Israel-Gaza war

[GoTfan]

I hope I don't either. I am not denying the existence of "good Palestinians" and apologise for giving that erroneous impression.

I think it's fair to say that everyone agrees with each other for wanting the best outcome for Palestinian citizens.

Hamas are clearly not allowing that to occur.

I don't think that's fair to say. There are a lot of people who don't wish for the best outcome for Palestinians, several on this forum included.

[GoTfan]

Honest question, is Israel planning to occupy and replace Hamas as the government of Gaza with something
or leave them in place after the operation?

In answer to your question, these are the snippets I have researched which have been slowly released thus far by Israel.

1. Hamas will be destroyed in terms of their economic, military and leadership capacity.
2. A 300m perimeter inside the Gaza border will be cleared as a security barrier.
3. Israel will not occupy or govern Gaza, presumably an Arab security coalition will do that.
4. Israel will provide no water, electricity, fuel, communications or any medical assistance to the new Gazan regime.

The information on the southern border is clearly impossible to predict at this stage.

That's exactly the sort of thing an extremist group would adore.

[GoTfan]

How long will this military operation continue?

I suspect the goal for Netanyahu is to continue it until all Palestinians are dead or forced out.

[GoTfan]

So they're not killing them. They're just transferring them to another country and likely planning measures to keep them there.

I suppose that's marginally better.

[GoTfan]

Prime Minister of Jordan, Bisher Khasawneh, said any attempts to expel Palestinians from the West Bank across the Jordan River would be a "declaration of war".

https://news.yahoo.com/jordan-says-beefs-army-presence-220107172.html

Amazing things about the Palestinians' Muslim neighbours. No one wants them.

Jordan will not take one West Bank refugee.

Egypt will not even take one Gazan refugee unless it is a premature baby from the al-Shifa Hospital.

There is a duplicitous side to the Muslim brotherhood towards Gazans. Happy to chant on Al Jazeera and CNN for you, but don't come to our country for help when you need it most.

The US should step up and put pressure on these two countries to do more to help with the situation in Gaza. The US gives $1Bn to each country on an annual basis, and basically get nothing in return.

It's more to do with the fact that I don't think they want expelled people with a grudge against Israel inside their country. And the US gives far more to Israel for not much either.

[GoTfan]

No, I don't think this is true. Most simply, the city can be leveled with conventional bombing and the tunnels flooded without any IDF casualties at all, or very few; breaking things is much easier than making them. Hamas has not demonstrated an ability to actually advance against an IDF which is actually there, and when a single rocket out of hundreds actually claims any lives in Israel this is accorded a victory.

The IDF has been preparing and openly discussing how difficult and grueling a ground campaign through Gaza will be but apparently they were just too dumb to realize that they just had to bomb everything and flood the tunnels.

https://twitter.com/i24NEWS_EN/status/1734677220692558117

"Bomb everything and flood the tunnels" was always the plan, it was always basically guaranteed to work, and it's the least surprising thing ever that it did. You could've forecasted the general progression of the war quite accurately by reading what I had to say and disregarding 70% of the clowns here.

"We can't kill them all with bombs so we'll just try and drown every Palestinian we find."

That's just base cruelty. The end goal here for Netanyahu is not to wipe out Hamas; it's to wipe out Palestinians.

[GoTfan]

No, I don't think this is true. Most simply, the city can be leveled with conventional bombing and the tunnels flooded without any IDF casualties at all, or very few; breaking things is much easier than making them. Hamas has not demonstrated an ability to actually advance against an IDF which is actually there, and when a single rocket out of hundreds actually claims any lives in Israel this is accorded a victory.

The IDF has been preparing and openly discussing how difficult and grueling a ground campaign through Gaza will be but apparently they were just too dumb to realize that they just had to bomb everything and flood the tunnels.

https://twitter.com/i24NEWS_EN/status/1734677220692558117

"Bomb everything and flood the tunnels" was always the plan, it was always basically guaranteed to work, and it's the least surprising thing ever that it did. You could've forecasted the general progression of the war quite accurately by reading what I had to say and disregarding 70% of the clowns here.

