA, EU, and Russia) begin, not to mention maintain, any operation aimed at confronting those engaged in terror? Or dismantling terrorist capabilities? Or confiscate illegal weapons? No, only two of those bodies were active in the holy land at the time. The UN "peacekeepers" in Lebanon abetted and filmed Hezbollah's cross-border raid in 2006, in which Israeli soldiers were killed and kidnapped. They didn't film to help, they actually refused to hand over the tapes to Israel. And the EU actually funded (and still funds) the movement of Arabs from Areas A and B to Areas C, in contradition to the agreements made between the PA and the state of Israel. I speak Arabic, I have been to West Bank Arab villages (I won't do it today, I'd be murdered, but I've done it in the past). Many of the hastily-built Arab encampments in Areas C have plaques describing how the EU and member nations have funded construction. The residents will tell you unabashedly from which Areas A and B villages they came from.
> But you are aware that the Israeli side states that the Arabs who left Israel in 1948 did so at the beheast of Arab politicians requets - and there is ample evidence of this. Yet, many didn't leave and Israel became 20% Arab.
Bro really said: "the Palestinians did the nakba to themselves"...
Well, don't take my word for it. Maybe these are people that you trust more than me.
> "We brought disaster upon the refugees, by calling on them to leave their homes. We promised them that their expulsion would be temporary, and that they would return within a few days. We had to admit that we were wrong."
- Syrian Prime Minister Khalid AlAzm
> "Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes, while it is we who made them leave."
- Same guy, Syrian PM Khalid AlAzm
> "The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies."
- Jordanian newspaper Falastin (Interesting fact, if I'm not mistaken the name of this very newspaper was the first Arab use of the word Falastin - way back in 1911!)
> "The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously, and they must share in the solution of the problem."
Obviously you can find quotes to support such a position. Just like I can run around quoting Israeli PMs about how Palestinians are rats and how they must all be killed. You have to look at the whole of the evidence, not individual quotes.
You're correct, of course. Let's look at the Israeli declaration of independence:
> WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.
> WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
AFAIK no but the person you responded to is dogwhistling by repeatedly referencing "arab" and "muslim". They're using it to imply that not only does the UN not matter, they're also positioning these words as the implicit enemy.
It's a bad faith way to approach this argument, so asking logical questions won't make a difference and will tire you out. That's the core strategy behind that behaviour.
I think a more charitable read would be they are claiming that Israel's geopolitical rivals have undue influence in certain UN organs and are using that influence to unfairly single out Israel.
Its not exactly a crazy claim. The UN is a political entity, its not above the influence of geopolitics. The former secretary general of the UN, Ban ki moon at one point (quite a while ago now) said that "Decades of political maneuvering have created a disproportionate number of resolutions, reports and committees against Israel".
If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.
While that is true, it does not change the fact that the internationally-recognized borders are those of Mandatory Palestine. Those were the internationally-recognized borders even between 1948 and 1967, which is why the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank was not internationally recognized, and also why Egypt was able to squeeze all her refugees into the Gaza Strip before severing ties with the strip in 1956. Or did you not know why Egypt has no refugee camps and almost no refugees today?
I think you're confusing "internationally recognized" with something like "there is an interpretation of international law that supports ..." (and it was unwise of me to use the term "international law" in an earlier comment because it contributes to this blurring, although I didn't realize that at the time).
If the borders were internationally recognized, it would mean that other countries agree that those are the borders. But as far as I know no country recognizes the borders of Mandatory Palestine as the borders of Israel, nor officially recognizes Israel's occupation of the West Bank as legal. I'm not talking about citing chapter and verse of some treaty or some principle like "Uti Possidetis Juris". If the fact of the matter is that other countries do not recognize those borders as the borders of Israel, then those are not the internationally recognized borders of Israel.
Internationally recognized under Uti Possidetis Juris, the principal under which most of the world's international borders have been defined (I think slightly beating out war, but falling behind geography).
I think this argument is a little difficult to make given Israel right now does not overtly claim that mandatory palestine's borders are its borders. If Israel openly claimed this consistently starting from its war of independence to present day, there would probably be a stronger argument, but its probably a bit too late at this point.
I am not making the argument that those should be the final borders. I'm responding to this quote:
> If it respected international law it would withdraw to its internationally recognized borders.
I am demonstrating that the people who are calling for all types of solutions, are not familiar with the full situation and are calling for things that are the opposite of what they actually think should happen.
Bro, I get that you care about Israel, but posting sophistry to Hacker News is not going to change the fundamentals.
Israel is going to be "the country that committed genocide" unless Israelis find a way to stop it. There's no "but you need to understand the complexities of the situation" when it comes to killing hundreds of thousands of defenseless civilians.
Then we should both do everything that we can to end this war before the death toll get to the "hundreds of thousands of defenseless civilians" stage.
How about Israel stop fighting, right now? Right this minute. The magazines come out of the rifles and the fighter jets stay on the ground. As soon as the Gazans decide that this is what they want, they can return the hostages and this will happen.
I am Israeli and I completely oppose the war ending until the hostages are all returned. You said it yourself, hostages are returned and the war ceases. Return the remaining hostages and we will have no more need for war.
At the very least, acknowledge that war is expensive and one of the most common tropes thrown at the Jews is that we are cheap. We don't want this expensive war either.
> I am Israeli and I completely oppose the war ending until the hostages are all returned.
Then surely you are capable of empathizing with Palestinians. Israel holds thousands of their (civilians!) hostage, in violation of international law, with no fair or expedient trial planned.
Demanding the slaughter of captors does not set a safe precedent for the release of Israel's political prisoners.
> We don't want this expensive war either.
Israel is a nuclear nation. Your countrymen chose to invest in catastrophic war as a way of life, no different from America or Russia. Don't weep about the price of fighting until the IAEA inspects Dimona proper.
Much of the criticism of Israel is self-serving, one-sided, and predicated on definition twisting.
After 9/11 there was ample “glass parking lot” sentiment. If some enclave of Canadians or Mexicans tortured, murdered, raped thousands then kidnapped hundreds of Americans those parts of Canada/Mexico wouldn’t exist any more. And rightfully so. The hyperbole and constant double standards in the criticism undermine the credibility of all involved (I mean, Sudan… Congo… Afghanistans border…).
Every westerner involved in dogpiling needs fundamental clarity in the order of the “Death to ____” claims. Every, single, argument against The Jews applies immediately afterwards to The Brits, The French, The Spanish, and Great Satan itself: The US.
“500 thousand dead Iraqi children” is a “genocide” too, if we don’t care about facts or words. That specific strain of propaganda directly supports 9/11 style attacks and ongoing terrorism against the US.
I deeply disappointed in the mush brained cowardice we’re displaying. The best liberal democracy in the Middle East, and victim of constant horrific terrorism, deserves better.
>How about Israel stop fighting, right now? Right this minute. The magazines come out of the rifles and the fighter jets stay on the ground. As soon as the Gazans decide that this is what they want, they can return the hostages and this will happen.
The Israeli government can stop fighting in a way that's currently killing Gazan civilians and destroying Gazan civil infrastructure.
The Gazan civilians cannot release the hostages. Those hostages are held by Hamas, the Gazan government.
This broad-brush blaming leads to despicable crimes against humanity, and is why so many nations have agreed to rules of war. It is inhumane to intentionally punish civilians for what their government is doing. Collateral damage is inevitable, but there must be an effort to minimize it and to actively preserve the lives of civilians. If that means sending in convoys of food trucks after securing a city, then that's what a humane government should do.
The funny thing is, I agree with you about the contradictions in recognizing borders for the state of Israel, depending on what they're arguing at any particular time.
The borders of a potential Palestinian state and the state of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan is one of the most difficult conundrums to consider. I can think of a few "resolutions", none of them really "solutions". I make a huge effort to understand the Israeli side, the greater Arab side, the general Muslim side, and the side of the Palestinians who actually live there. Very few people - from any of those categories - make any effort to understand anybody else's side.
There are troops there, The troops are not present with the consent of the local governing powers, the area has not been annexed (has not been integrated into normal civil law of the country with the troops)*.
That is a textbook definition of what an occupation is.
* except for East Jerusalem, which would normally be considered annexed, but the UNSC has decided (with the binding force of international law) that it is de jure occupied. However Palestinians in east Juruselum can apply for citizenship and get voting rights.
> The troops are not present with the consent of the local governing powers
Are the governing powers legitimate? Hamas banned elections after they won the 2006 election. Why should they be considered any more of a governing powers than Israel? Especially when literally the entire broader region was historically Jewish, long before the modern state of Israel, long before Islamic Arabs (now calling themselves Palestinian) were in the area?
What I see is that the Islamic Arabs in Israel are living peacefully and are integrated into the “normal civil law”. But the residents of Gaza have been pro terrorism - which is why they voted for Hamas on a charter of committing genocide against all other beliefs.
Why is 'legitimate' local government the hurdle here? Surely the presence of foreign troops killing civillians and destroying infrastructure counts as an occupation.
Gaza was de facto administered by the civilian arm of Hamas on the eve of Oct 7, and throughout while there was still infrastructure to speak of, and this is the only sense I understand the term "de facto" to mean when used unqualified; what entity performs the day-to-day administration and security.
It probably doesn't matter much. I agree that both the PA and especially Hamas are despotic dictatorships. So are a lot of countries. That's tragic for Palestinian citizens but ultimately doesn't matter much for determining if a piece of land is independent, occupied or annexed.
Much of it just comes down to drawing a line in the sand at roughly the start of when the United Nations started, and saying this is what the borders are and no one is allowed to change them by force (one of the conditions of joining the UN is to give up the right to acquire territory by force). So from that view, it was egyptian and jordan territory who in turn, supported by the UN, gave it to the palestinian people as respresented by the PA. In a certain way that's pretty arbitrary but i guess its sort of an, it is what it is, sort of thing.
> But the residents of Gaza have been pro terrorism - which is why they voted for Hamas on a charter of committing genocide against all other beliefs
The last election was in January 2006 and to vote you had to be 18+. That means anyone now alive who voted for Hamas has to be over 37. That's less than 20% of of the Gaza population. Furthermore, Hamas got a plurality in the 40-45% range, not a majority.
That means it is very likely that under 10% of people who lived in Gaza at the start of the current war voted for Hamas. Probably closer to 7% because the turnout in 2006 was around 80%.
That’s not relevant. Polls tell us the Gaza population supports Hamas today, after October 7. Even without elections, we know what the population stands for - the principles and goals that Hamas practices.
Without some strong general protection isn't that just 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner? Seems at least some basic guaranteed rights and freedoms is needed.
> A government that can kick down the door of the house you were born in has a duty to give you voting rights.
100%
The most basic principle in democratic government is that those subject to the monopoly of violence should also have a voice in how that violence is managed.
> The most basic principle in democratic government is that those subject to the monopoly of violence should also have a voice in how that violence is managed.
I'm pretty sure most democracies also have a right to decide who can become a citizen. Forcing a country to give citizenship to enemy combatants would be kinda crazy, regardless of whether or not the territory those combatants operate from is under a military occupation.
The current USA regime is attempting all sorts of dumb nonsense, but birthright citizenship certainly isn't universal among countries either. I'm not a citizen of the country I was born in.
It's always bizarre to hear this sort of doomsaying about what would befall israelis if they treated Palestinians as the equal humans they are: 'it's suicide to treat Palestinians as people'; 'innocent folks will be expelled from their land if we treat Palestinians as people'; "or worse, killed!'
It's bizarre because all the horrible prophecies have already come true, or are coming true, only with the roles reversed: We see that it is actually israel genociding Palestinians, rather than vice versa.
Somehow these doomsaying prophets feel this dystopia is actually totally ok, as long as the victims have a particular religion or skin color. Or, to be charitable, maybe the prophets have been paying exactly zero attention to what israel has been doing to innocent Palestinian civilians over the years.
The last time Palestinians voted they quite literally elected Hamas terrorists[0], you're making it out as if making Jews a minority and Palestinians a majority in Israel wouldn't represent an existential threat to the Jewish population. There are zero Jews living under Palestinian rule(i.e Gaza and the West Bank Areas A/B), why do you think it would be any different if they were given majority voting rights in Israel?
After nearly a century of Israeli oppression and zero interest from the international community, them electing a terrorist organization is certainly understable, even if still not justified. The first step is to reassure Palestinians that their neighbors won't start mass-murdering them again, something Israel has currently no interest in doing.
> The first step is to reassure Palestinians that their neighbors won't start mass-murdering them again, something Israel has currently no interest in doing.
Israelis don't just start killing Palestinians for no reason historically however, that pretty much always happens in response to some form of Palestinian aggression. It's not like Israel can just ignore attacks either as that would just encourage further attacks.
Israel is a settler colonial project, as far as I'm concerned they cast the first stone. Or rather, the British sending them here did. Not that it matters much in the end, but today Israel plays the role of the oppressor and Palestine of the oppressed.
> "This sort of entirely one-sided narrative is a huge impediment to peaceful coexistence."
> "Israelis don't just start killing Palestinians for no reason historically however, that pretty much always happens in response to some form of Palestinian aggression"
Fascinating how these 2 posts came from the same person. You are so close to getting it, you just need to take your advice from the first quote there and apply it to the second quote there.
Notably, israel kills around a hundred innocent Palestinians in Gaza daily, unprovoked, while the Palestinians are queuing for food. israel also regularly stages settler terrorist attacks on innocent Palestinians in the west bank: killing Palestinians; burning Palestinian homes and cars and crops; often claiming Palestinian land as their own. When "the authorities" (the IDF) arrive, they often support the terrorists and join in the violence against Palestinians.
But of course, it was because those innocent Palestinians are "being aggressive" by living in the west bank, which israel says they want, right? (They call it "greater israel", just like how the kremlin calls Ukraine "greater russia"). Obviously israel's ethnic cleansing is justified, because they really want someone else's land and stuff, right?
> At a minimum you should go back to the 1800s
We really don't need to. We just need to go back to the point where international laws came into being, including israel agreeing not to expand their territory through violence (a prerequisite to joining the UN). It doesn't matter who used to own it, what matters is global, international consensus on who owns what now (and who should), and global, international consensus on the right way to behave (in accordance with international law, as judged by the designated international courts). This goes even if israel strongly feels it is biased or unfair: after all, pretty much every criminal thinks the justice system that criticizes them is unfair. Like, of course criminals would say that, wouldn't they?
> Fascinating how these 2 posts came from the same person. You are so close to getting it, you just need to take your advice from the first quote there and apply it to the second quote there.
My point is that this conflict can be characterized heavily by back and forth attacks and retaliation from both sides.
> Notably, israel kills around a hundred innocent Palestinians in Gaza daily, unprovoked, while the Palestinians are queuing for food.
This claim is just wildly inaccurate, it's completely divorced from reality, nobody, not even the UN or the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry claim that around a hundred Palestinians are killed a day while queuing for food(they claim around 20 on average per day are killed while queuing for food[0]). Keep in mind that these are claims made by the GHM without proving much evidence to validate the circumstances of the claimed deaths at aid distribution sites. These claims are especially suspect since the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry has strong incentives make statements that discourage aid distribution mechanisms which bypass Hamas.
> israel also regularly stages settler terrorist attacks on innocent Palestinians in the west bank: killing Palestinians; burning Palestinian homes and cars and crops; often claiming Palestinian land as their own. When "the authorities" (the IDF) arrive, they often support the terrorists and join in the violence against Palestinians.
Did I ever defend this sort of thing? I agree there are significant issues with West Bank settlers/settlements.
> But of course, it was because those innocent Palestinians are "being aggressive" by living in the west bank, which israel says they want, right? (They call it "greater israel", just like how the kremlin calls Ukraine "greater russia"). Obviously israel's ethnic cleansing is justified, because they really want someone else's land and stuff, right?
You seems to be downplaying Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank by calling it "being aggressive". The term "greater israel" is also problematic in general since there's a wide range of claims people make regarding what that term even means.
Part of the problem here is that there is very little clear delineation regarding who's land it is, you're talking about a region where many borders were essentially armistice lines as opposed to clearly recognized borders. Keep in mind that Palestinians themselves largely reject even the 1967 borders as they believe all of Israel to be their land. This is one of the reasons attempts at a two state solution have likely failed.
The situation with Russia and Ukraine is not very comparable since there were mutually recognized borders[1] that Russia unambiguously violated.
> We really don't need to. We just need to go back to the point where international laws came into being, including israel agreeing not to expand their territory through violence (a prerequisite to joining the UN). It doesn't matter who used to own it, what matters is global, international consensus on who owns what now (and who should), and global, international consensus on the right way to behave (in accordance with international law, as judged by the designated international courts).
The issue here is international law is not remotely clear either, a real problem is a lack of peace agreements establishing recognized borders between parties, parties(i.e. Lebanon, Syria) that have so far refused to even sign peace agreements that would recognize Israel as a legitimate state.
The situation with Palestine is even more convoluted, since prior to 1967 Gaza Was Egyptian controlled territory and the West Bank had been annexed by Jordan. When Israel signed peace agreements with Egypt all territorial claims over Gaza were renounced by Egypt(despite Israel attempting to negotiate the return Gaza to Egypt). Jordan did sign peace agreements with Israel in 1994 and had officially abandoned all claims to the West Bank in 1988 prior to the peace agreements. So essentially we have ended up with a situation where there is land without an established recognized UN state being in control(the state of Palestine is not recognized by the UN).
> This goes even if israel strongly feels it is biased or unfair: after all, pretty much every criminal thinks the justice system that criticizes them is unfair. Like, of course criminals would say that, wouldn't they?
The issue is a lack of peace agreements establishing recognized borders, the UN/international law can not force peace agreements onto warring parties. Once Israel makes peace agreements establishing recognized borders(i.e. with Egypt/Jordan) they have not historically violated those borders. There are also numerous issues in general when it comes to enforcement of international law as UN courts don't really have independent enforcement mechanisms, the Security Council members effectively have veto power over ICJ rulings(which is one reason the UN is going to be incapable of enforcing rulings against Security Council members or their allies). Then there is the fact that Israel(similar to most countries) would be unlikely to follow an international court ruling if in their view the ruling would create an existential threat to their countries existence.
So no, saying we should let international law is the solution here isn't likely to be all that productive when it comes to resolving these issues.
Of course its understandable. Its also understandable that the israelis are not willing to accept people who want to kill them into their state. Both sides want to kill each other.
I don't think most Israelis actually want to kill Palestinians, but at a minimum I do think the majority of Palestinians probably want to expel all Israeli Jews from Israel(at least based on Palestinian opinion polling).
> I don't think most Israelis actually want to kill Palestinians
Then why are they standing by while their democratically elected government enacts a starvation campaign? The reality is that most Israelis are now pro genocide, just like most Palestinians
Your post weirdly focuses on only the concerns of israelis, even though Palestinians are equal people with equal human rights, including an equal right to protection from israeli violence. Do you even realize that you're not treating Palestinians as humans?
> The last time Palestinians voted they quite literally elected Hamas terrorists
The last time israelis voted, they quite literally elected not only terrorists, but war criminals, criminals against humanity, and literal genociders. Obviously that's worse! Thus, israel has no moral high ground here to attack others, and should look inward and fix itself first.
> There are zero Jews living under Palestinian rule
"Palestinian rule" is not a thing at the moment: all Palestinians are currently ruled (dominated even) by a genocidal israeli military occupation that kills hundreds of innocent civilians daily.
> Your post weirdly focuses on only the concerns of israelis, even though Palestinians are equal people with equal human rights, including an equal right to protection from israeli violence. Do you even realize that you're not treating Palestinians as humans?
It's not clear what you're suggesting in practice, we can all say Palestinians should be given equal rights in an ideal world but that doesn't really bring us any closer to resolving the conflict.
> The last time israelis voted, they quite literally elected not only terrorists, but war criminals, criminals against humanity, and literal genociders. Obviously that's worse! Thus, israel has no moral high ground here to attack others, and should look inward and fix itself first.
