Of course Israel knows this is not possible, but it’s a nice statement to point at every time they get caught killing civilians. “Look we told them to leave, nothing we can do after that.”
The problem is that they are based on two false assumptions.
The IDF today dropped leaflets over Beit Lahia in the Gaza Strip calling on people to leave their homes and go to shelters
There are no bomb shelters in Palestine or place to run to. If there were, Hamas would take them over. They are literally sardines. Unless Egypt will take refugees, so far that looks like a no.
The leaflet does not specify humanitarian corridors or how they can flee.
So I just heard about this whole thing last night. What is the preferred Israeli response to this?
To me it looks like Hamas using occupied buildings as places to attack from, the Israel being told they aren’t allowed to hit back at people using human shields.
Your response seems to be equivalent to “never defend yourself against someone holding an innocent hostage.”
To clarify, I’m not sure what response doesn’t result in more innocent people dying.
I don’t really care about this specific conflict more than any other. And morally I don’t care for the lives of one side more than the other. And morally I don’t care who lived in what cities 100 years ago (note: unless those specific people are involved).
My confusion seems to be that the ‘right’ response people seem to want to this is no response.
Israel definitely is well within their rights to retaliate against Hamas, it would be foolish to claim otherwise. It’s the exact way they are doing it that is the issue, they are behaving nearly as poorly as their enemy. You can’t just tell the world “look at the barbarity of Hamas slaughtering innocent civilians just out there kibbutzing” and then turn around and bomb civilian hospitals, completely disregard rules of engagement around medical aid killing humanitarian volunteers you were aware of, shutting off all power, water and closing food supply to the Gaza strip, and then act like it’s somehow better than that.
Hamas absolutely sucks and Israel has every right to defend themselves from terrorism, but the Palestinian children buried under rubble didn’t deserve any of this. (Neither did the Israeli citizens who were slaughtered and kidnapped for that matter.)
Israel has the technology, the troops, and the tactics to be far more precise and surgical in their retaliation, but their response has been punitive and brutal, and seems to almost maximize collateral damage. Of course that’s what Netanyahu and his thugs will all but directly say they want given the opportunity to speak. I do not believe that properly represents the citizens of Israel who are generally much more sympathetic to the people of Palestine.
Both the citizens of Israel and Palestine have been failed by their leadership. Agree or disagree, at this point, I just had to write that down somewhere. I know people from both Palestine and Israel, wonderful people, all this is heartbreaking.
War is hell, even if you play by the rules, why make it even worse?
Thanks. It’s hard for me to judge tactics from video, as I can’t really tell what is accidental collateral damage vs purposeful. The statements by Israeli leadership definitely supports the view that they are purposefully being punitive… which is monstrous.
Stop the occupation of Palestine, stop the settlement of the West Bank, and stop the apartheid status of Palestinians in Israel. Then either allow Palestine to be an independent country in the UN, responsible for their own security and economy. Or give all Palestinians voting rights in Israel as a one state solution. After that is set and done set up an independent criminal court to judge on all war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in this region, this will of course also include Hamas.
Israel used to occupy Gaza the same way it currently does the West Bank; there were even Jewish settlers living there. The IDF withdrew in 2005 as a token of goodwill towards peace and a future Palestinian state, evicting all Jewish residents as well. Gaza then elected Hamas, whose founding charter calls for the extermination of all Jews, and started lobbing rockets. Israelis aren't exactly keen to see a repetition of that.
I really get wanting to believe that this would be a solution, but the fact of the matter is that there are very real security concerns; a not-small number of Palestinians believe that the state of Israel should be destroyed by violently removing all Jews from the land, as we saw last weekend. You can say that that anger and resentment is somewhat justified - hell, I'd largely agree - but Israel is under no circumstances going to allow its existence to be threatened. The fundamental purpose of Israel existing is to provide a safe homeland for Jews, and Israel will stop at nothing to ensure that.