"We can't kill them all with bombs so we'll just try and drown every Palestinian we find."

That's just base cruelty. The end goal here for Netanyahu is not to wipe out Hamas; it's to wipe out Palestinians.

...no? The end goal is to remove Hamas from power. Hamas can end it whenever they want by leaving power, unconditionally surrendering, and agreeing to carry out the policies of the Israeli state. (This might start with agreeing to help reform the Palestinian education system, so polling results like the ones OSR keeps citing can be made a thing of the past. Like in post-Nazi Germany, this can mean celebrating the Israeli victory over them as an important triumph conducted on behalf of the Palestinian people, and maintaining monuments to the IDF and to those Palestinians who collaborated with them. It means agreeing to suppress organizations that are not on board with this agenda, which would most likely include the UNRWA. I can keep going but I think this is sufficient to give you the idea.)

Well, then you might want to tell Netanyahu that. His goal, from what I can see, is to use this as an excuse to kill as many Palestinians as he can.

[GoTfan]

Latest vote in UN on ceasefire.  Note Argentina vote given new government

These are really sick people. There was a ceasefire. Then the terrorist death cult ended the ceasefire because they didn’t want to release the hostages they raped.

"Am i out of touch? No, it's the rest of the world that's wrong."

They're literally trying to drown Palestinians, and last time I checked, hostages don't get an immunity to drowning.

[GoTfan]

If nuclear weapons are not so hard to make, then why don't you have any?

This question is so stupid that I am not even going to dignify it with an answer.

Dude, just be honest and admit that you want Hamas to murder all the (((Jews))).  No one who has even half a brain cell believes you’re not a rabid anti-Semite.  Then again, I suppose you did basically admit as much with your bizarre fantasizing about an imaginary Hamas victory.

Those are your words, not mine.

What I want is for the US to cut off aid to Israel.

What happens after that is no longer the US's problem.

Israel and Iran can blow each other up for all I care.

Press X to doubt

Since you are having a tough time reading between the lines, let me just tell you...

I am less concerned about Israel committing genocide.

I am more concerned about the US being complicit in Israel committing genocide.

If the US stops sending aid to Israel and covering its ass, then it's much harder to argue that the US is being complicit.

It's hard to claim moral authority around the world when one is being complicit in a genocide.

Luckily, Israel isn’t committing genocide, so no worries on that front.  

Even Joe Biden, a self-proclaimed Zionist, admitted that Israel is indiscriminately bombing Gaza.

1) Let’s say, just for discussion sake, that it were true that Israel was indiscriminately bombing Gaza with no concern whatsoever for military value of targets or lack thereof or potential civilian collateral and were doing this as a deliberate strategy (they’re not, but let’s say you are right and they are).  That would not be genocide in any way, shape, or form.  It would definitely be a brutal war crime, but it objectively would not be genocide.  That you seem to think it would be suggests you genuinely don’t understand what genocide is.  Yes, we all know you can Google the term and copy paste a definition, but you clearly don’t understand what it is or you’d have chosen an example of alleged conduct that…you know…would actually be genocide if Israel was doing it.

2) ROTFL.  I literally made that post as an experiment/test and boy did you flunk it.  I decided to make a lazy, one line drive by response with little-to-no thought put into it paired with a substantive, nuanced, detailed, and thoughtful response to your latest schtick and see what type of conversation you were actually looking to have in this thread.  Disappointingly, although unsurprisingly, you picked the one sentence section deliberately designed to be as devoid of substance as possible while not even acknowledging anything else in the post, much less actively engaging with it.  Really says a lot about what you’re looking to do here and none of it good.

Since you don't agree with the United Nations's definition of genocide, define "genocide" for me.

You’re only digging yourself into an even deeper hole.  Just put down the shovel and admit that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Israel is denying visas to UN employees.

Coincidence?

The problem isn't that I don't know what genocide is.

The problem is that you don't know what genocide is.