I'm certainly not a fan of the current Israeli government but with how Israeli elections(proportional representation) work you tend to get more extremist parties than you would in systems like the United States where you usually just end up with a two party system.
> "Palestinian rule" is not a thing at the moment: all Palestinians are currently ruled (dominated even) by a genocidal israeli military occupation that kills hundreds of innocent civilians daily.
There is a form of Palestinian rule in which the Palestinian Authority exercises a certain level of control in the West Bank, in Gaza Hamas still retains some control as well. I would agree it's not the same thing as an independent state but I don't think characterizing it as no Palestinian rule at all is accurate either.
> It's not clear what you're suggesting in practice, we can all say Palestinians should be given equal rights in an ideal world but that doesn't really bring us any closer to resolving the conflict.
That is unnecessary, because Palestinians already have equal rights which are not legally alienable. israel is merely illegally violating them.
It's also not necessary for equal rights to bring us to any sort of resolution. Equal rights are more important than israel's unequal, unilateral safety, and a country whose existence depends on the violation of others' rights, must find a new, legal way to exist instead. Equal rights come first, and only then can we even begin to discuss a resolution. We tried the other way around, and it has failed to produce a resolution after decades of war.
> how Israeli elections(proportional representation) work you tend to get more extremist parties
This seems to be agreeing with me? Like yeah, israelis voted for terrorists, war criminals, criminals against humanity, and genociders. That is at least as bad as hamas. It's also kind of telling how you refer to a terrorist as an "extremist" when they're israeli. Why soften the language only for 1 ethnic group in the conflict while hardening it for another?
> There is a form of Palestinian rule in which the Palestinian Authority exercises a certain level of control in the West Bank
There is no Palestinian rule. They are ruled, dominated even, by israelis. They do not have freedom of choice, or freedom of trade, or freedom of speech, or freedom of press, or freedom of movement within their own land of Palestine, because israel denies them each and every one of those freedoms. Palestinians are frequently victims of israeli terrorist attacks in Palestine too. When the IDF shows up, they often participate in the terrorist attacks. israel does not even allow Palestinians to defend themselves from israeli terrorist attacks. That is not Palestinian rule.
> That is unnecessary, because Palestinians already have equal rights which are not legally alienable. israel is merely illegally violating them.
Which rights are you referring to? Do you think they all have a right to full Israeli citizenship?
> It's also not necessary for equal rights to bring us to any sort of resolution. Equal rights are more important than israel's unequal, unilateral safety, and a country whose existence depends on the violation of others' rights, must find a new, legal way to exist instead. Equal rights come first, and only then can we even begin to discuss a resolution. We tried the other way around, and it has failed to produce a resolution after decades of war.
If one knew with a high degree of certainty that giving full voting rights to all Palestinians would result in the elimination of the Jewish population from the land would you still be in favor of giving all Palestinians full voting rights? You seem to be advocating for giving full voting rights to a population which largely doesn't believe in equal rights.
> This seems to be agreeing with me? Like yeah, israelis voted for terrorists, war criminals, criminals against humanity, and genociders. That is at least as bad as hamas. It's also kind of telling how you refer to a terrorist as an "extremist" when they're israeli. Why soften the language only for 1 ethnic group in the conflict while hardening it for another?
If you're referring to people like Ben-Gvir, then I would agree(as did the Israeli courts and likely most Israelis) that he is a supporter of terrorism. At the same time there have been other Knesset members like Haneen Zoabi who have made statements effectively supporting Palestinian terrorism as well. I'm not sure if there have been war criminals and criminals against humanity elected, that's a much higher bar than merely supporting terrorism(which is something that unfortunately large percentages of Palestinian society supports). Since the claims of genocide against Israel are not supported by the evidence I probably would not agree there have been genociders elected. As I mentioned earlier the way Israeli elections work makes it much easier for extremists to get elected, and this plays out for both sides naturally.
> There is no Palestinian rule.
There is some level of Palestinian rule under the Oslo Accords, I agree it's not a full state but it's arguably not "no Palestinian rule" whatsoever. Hamas had effectively full control of Gaza's territory for many years as well.
> They are ruled, dominated even, by israelis. They do not have freedom of choice, or freedom of trade, or freedom of speech, or freedom of press, or freedom of movement within their own land of Palestine, because israel denies them each and every one of those freedoms. Palestinians are frequently victims of israeli terrorist attacks in Palestine too. When the IDF shows up, they often participate in the terrorist attacks. israel does not even allow Palestinians to defend themselves from israeli terrorist attacks. That is not Palestinian rule.
There is a military occupation with some level of rule delegated to Palestinian authorities. Palestinian leaders and society have in general not been very supportive of many of those freedoms you mention, especially freedom of speech and freedom of press in addition to other freedoms like freedom of religion(no Jews live in Gaza or West Bank areas A/B at all for example).
> Which rights are you referring to? Do you think they all have a right to full Israeli citizenship?
Whichever rights israelis have, Palestinians also have. Whichever rights israel has, Palestine also has. If israel claims a right to safety from Palestinian attacks, then Palestine has an exactly equal right to safety from israeli attacks. If israel has a right to control their borders, Palestine does too. If israel has a right to 100% control their own trade, then Palestine does, too. This isn't that complicated.
> If one knew with a high degree of certainty that giving full voting rights to all Palestinians would result in the elimination of the Jewish population from the land...
You have this backwards: Palestinians already have rights by virtue of human beings, just like israelis. Likewise, Palestine has rights by virtue of being a country, just like israel. What comes after those rights are respected may be complicated, but is not as important as equal rights. Equal rights is most important, and an oppressor like apartheid South Africa or apartheid israel doesn't get to deny anyone their rights out of fear, or for any other reason.
> There is some level of Palestinian rule under the Oslo Accords
There is no Palestinian rule. They are ruled, dominated even, by israelis. They do not have freedom of choice, or freedom of trade, or freedom of speech, or freedom of press, or freedom of movement within their own land of Palestine, because israel denies them each and every one of those freedoms. Palestinians are frequently victims of israeli terrorist attacks in Palestine too. When the IDF shows up, they often participate in the terrorist attacks. israel does not even allow Palestinians to defend themselves from israeli terrorist attacks. That is not Palestinian rule.
> Palestinian leaders and society have in general not been very supportive of many of those freedoms you mention
Surprise surprise, israel is even less supportive, and "they did it first" isn't an excuse to deny a person or country their rights.
> I'm not sure if there have been war criminals and criminals against humanity elected
>Since [I personally believe] the claims of genocide against Israel are not supported by the evidence...
While you are no doubt a good person, reality does not depend on what you think or perceive. Luckily, the relevant authorities (international courts, scholarly institutions) seem pretty confident that israeli electees are war criminals, criminals against humanity, and genociders, so you don't need to be.
> Whichever rights israelis have, Palestinians also have.
I mean Israelis have Israeli citizenship...not Palestinian citizenship, individuals that have different citizenship in general will have different rights.
> Whichever rights israel has, Palestine also has.
If they don't have the same citizenship then they wouldn't have the same rights because they would live under different governments.
> If israel claims a right to safety from Palestinian attacks, then Palestine has an exactly equal right to safety from israeli attacks. If israel has a right to control their borders, Palestine does too. If israel has a right to 100% control their own trade, then Palestine does, too. This isn't that complicated.
It's unclear what you mean by this in practice, I would agree that if there was a peace agreement in place then this would be ideal, but there may be practical issues. For countries bordering Israel like Jordan/Egypt which have made peace agreements this is effectively the case so I don't see any reasons Israel would reject this outright. Keep in mind that since there is no peace agreement with Palestine creating established borders something like this isn't currently feasible.
> There is no Palestinian rule. They are ruled, dominated even, by israelis.
You're making it as if it's all or nothing, when in reality there's a lot more nuance here.
> They do not have freedom of choice, or freedom of trade, or freedom of speech, or freedom of press, or freedom of movement within their own land of Palestine, because israel denies them each and every one of those freedoms.
Their own leaders often deny them those freedoms, both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. They also don't have clearly defined borders in general which is a big part of the problem(i.e. the lack of a peace agreement creating mutually recognized borders).
> Palestinians are frequently victims of israeli terrorist attacks in Palestine too. When the IDF shows up, they often participate in the terrorist attacks. israel does not even allow Palestinians to defend themselves from israeli terrorist attacks. That is not Palestinian rule.
There are levels of rule below that of having a fully independent state.
> Surprise surprise, israel is even less supportive, and "they did it first" isn't an excuse to deny a person or country their rights.
Palestinians that are Israeli citizens have effectively all those rights. Israel doesn't recognize Palestine as a state due to a lack of a peace agreement, an actual peace agreement establishing a Palestinian state must be negotiated, unilateral disengagement(like Israel tried with Gaza in the past) does not work, likewise unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state will also be unlikely to work, both sides must agree on terms to end the conflict.
> Luckily, the relevant authorities (international courts, scholarly institutions) seem pretty confident that israeli electees are war criminals, criminals against humanity, and genociders, so you don't need to be.
Unfortunately many of these groups(UN and UN affiliated organizations especially) have a major credibility problem, from their outright lies[0][1], to poorly supported reports which cherry-pick data to create a false narrative[2] one certainly can't blindly trust the UN to provide accurate information due to their well documented history of extreme bias against Israel[3].
> I mean Israelis have Israeli citizenship...not Palestinian citizenship, individuals that have different citizenship in general will have different rights.
> If they don't have the same citizenship then they wouldn't have the same rights because they would live under different governments.
Obviously the rights we're talking about are natural rights -- see the UN declarations to that effect.
> You're making it as if it's all or nothing, when in reality there's a lot more nuance here.
You haven't actually shared any of that nuance. Which things do Palestinians exercise "rule" (complete control) over, without israel thinking that it is their business and interfering? Examples might include: Rule over sea-based import/export; rule over transit within Palestine; rule over journalism. Examples in this case unfortunately do not include any of those: in all cases, israel believes it has the right to interfere with violent veto power, which means there is no Palestinian rule.
> Their own leaders often deny them those freedoms, both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
It is israel denying them those freedoms -- their unconvincing PR campaign of abusing Palestinians and blaming others for 'making them do it' has not held water in international institutions.
> Israel doesn't recognize Palestine as a state
What israel recognizes here is not relevant -- there is not an exception in international law for "the aggressor doesn't recognize any rights of the victimized". What is more relevant is what the international community recognizes, and they recognize Palestine as a state. Thus, it is entitled to all the rights a state is entitled to, including protection from a genocidal foreign occupying power which seeks to conquer their country and take their land.
> Unfortunately many of these groups(UN and UN affiliated organizations especially) have a major credibility problem
Unfortunately, the few people making this claim have an even greater credibility problem. Thus, the assertions of those groups can be dismissed, unless they want to put them forward for consensus or judgement by the relevant international bodies. One certainly can't blindly trust these critics to provide accurate information due to their well documented history of extreme bias towards israel.
> Obviously the rights we're talking about are natural rights -- see the UN declarations to that effect.
That's very non-specific.
> You haven't actually shared any of that nuance. Which things do Palestinians exercise "rule" (complete control) over, without israel thinking that it is their business and interfering? Examples might include: Rule over sea-based import/export; rule over transit within Palestine; rule over journalism. Examples in this case unfortunately do not include any of those: in all cases, israel believes it has the right to interfere with violent veto power, which means there is no Palestinian rule.
In Gaza, especially prior to October 7th Hamas were the rulers of that territory by all those definitions(there may have been a blockade but that was imposed by multiple countries, both Egypt and Israel). The PA has some degree of authority the West Bank below that of "complete control". There is no universally agreed upon definition for what territory is Palestine since there is no peace treaty between the involved parties. Most Palestinians think the entirety of Israel should be theirs. So there it's not remotely clear what "rule over transit within Palestine" would actually mean.
> rule over journalism
Both Hamas and the PA have restricted what sort of reporting is allowed in areas they control.
> Examples in this case unfortunately do not include any of those: in all cases, israel believes it has the right to interfere with violent veto power, which means there is no Palestinian rule.
You seem to be describing the ongoing war, and without a peace agreement that's generally just how wars work. In WW2 Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were heavily blockaded by the allies until they surrendered and stopped fighting.
> It is israel denying them those freedoms -- their unconvincing PR campaign of abusing Palestinians and blaming others for 'making them do it' has not held water in international institutions.
Their own governments, ones they elected(Hamas) and would likely elect again(Hamas) if given the vote are some of the least free and most oppressive Governments in the world, Palestinians will never be free when the likes of Hamas(and to some degree the PA) are their leaders even if the occupation by Israel ended completely.
> What israel recognizes here is not relevant -- there is not an exception in international law for "the aggressor doesn't recognize any rights of the victimized". What is more relevant is what the international community recognizes, and they recognize Palestine as a state.
Palestine is not recognized as a state by the UN(since the US has veto power over recognition effectively).
> Thus, it is entitled to all the rights a state is entitled to, including protection from a genocidal foreign occupying power which seeks to conquer their country and take their land.
The UN doesn't even recognize Palestine as a state, the UN is not going to stop this conflict, in this region ending conflicts basically always happens via bilateral negotiations and peace deals(of which Israel has had many successful of course historically). Israel does not attack countries it has peace deals with.
> Unfortunately, the few people making this claim have an even greater credibility problem.
Are you referring to the UN official that admitted he outright lied about starvation risks?
> Thus, the assertions of those groups can be dismissed, unless they want to put them forward for consensus or judgement by the relevant international bodies.
Facts are facts, regardless of where they come from. The "relevant" international bodies have basically no credibility when it comes to these issues, especially the UN, one reason is that they themselves have been directly involved in perpetuating the conflict(i.e. via UNRWA policies).
> One certainly can't blindly trust these critics to provide accurate information due to their well documented history of extreme bias towards israel.
You can go through the sources in these reports and validate the facts yourself, on the other hand the UN tends to not put out sufficient data to validate their assertions and often ignores counterfactual data and cherry-picks data to fit a certain narrative.
Is it? I'm afraid I disagree, but then again, I've read the documents I mentioned. Feel free to ask for help if you want more clarity!
> In Gaza, especially prior to October 7th Hamas were the rulers of that territory by all those definitions
Unfortunately this is not true, because it does not meet the definition (even you acknowledge "exceptions" in your post, and 1 exception disproves the rule). You also keep switching "Gaza" out for "Palestine", which is the country we're discussing.
So, please reassess now that you know we're taking about Palestine, not "Gaza" or any other geographical sub-portions of it: What is the "limited" list of things which Palestinians currently exercise rule over in all of Palestine (rule meaning total control, without israel believing it has the right to interfere with violent veto power)?
> Most Palestinians think the entirety of Israel should be theirs
israel thinks the entirely of Palestine should be israel's, and is effecting this goal via genocide. So, even worse than what you claimed. Let that sink in.
> some of the least free and most oppressive Governments in the world
And yet, in Palestine, the genocidal israeli occupiers are even worse than that. Let that sink in.
> Both Hamas and the PA have restricted what sort of reporting is allowed in areas they control
And yet, in Palestine, israel does that even more, and also israel's latest conflict has killed journalists at a greater rate than any other in history. Let that sink in.
> The UN doesn't even recognize Palestine as a state
The international community (which comprises the UN) recognizes Palestine. Most countries in the world do. israel is merely an exception.
> outright lied about starvation
Are you referring to israel here, who has repeatedly outright lied about starvation, as judged by the authorities on starvation?
> Facts are facts, regardless of where they come from
Likewise, lies are lies, wherever they come from. When it comes to unconvincing israeli claims that any and every critic in the world is biased against them, we certainly aren't referring to facts or truth.
> the UN tends to not put out sufficient data to validate their assertions
israel tends to attack and murder the people who validate such things that israel lies about, so they have lost the benefit of the doubt regarding such things. This is known in courts as an "adverse inference". If they wish to have more than zero credibility here, they can allow independent investigators into Palestine (all of it), without murdering them, to the satisfaction of the relevant investigatory bodies.
As far as bias goes: If israel wishes to credibly prove their claims regarding bias against israel, they can submit their claims for judgement by the UN or international court. Until then, given israel's long history of bias, lying, murdering investigators, and claiming that everybody who criticizes them is biased, israel's claims can be assumed false wherever they would be self-serving.
> Is it? I'm afraid I disagree, but then again, I've read the documents I mentioned. Feel free to ask for help if you want more clarity!
You seem to just want to use vague terms and play word games.
> Unfortunately this is not true, because it does not meet the definition (even you acknowledge "exceptions" in your post, and 1 exception disproves the rule). You also keep switching "Gaza" out for "Palestine", which is the country we're discussing.
So you're saying Egypt and Israel were the rulers of Gaza...I mean if you really want to use ridiculously confusing definitions go ahead, but that's not particularly helpful.
> israel thinks the entirely of Palestine should be israel's
Then why did they leave Gaza in 2005?
> is effecting this goal via genocide
You have to really ignore the facts to make that claim, exactly like many UN officials do.
> And yet, in Palestine, israel does that even more, and also israel's latest conflict has killed journalists at a greater rate than any other in history. Let that sink in.
What people call journalists in Palestine often includes individuals holding actual hostages[0] and others that are part of Hamas, so those claims are quite problematic in general.
> When it comes to unconvincing israeli claims that any and every critic in the world is biased against them, we certainly aren't referring to facts or truth.
There are plenty that disagree with the claims, either way UN officials showing their bias isn't anything new and certainly didn't start with this conflict.
> If israel wishes to credibly prove their claims regarding bias against israel, they can submit their claims for judgement by the UN or international court.
There are cases in progress with the ICJ, Israel isn't the one making the claim of genocide, they are defending against a claim, the burden of proof is on the parties making the claims, and they have so far failed to provide sufficient evidence to back their claims.
> claiming that everybody who criticizes them is biased, israel's claims can be assumed false wherever they would be self-serving.
The burden of proof is on those that make the claims against Israel, and the UN has a way bigger credibility issue than Israel does when it comes to this conflict.
> You seem to just want to use vague terms and play word games.
If you don't seek clarity, it's totally ok for you to not ask. No pressure.
> So you're saying Egypt and Israel were the rulers of Gaza
Not sure where you got that from, it makes no sense. I haven't seen any credible evidence to that effect, whereas it's been reiterated thousands of times, via violence, that israel rules over Palestine with an iron, exploding fist.
> There are plenty that disagree with the claims
There are plenty that disagree with those that disagree with the claims. There are also plenty who disagree with the earth being round. That very loud people in the extreme minority disagree with something is not really evidence of anything.
> You have to really ignore the facts to make that claim, exactly like many UN officials do.
More accurately, one would really have to ignore facts to make the above quoted claim, like many supporters of the israeli genocide of Palestinians do.
> What people call journalists in Palestine often includes individuals holding actual hostages[0] and others that are part of Hamas, so those claims are quite problematic in general.
This is a claim often repeated by supporters of the israeli genocide of Palestinians, but unfortunately they never provide evidence of this "often" being the case. That said, the number of people who are both journalists and active combatants could theoretically be as high as 99%, and it still wouldn't justify israel restricting, much less killing, the remaining 1%.
> UN officials showing their bias
If israel wishes to credibly prove their claims regarding bias against israel, they can submit their claims for judgement by the UN or international court. Until then, given israel's long history of bias, lying, murdering investigators, and claiming that everybody who criticizes them is biased, israel's claims can be assumed false wherever they would be self-serving.
> they have so far failed to provide sufficient evidence to back their claims.
Correction here: those claiming israel is perpetrating a genocide in general have provided sufficient evidence to back their claims. Regarding the formal court case around it: the plaintiffs have also provided sufficient evidence to back their claims.
> UN has a way bigger credibility issue than Israel does
You have this backwards: israel has a way bigger credibility issue than the UN (nearly 200 other nations united). So far, israel has failed to convince the world (the UN) that they have more credibility than the rest of the world put together.
> Not sure where you got that from, it makes no sense. I haven't seen any credible evidence to that effect, whereas it's been reiterated thousands of times, via violence, that israel rules over Palestine with an iron, exploding fist.
