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.
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
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.
I’m a realist. A humanist. And have a bit of knowledge in history. By my read, there is now a clock running on invasion. The US would step off at night.
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