The problem is that you don’t know what genocide is nor do you care because you’re only in this to cheerlead the mass murder of (((Jews))).  

Accusing anyone who doubts Israel is telling the unvarnished truth is not wanting to mass murder Jews. This is why Israel is losing the propaganda war. People who question you are not all filthy anti-semites who would have been Nazis in the 1940s, and it would do you and other supporters of Israel a lot of good to remember that.

[GoTfan]

Imagine being so pro Likud that Tim Kaine has to call you out.

https://twitter.com/GuardianUS/status/1741212099618152918

If being pro-Israel automatically means you’re pro-Likud, does being pro-Palestinian automatically mean you’re pro-Hamas?  I disagree on both counts, but if we follow your line of reasoning, then the latter would seem to logically follow.

Well, it certainly foes seem like a number of people on here are pro-Likud, despite them constantly saying they are not.

[GoTfan]

Some people in the West are just stuck inside XX Century concepts of their nations and don’t realize new generations have a completely different background.

Jewish people were racially persecuted inside the West when these countries were all massively White dominated, with white western supremacists seeing Jews as the “Lesser White” ethnicity in their countries.

Nowadays the context is completely different, with Arab and Muslim immigrants receiving the short end of the stick by far and the US soon becoming a non-white and non-western majority country due to increase of American Latino immigration.

The Western world as it existed simply doesn’t anymore, globalization transformed it into something entirely new. And Jewish people are indeed holders of white privilege in this context in the same way WASPs have always been in places like the USA.

For WHITE people I understand why they might see Jews under the lenses of white guilt because of the racially motivated massacre and genocide they as whites committed against them in first half of XX Century. However if you put yourself in the shoes of anyone who is NOT white, from their perspective the social difference between Jewish people and the average White person in the West is basically non-existent.

White supremacists don’t see Jews as “lesser white” people, they don’t see us as white at all. In fact, they see us the way much of the left views white people- as the root of all evil.

It’s true that many nonwhites in America view Jews as simply another flavor of white people and lack “Holocaust guilt” that many whites have, but anti-Semitism among nonwhites is MUCH more common than among white people. Look at any poll on anti-Semitism is rare among whites but fairly common among blacks and Latinos. And among Arabs and Muslims it is very common and goes way beyond just anti-Israel attitudes.

Bigotry against Jews is not uncommon in the Arab community and vice versa. It's far from universal in either case but it's common enough for the overall situation to deserve special care.

You’re acting like the two are equivalent. All over the West, Jews get beat up and spit on by Muslims and Arabs. The reverse simply does not occur. If Jews are “bigoted” against Arabs (most are not) it would be because of their high likelihood of being anti-Semites.

I'm not the biggest fan of "oppression olympics" or broad claims of bigotry on a vast scale, but when some Arab Christian women are gunned down in a church in Gaza by the Israeli military and multiple mosques in Gaza get blown up or otherwise destroyed, and when the West stood by as its private investor cash helped fund the removing of West Bank Arabs of their wealth for the advancing of a settler project that stood directly against local Arabs (all while the far poorer Palestinians can't get Western aid to defend themselves from freaking pogroms), there's reason to believe that fixating on Arab anti-Semitism and holding them to a test that we ourselves would very easily fail if we were put in their place, is not just not constructive, but misses the point and how power has shifted since the 1920s and 1930s, when it was Arab willingness to use violence against them that was, on net, the bigger problem.
Israel is an mini-imperial power, and while Arabs are far from completely blameless here, Smotrich and Ben Gvir and radical Zionism are in fact the biggest potential boosters of future anti-Semitism. How do you think Arabs feel when they see Israeli government officials playing around and defiling the Dome of the Rock?

What on Earth does the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have to do with Jews getting beaten up and spit on in the West? Muslims getting triggered at Israeli official “allowing” a few Jews to pray at the holiest site in Judaism is justification to beat up Jews? And how does Israel having the upper hand vis-a-vis the Palestinians over the last few decades mean the “power has shifted” between Jews and Arabs in the West? Explain how that works.