My point was just that there have been various levels of control/rule over Gaza over the years by different parties, with Egypt ruling over Gaza following Israeli independence until 1967, then Israel until the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, then Hamas eventually took effectively full control after short period of conflict with Fatah. I'm deliberately not using the term "Palestine" here because there is no clear definition of what "Palestine" actually means(which is a significant issue in this conflict obviously).
> That said, the number of people who are both journalists and active combatants could theoretically be as high as 99%, and it still wouldn't justify israel restricting, much less killing, the remaining 1%.
By what standards are you making this claim? The laws of war clearly allow for collateral damage.
> If israel wishes to credibly prove their claims regarding bias against israel, they can submit their claims for judgement by the UN or international court.
Under what international procedure would Israel submit their claims of innocence of genocide for judgement? The burden of proof is on the party claiming there is genocide. This is aside from the obvious conflict of interest the UN has(as they are a party directly involved in perpetuating the conflict over the years with a clear history of double standards).
> Until then, given israel's long history of bias, lying, murdering investigators, and claiming that everybody who criticizes them is biased, israel's claims can be assumed false wherever they would be self-serving.
One should look at the evidence rather than blindly accepting anti-Israeli propaganda at face value.
> Correction here: those claiming israel is perpetrating a genocide in general have provided sufficient evidence to back their claims. Regarding the formal court case around it: the plaintiffs have also provided sufficient evidence to back their claims.
By what standards? There have been claims made(many of them with very obvious flaws), and there has yet to be a ruling on those claims.
> You have this backwards: israel has a way bigger credibility issue than the UN (nearly 200 other nations united). So far, israel has failed to convince the world (the UN) that they have more credibility than the rest of the world put together.
Many UN organizations like the UNHRC have been effectively run by oppressive dictatorships over the years, these are countries which no sane person can argue have any moral authority when it comes to human rights[0]. This is a common pattern at the UN[1] and is precisely why the UN has such a severe credibility problem when it comes to human rights and morality in general. People really need to understand what the UN actually is before they start claiming it as some sort of moral authority.
> always bizarre to hear this sort of doomsaying about what would befall israelis if they treated Palestinians as the equal humans they are
Treating others as equals and co-inhabiting a space with them are quite different. Israel needs to treat Palestinians with dignity. But a lot of Palestinians (and Israelies) legitimately believe in exterminating the other. That's not a stable social base for building a state on.
Yes, things look pretty bright for Netanyahu, and the others in the Israeli state who want to do ethnic cleansing or worse. And settlers who want to do ethnic cleansing (not everyone! a minority I presume), are happy too.
Not many mistakes made here, just others who are mistaken about the goals
A big question for me continues to be how much of Israel's behavior isn't really about best options for Israel as a state, but power politics for particular political factions internally.
but that's how every polity operates, you can't influence it more than people already try to influence it.
you can ask the same of Hamas, is theirs the policy the populace wants?
Israel does have a robust free speech democracy and you can easily learn what many of the different factions think, and like elections anywhere, you don't know till afterward how it plays out, and voters are always disappointed by the way power is exercised.
Yes and no - arguably most would define "pursuing negative outcomes to reinforce a fraction's power" as misoperation within governance and even 200+ years ago understanding this lead to things like Washington's warnings about factions and political parties.
Some have described what we're seeing as an impassioned overreaction to Hamas' initial strike and kidnappings. However, Netanyahu's actions appear far more deliberate. Rhetoric from his own cabinet ministers is now impossible to ignore.
The IDF has taken a very slow and careful approach. There are typically under a hundred Palestinians killed at a time, but they are killed most days with a high degree of consistency. Headlines like "50 civilians killed in Gaza overnight" no longer make it to the front page. There has clearly been careful management to ensure that the numbers don't climb high enough in a single day to upset the new "normal". Israel has banned foreign journalists and the IDF has deliberately targeted those inside of Gaza to further minimize coverage. On top of that, the IDF has targeted healthcare infrastructure and workers while carefully controlling aid to bring about famine without provoking any significant foreign response.
The big concerns now should be how quickly an incipient famine in a region whose healthcare system has been largely eliminated could cause mass deaths, and how long the fog of war Netanyahu has carefully crafted over Gaza might hide it. The remaining window of time in which intervention might prevent tragedy is rapidly closing.
They're not losing the information war against Hamas, who they can easily kill if they can identify, they're losing it against those concerned with human rights in the free world. International law (in the absence of diplomatic enforcement) has nothing to do with it, and neither does the complex and detailed history that only serves as a way for people to avoid talking about the present...
Netanyahu's goal is endless war and conflict so that he'll never have to leave office and finally face criminal charges. I think Oct 7 is exactly what he wanted also.
> In fact, it really seemed, and still seems, like no strategy at all
Since 2005, Israel has maintained a strategy for managing Gaza called "mowing the grass"[0][1] in which every few years they attack and conduct short, sharp military operations. This is in contrast to their strategy of (illegal) settlements in the West Bank. In fact, they removed 8,000 settlers in 2005 when they began this strategy.
Besides the major hostilities of 2008/9,[2] 2012,[3] 2014,[4] and 2021[5], Israel infamously tests new weapons and technology on Gaza, allowing their weapons to be labelled "battlefield tested". One of their largest export is surveillance technology (guess who's the largest customer of that), but they also test drones, air force tech, and even guns. In October 2020 an IDF sniper boasted to Israeli newspaper Haaretz about breaking the "kneecap record" after shooting 42 Palestinian kneecaps in a single day. The snipers purposefully target kneecaps to permanently disable protestors, especially younger ones and increase the burden of care for Gazan society. This is "peacetime" between Gaza and Israel.
Gaza has been called an "open air prison" and "laboratory"[6] for Israel's military industry. The point I'm making is that Israel has never stopped keeping its eye on Gaza. I find it extremely hard to believe Israel didn't know, with extreme detail, what they were getting themselves into
In all this description, with which I agree to a large extent except in believing the "lashing out" to have been very much deliberate, except simply murderous and grossly inept, it's worth mentioning the specific name of that murderous war criminal Netanyahu who is responsible for the majority of the decision making and impetus.
> Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this
Israel probably came out ahead if all they lost is prestige.
They've neutered Iran and become the de facto regional security power. Their weapons and military have been validated, which makes than a desirable trading partner in an increasingly-militarising world. And they're turning into a gas exporter.
Worst case, a generational shift occurs and Israel loses its military support from America. (I don't see us sanctioning Israel any time soon, so its economic primacy will remain intact. And we only pay for like 15% of their military budget, so not a disaster.) Do you really think China and India would even hesitate to partner with Tel Aviv on defense?
> They've neutered Iran and become the de facto regional security power
How did they "neuter" Iran? Iran responded quickly and managed to heavily damage TelAviv and is now rushing to accelerate rebuilding their nuclear capabilities.
If anything, the previous operation was a disaster, it allowed to regime to entrench itself even further in IRAN and regime change that they were hoping for didn't happen.
I'm sure both Iran and Israel are gearing up for another round of heavy conflict later this year or early next year.
> How did they "neuter" Iran? Iran responded quickly and managed to heavily damage TelAviv
Israel gained air superiority over Iran and successfully conducted military decapitation strikes. Iran sort of launched some half-assed rockets in Israel's direction.
The only damage Israel has suffered is to its intelligence faculties in Iran.
> the previous operation was a disaster, it allowed to regime to entrench itself even further in IRAN and regime change that they were hoping for didn't happen
It was a tactical failure and strategic success. Iran's proxies have been shown they're completely fucking on their own--Tehran can't defend itself.
As for regime change, Israel didn't prosecute its war in a way that suggests that was the aim. Separatism? Yes. Destabilisation? Sure. Incapacitation? Surely. But regime change? I really don't think so. Knocking out the regime would likely mean elements of the IRGC consolidating power. That isn't a win for Israel.
> I'm sure both Iran and Israel are gearing up for another round of heavy conflict later this year or early next year
Iran doesn't have the ranged capability.
> IRAN is still very much a threat to Israel
I haven't seen any credible, impartial analysis that suggests this is remotely the case.
The conflict was settling into a "war of the cities" scenario with both Israel and the US exhausting interceptors rapidly.
What happens when it turns into a contest of rocket production and absorption against a country with 10x the population and 20x the land area? Completely unwinnable for Israel. Iran doesn't need air superiority to fire rockets.
> conflict was settling into a "war of the cities" scenario with both Israel and the US exhausting interceptors rapidly
Iran was rapidly running out of launchers. Once Israel gained air supremacy, it severely reduced its launcher deployment to avoid losing them for nothing.
> What happens when it turns into a contest of rocket production and absorption against a country with 10x the population and 20x the land area? Completely unwinnable for Israel
Iranian rocket production rates aren't particularly amazing. Tehran's deterrence came from the size of their stockpile, and the fact that they could fire on Israel from four directions (Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis and Iran proper).
> Iran doesn't need air superiority to fire rockets
Where did you get this?
Iran's MRBMs are mostly liquid fuelled [1] and stored in fortified bunkers (like V2s were). This leaves them highly vulnerable during fuelling (same as V2s). With air supremacy one can take out the missiles on the pad. (Which, due to the aforementioned fortification requirements, are predictably placed.) This is one reason Iran's missile firing rate collapsed during the war [2]--Israeli intelligence combined with targeted (land-origin, it seems) strikes took out their launchers.
Iran also has a fleet of solid-fuelled missiles which can be launched on short notice, but these are also less accurate, have to carry smaller payloads and more cheaply intercepted.
Moreover, in a war of attrition (which we did not reach, both sides were burning stockpiles) production reigns supreme. You need at least air parity to fire missiles. You need a favourable air situation to run fixed factories.
Iranian solid-fueled MRBM production rates were estimated by Israel to be at 200 a month, and rapidly increasing. That is actually a pretty remarkable production rate - basically the yearly production rate of interceptors. And that's only the solid fueled (by now the most produced), and only in ranges that can reach Israel. There is no reason why they would be any easier to intercept - plenty of aeroballistic missiles and even HGVs are propelled by solid fueled boosters.
Iranian missiles launchers are pretty cheap, and reportedly quite plentiful - they are relatively simple modifications of domestically produced truck platforms.
The Iranian account for why the strikes slowed down, FWIW, is that it took a significant amount of time to dig out the exits of the missiles bases, not that they ran out of launchers. Given the recycling of footage from launcher destruction and the simplicity of the launchers I personally find that account significantly more plausible.
The Iranian missile arsenal and production is now focused on solid fueled missiles, so they were emerging from a predictable place, but with a fuelled rocket they could fire in minutes.
Since it took at least an hour for a cruise missile to make it's way and around 15 minutes for an ALBM to make it's way, that means that once Israeli drones started being shot down, they were able to dig out the entrances, exit and launch faster than it took for a munition to be delivered.
Of course if Israel had been able to fly manned aircraft deep into Iran and for prolonged periods of time, that would have been impossible, and they would actually have been unable to fire. But that wasn't the case and so they were able to fire, probably limited by the ability to dig out the entrances and synchronize launches between different sites.
That's all well argued, but I can't get over the asymmetries of country size and the asymmetry of missile defense vs shooting the missile.
Russia wasn't supposed to be economically capable of a war this long and yet here we are. And that's a war of choice. If Iran is being attacked, they have no choices. People will find a way to make missiles underground if they have to.
And that's all before we get into political and psychological factors. How long does Netanyahu stay in power if Tel Aviv is hit every day?
(I have to note, USA vs Iran and Israel vs Iran are very different economic comparisons. It would be impossible for Israel to sustain 24/7 suppression over a country Iran's size but maybe with enough American funding its more feasible.)
Iran has a choice - it could choose not to support Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis or any other group firing rockets on Israel. It could also choose not to enrich uranium.
> I can't get over the asymmetries of country size and the asymmetry of missile defense vs shooting the missile
You're referring to strategic depth. Iran has lots of it. Israel does not. Countering that, however, is power projection capability. Israel has a lot of this, through its air force and allies. Iran was thought to have a lot of it, through its proxies, but that failed.
Without its proxies, Iran's fire on Israel has to originate from its own territory. That means trading missile range against the protection offered by its strategic depth from Israeli counter-battery fire. Hence why Iran's launchers were somewhat distributed across its territory. But! If Israel has air supremacy, that strategic depth changes from a risk to a logistical cost. If Israeli jets can freely access Iranian air space, that extra distance Iran's central and eastern launchers have to fly don't trade against any defensive upside--they're still going to be blown up shortly after a pad is revealed. They just have to burn more fuel to get the same payload to the same place.
> Russia wasn't supposed to be economically capable of a war this long
There were a variety of estimates. Most of them assumed Russia's economy would crumble under sanctions and so Moscow would lose the will to fight. I don't believe any showed Russia would lose the ability.
> If Iran is being attacked, they have no choices. People will find a way to make missiles underground if they have to
Rockets, sure. Missiles? No. The Shahab-3 reaches altitudes of 400 km [1]. That's where the ISS orbits [2].
> How long does Netanyahu stay in power if Tel Aviv is hit every day?
How long does Putin stay in power if Ukraine keeps dismantling Russia's energy infrastructure? The sad truth is war-time leaders tend to be deposed after unpopular wars, not during them.
> It would be impossible for Israel to sustain 24/7 suppression over a country Iran's size
Again, they don't need to. They just need to destroy the launchers.
It's estimated Iran went from 350 to 100 launchers in the war. Once you've levelled the launchers, you're defending against unguided rockets (which everyone in between will try to pot) and drones (which are cheaper and easier to destroy and cause less damage).
> would be impossible for Israel to sustain 24/7 suppression over a country Iran's size but maybe with enough American funding its more feasible
Israel's economy is twice the size of Irans's [3][4]. Its smaller territory means it can concentrate air defences. And with 10x fewer mouths to feed, it can devote more of that economy to its war machine in a spurt.
Iran-Israel is super interesting because they don't share a border, and they sort of min-maxed their militaries and economies in very different ways. If Iran had maintained its proxies, I think your original analysis stands. Without them, when it can only fire from one direction and from far away, all while Israel can scoot up close and right on top of it, many of its advantages turn into liabilities.
Don't know why you're getting downvoted for a thoughtful comment.
I think you're overindexing on a prepared sneak attack with maximum ops velocity from Israel. They threw the best punch they had and it.. disrupted Iran. Didn't knock them out.
Longer term, Israel has 260 fighter-bombers and Iran is huge. Allied analysts after WW2 generally concluded that strategic bombing didn't really move the needle on German war production, and that was with 10s of thousands of bombers, although admittedly a lot less precision. Any long, flat building in Iran's gigantic, mountainous country could be building missiles. And new launcher locations won't be plotted out ahead of time for a high-tempo 72 hour operation, they'll be coming up continuously over the long haul. They don't need to be hypersonic once interceptors are exhausted.
How's Israel going to sustain that long term, especially if they take any amount of ongoing civilian losses at all? It stops being an abstract conversation about collateral damage to civilians pretty quickly once it's happening to them. 10/1 ratio is nowhere near good enough for the polity there.
A more relevant historical parallel was the Iran-Iraq war. Iraq, in the first 5 years of the war, had largely degraded Iranian air defenses and was able to carry out many thousands of airstrikes, at some points even using strategic bombers, many of them with precision weapons. That was enough to degrade Iranian industry, but not enough to destroy it, and by the late 80s Iran still won the war of attrition, and managed to develop their weapons industry.
By the end of the war Iran was using domestic surveillance drones to direct artillery, and was even experimenting with the first attack drones by fitting RPGs on their larger surveillance UAVs, had reverse engineered and started domestically producing TOW missiles, had started producing the Shahab-1 ballistic missile (a Scud clone), Silkworm-clone radar-guided antiship cruise missiles, etc..., all the while their air force was down to less than 100 hundred aircraft in various degrees of disrepair and with very few advanced munitions remaining.
The war ultimately ended in a stalemate, even after the US intervened in Praying Mantis.
The attacks on Iranian industry had zero land attack component. Iran is a very large country and Iraq was not able to hold much Iranian territory, the distances involved mean that Iraq was just like Israel reliant on airpower for these strikes.
> How's Israel going to sustain that long term, especially if they take any amount of ongoing civilian losses at all?
Long term, no clue. The best strategy would be a system of regional alliances, but they've screwed that pooch with Gaza. Second best is setting red lines for Iranian missile production and stockpiles and intervening when those thresholds are breached.
Being extremely hasty with setting red lines and enforcing them is what got Israel into this situation. The "mow the lawn" strategy means perpetual conflict and they have to win every single time.
What right does Israel have to govern Iran's self defense capabilities? Iran's been attacked unprovoked by USA/Israel several times in the last 6-7 years, they're not the ones starting shooting wars.
Iran's supply chain is already fully domestic thanks to sanctions. Repeated strikes on that supply chain will only serve to harden it.
Iran's GDP PPP is 1.75 trillion. The capacity for Iran to produce domestic designs is far higher than Israel's. Iran's nominal GDP has fallen drastically because of sanctions, but in terms of domestically produced and domestically designed military equipment, PPP is far more accurate.
> It's estimated Iran went from 350 to 100 launchers in the war. Once you've levelled the launchers, you're defending against unguided rockets (which everyone in between will try to pot) and drones (which are cheaper and easier to destroy and cause less damage).
That's possible, although no one actually knows how many TELs Iran has, and no one knows how many have been destroyed : Israeli evidence to that effect has been very very slim. Iran's TELs are essentially a pneumatic piston and a FCS (read: Beidou GNSS receiver) bolted onto a domestically-designed 8x8 or 10x10 platform. Iran has far, far more than 400 8x8/10x10 military trucks, so it's essentially impossible to know how many of those they can or have configured as a TEL at any given moment, especially since those conversions are easily done in undergound facilities.
So the "they just need to destroy the launchers" theory is very thin, on the edge of wishcasting. The launchers being domestically produced and similar/lesser in cost to the missiles they fire suggest that even if it does work once, it's not a viable long term strategy.
Iran has a very large automotive industry - they produce over 1 million cars per year. If the main strategic hit was to destroy 200 trucks made in a country that cranks out 1 000 000 cars, I'm going to very skeptical about claims of neutering them.
You may be confusing the guidance mechanisms of early ballistic missiles, which relied entirely on on-board inertial guidance. These missiles therefore needed quite precise initial guidance and an expensive TEL with a myriad of expensive sensors in order to calibrate themselves. Modern ballistic missiles don't work like that : they have non-inertial GNSS guidance (and for the most sophisticated, some kind of active or optical guidance system in the mid course and terminal phase) to complement inertial guidance. That means that the TEL just needs to communicate an initial position, so nothing much more complicated than a GNSS receiver is needed, and to the extent that this is incorrect, the missile can correct itself.
> Rockets, sure. Missiles? No. The Shahab-3 reaches altitudes of 400 km [1]. That's where the ISS orbits [2].
What does that have to do with anything? The Shahab-3 missile has a small fraction of the dV necessary to reach orbit, and is therefore much smaller than the kind of rocket you need for that. We already know that they are stored in large numbers underground, so what's the bottleneck that prevents underground production?
In fact, in Masyaf, Syria, Iran placed the planetary mixers which are the most sensitive and expensive component underground. There is no clear reason why they wouldn't have done so at home.
The rest of the production of solid-fueled missiles is bottlenecked by casting pits. Iran has placed mant of these above ground - obviously we can't know if or how many they have placed underground, but they seem to have largely resisted Israeli airstrikes - they are not a sensitive target. See : https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1220847/guest-post-a... for an independent account of Iranian MRBM-scale solid fueled rocket motor production. The only easy target are the planetary mixers - Israel has claimed to have targeted them, but in Masyaf, Syria, they failed to destroy them using airstrikes and had to resort to a commando attack on the underground facility, so that theory is thin as well.
> Its smaller territory means it can concentrate air defences.
That's right, which is why Israel uses weapons designed to evade air defenses and exploit gaps, while Iran uses weapons that simply exhaust interceptors. The former is easier to exploit from the get go, but the latter fails catastrophically once the breaking point arrives.