Giving all Palestinians full voting rights is not going to happen so long as there's such a complete lack of trust between the two groups. Israelis, probably correctly, fear that they'd quickly become a minority within their own state and ultimately be subjected to government persecution or expulsion. You have to keep in mind that a huge chunk of Israelis come from Arab countries that forcibly seized their assets and expelled them. Israelis will not accept the possibility of their own government doing the same.
Idealism simply is not applicable in this situation. If Israel fully withdrew from the West Bank, they have no reason to believe that it wouldn't simply be a repeat of the Gaza fiasco from 2005, with the situation being even worse since attacks out of the West Bank could threaten Jerusalem. Any analysis of the situation must begin and end with the immutable fact that Israel will prioritize its own security above anything else, including Western condemnation.
None of this is to excuse the many unjustifiable travesties that Israel does commit against the Palestinians, which are numerous, nor does it excuse settlements in the West Bank at all, which are disgusting abominations that actively serve to make peace even more impossible than it already is. But fundamentally, Israel is never going to make any kind of withdrawals or concessions unless it feels its security remains guaranteed, and any proposal that doesn't accept this is doomed.
I'm gonna nitpick here, but:
stop the apartheid status of Palestinians in Israel
Statements like this really need to be more clear, because they can otherwise severely muddy the waters of an already extremely messy situation. What exactly are you referring to here by "Israel"? Arab citizens of Israel, Palestinian or otherwise, have full rights. Palestinians within the West Bank and Gaza are severely restricted and oppressed a lot, and sure, you can make an apartheid analogy if you want. But is it not our entire fundamental premise that the West Bank is not Israel, but rather is Palestine? Palestinians do not live under any kind of apartheid within Israel, unless you are including the West Bank as part of Israel, which no one but the most extreme Israeli nationalists would ever do. So either Palestinians live under apartheid and the West Bank is a legitimate part of the state of Israel, or Palestinians live in Palestine under a strict foreign military occupation and not under an apartheid in Israel.
Not going to get into an argument about Hamas vs Isreali tactics, but you should be aware that it is far, far from the case that Palestinians inside of Israel let alone in OPT have the rights you think they do:
In your statement you are completely disregarding the security concerns of the Palestinians, calling the current state of the Gaza strip a ‘token of good will’ is absolutely ludicrous. If you really believe this I would invite you to read the wikipedia article on the great march of return: en.wikipedia.org/…/2018–2019_Gaza_border_protests.
And finally it is not stupid idealism to want to end the current status quo in Israel, I think it has become clear over the last few days that it is not possible to suppress a population without some kind of response: an apartheid state is a state of violence. And I hope we can all agree (at least if you are not an ethnonationalist) that the current state of South Africa is much much better than it was during apartheid.
The Palestinians absolutely have legitimate security concerns. They are also, in no universe, ever going to be able to resolve them by violently overthrowing the Israelis, and no amount of winning the moral argument will change this fact. This notion of establishing a Palestinian state through violent resistance must be abandoned - no matter how righteous it may or may not be - because Israel will defend itself down to the last Jewish life before allowing another Jewish diaspora, and it will win. If Egypt, Jordan, and Syria were all defeated in 1967 in six days, it is simply not in the realm of possibility that some loosely organized Palestinian resistance is going to be re-taking Jerusalem.
There is a plausible, though still mostly confined to dreams, path to peace that involves the Palestinians de-militarizing, Israel abandoning all settlements and withdrawing to the 1967 borders, the establishment of a joint security force between Israelis and Palestinians that has zero tolerance for nationalistic violence, and a gradual opening of economic and cultural integrations over time. There'd probably need to be some land-swaps, and Jerusalem would probably need to be governed by some kind of joint administration as well, but there does exist a framework where peace is imaginable.
Key to this, though, is that Israel stops settlements and that Palestinians completely abandon any consideration of violence. Under no circumstances will Israel make any steps towards peace if it feels its security is threatened, and seeing as they're the ones with the guns, anyone hoping to see peace simply must accept this fact. So long as aggressive violence is seen as a way to solve the conflict, there will never be peace.