Reality is: even the most pro-Israel, anti-Arab Jews in the West DO NOT beat up or attack Muslims and Arabs. It just doesn’t happen. The reverse happens all the time.

Didn't a kid get stabbed by his landlord a while back for being Muslim?

[GoTfan]

Alright dude, I'm done talking to a brick wall.  Total waste of effort...

So someone brings multiple quotes of major Israeli leaders, not "Tom Tancredo figures" as you like to call them saying these things, and you're response is "My efforts are wasted on you?"

[GoTfan]

Now Gmac is advocating for a forced removal because "Oh it's not a good place to live anyway."

[GoTfan]

Now Gmac is advocating for a forced removal because "Oh it's not a good place to live anyway."

I am not advocating for anything, just correcting false information when I see it.

"Oh hey, I know you didn't spend your entire life here, but it's so much better than where you were before!"

I've studied history about as much as anyone else has, so I can tell you a certain incident in the US where this exact argument was made.

[GoTfan]

Thank you President Biden for bringing Bibi to heel.
https://twitter.com/israelipm/status/1745186120109846710?s=46&t=o2RmfeV6yYJk...

Does anyone actually believe this?

[GoTfan]

The Israeli operation is to destroy Hamas.  It was universally recognized within about five seconds of the 10/7 news breaking that this would be Israel's objective.  Sorry it's taking longer than you expected.  Maybe if the Gazans were willing to help Israel out it would go quicker.

After all, allegedly they want to get rid of Hamas even more badly than Israel does, right?

But it's just been too hard for the last sixteen years.  Otherwise they totally would have.  But it's just so difficult.  So why even try.

Much more difficult than, say, the French Resistance.  What are the Nazis compared to the might of Hamas?

And it's not like an anti-Hamas resistance movement would be able to get support from, say, Israel or America or the EU or, heck, Fatah.  Or ISIS, who also hate Hamas and declared war on them six years ago.

The truth is that even the Gazans who oppose Hamas are more upset about the decline of living conditions under Hamas rule than they are about Hamas's obsession with killing Jewish civilians (which they by-and-large support).  That anti-Hamas protest I mentioned earlier this year?  It was because Qatar used to pay a monthly stipend to Gazan families, and Hamas started taxing that stipend so they could send the money back to Qatar for Ismail Haniyeh to use on more tributes to his Telegram findomme.  That's what the Gazans were upset about -- not the missile attacks, not the suicide bombings, not the kidnappings.

If Hamas were able to competently administer Gaza but otherwise maintain their fanatical extremist ideology and obsession with killing innocent Jews at all costs, I'd be willing to bet their approvals would be 80-90%.

So a Palestinian gives you their opinion on the whole thing-which us going to have significantly more personal insight that most of us the rest of us-and you just want to rubbish them and pretend they're an idiot?

[GoTfan]

So a Palestinian gives you their opinion on the whole thing-which us going to have significantly more personal insight that most of us the rest of us-and you just want to rubbish them and pretend they're an idiot?

Just because someone is Palestinian doesn't mean everything they say about Palestine or the Israel-Gaza conflict is true, lmao.  Hamas is Palestinian, do you take everything Hamas says about Gaza as gospel because they have "significantly more personal insight"?

Or, and I know this is crazy but bear with me, do you just pick things people say that you agree with, and invent rationalizations after the fact for why you choose to continue believing them in the face of compelling facts and arguments?

All I pointed out wad that someone who is Palestinian is worth listening to. I've spoken to people like Ray Goldfield about my position and while we don't exactly see eye to eye, we do recognise that someone's opinion is not automatically worthless because they happen to be different from ours.

[GoTfan]

Highly disturbing developments coming out of Israel.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/13/it-is-a-time-of-witch-hunts-in-israel-teacher-held-in-solitary-confinement-for-posting-concern-about-gaza-deaths

An unlikely charge of intent to commit treason landed Meir Baruchin, a grey-haired, softly spoken history and civics teacher, in the solitary confinement wing of Jerusalem’s notorious “Russian Compound” prison in early November.