> And with 10x fewer mouths to feed, it can devote more of that economy to its war machine in a spurt.
Yes, but Iran doesn't feed it's citizens in US dollars (at least not anymore), it feeds them using a PPP-adjusted basket of goods. And similarly while Israel's interceptors are in large part manufactured in the USA and paid for in USD, Iran's missiles are almost entirely manufactured domestically, with workers paid in a much cheaper basket of goods. In terms of exchaning interceptors and ballistic missiles, Iran is ahead.
The main issue Iran has is that their missiles are mostly not accurate enough to degrade Israeli force projection, and that while missile production is very high, it hasn't been for a long time and thus stockpiles are not great. That's a problem that has an expiration date, and that's why Israel attacked Iran, because the window is closing. Iran only very recently demonstrated the kind of technology that is needed to execute precision strikes using MRBMs: the first missile design they claim is able to do so is the Qassem Basir, which only entered service this year. If that works and if they can scale production, the advantage Israel has in being very concentrated and densely protected turns into a liability - Iran then has the ability to directly attack Israeli BMD radars, and then directly attack airbases. It's a serious threat, and that's exactly why the Israelis decided that they needed to attack.
Granted. We're still talking about a 3x difference, advantage to Iran, in the face of a lot more territory to defend, population to manage and a technical deficit.
> if the main strategic hit was to destroy 200 trucks
MRBM launchers are not trucks.
> You may be confusing the guidance mechanisms of early ballistic missiles
Guided vs unguided refers to the ability to course correct en route. An unguided missile is a lobber rocket. A guided missile has reaction controls onboard.
> What does that have to do with anything?
That it's a complicated machine you can't whip up in a garagd.
> while Iran uses weapons that simply exhaust interceptors
A strategy undermined by collapsing launch rates.
> If that works and if they can scale production, the advantage Israel has in being very concentrated and densely protected turns into a liability
Absolutely. I'm not saying Israel is indefinitely invulnerable to Iran. Just that in the last war, it neutered Iran's capacity to hurt it.
It's a piston mounted on top of a utility truck. It's a truck! If a semi-truck with a refrigerated trailer is a truck, then an 8x8 utility truck with a hydraulic piston is also a truck.
> Guided vs unguided refers to the ability to course correct en route. An unguided missile is a lobber rocket. A guided missile has reaction controls onboard.
That's not what I'm referring to. Early ballistic missiles only had inertial guidance, and therefore needed an accurate positional and attitude fix provided by the launcher, which made it expensive and complex. Modern ballistic missiles have absolute guidance mechanisms, so the launcher is now much simpler.
> That it's a complicated machine you can't whip up in a garagd.
Iranian UGFs aren't garages. They are called missile cities for a reason.
> A strategy undermined by collapsing launch rates.
25-35% of ballistic missile impacts on Israel occured on June 22nd. The Iranian capacity to actually hit targets in Israel did not collapse through the 12 day war.
> Absolutely. I'm not saying Israel is indefinitely invulnerable to Iran. Just that in the last war, it neutered Iran's capacity to hurt it.
Iran's ballistic missile strikes were most successful on June 22nd. In the last week of the war, there is plenty of evidence pointing towards Israeli BMD degrading faster than Iran's ability to launch ballistic missiles.
The only way to conclude that Iran's ability to launch was neutered is if you believe that, were the war to continue, Iran's ability to launch missiles would have continued to degrade. The only argument to that effect is that they'd run out of launchers - I find that implausible on the basis of the launchers being simple modifications of extremely plentiful military truck platforms.
after first week or so iran could launch only from bases that were much further away from Israel (way east), because Israeli air control was weaker there
Iran does need actual rockets and launchers, which they were rapidly running out at a faster rate than interceptors. Whatever the response was, it certainly wasn't the "apocalyptic" attack like some doves were previously predicting.
Iran being neutered is propaganda that is necessary for the (failed, for now) Israeli plan of regime change.
Iran maintains the ability to build ballistic missiles in large numbers, greatly depleted Israel-US BMD reserves, continues to build even more reinforced nuclear sites. Neutering those capabilities was the main goal of the 12 day war and by most accounts, that didn't work.
Israel did not manage air superiority over the large majority of Iran, instead the majority of strikes over Iran were done using standoff weapons and drones, many flown from within Iran as an act of sabotage.
If Israel truly managed to get air superiority over Iran, the Iranian regime would have suffered the same fate as Nasrallah. But that didn't happen, because while Israel was able to execute a number of deep strikes, the capability to do so was much closer to Russia's ability over Ukraine than, say, the way the US operated over Iraq. And Iran at the same time was able to execute dozens of deep strikes within Israel, but with much less precision - without a much deeper cut to the Iranian MIC it's only a matter of time before the newer, much more precise missiles are built in sufficient numbers to become a similar threat to the Israeli airforce.
There is no reason why China would ever want to partner with Israel on defense anymore. They tried do in the 2000s, and they found that Israel was so deeply and inextricably dependent on US technology and manufacturing for it's military technology that there was almost nothing worthwhile they could get that wasn't so dependent on the US that the US would veto it. Israel's military sophistication is not endogenous to the extent it would be competitive without the US - it's entirely dependent on an extremely privileged relationship with the MIC that allows Israel to stand on the shoulder of giants and produce weapons that are far more sophisticated than would be possible for any economy of its' size otherwise.
An article came out only today on Haaretz detailing how much of the footage and imagery from Israeli strikes were deepfakes or recycled footage. That's not something you do when you've managed to neuter your opponent.
> Iran being neutered is propaganda that is necessary for the (failed, for now) Israeli plan of regime change.
Iran maintains the ability to build ballistic missiles in large numbers
Iran hasn't been neutralised. It was just reduced to a non-threat during the war. Of course it maintains future capabilities that could be threatening.
> That's not something you do when you've managed to neuter your opponent
> Iran hasn't been neutralised. It was just reduced to a non-threat during the war. Of course it maintains future capabilities that could be threatening.
I wouldn't call 10 ballistic missiles hits in a day a non-threat. If they were accurate that's a significant threat: enough to disable all BMD radars in a day, and over a week to disable airbases.
The most important factor that made them less threatening is the lack of pinpoint accuracy, and that is not something that changed over the course of the war.
> Why not? It's an information war.
Getting caught using fabricated imagery is inevitable within a couple days, so that's not something you'd want to do in an information war if you are looking for long term effect, unless you have to.
> Israel an the US are a single entity when it comes to security matters in the middle east. It was already the de facto regional power
Not independently. At this point, Israel is independently a de facto regional power. The strike in Doha drove that home. (As did the attacks on Iran, which delivered a geostrategic win to Riyadh that Washington was never able to.)
They haven't "neutered" Iran, all they've proven is that they're actually quite ineffective against Iran and Yemen. They've also become the most hated country in all of the world. Their citizens have to hide their citizenship when they travel back to Europe. Israel won't last another 10 years.
You may not realize it but Israel is slowly becoming Rhodesia/Apartheid South Africa. And i don't mean the word 'apartheid' as a cudgel.
During the Rhodesian Bush War, their forces ran circles around the ZIPRA and ZANLA with multiple battles and encounters where they'd routinely record 500:1 KD ratios like Operation Dingo, etc. They had complete freedom of action to bomb any infrastructure obstructing them, reach deep into neighboring countries and slaughter guerillas copiously.
Hell, South Africa had a dozen nukes.
Once the sanctions came on, it unraveled everything they had.
Israel is in such a precarious situation right now. Their economy depends on technology exports to an extreme degree. Cutting off that source of FX would literally half the economy overnight because cash would stop sloshing around internally from its main sources.
If that happens, all the smart kids propping up the economy will move out while you're left with extremists who want war but won't fight in the army. In fact, it's ongoing right now with people leaving the country in the midst of a war they're 'winning.'
You might think sanctions are a far-off notion, but key Western powers are breaking with America on recognizing Palestine. That's a red line designed to signal to Israel that it's losing ground. People across the world are calling for sanctions and it won't be long before they materialize.
And America? Israel's main power base are American boomer evangelicals who're going the way of the dinosaur. Like I said in another comment, their kids are either not religious, don't like bombing kids, have been radicalized by the atrocities they've witnessed, or are aligned with people like Fuentes.
I hope they can smell the coffee; if anyone had told South Africa that a nuclear power could be disarmed without a gunshot, they'd never have believed it. But, look what eventually happened.
Thanks to the ongoing genocide, America's voting demographic for the next 40 years has begun to see Israel as a genocidal terrorist state. They will be voting for the next 50 years, while the boomer evangelicals die off.
> Cutting off that source of FX would literally half the economy overnight because cash would stop sloshing around internally from its main sources
My point is this isn't a realistic threat for Israel. Its exports are highly desirable to too many parties. Technology. Weapons. Energy. There is too much money to be made, too much advantage to be had.
Yes, if the war in Gaza continues for another decade, Israel will run out of goodwill. But if it wraps up within a year or two? I don't see anything happening quickly enough that they can't adapt. Apartheid was a permanent state. The war need not be.
> America's voting demographic for the next 40 years has begun to see Israel as a genocidal terrorist state. They will be voting for the next 50 years
I'd say a strategic prerogative for Israel at this point is to diversify away from America. It's unfortunate. But they screwed a golden goose.
For the aforementioned reasons, however, that isn't existential. Particularly given India and China have what they consider to be problematic Muslim populations within and around themselves, too.
> Even now they can get the Chinese on the line in a minutes notice. I’m pretty sure the Chinese are running one of their ports
China has actually been more arms length in this conflict, possibly due to its relations with Iran, possibly because it wants Israel to fully commit east. (Possibly because they have a moral position on occupation and genocide, though unlikely, it's not like they're handing back Tibet and Xinxiang.)
>My point is this isn't a realistic threat for Israel. Its exports are highly desirable to too many parties. Technology. Weapons. Energy.
Everything Israel makes is fungible. The middle east is a river of gas. Israel's defense technology industry can't exist without Western partners. Hell, America denying them F35 repairs/upgrades effectively kills their airforce.
>Yes, if the war in Gaza continues for another half decade, Israel will run out of goodwill. But if it wraps up within a year or two? I don't see anything happening quickly enough that they can't adapt. Apartheid was a permanent state. The war need not be.
The damage has been done. Hundreds of millions globally now voice opinions about Israel openly that they wouldn't have allowed to just a few years back. These people vote in their countries, buy products, interact in the real world. We're seeing Israeli tourists get harassed openly. Would have been unthinkable in, say, 2020.
>Yeah, I'd say a strategic prerogative for Israel at this point is to diversify away from America. For the aforementioned reasons, however, I don't see that being a problem. Particularly given India and China have what they consider to be problematic Muslim populations within and around themselves, too.
India cannot even field 4.5 generation jets. Their airforce (French Rafales) got whooped in the recent confrontation with Pakistan. In fact, after China delivers Pakistan's J35s, India would have nothing to counter it. Israel's military core is air supremacy so much so that it is state doctrine to use nukes if the IAF is ever destroyed.
And China, trying to project an image of fairness to the third-world, as an alternative power, supports a two-state solution. Unlike Western politicians, they can't be lobbied and bribed to support endless wars.
I have my gripes with the West but they're still a superpower bloc. If they sanction you, you're fucked. There's a reason even China keeps its dealings with sanctioned Russian companies plausibly deniable. To avoid contagion.
You just don't understand how dependent Israel is on the West. 53% of their exports are technology goods. If you're cut off from Western markets, not only will China not buy much from Israel, they will copy their products and compete with them.
The only country you can build a shared resistance towards Muslims is India. For now, their economy is small and irrelevant. China has their Islamist problem under control and they won't want to offend the moneybag Arabs by supporting Israel (LMAO).
Israeli weapons are absolutely not fungible, particularly not for non-Western buyers. And something being fungible doesn't make it less valuable.
> America denying them F35 repairs/upgrades effectively kills their airforce
Correct. I am guessing we'll see diversification here.
> India cannot even field 4.5 generation jets. Their airforce (French Rafales) got whooped in the recent confrontation with Pakistan
...and guess who makes a state-of-the-art integrated air defences? And knows how to penetrate (and thus harden) state-of-the-art Russian air defence systems?
> China, trying to project an image of fairness to the third-world, as an alternative power, supports a two-state solution
Uh, China is doing whatever it can to keep America distracted. If Israel can give China technology, China will continue calling for a two-state solution while buying what it needs. (Chinese-Israeli trade has increased throughout the war.)
> have my gripes with the West but they're still a superpower bloc. If they sanction you, you're fucked
Israel is not at material risk of blanket sanctions from the West in the next decade. And being a democracy, there is a lot of good a change of face can do.
> 53% of their exports are technology goods
Why does this have to go to America and Western Europe?
> China has their Islamist problem under control and they won't want to offend the moneybag Arabs by supporting Israel
Which of the Arab monarchies is particularly distressed with Israel? Which has even walked back its previous support and recognition? The Gulf is more than happy for Israel to fight their wars against Iran. If the war dies down, they've got more important things to worry about. (Their populations have never liked Israel. Not super relevant.)
It seems that everyone in this conflict has doomsday fantasies for their opponents. The Gazans will all shrivel up and die. Israel will poof away because young Americans decide foreign policy--not jobs or housing or the rule of law--is their single issue. These extreme outcomes are incredibly unlikely.
>Israeli weapons are absolutely not fungible, particularly not for non-Western buyers.
My claim was specifically with China in mind. Pretty much everything the Americans will let Israel sell to non-Western partners can be gotten from China, Turkey, etc. cheaper and with less headache.
>Correct. I am guessing we'll see diversification here.
Yep. Introducing my magical new fighter jet that replaces the f35!
>...and guess who makes a state-of-the-art integrated air defences? And knows how to penetrate (and thus harden) state-of-the-art Russian air defence systems?
Well, it probably didn't work great given how India fared recently, did it? They're a committed partner of Israel and collaborate on military tech.
>Uh, China is doing whatever it can to keep America distracted. If Israel can give China technology, China will continue calling for a two-state solution while buying what it needs. (Chinese-Israeli trade has increased throughout the war.)
The only thing China reliably does is single-mindedly pursue their interests. Propping Israel up doesn't achieve that. In fact they're quite chummy with the Palestinians and lots of the weapons used for the Oct. 7 raid were Chinese-made.
>Israel is not at material risk of blanket sanctions from the West in the next decade.
If you say so. The chances of the Five Eyes breaking with America on recognizing Palestine were also exactly zero just a few months ago.
>Why does this have to go to America and Western Europe?
Because they're the only ones who have the money for it. No non-Western company/country has the amount of tech demand/cash to have completed the Wiz acquisition for $32b in cash. Their software markets have no viable customers outside the West.
>Which of the Arab monarchies is particularly distressed with Israel? Which has even walked back its previous support and recognition? The Gulf is more than happy for Israel to fight their wars against Iran.
Good point.
>It seems that everyone in this conflict has doomsday fantasies for their opponents.
I have no dog in the fight. Both countries could disappear overnight and it wouldn't affect my quality of life. I'm simply a student of history and I'm trained to see patterns.
I'm curious to know what it is that India didn't fare well in the recent conflict. Based on my reading I was under the impression that original incursion was a military success for India and everything else after that was theatre on both sides. What am I missing?
> curious to know what it is that India didn't fare well in the recent conflict
Pakistan shot down Indian plane(s). India didn't return the favour. Worse, Pakistan's integrated air defence systems had situational awareness; it's clear Indian Rafale pilots didn't even see the shots coming.
It's not a victory for one side or the other, overall. But in the air battle, Pakistan gained tactical supremacy.
The Indian government claims to have shit down Pakistani jets as well and Pakistan denied it. Pakistan claims to have shit down six jets and India says it's 3. So there is that
> Indian government claims to have shit down Pakistani jets as well and Pakistan denied it
A lot of folks have looked at a lot of OSINT. There is no evidence of any Indian kills. The best we can say is we have zero confirmed kills by India on Pakistan. For what it's worth, New Delhi seems to have backed off repeating its claims of kills internationally.
> Pakistan claims to have shit down six jets and India says it's 3
India claims three jets crashed for unknown reasons [1]. French and US officials have indirectly confirmed those kills [2][3]. Internationally, it's being treated as three confirmed kills by Pakistan.
> Introducing my magical new fighter jet that replaces the f35
You really think the French, Swedes, Russians or Chinese won't sell them planes? They're seeking to be a regional power. They don't need F-35s. (Though they're certainly handy.)
> probably didn't work great given how India fared recently, did it?
India doesn't field Israeli air defences...
> only thing China reliably does is single-mindedly pursue their interests. Propping Israel up doesn't achieve that
I'll grant that China has been the most consistent on Israel and Palestine. Nevertheless, Israeli-Chinese trade keeps growing.
> If you say so. The chances of the Five Eyes breaking with America on recognizing Palestine were also exactly zero just a few months ago
Really? According to whom? I haven't been in the UN for a while, but everyone I knew was asking when, not if. It clearly works for domestic politics, doubly following the recent trade concessions.
Netherlands (not Five Eyes) was 1 in 3 [1]. Canada and France were making motions for a while; Japan and Italy were like 50% going back two months.
> they're the only ones who have the money for it
The U.S. funds about 15% of Israel's defence budget. We allow them to splurge in a way they can't alone. But that just means they can't defeat Hezbollah and Iran and Hamas at the same time without us.
>You really think the French, Swedes, Russians or Chinese won't sell them planes? They're seeking to be a regional power. They don't need F-35s. (Though they're certainly handy.)
The fact we're even having this conversation is the point. Top-end equipment was always guaranteed. The fact you're shopping around mentally for second-best points to that.
>I'll grant that China has been the most consistent on Israel and Palestine. Nevertheless, Israeli-Chinese trade keeps growing.
Well, there's a reason why they've been consistent on it so far. If Israel's trade comes to depend significantly on them, they can use it as leverage against them.
>Really? According to whom? I haven't been in the UN for a while, but everyone I knew was asking when, not if. It clearly works for domestic politics, doubly following the recent trade concessions.
I should have been more specific than a few months ago. Here's what I meant. Many of these countries have no issues against Palestine, but wouldn't break openly with the US position because of how dependent they are. That happening is a vibe shift.
>The U.S. funds about 15% of Israel's defence budget. We allow them to splurge in a way they can't alone. But that just means they can't defeat Hezbollah and Iran and Hamas at the same time without us.
You keep taking my statements out of context, attacking a point I didn't make and then claiming victory. I'm not even addressing US aid to Israel, which is extensive. I'm talking about their economy! Without that trade, the economy will shrink by a lot. The technologists bringing in that FX will move away in large numbers. Spending will have to reduce by half or more, especially given Israel already has a high tax-to-gdp-ratio. The country won't survive it. More high earners will leave and you'll go into a death spiral.
Dozens of UN resolutions have been issued against Israel and vetoed by the US. If it happens without American support, they'll be placed under an intl. embargo until they comply. Ask Iran what intl. embargoes have done to crush their economy before you wave it off. What America offers Israel is both a large export market they don't have internally, and protection from consequences.
Israel is too integrated with the West, going as far as competing in Eurovision, UEFA, etc. If they break with the West, they can't survive it. I cite Rhodesia as an example repeatedly because that's where they slowly but surely ended up.
If you end up with Western sanctions, no matter your country's size, you're fucked. USSR and Maoist China can give you any lectures you want.
The 'chosen people' delusion can make it seem economic realities don't apply, but the earlier Israel can get to a lasting peace while conditions are favorable, the better.
> fact we're even having this conversation is the point. Top-end equipment was always guaranteed. The fact you're shopping around mentally for second-best points to that
I've literally not thought about this until you brought it up. My point is there is an extensive list of eager jet sellers who would step up to the plate.
> If Israel's trade comes to depend significantly on them, they can use it as leverage against them
Sure? Same as America can now. This defeats the argument that Israel is being economically isolated, or faces devastation from losing America as a close ally in decades.