The West Bank has seen minimal Palestinian-initiated conflict, and in exchange, Israel has built more settlements, let them burn fields, and kicked people out of their homes. It’s not security that drives the settlement projects. They want the land.
Where is that smile coming from? Is this a funny online game of words for you?
Israel has to defeat Hamas decisively and Hamas just tries to save their own sorry asses by telling the civilian population to stay where the israelian ground offensive will start. It is a deliberate plan by Hamas that civilians get killed. They want those pictures to drum up their support in Arab states.
he smashed the statues because he considered them “to be idolatrous and contrary to the Torah.”
followed by
The man’s lawyer, Nick Kaufman, denied that he had acted out of religious fanaticism.
If you say so! Its horrible that someone who isnt even from an area thinks they have the right to destroy another place’s cultural heritage and history because they feel it goes against their religion.
I feel like I’m being gaslit into thinking there’s this huge outbreak of antisemitism when all I’m ever reading about is Muslims being murdered?? why are we constantly talking about antisemitism and only antisemitism
The easiest way to deflect criticism is to claim it’s racism or antisemitism. China does the exact same thing. It’s obvious and lazy. I can’t believe people still fall for it. Israel is not the representative of Judaism. They have a far right militant dictator running their country right now who is killing many innocent people. The fact that they are still recognized as a country is beyond reason at this point.
I’m pro-Palestine all day but I don’t like this line of questioning. The only reason I see to make this argument is to try to erase the very real horrors the Jewish people survived.
However debate lords are still gonna want an answer (not trying to imply you are one). If I had to respond I would say:
English is a living language. The definition of words is determined by how we use them. Think of “literally”. It meant one thing but it was so misused that the definition had to change because the common use was completely disconnected from the textbook definition.
The words “Semitic” and “anti-semitic” did not come into existence at the same time, similar to matter and Antimatter. “Anti-Semitic” is specifically “anti-Jewish” because that how the phrase was used.
It’s not a word whose definition comes from the literal sum of its parts, it refers to a specific phenomenon.
Interesting that you use the idea that English is a living language to push back against people using a term in a way you’ve decided is incorrect. Seems like you don’t think English is that alive after all if you refuse to incorporate all Semitic people into the concept of antisemitism.
You can’t cite descriptivist arguments to defend your prescriptivist attitude towards the term antisemitism. It betrays your own bias and deflates your argument.
Language evolves, just like you said. Which is why people are realizing the double speak nature of this idea that antisemitism is only when you’re prejudiced against a specific Semitic people group and the others don’t get a term to describe prejudice against them. Your position is an Orwellian attempt to deny a group of people the ability to specifically identify their oppression and it’s sad.
You can argue about it all you like, but if you say the word “antisemitism” then people will assume you mean anti-Jewish sentiment. Because that’s the agreed-upon meaning. Pineapples aren’t really apples, but that doesn’t cause confusion because people know what the word “pineapple” means.
Like you said, language evolves. People are deciding that the definition you follow is very limited and constrains dialogue by being needlessly exclusionary. So they’re seeking to expand the definition to its logical conclusion.
You can throw a fit about other Semitic people being recognized or you can accept that language changes to fit our current understanding of the world.
Antisemitism still refers to prejudice against Jewish people. It’s also being extended to all Semitic people as to disallow them the ability to categorize prejudice against them is to obfuscate and to an extent even deny their own reality.
In January 2020, House Representative Jonathan Carroll introduced the bill HB 4049 which adopts a contested definition of antisemitism equating criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish discrimination. The language of the bill draws heavily on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Antisemitism in which “Delegitimizing the State of Israel by denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and denying the State of Israel the right to exist” is labelled a form of antisemitism. The bill would make public schools and universities culpable for failing to treat discrimination as defined by the bill in the same manner that they treat discrimination motivated by race.
I wonder how that stands up with Israel now bombing hospitals. Are we still going to be expected to defend them now that they are committing the same atrocities that was once done against them?
We murder anyone lesser and make those who are mentally disadvantaged suffer …unless a pictures being taken.