The evidence compiled by police who handcuffed him, then drove to his apartment and ransacked it as he watched, was a series of Facebook posts he’d made, mourning the civilians killed in Gaza, criticising the Israeli military, and warning against wars of revenge.

“Horrific images are pouring in from Gaza. Entire families were wiped out. I don’t usually upload pictures like this, but look what we do in revenge,” said a message on 8 October, below a picture of the family of Abu Daqqa, killed in one of the first airstrikes on Gaza. “Anyone who thinks this is justified because of what happened yesterday, should unfriend themselves. I ask everyone else to do everything possible to stop this madness. Stop it now. Not later, Now!!!”

Ten days after that Facebook message, he was fired from his teaching job in Petach Tikvah municipality. Less than a month later he was in a high-security jail, detained to give police more time to investigate critical views he had never tried to hide.

He was interrogated again before a second judge ordered his release. Questioners told him his posts were like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, among the most famously antisemitic documents in the world. “I’m a history teacher, so I asked, ‘Did you ever read them?’ They didn’t respond.”

When his name is clear, Baruchin plans to sue Israeli media who reported police charges without asking for his response or looking for evidence, and accused him of justifying and legitimising Hamas.

Only Democracy in the Middle East^TM

That talking point deserves to be shredded, yes. Israel is a fairly typical Middle Eastern country whether or not the people there or elsewhere would hate to acknowledge it.

Imagine actually believing this

The people *currently* in charge of Israel see democracy as an inconvenience at best.

Look at who Bibi's mates are - Putin, Orban, Trump. By their friends ye shall know them.

And yet an Israel that has been led by Bibi for so long is still a million times more free, more democratic, and more equal than any of its neighbors.

That's debatable at this point. His attempts at reforming the Supreme Court showed exactly the sort of nation he wants Israel to be. He has no interest in democracy and I would bet my life he sees it as something to be removed rather than maintained.

The man wants to be a dictator.

[GoTfan]

Right; the aid is being packaged with fuel which is permitting Hamas to continue its war. We should not permit any authorities except the IDF and open, explicit collaborators to distribute any aid in the Gaza Strip, and it's horrible that we have an international community which is permitting shipments of aid to continue.

https://twitter.com/HeTows/status/1744613147028185501

Instead of just families of hostage victims, we should build the world where eight billion people, of all races and religions, block the path and prevent anything from entering not distributed by the IDF; where the figure of the useful fool who calls for supplies to be sent to the enemies of humanity has been completely eliminated from the human consciousness. And the happy thing is that I think that really is the world that is very slowly being built, but it's disappointing to be reminded that it's nowhere near built yet.

You are a uniquely evil person. I wonder what Gazan civilians did in your eyes to be forced to starve to death. Then again, it's not out of the ordinary for you.

[GoTfan]

Could any of the people changing their avatars and/or usernames in support of Israel despite having no connection to it explain their reasoning for me? Doing it for Gaza makes some sense if you believe that Israel is committing a genocide (see also: the outpouring of support in the form of such changes for the Armenians over the past few years). But there’s neither that nor a ‘plucky little Belgium’ sort of thing going for it. Anyway: please?

Israel supporters would say that Israel was the victim of a genocidal attack on 10/7, so it’s the same logic.

Sure, that makes sense. At which point they would also be counting the Israeli intervention in Gaza as genocidal. So then it becomes a matter of supporting a government that is, by such logic, committing genocide against a people who did not (unless by such logic 9/11 was a legitimate military attack against legitimate military targets) (so "you started it!", if someone thought that was an excuse, wouldn't work anyway) during a war against a group that did. On second thought, I don't think it makes sense at all.

They don't count the Israeli intervention in Gaza as genocidal though.

I'm being generous and assuming consistency in their logic rather than it being an afterthought to supporting a particular 'team' because ??.