> Many of these countries have no issues against Palestine, but wouldn't break openly with the US position because of how dependent they are. That happening is a vibe shift
It's been months in the making. Not paying attention doesn't make something surprising. It would have been extremely surprising if Canada, the UK and France didn't recognise Palestine, and I'm saying this going back half a year.
> I'm talking about their economy! Without that trade, the economy will shrink by a lot
But going back to the top, there are plenty of other trading partners America's third of exports could be replaced with. Not entirely. Not on as great terms. But close enough to keep Israel reigning as a regional hegemony.
> technologists bringing in that FX will move away in large numbers
Where are you getting this notion that tech exports are a major source of FX for Israel? Or that Israel would stop being a tech centre if America turned its back on it? (And again, major emerging gas exporter.)
> you'll go into a death spiral
I'm not Israeli. I've never been to Israel.
> Dozens of UN resolutions have been issued against Israel and vetoed by the US. If it happens without American support, they'll be placed under an intl. embargo until they comply
Look at the list of UNSC sanctioned countries [1]. They're symbolic. The point is to cause members to enact follow-on sanctions [2]. When that doesn't happen, they're ineffective.
> Ask Iran what intl. embargoes have done to crush their economy
They're...still around. You also missed Angola, Yemen, North Korea...
> Israel is too integrated with the West, going as far as competing in Eurovision, UEFA, etc. If they break with the West, they can't survive it. I cite Rhodesia as an example repeatedly because that's where they slowly but surely ended up
I get this is your hypothesis. It simply isn't sustained. This is before we get to the point that if a couple Western countries sanction Israel for shits and giggles, there is a lot of money to be made by someone defecting and acting 'neutrally'.
(Also, in any world where Israel is sanctioned, Palestine gets devastated. That's simply the nature of having an economic basket case as a neighbour.)
Again, there seem to be folks who like to see patterns that sustain extreme outcomes that support a moral view of the world. You're having to go so deep into hypotheticals while being able to surface zero sources because the precedented outcome for this war--like most others that caused moral outrage in the West--is that we forget about it and move on and then everyone goes back to making money again.
(The only note I'd add is that if this rhetoric becomes commonplace, that America is destined to abondon Israel, it incentivises one outcome and one outcome only: destroying Palestine today, quickly and decisively. Nobody talks about that because nobody really buys the pitch you're making outside pro-Palestinian activist circles. I'm also not criticising you personally. Ukraine was my pet war. I absolutely bought into all sorts of conspiracies about Russia getting sidelined and partitioned up. We all want to see patterns that sustain the illusion of a just world.)
>Where are you getting this notion that tech exports are a major source of FX for Israel? Or that Israel would stop being a tech centre if America turned its back on it? (And again, major emerging gas exporter.)
From their own economic publications. Tech exports are 53% of their export output. Gas is a laughable non-issue. Like I said earlier, the middle east is full of it. It's not a significant source of leverage since every third country has it.
>UN sanctions are way less biting than American secondary sanctions alone.
You can always tunnel around sanctions, but it kills a lot of your open-market economy. You have to sell for a lower, discounted price. Acquisitions and mergers are effectively over. Sales shrink by a lot. Your largest companies move away to avoid contagion. I mean, have you ever read about the sanctions on Rhodesia & south Africa?
>They're...still around. And they never had a weapons sector like Israel's.
They're severely, terribly weakened. Even China won't sell them any modern airframes. That should tell you something.
>I get this is your hypothesis. It simply isn't sustained. This is before we get to the point that if a couple Western countries sanction Israel for shits and giggles, there is a lot of money to be made by someone defecting and acting 'neutrally'.
I have evidence of Western & non-western countries banding together to sanction consistent bad actors, despite being even more Western than Israel will ever be. Do you have any evidence of any country surviving sanctions without severe economic damage? Please share; my viewpoint has abundant proof. I'm just supposed to believe yours.
>Again, there seem to be folks who like to see patterns that sustain extreme outcomes that support a moral view of the world. You're having to go three levels deep for every turn because the most precedented outcome here is everyone forgets and moves on.
I don't have a dog in the fight. Both countries could die to the last man and I'd still go on my merry way, whistling. I'm simply projecting based on history, which is why I cite precedent that you refuse to admit.
Sure. Where are you getting that these are a critical source of FX?
> Gas is a laughable non-issue
To FX? Seriously?
> have you ever read about the sanctions on Rhodesia & south Africa?
Yes. Zimbabwe is still sanctioned. South Africa had preëxisting power-sharing negotiations.
> Even China won't sell them any modern airframes. That should tell you something
...that Beijing isn't drunk? Why do you think Washington got pissed off when Turkey bought Russian air defences and let them paint our fighter fleet?
> have evidence of Western & non-western countries banding together to sanction consistent bad actors
One, during a unipolar world. Someone else commented on this, but in a multipolar world, that is a luxury that simply doesn't emerge. (Even the bilateral world of the Cold War very rarely saw international sanctions regimes effected. That was just a nudge for someone to switch from one system of alliances to another.)
> Do you have any evidence of any country surviving sanctions without severe economic damage?
Yes [2]. In the short term, they cause damage. ("Severe" needs to be quantified, however--when regime change is targeted, it's only successful about a third of the time.) In the long term, they're less effective. Economies go into cockroach mode.
If you want a list, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Belarus, Burma and Venezuela are each heavily sanctioned and pretty much setting themselves up to permanently be so. (Pyongyang and Minsk having practically turned it into an art.)
> I'm simply projecting based on history, which is why I cite precedent
You haven't cited anything! Based on history, Israel is highly unlikely to get sanctioned by anyone, let alone America, and if it were, it's likely to be fine.
China and India have problematic local Muslim populations. That doesn’t extend to supporting Israel.
And they clearly don’t. China actively talks against it (because it builds global goodwill on the diplomatic stage) and India only plays lip service (they have more to gain from the Gulf than Israel).
They're opportunistically buying/selling what they want. None of these are an ideological commitment to Israel's status quo. If the wind direction changes, they'll change with it.
> They're opportunistically buying/selling what they want. None of these are an ideological commitment to Israel's status quo. If the wind direction changes, they'll change with it
Yes. That's trade. It's true for most international relationships.
Yes. That's trade. It's true for most international relationships.
You don’t get to have your cake and eat it too. China and India don’t have an ideological relationship with Israel. So Israel is never going to “diversify” (your words) their relationship to the point that China is shooting down cruise missiles flying over Tel Aviv on their behalf.
America is a perfect ally to Israel. I’m not arguing they’ll replace us 1:1. Just more than adequately, certainly enough to maintain a regional hegemony if not fight for it anew.
> India don’t have an ideological relationship with Israel
Right-wing Indians and Israelis actually have quite a bit in common. I don’t think it’s enough to sustain a long-term alliance. And New Delhi is no Washington. (It’s also a buyer of Iranian oil.)
But there are outright exterminationist wings in both countries, and their enemies share the same faith.
>America's voting demographic for the next 40 years has begun to see Israel as a genocidal terrorist state. They will be voting for the next 50 years, while the boomer evangelicals die off.
The pro-palestine progressives are rapidly loosing political power, if not being targeted right now by the Trumpian administration. The National Conservatives may be isolationist regarding free funding, but they certainly aren't going to sanctioning Israel or ending arms sales, while Pro-Palestine is pretty much a useful proxy as is for them to signify "un-americans".
Furthermore, the sanctions on South Africa occurred within the context of the Liberal International Era where one could afford to alienate a state in a region with little importance. But it's posters like you that have been calling for the so-called multipolar world, which is where NGOs and Human Rights will be sidelined in favour of a Westphalian-Type Sovereignity whereby hard interests decide foreign policy, not human rights concerns. In that Realist context, it is virtually within complete interests for the Gulf States and other actors to align with Israel over Iran, the former which has proven itself militairly and acts accordingly to economic interest, whereas the latter is bordering on a failed state still motivated by irrational hegemonic concerns. In the same context, a Palestinian states that takes over Israel basically will likely be detrimental to the other actors.
> a Westphalian-Type Sovereignity whereby hard interests decide foreign policy, not human rights concerns
Westphalian sovereignty refers to "a principle in international law that each state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory" [1]. It doesn't support realpolitik nor negate human rights. The only degree to which it intersects with the latter is in arguing against foreign intervention. (Which realpolitik encourages.) It's a concept that was promulgated to integrate previously-independent city states into the larger nation-states and empires of the time.
It's also quite idiotically named, given the actual Peace of Westphalia dealt with foreign powers deciding what to do with the Holy Roman Empire at the end of the Thirty Years' War, with France and Sweden being "recognised as guarantors of the imperial constitution with a right to intercede" [2], sort of the opposite of inviolable sovereignty.
Today, it tends to be something Putin brings up, again, quite idiotically, given he's constantly fucking around in other countries' affairs.
(You're broadly correct that in a Realist international framework the morality of Israel's actions are irrelevant. And that everyone advocating for a multipolar world shifts us in the Realist direction. Practically, however, these are models, not theories, and they coëxist with each other.)
I’m one of the folks whose opinion of Israel has shifted. I don’t see them as a “genocidal terrorist state.” I see them as “just another middle eastern country.”
While it’s bad what’s happening, it’s still nowhere near Syrian or Yemeni levels, although that may change.
The best analogy I can think of is the Allied conduct in Germany at the end of WWII. WWII was a just and defensive war. But the bombing of Dresden and atrocities by the Soviet Army were unnecessary and dishonorable.
Israel is now engaged in unnecessary and dishonorable conduct. They’ve been demoted from impressive to embarrassing.
But they’re still a legitimate country, just like, say, Saudi Arabia.
>I’m one of the folks whose opinion of Israel has shifted. I don’t see them as a “genocidal terrorist state.” I see them as “just another middle eastern country.”
Okay. Opinions are on a spectrum. just like you, hundreds of millions of people who used to be pretty neutral on Israel now have strong opinions on the country. As a country, you generally want to blend in like Singapore/Switzerland and just not attract attention. Israel is attracting that attention, and for very bad reasons.
Western voters are childlike and emotional. They hate seeing blood on screen, children crying, starving, dying, being squeezed in queues for food. For any reason at all. Israel might seem like just another middle eastern country to you, but when you aggregate across 8 billion people, the average vibe has shifted negatively. By a lot.
>While it’s bad what’s happening, it’s still nowhere near Syrian or Yemeni levels
Tell that to Western voters who will be voting for 50 years. No one cares. just make it stop.
>But they’re still a legitimate country, just like, say, Saudi Arabia.
You're being nuanced. Cool. But the average human is not. Good luck beaming that moderate position into everyone's minds.
> Western voters are childlike and emotional. They hate seeing blood on screen, children crying, starving, dying, being squeezed in queues for food
There are like half a dozen wars of extermination currently occuring with lots of disturbing footage. Nobody really cares. Israel is close to home because it's an ally and we styled it as a Western-style democracy (versus something closer to the Middle Eastern democracy it is.)
> Tell that to Western voters who will be voting for 50 years. No one cares. just make it stop
There are precisely zero foreign policy issues that have survived this long on the back of vibes alone.
>There are precisely zero foreign policy issues that have survived this long on the back of vibes alone.
Christian Zionist support for Israel is 100% based off vibes. Hitler's plan to invade Russia & exterminate its people for living space was based off Master Race vibes. America's Manifest destiny was based off vibes. Anti-communist domino theory was based off vibes and 58k young American kids died in Vietnam for it, not counting the 153k maimed and injured. Japan's imperial delusions that got them nuked was based off vibes.
Want me to go on?
>There are like half a dozen wars of extermination currently occurring with lots of disturbing footage. Nobody really cares. Israel is close to home because it's an ally and we styled it as a Western-style democracy (versus something closer to the Middle Eastern democracy it is.)
Would you kindly name them, good sir? Off the top of my head, I think Sudan. But, no Westerner really cares about Sudan. Israel they do care about because of the media onslaught and their countries' stance on the issue. It's one of those conflicts you just can't unsee.
> Anti-communist domino theory was based off vibes
Couldn't possibly be that in the post-colonial world there was a burst of new countries, the superpowers were constrained militarily by MAD, and thus both engaged on a worldwide game of attracting potential military allies and trading partners into their respective spheres of influence while denying the other the same wherever possible?
> Would you kindly name them, good sir? Off the top of my head, I think Sudan. But, no Westerner really cares about Sudan
Sudan. Burma. Tigray. (Ukraine. Uyghurs, technically, too, but we don't have footage because China's gotten good at this since Tibet.)
> Israel they do care about because of the media onslaught and their countries' stance on the issue. It's one of those conflicts you just can't unsee
One. Among many.
Uniquely capturing American attention. But so was Darfur once. And #StopKony before that. Barring Israel literally continuing this war for another twenty years, chances are, it too will be forgotten. There really is just that much horribleness constantly happening in the world. I cannot imagine the 2030s will be so blissfully peaceful as to allow us to continue to fixate on the crimes of decades past.
>Christian Zionist support for Israel is 100% based off vibes. Hitler's plan to invade Russia & exterminate its people for living space was based off Master Race vibes. America's Manifest destiny was based off vibes. Anti-communist domino theory was based off vibes and 58k young American kids died in Vietnam for it, not counting the 153k maimed and injured. Japan's imperial delusions that got them nuked was based off vibes.
This is totally serious analysis that is reflective of mainstream analysis and not just the projection of highly partisan political views. Foreign Policy Analysts certainly will be going to be making decisions based on views like this!
You didn't debunk any claim I made in my comment. All the historical episodes I referred to were deluded people coming up with nice-sounding theories on why they deserved to take other people's stuff or force their compliance by force. Each last one ended badly.
>All the historical episodes I referred to were deluded people coming up with nice-sounding theories on why they deserved to take other people's stuff or force their compliance by force.
There's no need to debunk a gish-gallop. I'd simply make the claim that this poster's views are not reflected by the overwhelming majority of academic historians and foreign policy analysts in any country, certainly not in reductively reducing things to "deluded people". That's more of sign of unserious polemics.
The article says on a low period they found people were eating 1400 calories a day at one point. If there was more than that they would have listed it. Israel targets a higher number but that is what it got to in the worst situation the article could find to list.
The United States Red Cross sets as a floor 1500 calories a day for people in distress. Is the Red Cross trying to starve Americans in distress?
The UN just cut food aid in Kenya for 800,000 refugees from the war in Sudan in half to 588 calories per day, yet the UN says it is willing and able to provide significantly higher amounts of food (and to not do so would be criminal) to the 2 million people of Gaza. Is the UN criminal/genocidal against Kenyan/Sudanese for offering starvation level assistance to one group but significantly more to another? The UN says they are ready and able to provide assistance to one group at the very same time the cut in half/say they can't provide aid that meets the level they say Gaza must receive when it is people in Kenya that need aid. Kenyan war refugees are receiving significantly less per person than that 1400 calorie at 588.
Agreeing with the other sibling comments. I think in part it was following the same vision that the current Israeli government had been following already before Oct. 7 - they had annexation of the West Bank listed as one of the official goals of their coalition since they were elected.
Another part stemmed from the extreme dehumanization of Palestinians that was already established in Israeli society long before (and to a lesser extent also in other western countries). The overton window had already been shifted so far that this kind of response was seen as mostly normal.
I found the standard justifications of "eh, war is always cruel" and "when their kids grow up, they will just become the next generation of terrorists" pretty telling.
Public opinion in the US has turned against Israel, yes. Trump doesn't care about public opinion. He'll be buddy-buddy to Netanyahu other than symbolic acts of distancing / reprimanding.
I think that's mostly accurate, but to be fair he did recently sign an executive order guaranteeing military defense of Qatar, which was clearly a message to Israel that they better not mess with them. It's far from a backpedal on his support for Israel, but it does show he won't let them do anything they want (at least if he is speaking honestly)
Of course he does. But he's currently most sensitive to Republican voters' opinions, and they're still at 64% net sympathy for Israel and 9% for Palestine. (55% of Trump voters say "Israel should continue its military campaign until Hamas is fully eliminated, even if it means the civilian casualties in Gaza might continue," while only 29% say "Israel should stop its military campaign in order to protect against civilian casualties, even if Hamas has not been fully eliminated" [1].)
As the midterms come closer, that 26% independent net support for Israel becomes more pertinent, as do the 67% of independents who want Israel to stop its campaign.
Trump is also "buddy-buddy" with a lot of the Gulf States, in fact, he probably likes them more because they have more money to give him. If Israel does something they don't like, such as bomb Qatar, Trump can swing against Israel.
Well Hamas did write they want to kill all Israel.
Hamas did slaughter , rape and torture 1200 civilians , children and babies. and take at least another 200? hostage Then paraded some of them thru Gaza. Exactly what response did Hamas expect. Also Trump has said 30,000 of the cira 60000 dead are Hamas fighters.
Look at the situation on October 7. 6000 armed terrorists swarmed across the border of gaza, commiting atrocities the like of which were not even thought to be possible in todays day and age among civilised people. I was never under any illusion of what hamas was and i was still shocked. The political climate in Israel up until that day was trying to help gazas economy and assuming hamas were pragmatic enough not to seek a war.
But it became clear that not only did they spend their main efforts in the previous few years planning this massacre, but they had embedded themselves as deeply as possible in every single part of gaza as possible. Their tunnel network is more extensive then the London underground. Their bases are in hospitals and schools. Undeniable facts except to the most cynical and dishonest people out there.
But what dismayed me the most was the response of the average palestinian on the street. Ecstatic celebration, i saw videos of crowds literally shrieking and crying for joy, at the single most shameful crime against humanity that was ever committed in their name.
No other country in the world would do anything different in Israels place. Most would go much further. You can express disgust at their actions from your place where you would never have to confront such barbarity. Hamas planned and created the entire situation you just described and left no other course of action for Israel to take. What else should they have done? Don't tell me some stupid idea like make peace with them and stop the settlements etc. Those are grievences entirely made up of anti israel people and does not address the reality of who hamas and far too many palestinians are.
War is horrible. I don't want it. No one wants it. This one is just and necessary. The world can sit and wait or they can help meaningfully.
If you want to argue explain to me how Israelis and any human being should view and respond to the scenes of joy and celebration they saw on and after Oct 7. Even today there is very little remorse or even regret.
> Neither of those are natural or forgivable, and I've never listened to a damn word Kirk said in my life
I haven't either. That's probably why I don't have an emotional reaction here. A guy was brutally murdered in public, and that's all I had to respond to.
Finding someone having mean thoughts--not actions, just thoughts and words--unforgiveable is, well, it's how you get entrenched, hateful, multigenerational conflicts like the one we're discussing.
I don't think killing Sinwar means much. Israel definitely wanted him dead but, to their national security, it doesn't mean anything. Sinwar isn't unique and he'd just be replaced by the next guy who wants to do the same thing and also doesn't care if he's made a martyr in the process.
Strategically, they have to destroy the entirety of Hamas and hope the Palestinians are allowed to and do elect better leadership. Anything less is accepting the status quo that led to Oct 7.
> don't think killing Sinwar means much. Israel definitely wanted him dead but, to their national security, it doesn't mean anything
You don't think the next jackass who pitches an October 7th attack won't get second thoughts from his lieutenants when they consider that all of them will be killed, their friends and families--best case--rendered homeless, their cause set back decades, all while Israel suffers fewer deaths from the entire operation than Hamas was able to notch on its one day of glory?
If they were able to repeat Oct 7, I think they'd gladly be martyred for that.
I think Sinwar would have loved to stay alive and recommit his attrocities but martyrdom is a nice consolation prize. The next in line should be so lucky.
> If they were able to repeat Oct 7, I think they'd gladly be martyred for that
I'd love to see firm evidence for this. It seems a little too fatalistic, and convenient for arguing for the permanent subjugation of a people, to suggest that two million people can't be left to their own devices without obsessively committing to destroying themselves against their neighbors.
for context about hamas thinking in general [0] (quote from article)
"for the past two years the
Hamas leadership had been talking about implementing "the
last promise" (alwaed al'akhir) – a divine promise regarding
the end of days, when all human beings will accept Islam.