We are Devils in disguise. Elite false gods in denial. A collective fascism born to genocide all those that live as natural human beings. So we can feel safe and have a false perception of reason to quell existentialism that we pretend we don’t have.
It's the word of the day every day they be doing war crimes.
Not only is it impossible to evacuate that many people in that short a time, but they're basically declaring that they're going to use their military to targer and kill civilians.
Which is a war crime.
"Hamas did it first" doesn't give them a pass here. If it's not ok for Hamas, it's not ok for the Israeli state. And inverting that, if it is ok for the Israeli state...
You are using a term you don’t fully understand to try to cudgle popular opinion without acknowledging your own hypocrisy of not acknowledging that this began with the slaughter of civilians to begin with. I’m sure countries like Iran love you for it,
You don’t know if it’s a short time. The time is not specified. If Hamas uses human shields, is that not a war crime?
Yes if Hamas uses human shields, and that is actually a war crime, which I have to believe it is but loopholes and exclusions abound in treaties, then that IS a war crime. Full stop.
Does that make it okay for others to commit war crimes?
If someone rapes or kills someone daughter, does that mean that the father gets a free pass to rape or murder the original rapist/murderer's daughter even though she had nothing to do with it other than by happenstance of being the rapist/murderer's daughter?
Just to reiterate, Hamas committing war crimes is Bad!
No country, not even the US, is not going to defend 8tself after being attacked. If human shields are used, you can try to take precautions but shit does happen when you’re being shot at.
Where do you think Hamas is at? This happens every time. Hamas uses human shields of Palestinians. israel bombs their ass in the houses they hang out is. Liberals get upset and scream war crime. Israeli then stops.
But, will that happen this time? By my reading the answer is no. Israel will make a full force invasion and much blood will be spilled on both sides.
Instead of carrying Hamas water, you should support, as I do, the US Secretary of State who knows what is coming and is trying to setup humanitarian corridors for the humanitarian crisis that is sure to come.
Hey, you're not allowed to talk about the decades of an apartheid state's treatment of these people or the systematic destruction of their infrastructure to be stolen by illegal settlers or the fact that Israel is directly responsible for creating Hamas; all the history for this conflict started like 6 months ago!
Whoa. I think the rules of war are fairly specific and technicalities and legalities are determined by the International Criminal Court. Not up to you to determine and you know it.
Whoa. I think I made very clear I don't give a fuck about what the legal fucking rules of War are.
Just because you make a rule about something doesn't make it right.
Germany had rules that made it okay to kill the Jews, does that make it right?
You can go ahead and find everywhere I went and said anything that could be misconstrued as giving a shit about the rules of War and understand I don't give a shit about them.
Go with crimes against humanity, crimes against basic decency, hell call it crimes against the Galactic Empire that supports the lizard people undermining the nationality of Panama.
I don't give a shit, feel free to hide behind the technicalities of whether something is a war crime or not.
Nowhere in my life do I feel the need to try to fucking defend that
Willy Pete has been used by the US is Iraq and other places. One of the big reasons it was used.is that that in cities the trend is to cover roads with fabric. Of course, you can’t see movement on those roads , so willy Pete, white phosphorus, is used to clear the fabric. Don’t know why Russia uses it in Ukraine.
There is nothing we can do, except social pressure.
I wonder howmuch effect you think you have on a full blown war.
There is nothing that will be done. Until everyone has had their fill of violence.
I always forget that just because we did something bad means that other people should as well. I should have remembered we did the Trail of Tears and now Israel wants to do the Trail of Tears, it's genius!
Fuck we can get away with anything as long as someone else does it first that makes it all okay I'm glad you solved this problem.
No we just don't buy your excuses for genocide. You can try and justify it all you want and maybe that will make you feel better but at the end of the day it is what it is and they have been trying to remove the Palestinians for years by whatever force is necessary. Whether it's kicking them out of their homes and killing their children or now just going for a full-on fucking genocide.