Hamas clearly states and acts on its intentions to kill Jews. Israel is fighting to eliminate Hamas whilst protecting civilian lives as much as possible. It's not even close to moral equivalency between the two. Accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians is like accusing the WW2 Allies of genocide against Germans...

And then there's mainstream Israeli politicians calling for Gaza to be levelled. I believe the Israeli President recently said that there are no innocent people in Gaza.

That sort of rhetoric is quote alarming, as is the willingness of some people to dismiss them.

[GoTfan]

Could any of the people changing their avatars and/or usernames in support of Israel despite having no connection to it explain their reasoning for me? Doing it for Gaza makes some sense if you believe that Israel is committing a genocide (see also: the outpouring of support in the form of such changes for the Armenians over the past few years). But there’s neither that nor a ‘plucky little Belgium’ sort of thing going for it. Anyway: please?

Israel supporters would say that Israel was the victim of a genocidal attack on 10/7, so it’s the same logic.

Sure, that makes sense. At which point they would also be counting the Israeli intervention in Gaza as genocidal. So then it becomes a matter of supporting a government that is, by such logic, committing genocide against a people who did not (unless by such logic 9/11 was a legitimate military attack against legitimate military targets) (so "you started it!", if someone thought that was an excuse, wouldn't work anyway) during a war against a group that did. On second thought, I don't think it makes sense at all.

They don't count the Israeli intervention in Gaza as genocidal though.

I'm being generous and assuming consistency in their logic rather than it being an afterthought to supporting a particular 'team' because ??.

Hamas clearly states and acts on its intentions to kill Jews. Israel is fighting to eliminate Hamas whilst protecting civilian lives as much as possible. It's not even close to moral equivalency between the two. Accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians is like accusing the WW2 Allies of genocide against Germans...

And then there's mainstream Israeli politicians calling for Gaza to be levelled. I believe the Israeli President recently said that there are no innocent people in Gaza.

That sort of rhetoric is quote alarming, as is the willingness of some people to dismiss them.

And some prominent Allied politicians in WW2 advocated for the Morgenthau Plan. Does that mean the war was an anti-German genocide?

I never claimed it was a genocide. Merely pointed out that there has been some alarming rhetoric.

[GoTfan]

Will be interesting to see which Dems have a conscious.

I'm guessing around 45+ of them, minus Bernie, Warren, Markey, and a few strays!

Why do you, Vosem, and others in the pro-Israel crowd refuse to acknowledge the fact that Israel, like pretty much all states in history, can, has, and have committed human rights abuses during war? Do you seriously believe Israel can do no wrong?

This is another one of those linguistic games where, similar to "genocide", you guys are going to speak out of one side of your mouth to say that "human rights abuse" means the wanton slaughter of innocents, torture, rape, and whatever other heinous and deplorable crime you want to accuse Israel of committing, but then out the other side of your mouth you'll say that, like, Israel refusing to release aid packages of food on one occasion (regardless of context) is a "human rights abuse."  And the point is to get us to say "well yes that does meet the technical definition of a human rights abuse, so Israel is committing a human rights abuse" so you can go "AHA!  You admit we were right all along, Israel IS committing human rights abuses!" where now you're using "human rights abuse" to refer to the heinous crimes Israel isn't committing, but which you're grouping under the same definition.

Again, again, again, I have been saying this again and again and again, over and over again, once more, again and again, throughout this thread.  Can we please stop with the pseudo-lawyer crap where you guys are just trying to twist Israel's actions to meet some definition of some loaded thought-terminating term or another?  Can you talk about what Israel is actually doing?  Can you discuss those activities on their actual merits rather than bickering about whether or not they meet some definition of some term that, under some other circumstances, can be used to indicate that a heinous crime has been committed?  Can you just say "Israel is doing X and that's bad because Y" rather than trying to hide behind layer after layer of obfuscation and dictionary game?

We have people on this thread advocating for starving civilians.

I have not once claimed what's happening is a genocide because it's a loaded term that is thrown around way too freely, but surely we can admit that Israel has been too free in its use of weapons and that some of the statements made by mainstream Israeli leaders are quite alarming, right?