Sinwar and his circle ascribed an extreme and literal meaning
to the notion of "the promise,
" a belief that pervaded all their
messages: in speeches, sermons, lectures in schools and
universities. The cardinal theme was the implementation of the
last promise, which included the forced conversion of all
heretics to Islam, or their killing"
Your metrics are yours alone. Ask Hamas if they won? If they stay in power in Gaza, trust me, they won. Same as if the Nazis were still in control of Germany, Stalin in charge of Russia, ISIS in charge of Iraq and Syria and the Khmer Rouge in charge of Cambodia…
Your suggestion that Israel stop fighting in contrast to Trump’s direct words stating that he will back Israel fully in defeating Hamas if Hamas does not accept his deal which involves them fully disarming, is essentially suggesting that Israel should accept defeat even when it has the backing of the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Now either you are ignorant or you are intentionally malevolent in your suggestion… take your pick
- De-escalate. Disproportionate violence legitimizes Gaza's resistance, reinforces domestic support for retaliation and signals to third-parties like China and Russia that they need to have a stakeholder in this fight. It also weakens American support for Israeli right-to-defense.
- Negotiate a release of all illegally held hostages and fair international trial for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detainment. Hamas should have no illegal captives, but neither should Israel. Without a solid and agreeable plan towards releasing these captives in a timely matter, neither side has an incentive to stop fighting.
- Establish a good-faith interrim government to rebuild trust with the international community. Defer some power back to the UN as a gesture of goodwill, draw-back from annexed Gaza but draw the line firmly on pre-October 7th borders. Give up on the idea of annexing anything else. In a perfect world they also give Mount Hebron back to Syria, they'll be asking for it soon.
That's easy -- releasing all hostages would de-escalate immediately. Imagine a situation when there was no Oct 7, so Israel would have no reason to de-escalate.
> Negotiate
How to negotiate with one side pre-condition that the other side is all dead and their country does not exist. Now it starts to change, but not because of negotiations, sadly.
> Establish a good-faith interrim government
Sorry don't understand -- Gaza already has the official government -- HAMAS. Since 2007 there was no Israeli forces on Gaza territory (until Oct 7).
Or you mean Israel should've established a different goverment in Gaza? Well taking down governments is already a military objective.
> Their strategy is and has been for decades to kill as many Palestinians as possible.
This is just obviously false, Israel obviously has the military capability to kill effectively every Palestinian in Gaza, and yet they make significant efforts to prevent civilian casualties there.
It's more accurate to say "as many Palestinians as they thought the US would let them get away with". This is why each new kind of atrocity was first messaged and checked with the US before proceeding. Without cover in the UN and unlimited bombs from the US Israel's actions in Gaza would not have been possible.
Folks may remember when Israel thought they had to cook up a bunch of fancy 3D renders of a "Hamas command center" and do a multi-week propaganda blitz before attacking Al Shifa hospital. Then they eventually realized that the Biden administration didn't care, nor did they care about the lack of evidence for this supposed massive complex [1] after the fact. So they could bomb hospitals with just a generic justification after the fact.
It was the same with every escalation, from murdering UN aid workers to dropping 2,000lb bombs on tents to completely flattening cities they had designated as "safe zones".
Israel would push the envelope a bit, see that their key patron didn't care, and push it further. What was once a line they feared to cross became the new normal.
[1] It turned out to just be a couple hospital rooms that a former Israeli PM admitted they themselves had built.
> It's more accurate to say "as many Palestinians as they thought the US would let them get away with". This is why each new kind of atrocity was first messaged and checked with the US before proceeding. Without cover in the UN and unlimited bombs from the US Israel's actions in Gaza would not have been possible.
Israel makes far more efforts than even the US when it comes to trying to prevent civilian casualties.
> Folks may remember when Israel thought they had to cook up a bunch of fancy 3D renders of a "Hamas command center" and do a multi-week propaganda blitz before attacking Al Shifa hospital. Then they eventually realized that the Biden administration didn't care, nor did they care about the lack of evidence for this supposed massive complex [1] after the fact. So they could bomb hospitals with just a generic justification after the fact.
There's plenty of evidence Hamas used Al Shifa for military purposes, although it's maybe somewhat unclear to what extent exactly. Also from my understanding Israel didn't bomb Al Shifa, they raided it instead.
> It was the same with every escalation, from murdering UN aid workers to dropping 2,000lb bombs on tents to completely flattening cities they had designated as "safe zones".
The entire Gaza strip is a war zone, Israel largely tries to avoid combat operations in the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone but that doesn't mean Hamas has complete immunity there[0].
> [1] It turned out to just be a couple hospital rooms that a former Israeli PM admitted they themselves had built.
Regardless of who built the bunker under the hospital if Hamas uses it for military purposes that makes the hospital a valid military target. I'm not sure how a bunker having been built by Israel decades ago would make a difference in regards to it being a valid military target or not.
> …and yet they make significant efforts to prevent civilian casualties there.
This is just obviously false. All you have to do is look at how many children they’ve killed. Those aren’t the number of someone going out of their way to prevent civilian casualties.
lol... bots are up in arm. No one with two brain cells believes this, anymore. The only reason they are not just straight nuking the places (both gaza and west bank), because of external pressures.
They would if they could.
No, what's happening is that you are describing pro-Palestinian protests as pro-Hamas and then acting confused. You only confused yourself!
Hamas is absolutely a terrorist organization but Israel has revealed itself as a terrorist state. I hold one to a higher bar because I pay for the bombs that one side drops.
A terrorist state does not need to be "baited" to attack.
It is absolutely correct to hold the state to higher standards, regardless of what you pay for. But it is not correct to refuse state's right to defend itself, when it is attacked by a terrorist semi-state that not only does not care about its people, but actively using them as bait. This only incentivizing Hamas to keep using Palestinians as bait, and to turn more of them into "martyrs".
Actually it's quite possible that a state exists with Dominant Political Regime A at one point in time, then after an event, they transition to Dominant Political Regime B.
In fact this is what did happen, as is plainly obvious. October 7th effectively stripped the moderating forces in Israeli politics of their power.
Agreed the incentives are fucked up in every direction. For example, giving Israel impunity to respond to such attacks with extremely aggressive pursuit of related and unrelated geopolitical objectives actually creates an incentive for Israel to sustain such attacks from time to time.
This was actually Netanyahu's explicit strategy: allow Hamas to take power in Gaza so no credible government could achieve a second state in the region.
> “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Netanyahu told his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy"
Creating such perverse incentives is sort of the entire point of terrorism.
So what would you do if you're Israel? Suck it up? Leave the hostages to rot in Gaza? Wait until the next coordinated attack from Iran, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza? Israel's enemies want it destroyed- that's what's at stake here. If Hamas had a chance it would keep going and murder all Israelis, not just the ones they managed to before they were repelled.
What sort of adaptation are you proposing?
I do agree Israel is taking a hit on the world stage. This is part of the war and Israel has a hard time defending itself against enemies with vast resources. Those enemies are also more than happy to distract and splinter the western nations with this topic. Russia has a better standing in the world with its war of aggression on Ukraine amongst many other problems. Most western countries who were/are happy to abandon Israel would (and have) respond with significantly more force to a similar attack on themselves.
It remains to be seen what are the longer term consequences here. Not just on Israel.
What we have seen throughout this is not criticism. It is hate. It is often directed at Jews, not just at the Israeli government. Not 100% but a large percentage. It's not that Israel's response has no problems - it has many problems. But the discourse on this is not rational and not fact based. The media and the various actors are pushing agenda and ideology. This isn't unique to Israel here, we see this on political issues, a discourse that is tribal, not rational but rather emotional, manipulated by the media (social and otherwise). CNN here is treating Israel basically as it treats Trump and the republicans. CNN is not in the news business, it is in the shaping political opinion business.
Would you say the west's response to ISIL/ISIS chopping the heads off a few westerners, a couple of random terrorist attacks in the west, and burning a Jordanian pilot alive would also be characterized as "extreme actions against a weak opponent"? How did CNN cover that conflict?
So criticism is hate? I'm Jewish does that mean I am hateful when I am critical of the actions of the Israeli government? Are you claiming none of the critism is legitimate and its all hate? Is criticism of Israel antisemetic? Because last I checked Israel is not a religion.
My other reply got flagged, please read it. But to add:
This specific article is not "criticism". The headline claims Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza. The title, and the article, completely ignores other actors like the government of Gaza (aka Hamas).
"How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized" -> is basically a lie. The truth is that Israeli actions contributed to the food situation in the Gaza strip. The cause is obviously the war. The cause of the war is obviously Hamas. The entire article rests solely on a report by a UN organization. The UN is not unbiased. It is openly anti-Israel.
The reporting is completely one sided. It is not news. It is agenda. CNN's agenda is anti-Israel. There is no mention of the UN leaving food on the border to rot and not deliver it. There is little to no mention of the UN's refusal to cooperate with Israeli initiatives to distribute food (and generally refuse to cooperate with Israel on anything).
At best the authors don't understand the idea that correlation doesn't equal causation. I would say the authors and CNN's goal is simply to attack Israel for political reasons.
I think Israel's decision to block aid around the end of February was stupid and a mistake. It is far from clear that decision is a war crime. Israel claims there was plenty of food in Gaza that was delivered during the ceasefire and ofcourse also claims that Hamas has plenty of food in its tunnels. Egypt also at times contributed to the condition in the Gaza strip by blocking aid and preventing refugees from leaving. The actual responsibility for the well being of Palestinian citizens in Palestinian controlled areas (which Gaza city still is) is on their government. That government has a choice to stop the war, it has a choice to distribute the food it controls to its citizens. Ignoring that in any article basically tells us what we need to know. Israel does have responsibilities under international law but is being held to impossible standards that are not applied to any other country. The media intentionally creates an artificial separation between "Hamas" and "Palestinians" where in fact we are talking about combatants and non-combatants of the same non-state or state-like actor (Gaza). Israel is responsible, to the same degree any other country would be, to take steps to allow non-combatants to leave battle areas and to not target them. Israel has asked all non-combatant population to evict the Northern Gaza strip a long time ago. The food situation is worse in that area. So Israel arguably has done what international law requires it to do with respect to non-combatants. Is Israel perfect? no. Is it worse than most western countries? I don't think so, and there's plenty of comparisons we can make. Can we criticize Israel? Definitely!
In terms of contribution to antisemitism, there is a large number of people who will read the title as "How Jew actions caused famine in Gaza". That is literally the conversation on some social media. Just because you haven't seen that doesn't change it. This means there should be more sensitivity and better accuracy and context.
Being Jewish is also not a religion by the way. It's an ethnicity as well. I'm sure you know this but just to remind others. The Jewish people are also known as Israelites and the word Israel is sometimes used as a synonym for Jewish.
Israel started this war long before October 9, and Israel will never end it.
A Zionist Israel can not allow the Palestinian people to exist. Every member of every government that Israel ever had 100% believed this.
This war is part of Israel's DNA, and the total security Israel demands can never be achieved, so the war can never end.
Until significant portions of the political right in Israel are outlawed, and until the entire Jewish population of Israel undergoes deradicalization, we will keep fighting.
If that solved the problem I would endorse it. I don't see how it does or how you do it.
How do you get food to all of Gaza while there is raging fighting? The biggest problem is in Gaza city where there is intense fighting. The southern areas have a lot more food. How do we flood Gaza city with food? Ceasefire? We had one. Then what?
Let's plan this in more detail. Who is going to distribute the food in Gaza? Who in Gaza has weapons and control? How is the hostage problem resolved? How do we get Hamas to not rule over Gaza any more?
> How do you get food to all of Gaza while there is raging fighting?
Berlin airdrop and pile it up at the borders from trucks for starters.
> southern areas have a lot more food
But not enough. Start there. Also, if you make food plentiful enough in the south, it will find its way north. The point, again, isn't just to starve the famine. It's also to reduce the value of food as a recruiting tool.
> How is the hostage problem resolved? How do we get Hamas to not rule over Gaza any more?
It's true that it's objectively hard to get the food from the border into e.g. Gaza city while a war is raging on. Israel has asked all civilians to evict Gaza city (basically for the entire duration of the war). Many people returned to Gaza city during the last ceasefire despite no green light from Israel. There is more food in the south and it's easier to get food into there.
There is an effort to get even more food into the south. For example World Central Kitchen is scaling up their operations there right now (with Israel's support). The GHF effort was also mostly focused on the south.
Air drops can't move in enough food. They're also dangerous.
> There is more food in the south and it's easier to get food into there
Yet there are still credible claims of famine in the south.
> Air drops can't move in enough food
This is nonsense. West Berlin had a civilian population of about 2.5mm [1]. Gaza is smaller. Our planes are better. We've solved this problem, but harder, before.
> They're also dangerous
What's the threat model? Initially, you'd literally air drop--no landings. Gaza isn't fielding air-defence systems.
Once you're reduced the desperation, you'd secure a couple airfields and make unsupervised drops. (This is cheaper.) You wouldn't even bother handling distribution. Again, the point is the flood the zone with so much food that it starts to become sort of worthless.
in this case they divert more desirable goods that they sell and make aid agencies pay protection money for "securing shipments".
as example, there was a story on Israeli news a couple of months ago, about some NGO that setup a new aid distribution network. One day they got some of their people killed in Gaza and received a phone call demanding payment "or else"
story credible. channel 12 news is very solid organization and their investigations resulted in a bunch of criminal cases.
essentially ngo established this summer (july/august) new aid distribution network, I think it was at south with it's own drivers, distribution points, etc. during the time when supposedly was impossible to bring aid in gaza, but in reality it was going in.
"local interests" in gaza didn't like it, as NGO wasn't paying protection fees so they killed some of people who helped ngo in gaza and made threatening calls to person who runs NGO demanding payments or that this person will be harmed and distribution will be stopped.
not sure how it all ended. my guess it was "public" ask from military or security services to get involved in some way
If it's the events that I'm thinking of, one of the drivers killed was a Bedouin from the Tarabin family. They literally gathered hundreds of family members to record a cellphone message to the perpetrators, who were mentioned by name. In the video, dozens of illegal weapons - mostly M-16 variants - were paraded and fired in the air. Tarabin is a well-known dangerous and hostile family, the Israeli police don't interfere with them (that's why they have all the illegal weapons).
I know of other Bedouins families that have rewards for the heads of other Hamas members.
your entire narrative screams “I’m the victim here, please validate my aggressions, abuses and violence”.
the state of Israel has not been respectful since day one of it’s inception (violating the defined borders) neither truly wants a two state solution.
this outcome is the product of what escalated from that.
at least you understand the correlation between a figure like Trump and the state of Israel, that’s exactly on point.
it’s ok when one side violates borders and even settles on foreign land but when reactionary action (you’ve helped shape) takes place, you’re now the victim…
The state of Israel offered Palestinians a two state solutions multiple times starting at its inception (and it also offered them a one state solution at its inception with them being equal citizens in a free democratic country). Maybe it wasn't the best the Palestinians were looking for but it wasn't unreasonable and it was very close to what everyone (other than the Palestinians) says when they say "two state solution". Where we are today is the result of them rejecting it and instead opting for the "one day we'll send all the Jews back to Europe" solution (despite more than half Israeli Jews being from the middle east and generally no place for Jews to go). This is still their plan today, they say it out loud, you just need to listen.
EDIT: I'd also challenge you to tell me why these two states weren't created when Egypt ruled over Gaza and Jordan over the West Bank and Jerusalem up till 1967 (the six day war) when Israel took those areas. Where were all those supporters of the two state solution then? Why didn't they recognize the state of Palestine then over those territories that Israel didn't control?
Before 1948 the Palestinians were peasants living under foreign rule. But at least they were alive. When Zionist interests moved in, backed by English and American militancy to enforce land purchase contracts, the Palestinians were not a centrally organized collective. You cannot “offer” to people who are not organized, and that’s what Israel has exploited. Jews went on a 2,000 year holiday in Europe, then came back and expected they could relive the glory days of a kingdom from over 2,000 years ago. The issue has been the presumption that you can “offer” to people who have occupied the land consistently for thousands of years. Their lack of central government as peasants does not negate their humanity. Except in the Israeli government’s expansionist eyes.
I would never be in Israel's position because I don't believe in genocide or land theft, thus would not have created this fake state in the first place.
> So what would you do if you're Israel? Suck it up? Leave the hostages to rot in Gaza?
What they're doing doesn't seem to be working, so maybe something else.
This is just armchair military philosophizing, but after the October attack, go ahead and do some big disproportionate response stuff for 30-90 days, then a ceasefire and prisoner exchange (this happened). But if the ceasefire doesn't work out, you can't go back to disproportionate response on the October attack; that doesn't look reasonable. Cat and mouse strikes on leadership until the hostages are released (edit: but not while leaders are gathered for peace negotiations!). You can still do proportionate response for any tit-for-tat kind of attacks in the occupied zone.
A war of occupation is a PR thing. You need to convince outside observers you're occupation is reasonable --- two years of disproportionate response doesn't do that. You also want to convince the occupied people not to support armed resistance; disproportionate response can work for that, but IMHO not over a long period of time; in the short term, it can get people to demand a stop to fighting, but after two years, again IMHO it just breeds more desire to fight.
You also need some sort of plan for after the hostilities end. How do you set the conditions so this is less likely to happen in the future. Really, the best way to have peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine as two states is for Israel and Palestine to both be prosperous; Israel needs to help make that happen, because it's in Israel's interests --- even if maybe it doesn't feel like it; a prosperous Palestine will be incentivized to be peaceful because prosperity is tenuous; a destitute Palestine has no need to be peaceful, because it has nothing to lose.
There's a lot of talk about ending Hamas; maybe that would do it, but if Hamas disbands today, you need something to replace the government services they provide. What's the plan for that? What would the interim system look like between now and that; can you enforce the interim system now as a way to push Hamas out?
Alternately, big problems require big solutions. Forcibly return Gaza to Egyptian control, as it was before the Six Day War, and encourage Egypt to deal with Hamas through diplomacy and response to future attacks from within Gaza as if they were from Egypt.
Perhaps return the West Bank to Jordan ... maybe do the return of the West Bank first as a show of 'if y'all give us the hostages, we'll end the occupation' Returning the West Bank is hard, because you've got to figure out what to do with the settlers, which is probably a lot of tricky negotiations over which settlements can be kept with a land swap and which have to be abandoned, so it probably can't be done super fast.
Egypt doesn't want Gaza and Jordan doesn't want the West Bank. That's a total non starter.
So after 90 days we have the bulk of hostages still in Gaza. Hamas in total control of all of Gaza. Hamas doesn't want to exchange all the hostages, we've been there after the first ceasefire (24 November 2023 to 30 November 2023).
Look at Hamas' calculus. Surviving in any shape and form while holding hostages is a clear win. Increasing Israel's isolation is a win. Anything else is mostly a don't care. They have no intention of giving up control in Gaza or in ceasing future hostilities against Israel. They would love nothing more than to go back to the tit for tat where they make and fire rockets and mortars at Israel all day and Israel has some limited retaliation.
Ask Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers about whether force works or not. Or the Turkish and the Kurds. Or anyone who thought they could go against China. That's not to say that should be the default or the preferred solution, but more force works in situations where you have the power and the other side won't yield.
There is a somewhat stupid/joke saying in Hebrew. What doesn't work with force will work with more force. That's sort of where Israel is right now. Many Israelis don't think this can solve the problem but the government does. I think pretty much everyone would prefer a better/easier way out of this that includes security guarantees and the release of the hostages. There just doesn't seem to be one. It's a problem when fighting an enemy where their loss is their win. There's no leverage. Though in theory Hezbollah was also like that, until it surrendered. The difference in Lebanon/Hezbollah is no hostages and less mix of combatants and civilians.
> Alternately, big problems require big solutions. Forcibly return Gaza to Egyptian control, as it was before the Six Day War, and encourage Egypt to deal with Hamas through diplomacy and response to future attacks from within Gaza as if they were from Egypt.