You are trying to justify things that are unjustifiable
Ŵar crimes are very specific. You use the phase often enough and it’s impact dilutes. Ukraine knew this, so they got an international investigation going that ended up with the ICC indicating Putin. That’s the way it works. Sitting in your computer chair repeating war crimes not only does nothing but fogs discourse
Those are just technical details. Misinformation about the IDF-Hamas war is so insane, you can’t even look at “reputable” mainstream media outlets without getting ahistorical analysis, zionism or antisemitism. We are witnessing ethnic cleansing and cruel war crimes here because all the parties who had the possibility to prevent this decided not to. Instead of focussing on the historical context and the steps necessary to deescalate this conflict, the media is focussing on the question of which acts of violence are justified and which aren’t.
Not all the people, just the “wrong” people. And let’s not forget Palestinians have been trying to “produce” more people as quickly as possible, to the point they’re “about to win” the demographic competition, against even the orthodox jews who are at the same time trying to reach 25% of Israel’s population in order to become the “spiritual leaders” for others to fight their wars.
I’m reminded of the 2015 Paris Attacks, in the aftermath of which their Prime Minister said “France without Jews is not France;" I really feel like he should have also said, especially at that moment, “France without Muslims is not France.” The national ban on wearing the hijab, which I believe is still in place, is an outrageous violation of human rights.
Governments should definitely have done a better job to ease tensions and avoid faith-based hate and backlash for muslims.
A good thing officials could do is explicitly oppose to the rhetoric of religioius war that Daech/Isis is trying to spread, and defend France’s universalist model that aims and succeed in large part to have citizens of all faith peacefully cohabit.
That’s not the end goal. The end goal is security for the Israeli people. If Palestinians choose peace, they’d have it. They have not chosen that path yet.
Ok. They are trying to eliminate all people of a certain belief system in a certain area after stealing their land and killing innocents and children... Oh shit that sounds a lot like genocide to me.
Israel is not trying to eliminate people of a belief system. Their objective is to eliminate Hamas, whose charter is to destroy Israel, and in Saturday’s attack demonstrated they’ll do it without remorse in the most cruel ways.
Thing is, even if the people want peace there’s no one to deliver it. Their leadership has no interest in negotiating with the state of Israel that they see as illegitimate.
So for decades Israel has been pushing people out of their homes and killing their children, they have killed journalists.
Now, they told everyone to get out of gaza then bombed the crossing, they shut off power, water, sanitation, food, medicines, and shutdown god only knows how many machines that were keeping people alive because they do not run without electricity...
it’s terrible that the Palestinians chose Hamas as their leaders. It’s terrible the Hamas chose war. They’ve had opportunity after opportunity for peace.
But they chose was, to attack Israelis in their homes, in a peace party, in the street. To slaughter them like animals. That’s unhinged behavior.
This is nearly a certain white supremacist dogwhistle. Don’t trust people who want to murder an entire people for the sake of “security” of other people. That’s how ethnic cleanses and genocides are justified.
Israel wants security for the people of Israel. Ideally, this is peace with their neighbors. Hamas has chosen war. Israel has no choice but the take action.
And this action must be extermination of the people of Palestine. If you’re going to say it, say all of it. Stop dancing around what you’re advocating.
Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m absolutely not saying that. Let me be clear: Palestinians should have a state and live peacefully as neighbors of Israel.
However, as of now, the Palestinian leadership is fracture and (in the case of Hamas) undeniably barbaric. The Palestinians need to choose better leaders and take themselves to freedom and peace they deserve.
This is a scare tactic and it’s a stupid one. If there were any advantage whatsoever to a nuclear powered cruise missile, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would have already cranked out thousands of them instead of conventional rockets.
We could just rewrite the headline as:
Putin says, “Booga Booga!!! Have nuclear shit!! Am scary asshole!!”
Iirc the USA did investigate making them during the cold war but concluded that the (very real) benefits - such as the ability to recall a missile after launching - weren’t worth cooking US citizens and allies with radiation from an unshielded nuclear reactor flying at mach 3 just above the surface; they planned to fly as low as 150m!