Surely calling for some restraint is not anti-Israel, right?

[GoTfan]

People like Vosem don't consider military dictatorship in the West Bank or 20,000 dead women/children "violence" because Palestinian lives don't really matter to them. Just a statistic or a nuisance.

Yeah, the issue is that if Hamas wins then participants in the next dozen conflicts will be incentivized to make those bigger statistics.

Wars with many more than 20,000 dead have been justified in the past, and wars with many more than 20,000 dead will be justified in the future. But we can try to set up norms today which will make future bloody wars less likely. (This is why Hamas should unconditionally surrender and agree in good faith to carry out Israeli policies.)

Does the life of any Palestinian matter to you at all? Or is this just an extension of your Social Darwinism?

[GoTfan]

People like Vosem don't consider military dictatorship in the West Bank or 20,000 dead women/children "violence" because Palestinian lives don't really matter to them. Just a statistic or a nuisance.

Yeah, the issue is that if Hamas wins then participants in the next dozen conflicts will be incentivized to make those bigger statistics.

Wars with many more than 20,000 dead have been justified in the past, and wars with many more than 20,000 dead will be justified in the future. But we can try to set up norms today which will make future bloody wars less likely. (This is why Hamas should unconditionally surrender and agree in good faith to carry out Israeli policies.)

Does the life of any Palestinian matter to you at all? Or is this just an extension of your Social Darwinism?

I think letting Hamas win (even in some symbolic way; they must either be destroyed or repudiate their beliefs and work towards letting their former enemies win) would create a world where there are many more wars and those wars are much more deadly; even beyond this, Palestinian liberationism as an ideology offensive to ordinary principles of justice, for much the same reasons fascism was. Nationalism is acceptable, for any nation, but for peace to be preserved it can never come at the expense of an existing nation. Palestinian nationalism may not be anti-Zionist for the same reason German nationalism may not be anti-Polish, or Argentine nationalism anti-Falklander.

I think that Israel should fight in a way that minimizes civilian casualties where possible; that there have been only 20,000 deaths total out of a population of 2 million (of whom something like 7,000 are estimated to be militants), where their enemy openly uses human shields, suggests very strongly to me that this is happening. But in principle, I think if Hamas fought in a way that meant that they could not be defeated except by killing every person in Gaza, then I think that should be done (and if they fought in a way that meant that they could not be defeated except by killing every person on Earth, my very strong instinct would be to call their bluff). Fiat iustitia, ruat caelum.

The idea that we should give in to the demands of militant groups if not doing so would cause many death is evil, and needs to die. I don't know whether this codes as a 'yes' or 'no' answer to your question ("Do the lives of any Palestinian matter to you at all?" -- they matter as much as that of any other person, so a lot but not more than humanity's future ability to thrive in peace). Your question, fundamentally, codes to me pretty strongly as 'this is the wrong question to ask, to a degree which implies that the person asking it is confused about basic aspects of reality, or is living in a different reality from me'.

(Also, what do you mean by 'Social Darwinism'? Do you mean that I think people should be permitted to purchase access to healthcare instead of forcing them to live in societies where access to healthcare is impossible in principle? I also think that is just, yes, and in principle worth fighting and dying for.)

So 20,000 dead, the majority of which you've just admitted are civilians, are acceptable casualties to you?

In order to even take your argument seriously, we have to start from the viewpoint that Palestinians are less than human.

Edit: Just saw the part I bolded. Holy s**t you're evil.

I mean, to defeat Hamas, yes, absolutely. But I don't think this means Palestinians are less than human: I would say the same about any other people in that position. The people who raised me fought in years-long wars with orders of magnitude more civilian casualties in every battle, and I think they were right to do so. (My great-grandfather was part of a partisan group which relayed information to a government bombing the area where most of that partisan group's homes were, and most of the people in that group belonged to an ethnicity that government had deliberately starved less than a decade earlier. And they were right to do so.) The struggle against evil will always be with us, but by not giving in to the propaganda that makes you think that you should give up on a war because of civilian casualties, you can at least reduce the number of civilian casualties in the long run.