This sounds kind of like the proposed peace plan, no? They’re supposedly going to put an Arab force in charge of Gaza.
"What we have seen throughout this is not criticism. It is hate. It is often directed at Jews, not just at the Israeli government. Not 100% but a large percentage."
This is exactly the blackpill. I live in a Muslim-majority country. Jews and Muslims have been allies since the start of Islamic history. Yes, there was some hate for Jews 20 years ago, but it has been gradually displaced into Zionist hate.
The recent analogy is Imperial Japan. The Japanese killed, raped, starved our people. But it was specifically the Imperial Japanese, not the citizens. Firebombing citizens didn't make anything better and it only slowed the process of post-war healing. We have great relationships with Germans and Japanese today despite their past. Moving on is an option.
Some of it is because we see the same pattern. Nationalist politics will always say, "Everyone hates you. We are the only ones who will protect you." For the former British territories, it was the playbook.
I do believe the only way to break from this cycle is to break this hold. Internally: don't keep genocidal leaders in power. Externally: avoid all this racist shit that gives fascists their power base.
I'm not sure where you get "Jews and Muslims have been allies since the start of Islamic history" and then you pivot to hate for Jews 20 years ago.
Antisemitism is alive and kicking. Hate to Jews has not been "displaced into Zionist hate". It's just s/Jews/Zionists/ the hate is the same hate. The blood libels are the same blood libels. The stereotypes the same stereotypes.
If you are talking about how Jews have been treated in Muslim countries it ranged between second rate citizens (dhimmi) to outright massacre. Yes, there have been a handful of examples, in a handful of countries, where Jews managed to thrive despite the discrimination but it was the exception that proved the rule.
I would love to see Israel's government gone and the Palestinian government of Hamas gone. I'm not seeing any analogy to Japan.
That's not true; I have seen many members in the Satmar community here in NYC that join pro palestinian protests, and are met with absolute love. They're spat on by the Israeli side at said protests. I think people here at least separate the two very well and it's not a s/Jews/Zionists/g at all.
This is the equivalent of "some of my best friends are Jews".
So the Satmar anti-Zionist Jews are ok? But the other Jews? Also met with love? Do you love the Jews that have opinions that differ than yours on this conflict? Why do Palestinian protests where I live (Canada) target Synagogues, Jewish owned businesses, Jewish neighborhoods?
Do Zionists control the US? The Media? Not Jews... nono. "Zionists".
I'm not necessarily talking about you specifically. But it is a fact that antisemites use this technique and this is being normalized. Why does it matter than you have a token Jewish person in your protest at all? Who cares if someone in your protest is a Satmar Jew or an Iranian Bhaii?
As a jew, I have never felt more targeted by anti-semitism than I have following israel's genocide of Palestinians. israel is making jews like me look bad by association, even though that association is false.
The worst part is, most of that antisemitism comes from zionists. Zealots making posts not unlike yours, frequently accuse me and my kind of being 'self-hating jews' for being insufficiently zionist. It really sucks.
As a side note, please stop repeatedly, unsuccessfully trying to conflate jews with zionists. We are not the same thing, and it is hurtful to hear you insult jews like that. It is somewhat akin to conflating all South Africans with apartheid supporters, or all Germans with nazis, except you are stereotyping based on religion, rather than national origin.
That conflation was made by antisemites first, many decades ago. That is simply historical fact, whether people know it or not. In that time and place antizionism was a barely concealed excuse for straight antisemitism; it didn't actually matter what their targets believed.
And yet, you are the one making the antisemitic conflation here and now. The fact that you're repeating the words of people you believe to be antisemetic should be a clue that the words you're repeating are antisemetic. Just because an antisemite says something doesn't mean you should agree and reshare their post.
So maybe don't? Next time you see an antisemite saying that, rather than parroting their talking points to others, you can tell them the same thing: zionists and jews aren't the same thing, and many jews are members of the global consensus in opposing the ongoing israeli genocide of Palestinians. Or don't, maybe it won't make a difference, and it's your choice.
In the meantime, please stop repeating hurtful antisemetic tropes by conflating us jews with zionists. We are not the same. Criticism of zionism and the israeli genocide of Palestinians is totally legitimate. Propagating antisemetic language is antisemetic. That means smarmy posts I've seen around saying things to the effect of, 'zionists... you mean jews??? [*wink wink*]'
Then why is it that self-proclaimed "anti-zionists" use the exact same talking point as those antisemites back then? It is difficult to ever unsee that what you call "the global consensus" was invented decades ago in the halls of the Kremlin.
I simply informed you of the historical precedent; why do you immediately include me in those you say are conflating the two?
If criticism of Israel sounded more like the criticism of America's War on Terror instead of a Kremlin anti-West propaganda manual, then maybe it would be worth thinking about.
Why are you still defending your antisemetic language? Repeating that you think your antisemetic language is ok if other antisemites said it first?
Just don't say it. I'm not even asking you for an apology for your hurtful, antisemetic words. Just recognize that your spreading of antisemitic tropes is bad, and please stop. Are you seriously so dead-set on repeating antisemetic tropes that you refuse to do even that?
I start talking about historical Kremlin propaganda campaigns, and you accuse me of antisemitic language. Interesting. Did you have anything to say on the actual points I raised?
I explicitly ignored the weird distraction about the kremlin or whatever, because the kremlin didn't force you to repeat antisemitic tropes. You chose to repeat antisemitic tropes, and still haven't even been able to acknowledge that your repetition of antisemitic tropes was bad.
Remember, the topic isn't bibi's fellow war criminals, it is antisemitism, with you, yes YOU, contributing to it. This is what I meant when I said that most antisemitism I've seen and felt as a jew lately, is coming from zionists.
So, back on topic: Do you have anything to say on the actual points I raised even earlier?:
For a century, Israel has been telling the world that they represented Jews, and Nakba was what the Jews wanted and it was their right. So for a century, the world hated Jews because of this narrative. And only recently people are learning the truth.
There's a lot to unpack in the last 1400 years, but basically everyone cherry picks what they want to see.
Medina, the first actual Islamic state, was established on an alliance between the Muslims and Jewish tribes. When the Muslims took Jerusalem, they welcomed the Jewish back. There's a few of these right up until Ottoman times. Dhimmi literally meant "protected person" - they can't be attacked or looted by Muslims and were not conscripted. Alliances aren't necessarily friendships, and a lot of these were built on mutual protection vs a common enemy rather than brotherhood.
Even in recent times, there's common grounds, especially in terms of religion. It's a kind of cousinhood. Notably all kosher food is halal, though not vice versa. In countries with both, it's popular to have a Jewish/Muslim district and Muslims often join Jewish student accommodations.
Of course there's plenty of bad history, but I find that the people who are pro-genocide will bring up massacres by Muslims. The people who advocate for treating Israeli Arabs as second-rate citizens will bring up dhimmis.
In the end, we pick the history we want to repeat.
> Jews and Muslims have been allies since the start of Islamic history.
Only when the Jews were Dhimis - in fact as I understand it the term literally means to protect. But we are not interested in being Dhimis any longer - no more taxes to Muslims, and we want to hold prestigious jobs and own land and participate in government.
but that takes a level of humanism, and effort, abusive leaders don’t have and unfortunately people are too brainwashed to see (and lack the knowledge to understand?).
> Their strategy was, I think, as bad as it could possibly be.
After the October 7 attacks it was critical that Israel re-establish deterrence, not doing so would be inviting more attacks.
> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response that killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, which played directly into the dynamics of guerrilla warfare where a strong state's extreme actions against a weak opponent undermine its legitimacy.
It turns out a disproportionate response is a rather effective strategy at deterring ones enemies from attacking, it worked quite well with Hezbollah which was considered by Israel to be a much more serious threat to Israel than Hamas was.
> Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation.
What other option did they have realistically? The middle east isn't a region where pacifism tends to work out well.
> Yet, rather than adapting, Israel's network doubled down with censorship campaigns, crackdowns on protests, and weaponizing "anti-semitism" accusations to silence critics -- actions that have all backfired. Now international support is collapsing, the EU is pushing sanctions, and the US is slowly distancing itself. Israel's best option right now is to end the war as quickly as possible, and devote all of its efforts to repairing damaged relationships and mitigating the war's effects, before isolation accelerates to the level of sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa.
Keep in mind that statements politicians make publicly about Israel are often rather different from what they really think, politicians placating various activist groups for domestic political reasons doesn't often translate into meaningful adverse actions against Israel. The Israeli stock market is at all time highs right now despite everything that has happened.
I agree Israel has been way too slow at ending the war, their reluctance to take actions to finish off Hamas(or force their capitulation/surrender) and end the war is not helping either the Palestinian people or Israelis.
> I'll also note that it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost. Hamas lost the shooting war, the people of Gaza have lost lives and livelihoods which may take more than a decade to rebuild, and Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this.
Israel losing the media war was probably somewhat inevitable, the extreme disparity between worldwide Muslim population sizes and Jewish population sizes being a big factor, but that isn't really an entirely new issue either.
Despite all this Israel has largely re-established military deterrence in the Middle East and is on a path to normalize relations with countries like Saudi Arabia once Hamas is either forced to surrender or degraded enough that they lose their ability to govern Gaza.
A country loses its right to "re-establish deterrence" when the population it's "deterring" is born inside its own de-facto borders, and when the only reason it needs to deter so many of them is that they would (rightly) like one of a) sovereignty or b) voting rights inside the federal system that controls their borders and can kick down the doors of the houses they were born in.
If Israel would like to give Gaza full sovereignty, or Palestinians born inside the occupied territories the right to vote in the federal systems that determine their law enforcement environment, we can talk about deterrence and law enforcement respectively.
Israel has unilateral control of who it recognizes as its citizens, and what sovereign states it recognizes. No complaint about current or past bad behavior by the Palestinians excuses its failure to grant sovereignty or voting rights to people under its territorial control.
> A country loses its right to "re-establish deterrence" when the population it's "deterring" is born inside its own de-facto borders, and when the only reason it needs to deter so many of them is that they would (rightly) like one of a) sovereignty or b) voting rights inside the federal system that controls their borders and can kick down the doors of the houses they were born in.
It's not just Palestinians they needed to deter, by the way most Israelis were also born within the borders as well. Israel has in the past made efforts to give more sovereignty to Palestinians but those efforts have largely backfired. I think initial efforts really need to focus on de-radicalization of Palestinians first before there's any reasonable chance another attempt at giving them more sovereignty will be more successful.
> If Israel would like to give Gaza full sovereignty, or Palestinians born inside the occupied territories the right to vote in the federal systems that determine their law enforcement environment, we can talk about deterrence and law enforcement respectively.
They already tried that[0], it didn't work out and arguably made the situation worse as they voted for Hamas[1] which quite openly advocates for the destruction of Israel.
> Israel has unilateral control of who it recognizes as its citizens, and what sovereign states it recognizes. No complaint about current or past bad behavior by the Palestinians excuses its failure to grant sovereignty or voting rights to people under its territorial control.
Are you seriously suggesting Israel can just give citizenship/voting rights to all Palestinians and make a group that largely wants their destruction a voting majority? There's a reason this will basically never happen, and that reason is that it would effectively be suicidal for Israelis. This sort of one-state solution is completely unrealistic. Some variation of a two-state solution is probably the most realistic, but I think we're a long way off from that being viable due to a lack of Palestinian desire for peaceful coexistence.
> Are you seriously suggesting Israel can just give citizenship/voting rights to all Palestinians and make a group that largely wants their destruction a voting majority?
Can you think of any reason why Palestinians might feel this way? Does anything come to mind?
Since the 1990s Israel has been trying to give them a state, to varying degrees. They got civil and security autonomy in Areas A of the West Bank, for example. And Israel pulled her citizens out of the Gaza strip in 2005.
The problem is that the PA, who rules the West Bank are extremely corrupt, and Hamas is committed to Israel's destruction. Neither side has been actually performing all the functions of state, UNRWA has been doing that.
The leaders of Hamas have stated the the Jewish state is to destroyed and the Jewish residents exterminated.
The PA leaders have stated that the German genocide of Jews never occurred.
And Egyptian, Jordanian, Palestinian, Libyan, and Iraqi leaders have all stated the the idea of a Palestinian People was invented in the 1960s. No joke.
If you want to start pulling out quotes to judge merit in the Middle East, there's enough material to hang anybody.
The leaders of Israel have not just spoken about it, they have actually destroyed the Palestinian State in the last few months. They have killed tens of thousands of kids.
Then from where came the rockets that were shot at Ashdod, Barnea, Nitzan, Kfar Aza, Miflasim, Saad, and Nir Am come from? This was during Yom Kippor, the Jew's holiest day.
You are invited to check that those rockets were fired from the Gaza strip. I know, I live walking distance from the strip. And you should then realize that the sources who tell you that Hamas is not shooting at Israel are using the tactic of Lies of Omission to influence your opinion.
I won't dispute that 50 people were killed yesterday, I have no idea, and I don't know how many of them were killed by Hamas and how many of them were killed by Israel. The Arab media reports all of them as being martyrs because that is their culture. The Western media just translates with the Arab media says. I do know that yesterday, Yom Kippur or the Jew's holiest day of the year, Hamas shot barrages of rockets at Israeli cities and towns. I don't know how many of those rockets fell back into the Gaza strip, typically a third of them do. So go figure how many of the 50 Gazans were killed by Hamas own rockets. In any case, when the Gazans decide that they've suffered too much then they are invited and welcomed to return the hostages. The war will be over that minute.
It is very telling that the side which has the ability to end the suffering now, by returning the hostages, chooses not to do that.
So the photos of flattened buildings are all "hamas"? You came in, blew up everything, and now you are saying "they did it to themselves, that wasn't us". Their dead kids - oh they did that? The occupation? Oh, that's their fault! If only they would start being nice, so we can stop killing them and give them a city! Ah let me build a settlement in their land - but it's THEIR fault!
> So the photos of flattened buildings are all "hamas"?
No, if buildings are flattened then that's not Hamas. Israel uses HE explosive, Hamas uses FA. HE is the one that levels buildings, FA is the one that leaves burn marks. Just like we saw at the AlAhli hospital where 500 people were killed - burn marks. Flattened buildings are Israeli munitions.
> Their dead kids - oh they did that? The occupation? Oh, that's their fault!
Often, yes. This is not disputed among Gazans. By their culture, no matter which side had the hand in killing you, you are a martyr and afforded the rewards of heaven.
I suggest you go open the guys and Telegram channels. There's a photograph being shared right now of half a dozen Gazans that were killed by other Gazan's hands. All piled up on a blanket.
> The occupation? Oh, that's their fault!
There's no dispute that the beginning of the occupation is squarely on the Arabs, the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank lasted 19 years. That said, both sides are responsible for it having been dragged out for an additional 60 years. Various Israeli governments have had different levels of intentions of giving or not giving the Palestinians certain autonomies and land. But no matter what the intentions of any specific Israeli government, the Palestinians have rejected every single offer. At some point one has to be content with what they've gotten, and realize that they can't destroy the other side completely and those people need some place to live. We, the jews, watched the British give over three quarters of the land of Palestine to the Hashemite kingdom, and left us less than 25%. And we were content with that. Then the UN came in and gave half of that to an Arab state and half of that to a Jewish state. And we were content with that. But then seven Arab nations invaded us to slaughter us. The Jews were ethically cleansed during that war from the West Bank and other places. Just as the Jews were content with what we were offered when we were weak, so should one reasonably expect the Arabs to be content and realize that we're not going anywhere and we need a safe place to live as well.
> If only they would start being nice, so we can stop killing them and give them a city!
Yes, generally in Western culture it is expected that when you want something from somebody, you treat them nicely. Especially if what you want is to live next door to them.
> Ah let me build a settlement in their land
Their land? Are you pulling the Arab Land card? How would you respond to British who reject Arab immigration to Great Britain on the basis of GB being White Land? The Jews have 3000 continuous years of history in the West Bank, broken only for 19 years when Jordan ethnically cleansed the West Bank of Jews. Even Israel didn't ethnically cleanse the land she won, Israel was (and remains) 20% Arab. If you support ideas of one-race-only Land and ethnic cleansing, then you and I will never agree.
> Then give the inhabitants of the land citizenship and the right to vote! It's simple.
Effectively saying Israel should have over control of their government to a majority voting block that will likely elect terrorists again just isn't something that's ever going to happen. There's a reason the international community largely regards a one-state solution as entirely non-viable.
Either you know what the consequence of that would be, and you therefore seek to destroy the Jewish state. Or you do not know what the consequence of that would be, and you therefore should not be talking about a subject that you know little about.
However, there are no groups vying for government in the Levant which are secular in nature other than the Jewish leftist groups. And none of the other groups have a culture compatible with those Jewish leftist values.
What I can't unsee is your argument depends on Palestinians having no agency. And thus blameless.
As soon as one assumes they do then ones sympathy is very limited indeed. Bookends for me are Munich and finally 10/7. And I'm just done with that group of people. They'd be way better off if everyone abandoned them.
Discussing this topic with you is impossible because you have committed to spreading Israeli state propaganda regardless of what the actual facts of the situation are. If you are unmoved by the children being savagely blown apart by Israeli rockets because you equate that with some Arab states bad-mouthing Israel then I fear nothing will ever convince you that Palestinians are human. Have a good day and if you have kids, give them a hug and be glad they don't live in Gaza.
> Discussing this topic with you is impossible because you have committed to spreading Israeli state propaganda regardless of what the actual facts of the situation are.
If I have stated something infactual, point it out. I can back up every fact that I've stated.
> If you are unmoved by the children being savagely blown apart by Israeli rockets because you equate that with some Arab states bad-mouthing Israel
You are correct that I don't use emotional strategy in my arguments, nor am I swayed by emotional arguments. I stick to facts. And if you did too, you would recognize that one third of the Hamas rockets fall back into the Gaza strip and kill Palestinians as well. If you were to read the Palestinian Telegram channels like I read, you would have seen the recent little girl being destroyed by an IED that was placed to attack Israeli soldiers. The Muslim culture considers all killed to be martyrs, no matter whose hand killed them. The Western media treating this as if Israel killed every martyr is disingenuous. If you really cared about Palestinian lives, you would recognize that Hamas is also a major factor in killing Palestinians today, and that Hamas could end this entire war by returning the hostages any minute.
> then I fear nothing will ever convince you that Palestinians are human.
How many Palestines in Palestine have you talked to in the recent past? I talk with them almost weekly: face to face, and online. In English, in Arabic, and in Hebrew, in their own towns. You'll see in my past posts that I quote them often, both in defence and in opposition to the state of Israel, and both in defence and in opposition to the Palestinian cause.
> Have a good day and if you have kids, give them a hug and be glad they don't live in Gaza.
Thank you, I hug my children and like you said, I am glad that they don't live in the Gaza strip.
Why not? It was part of Mandatory Palestine, lost to Jordanian occupation in the war for independence, and in 1967 recovered by Israeli forces in the same manner that Jordanian forces took it in the previous war. It had a Jewish population for the past 3,000 years, the only exception being the 19 years that the Jordanians held it because the Jordanians ethnically cleansed the area upon conquering it. At what point in this timeline do the Israelis lose claim to the area, or what have I misrepresented in the timeline?
> Being forced into a never ending apartheid situation may also be the reason.
An occupation is not apartheid.
> Give them voting rights
Israel tried that...Palestinians straight up voted for Hamas terrorists[0] who promptly eliminated voting rights(although based on opinion polling Hamas would likely be elected again).
> give them a state
Israel tried moving towards that in Gaza[1], it backfired spectacularly leading to the current conflict.
Any other ideas on how to move towards peaceful coexistence? I think the first step is some sort of de-radicalization program, but not sure how one would implement that.
Apartheid by definition means race based discrimination, which is different from citizenship based discrimination(which basically all countries have to various degrees).
Anyone in the world who has one race can freely move there. People of other races cannot. Rights are awarded based on race. Nothing to do with citizenship.
> Anyone in the world who has one race can freely move there. People of other races cannot. Rights are awarded based on race. Nothing to do with citizenship.