Their initial plans basically were to build a nuclear-ramjet “missile” that could fly for several days straight carrying dozens of nuclear warheads, autonomously dropping them on “enemies”. The big problem was that it’d have to fly over the USA and/or western Europe in order to reach the USSR.
Because it shows how not solving one problem (high cost housing and the resulting homelessness) results in more problems (trees getting cut down to make it someone else's problem)
Right, this is like those American feel good articles about some local school having to do a fundraiser to purchase a wheelchair or something that really should be provided by the healthcare system to start with! Grim
This is devastating. And amidst so much debate over Israel’s right to defend itself, I feel it’s getting lost that this military campaign is only a success if measured by a set of goals even most Zionists would not recognize as productive.
Will it make Israel safer? No, undoubtedly the war has cost international standing, strained the US-Israel relationship, and will inevitably radicalize far more extremists than are killed.
Will it continue the right-ward shift of Israeli policy? Does it cut off avenues for peace and reconciliation and foster militant Israeli nationalism? Yes.
This campaign is only a success if the primary objective is the eventual capture of the entire region at the cost of Israel’s safety (and the safety of Jews around the world) and Israel’s international standing. By any more conventional aims, it is an unmitigated disaster.
Honest question, what is Israel supposed to do? Give Hamas concessions? I think history shows that appeasement only emboldens terrorism. Back out now and let Hamas come back with even more local support?
It’s a lose/lose. There is no winning for Israel. It seems that either Israel makes itself a pariah in the international community by killing countless innocent Palestinians or it lets terrorists win.
I would love for you or someone to help me see a different way Israel can get back out of this.
Part 1: I grew up a Zionist. In most versions, Zionism envisioned a peaceful, multi-ethnic state. In that sense, the zionist project is half-complete.
The first half was accomplished by people who aspired to something that everyone said was madness, totally impossible, completely unfeasible, hopelessly unworkable. And they fucking did that thing.
Now, anyone who considers themselves a Zionist needs to take on the responsibility for continuing that project with the sense of courage and insane vision that brought Israel into existence. ‘It’s too hard!’ ‘There are no good solutions!’ BULLSHIT. The whole country is founded on the idea that nothing is impossible, so let’s stop making excuses.
Part 2: The biggest problem is Jewish radicals. Itmar Ben Givir of the Jewish Power Party, Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party, and Netanyahu of Likud. These are the primary leaders of a genocide, and Netanyahu’s special move for decades has been foreclosing peace. Step one is wanting peace, and step two is holding accountable the people who’ve never wanted it and always tried to keep it out of reach.
Step three, I think, is to help every Palestinian climb what I think of as “the ladder”. Israel is an apartheid state. You’ve got Ashkenazi Jews at the top, and Mizrahi/Sphardeic Jews close but just below. Then you’ve got Palestinian Israelis, then a whole bunch of tiers of West Bank / East Jeruselum Palestinians, then Gazans / foreign refugees. Each group needs a path to the rights of the group above, and there has to be a roadmap to a roadmap to peace. And that is going to require international brokers. Israeli needs a government that isn’t hostile to the UN, and the US needs to reduce its involvement and stay the fuck out of the peace process.
You should think a bit more about that “ladder” concept. In the same way that advocating for manumission doesn’t fix any of the issues with slavery a “path to the rights of the group above” doesn’t fix any of the issues with an apartheid state.
Unless you’re fine with a little genocide, any apartheid state is not a solution.
I’m saying that the apartheid state needs dismantled.
It’s just a mental exercise to get people to expand their imagination. I don’t expect the end of apartheid to literally require each group to pass through a series of stages.
This is really nice in a way I don't really know how to describe. I get a feeling a lot of people that go unaccounted for in these events don't have a lot of people close to them in their lives. It must feel at least a little good to know that someone was looking for you.
I also really like that people are calling to say they're ok. Just an overall excellent display of humanity in a bad situation. Glad those calling in are ok.
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