Also, really, I would've thought the sentence immediately after the bolded one would've upset you more than the one you bolded.

So now civilian causalities are propaganda?

Bloody hell.

[GoTfan]

People like Vosem don't consider military dictatorship in the West Bank or 20,000 dead women/children "violence" because Palestinian lives don't really matter to them. Just a statistic or a nuisance.

Yeah, the issue is that if Hamas wins then participants in the next dozen conflicts will be incentivized to make those bigger statistics.

Wars with many more than 20,000 dead have been justified in the past, and wars with many more than 20,000 dead will be justified in the future. But we can try to set up norms today which will make future bloody wars less likely. (This is why Hamas should unconditionally surrender and agree in good faith to carry out Israeli policies.)

Does the life of any Palestinian matter to you at all? Or is this just an extension of your Social Darwinism?

I think letting Hamas win (even in some symbolic way; they must either be destroyed or repudiate their beliefs and work towards letting their former enemies win) would create a world where there are many more wars and those wars are much more deadly; even beyond this, Palestinian liberationism as an ideology offensive to ordinary principles of justice, for much the same reasons fascism was. Nationalism is acceptable, for any nation, but for peace to be preserved it can never come at the expense of an existing nation. Palestinian nationalism may not be anti-Zionist for the same reason German nationalism may not be anti-Polish, or Argentine nationalism anti-Falklander.

I think that Israel should fight in a way that minimizes civilian casualties where possible; that there have been only 20,000 deaths total out of a population of 2 million (of whom something like 7,000 are estimated to be militants), where their enemy openly uses human shields, suggests very strongly to me that this is happening. But in principle, I think if Hamas fought in a way that meant that they could not be defeated except by killing every person in Gaza, then I think that should be done (and if they fought in a way that meant that they could not be defeated except by killing every person on Earth, my very strong instinct would be to call their bluff). Fiat iustitia, ruat caelum.

The idea that we should give in to the demands of militant groups if not doing so would cause many death is evil, and needs to die. I don't know whether this codes as a 'yes' or 'no' answer to your question ("Do the lives of any Palestinian matter to you at all?" -- they matter as much as that of any other person, so a lot but not more than humanity's future ability to thrive in peace). Your question, fundamentally, codes to me pretty strongly as 'this is the wrong question to ask, to a degree which implies that the person asking it is confused about basic aspects of reality, or is living in a different reality from me'.

(Also, what do you mean by 'Social Darwinism'? Do you mean that I think people should be permitted to purchase access to healthcare instead of forcing them to live in societies where access to healthcare is impossible in principle? I also think that is just, yes, and in principle worth fighting and dying for.)

So 20,000 dead, the majority of which you've just admitted are civilians, are acceptable casualties to you?

In order to even take your argument seriously, we have to start from the viewpoint that Palestinians are less than human.

Edit: Just saw the part I bolded. Holy s**t you're evil.

I mean, to defeat Hamas, yes, absolutely. But I don't think this means Palestinians are less than human: I would say the same about any other people in that position. The people who raised me fought in years-long wars with orders of magnitude more civilian casualties in every battle, and I think they were right to do so. (My great-grandfather was part of a partisan group which relayed information to a government bombing the area where most of that partisan group's homes were, and most of the people in that group belonged to an ethnicity that government had deliberately starved less than a decade earlier. And they were right to do so.) The struggle against evil will always be with us, but by not giving in to the propaganda that makes you think that you should give up on a war because of civilian casualties, you can at least reduce the number of civilian casualties in the long run.

Also, really, I would've thought the sentence immediately after the bolded one would've upset you more than the one you bolded.

So now civilian causalities are propaganda?

Bloody hell.

Since when has the narrative "you shouldn't fight a group if that would cost more than some number of lives" not been authoritarian propaganda?

I'm not the one advocating for wiping out Gaza here.