You're obviously referring to a Israeli citizenship law[0] here. Your claim that it has nothing to do with citizenship makes no sense.
So eternal apartheid? That's what will make the Palestinians happy? When the Tamil Tigers were defeated, they were able to vote in their country. The separatists in Spain get to vote in Spain. The kurds get to vote in Turkey.
Israel is the only country that says: do not separate and create your own state, but at the same time if you stay here, we will NOT give you civil rights.
> So eternal apartheid? That's what will make the Palestinians happy? When the Tamil Tigers were defeated, they were able to vote in their country. The separatists in Spain get to vote in Spain. The kurds get to vote in Turkey.
A military occupation is not an apartheid, apartheid is race based discrimination, the occupation here is citizenship based discrimination(which basically all countries have in various forms). I'm not really sure what the best solution here is, but it's probably going to need to involve some serious de-radicalization on the part of the Palestinian people and then some form of a two-state solution.
> Israel is the only country that says: do not separate and create your own state, but at the same time if you stay here, we will NOT give you civil rights.
They tried that approach already with Gaza, it backfired massively. It's pretty obvious giving the people who elected terrorists(and based on Palestinian opinion polling they would likely elect Hamas again) the right to vote in Israeli elections isn't going to lead to a peaceful coexistence.
An eternal military occupation, where the GOVERNMENT says - you will NEVER get a country, and you will NEVER be part of our country IS apartheid.
These are direct, unambiguous statements from the Prime Minister and all members of the cabinet. They have said that the Palestinians will NEVER get a state.
So what are you saying then about Israel wanting a two state solution? They have said there will be no state, and they have said they will not give civil rights.
> An eternal military occupation, where the GOVERNMENT says - you will NEVER get a country, and you will NEVER be part of our country IS apartheid.
That's not apartheid, apartheid means race based discrimination which is simply not an accurate characterization of what is going on here.
> These are direct, unambiguous statements from the Prime Minister and all members of the cabinet. They have said that the Palestinians will NEVER get a state.
Israel isn't a dictatorship and these things can change over time, I'm certainly no fan of Netanyahu in general, right now there is very little support for a two state solution amongst Israelis because they largely don't believe the Palestinians currently have a desire to live in peace with Israeli Jews. Unfortunately they appear to be correct for the time being but if those viewpoints were to change on the Palestinian side I would expect Israeli opinions to change as well. I'm just not sure how you de-radicalize a population like the Palestinians.
> So what are you saying then about Israel wanting a two state solution? They have said there will be no state, and they have said they will not give civil rights.
My point is that Israelis in the past have supported a two state solution, obviously there is currently a war going on right now so a two state solution is not going to happen any time soon.
> This is apartheid.
That's still not apartheid, it's an occupation, there's a difference.
> Israel isn't a dictatorship and these things can change over time
Indeed, Israel is a democracy, and things have in fact changed over time. These changes in Israeli public opinion have been based largely on the actions of the Palestinians.
There was optimism about peace in 2007, after the withdrawal from Gaza: 70% of Israelis supported the two-state solution. After the Hamas massacres in 2023, there was 70% opposition to the two-state solution.
It is race based because if there was a jewish person living in Palestine, they could apply for and get the right to vote. A muslim person cannot.
The Israeli PM has said: There will never be a Palestinian state. If you plan to eternally occupy and dominate a people, what is the difference to Apartheid?
> It is race based because if there was a jewish person living in Palestine, they could apply for and get the right to vote. A muslim person cannot.
Jews are not allowed to live in Palestine controlled territories at all(i.e. Gaza and West Bank areas A/B). This still wouldn't be race based discrimination however. Apartheid is a form of discrimination among citizens, immigration law is a somewhat separate issue. Many countries take factors into account when it comes to immigration laws that wouldn't be applied with regards to those who are already citizens. You don't see those cases of immigration law preferences being called Apartheid in general.
> The Israeli PM has said: There will never be a Palestinian state.
Israel has elections and things can change.
> If you plan to eternally occupy and dominate a people, what is the difference to Apartheid?
That's still not race based discrimination so not Apartheid.
Israel was formed atop the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians (not to mention massacring of >5000). There were no Israeli citizens before it was formed, this was purely racial discrimination.
Palestinians under Israeli occupation generally have no pathway to Israeli citizenship, with the exception of those in East Jerusalem, which is occupied under international law but is considered part of Israel by Israel; in the West Bank there is a process to apply for Israeli citizenship, but only a small percentage of Palestinians in East Jerusalem can become citizens every year (I believe I read it was <5% of those who applied).
People who are not Palestinian, anywhere in the world, can convert to Judaism and make Aliyah. This pathway is denied to Palestinians, especially those under occupation.
So I don't know how you can claim this is not race based discrimination.
> It's pretty obvious giving the people who elected terrorists
8% or fewer of the people in Gaza today actually voted for Hamas. Most of them were not even born at the time of the last election, and combined with those who were under 18 at the last election and those who voted for other parties, 92% of people alive in Gaza today had no part in Hamas coming to power.
> Israel was formed atop the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians (not to mention massacring of >5000).
There were various push and pull factors involved, it's not entirely accurate to say they were all forcibly expelled(there were many that were not expelled as well).
> There were no Israeli citizens before it was formed, this was purely racial discrimination.
Palestinians that remained were given Israeli citizenship however.
> only a small percentage of Palestinians in East Jerusalem can become citizens every year (I believe I read it was <5% of those who applied).
It's around 5% that have Israeli citizenship I think, about a third that apply have been approved with the remaining being rejected or postponed looks like. The majority do not apply for Israeli citizenship for various reasons.[0]
> People who are not Palestinian, anywhere in the world, can convert to Judaism and make Aliyah. This pathway is denied to Palestinians, especially those under occupation.
There being no Jews allowed to live in Palestinian controlled territories(i.e. Gaza and West Bank areas A/B) may make converting a bit uncommon/difficult(converting in general is rather difficult AFAIU), but I don't think there's any outright prohibition on accepting Palestinian conversions for the purposes of citizenship(even though in practice it may be extremely rare).
> So I don't know how you can claim this is not race based discrimination.
I'm not claiming there's no race based discrimination when it comes to Israels immigration policy. Apartheid would be considered racial discrimination between those that are already citizens however, which is a different issue. Many countries have immigration laws that have various forms of racial discrimination and you don't normally see those cases described as apartheid either. I am not a citizen of the country I was born in due to these sort of policies.
> 8% or fewer of the people in Gaza today actually voted for Hamas. Most of them were not even born at the time of the last election, and combined with those who were under 18 at the last election and those who voted for other parties, 92% of people alive in Gaza today had no part in Hamas coming to power.
That may be true but keep in mind Palestinian opinion polling does indicate Hamas would still likely win elections if they were in fact held today.
> After the October 7 attacks it was critical that Israel re-establish deterrence, not doing so would be inviting more attacks
Sure. They did that when they killed Sinwar. After that, they could have just continued to Mossad individual leaders in Hamas.
> Israel losing the media war was probably somewhat inevitable, the extreme disparity between worldwide Muslim population sizes and Jewish population sizes being a big factor
> Sure. They did that when they killed Sinwar. After that, they could have just continued to Mossad individual leaders in Hamas.
Killing one enemy leader is insufficient to re-establish deterrence, with how severe the October 7 attacks were I don't think Israel can possibly accept any outcome that doesn't effectively remove Hamas from power in Gaza.
> Not relevant to America.
It still has some effect in America, but less so than other parts of the world.
However Hamas has yet to capitulate/surrender, Israel basically has no choice but to finish Hamas off if they won't surrender, not doing so would significantly weaken their deterrence capabilities and allow Hamas to rebuild. There are potential consequences to ceasefire agreements where an enemies leadership retains power[0] historically.
> Like, Hezbollah got the message pretty clearly.
They eventually got the message after Israel essentially eliminated the entirety of their leadership chart multiple levels deep and crushed Hezbollah's will to fight, the ceasefire Hezbollah eventually agreed to was effectively a surrender agreement.
Sure, and I don't see credible evidence that they are[0]. Just more of the same false narratives pushed by the all too common antisemitic UN officials[1].
An NGO "Agence France-Presse has described...as 'a lobby group with strong ties to Israel'" [1] is not a credible source for disputing two separate groups at the UN, the IPF and--at this point--more than a few independent investigations.
> An NGO "Agence France-Presse has described...as 'a lobby group with strong ties to Israel'" [1] is not a credible source for disputing two separate groups at the UN, the IPF and--at this point--more than a few independent investigations.
This doesn't make the information they are putting out false, the UN bias against Israel is well documented by many sources.
> This doesn't make the information they are putting out false
It makes it unreliable. If you’re claiming the IPC is an unreliable source, you need a reliable source to back you up on that. (And neither article actually cites any data that would undermine the IPC’s case.)
I’m genuinely open to being convinced. Another comment raised the issue of insufficient CDRs for IPC 5 status, which may or may not be relevant. But these UN Watch interviews are rally the base stuff, not argument.
> If you’re claiming the IPC is an unreliable source, you need a reliable source to back you up on that. (And neither article actually cites any data that would undermine the IPC’s case.)
I think the most detailed rebuttal to the recent IPC claims is this one[0] backed by the COGAT[1] published aid data. There are other responses to prior IPC reports that go into more methodological details[2] as well. The impression I get overall is that the IPC is largely just cherry picking incomplete data to create a false narrative[3]. IPC forecasts also basically never end up being accurate historically either.
What Israel is doing is essentially sowing the seeds for a new crop of leaders hell-bent on destroying Israel. Children who saw ghe carnage Israel is inflicting will grow up to join Hamas and Hezbollah, and the cycle repeats.
> What Israel is doing is essentially sowing the seeds for a new crop of leaders hell-bent on destroying Israel
This isn't necessary! Plenty of peoples have overcome cycles of revenge. There isn't something inherent to Israelis and Gazans that requires they metabolise past trauma into future violence.
Overcoming this cycle requires the cooperation of both sides, or at the very least that both sides stop fucking with one another.
Israel, the stronger entity, should've been the one to abstain first and attempt to understand and forgive, instead they kept building illegal settlements and driving more and more people out there homes. Israel made sure the embers stayed hot, and I can't think of any reason for that aside from hoping those hot embers produce a flame that justifies genocide and completely eradicating the Palestinian population.
> Yes, the current leaders are the result of Natenyahu's previous harvest.
When have Palestinians had leaders that have been truly interested in peace?
> There is no shortage of articles on the internet detailing how Israel is the one responsible for propping up Hamas.
There's a lot more nuance to this issue as allowing funds to be transferred by Qatar was to some degree an attempt at improving the lives of Palestinians in Gaza.
> And the current leaders of Iran are the fruits of what the USA/CIA sowed by toppling a popular democracy and replacing it with a despotic monarchy.
I think you're underplaying the impact of radical Islam here.
> Despite all this Israel has largely re-established military deterrence in the Middle East and is on a path to normalize relations with countries like Saudi Arabia once Hamas is either forced to surrender or degraded enough that they lose their ability to govern Gaza.
Citizens in the Gulf feel very differently on a large number of issues than their leaders.
> Citizens in the Gulf feel very differently on a large number of issues than their leaders.
Yeah, this is a common pattern, in general most Muslim counties have leadership which is far more moderate than their populations overall, with Iran being a notable exception.
This is disturbing. You seem to imply that there are legitimate reasons to starve an entire population, which is to me so repulsive that you’re not even allowed to consider entering that territory.Under that reading, once you’ve crossed that line, how can you actually win a media war ?
> You seem to imply that there are legitimate reasons to starve an entire population, which is to me so repulsive that you’re not even allowed to consider entering that territory.
No, I'm not saying that, I'm saying that the claims of starvation are simply not accurate.[0] They also tend to be pushed by antisemitic individuals[1].
You’re really saying that there is no starvation , and plenty to eat in Gaza ? ( I won’t debate the technical meaning and definition of the word famine, which I didn’t use ) There are enough Israelis who confirm this , and they’re hardly antisemitic.
> You’re really saying that there is no starvation , and plenty to eat in Gaza ?
I'm saying there are varying degrees of food insecurity but not to the levels one would typically call famine/starvation. I'm saying there is sufficient food availability to prevent starvation/famine, I'm not sure I would neccesarially characterize that as being the same thing as there being "plenty to eat" however.
The layman's understanding of war is less guided by international law and more around ideas like "tit for tat". Eg if Hamas kills 1000 Israeli civilians, Israel is entitled to kill 1000 Palestinian civilians, but should stop after that.
Is it the better response under international law? Not necessarily, but it would be better PR.
One interesting comparison I saw is the Siege of Mariupol. The fighting there had very high rates of civilian deaths (per day, and also vs combatant deaths), but:
* a large portion of civilians (and thus civilian casualties) in Mariupol actually identify as ethnic Russians, so it seems unlikely Russia targeted them intentionally
* nobody has filed a genocide case against Russia on the basis of the large number of civilian deaths in Mariupol
> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response
Was Hamas' response proportionate to Israeli actions? What actions specifically.
Before you answer wildly, note that you're talking to someone who knows a dozen hostages and ex-hostages personally. Someone who knows two women whose babies were burned to death. Some whose daughter lost a close friend (that friend was slaughtered in his home along with both siblings and both parents, in their pajamas). Someone whose son's camp counselor was dragged to Gaza and murdered. I could go on. What was Hamas' actions a proportionate respond to?
>It’s been way too short a time to tell if this will work, but responding in a softer manner has proven to not. Might work is better than won’t work.
Absolutely! As R.A. Lafferty correctly posited[0]:
“When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure clarified your
attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer to a definite problem.
For better or worse you have acted decisively. In a way, the next move is up
to him.”
― R.A. Lafferty
Yes. It's up to those dead Palestinians to now make peace. And the more dead Palestinians there are, there are more who are on the hook to do so. In fact, if we kill them all, they'll be in the perfect spot to make peace, amirite?
> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response
Is it disproportionate? Why do we talk about proportions when it comes to Jewish people defending their security but don’t bring it up in other conflicts? There was no talk of proportionate response after 9/11, for example. Virtually all nations who participated in the global war on terror didn’t care.
Proportionality is also not relevant when you’re talking about terrorists who are hiding among civilians on purpose. Why should Israel have to sacrifice the security of its residents to limit collateral damage among the very people who voted for Hamas and still support Hamas, as polls show.
Some of America's most famous writers weighed in at the time. Here's Hunter S. Thompson warning about how 9/11's narrative will be used to warp the perception of empire:
I've lived in the US since around 9/11; there was lots of discussion around the responses to Iraq, and Afghanistan. It went on to Yemen, and Libya. There was always criticism and utter disappointment with Obama in many circles over this. Many US soldiers came forward and condemned the Iraq war.
Also, the people who voted for Hamas over 20 years ago? Considering how young the population is, I doubt many were alive then. Hamas won 74 of the 132 seats back then. It's very dangerous rhetoric to say collateral damage should not be limited. Did the babies and the many women who were slaughtered in endless bombing campaigns vote for Hamas to deserve their very end? This rhetoric is exactly why the world has turned their back on Israel. In the US, huge majority of under 35s do not support the state, for example.
We can talk endlessly about strategy and long term implications (for example, the destruction of the Iranian "ring of fire" network of proxies, the permanent changes in Syria and Lebanon, etc), but consider something much more basic: Israelis around Gaza can finally live securely. There are no rockets coming from Gaza, no mortars, no chance of another October 7th or smaller incursions as long as the Israeli military is there. Israelis have peace. No Gazan rocket can disturb the life in Tel Aviv or Ashdod.
This couldn't and shouldn't have been a re-run of the countless previous clashes with Hamas. Israel needed to go all out to change the security situation, permanently.
I'm pretty sure people said the same thing after operation Cast Lead and other previous crackdowns. A country making itself into an international pariah while pursuing local security from an antagonist it nurtured in the first place is extremely myopic. As this conflict has dragged on, it has become more and more apparent that a great many Israelis (including in government) view their strategic situation through the lens of ancient historical conflicts from >2000 years ago and fantasize about resorting to the triumphant excesses of legend. Mass psychosis is not a good basis for long-term security.
Israel has seen more rockets and daily attacks than probably in its entire existance since they commenced the Gaza genocide what are you talking about.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this? The claim is that there are less rockets now, but that article doesn't show anything for 2024 or 2025. There is an article specifically for 2024 that is linked but only shows attacks up till May. Whether that means rockets have stopped, as is the claim, or that they simply haven't been recorded in the Wiki is unknown.
It’s a very high hill to die on, expecting Israeli civilians to prioritize the lives of enemies over their own. Any historical precedent, or are we entering into the fuzzy realm of uncharted morality?
The war in Gaza did not save a single Israeli’s life. Hundreds of Israeli are dead because of it though, many through accidents and friendly fire.
So it’s not about prioritizing lives, it’s about prioritizing ideologies.
And the pervasive ideology in Israel is that Palestinians are not people, and therefore our children, the IDF soldiers who daily target them, are not war criminals.
It's a neat little trick to just say any child you shoot in the head is Hamas. Or any women a children you starve was actually Hamas. Or every hospital you blow up was because Hamas was hiding in there. Or just pretend that October 2023 was the start of the conflict ignoring the decades of death, apartheid, and brutality preceding it.
I'm just glad people like you are willing to publish stuff like this to the internet so we can look back and understand why genocides are allowed to happen.
>> It's a neat little trick to just say any child you shoot in the head is Hamas. Or any women a children you starve was actually Hamas.
Your words; not mine. I am supporting the military campaign against Gaza, and I also reject the separation between "Gaza" and "Hamas" as entirely artificial and serving an agenda.
Hamas is the elected government of Gaza, they administrate Gaza, they pay salaries and they're the ones you negotiate with regarding Gaza. When your hear casualties numbers coming from the "Gaza Health Ministry", they're provided by Hamas.
In October 7th 2023 it's Gaza, not Hamas, who started a war with Israel (not with the Israeli Defense Forces). It's a war between populations that for various reasons will not coexist on the same piece of land.
Back in WWII, USA fought Japan, not the "Imperial Japanese Armed Forces".
The "Hamas is the elected government therefore women and children deserve to die" is Israeli propaganda.
It was a single election 20 years ago for a party running on change, not what Hamas stands for now. It was a protest vote. Palestinians have been experiencing genocide for decades.
Your seething hate for brown people is apart though. I'm glad you're willing to share it for the world to see.
>> Hamas is the elected government therefore women and children deserve to die
It's your own propaganda. Not mine, nor the Israeli government.
If your concern was with saving "brown people" lives, the most effective way to do so was to advocate for Hamas to release the remaining Israeli hostages and surrender. As it is, you're advocating for an Israeli surrender.
As it is, I openly and proudly call for Israel to win this war, decisively, with a surrender of their enemy.
P.S. Israelis are "brown people", given that most of the Israelis are of Arab origin (Jews, Christian and Muslim), about 70% or so.
If I remember correctly, the side holding people in concentration camps and shooting children in their heads weren't the good guys. It's not surprising that someone like you is making themselves the hero for supporting genocide though.
Their strategy was, I think, as bad as it could possibly be. In fact, it really seemed, and still seems, like no strategy at all -- they lashed out wildly and extremely destructively, without a clear picture of what the post-war Gaza Strip will look like.
Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response that killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, which played directly into the dynamics of guerrilla warfare where a strong state's extreme actions against a weak opponent undermine its legitimacy.
Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation.
Yet, rather than adapting, Israel's network doubled down with censorship campaigns, crackdowns on protests, and weaponizing "anti-semitism" accusations to silence critics -- actions that have all backfired. Now international support is collapsing, the EU is pushing sanctions, and the US is slowly distancing itself. Israel's best option right now is to end the war as quickly as possible, and devote all of its efforts to repairing damaged relationships and mitigating the war's effects, before isolation accelerates to the level of sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa.
I'll also note that it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost. Hamas lost the shooting war, the people of Gaza have lost lives and livelihoods which may take more than a decade to rebuild, and Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this.