Israel-Gaza war

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

I'm having a lot of trouble following exactly what your analogy is with all the Good German stuff, but Hamas has a long, well-documented, rich history of disguising themselves as civilians -- it is literally their modus operandi -- so if the Soviets had a rich history of disguising themselves as civilians and that was their main tactic in fighting Nazi Germany, then yes I would be way more inclined to believe that some Nazi war crime against "civilians" was actually against disguised Soviets.  Because the odds of that being the case are way higher.

For example, at Stalingrad both sides wore down their uniforms to tatters by the end of the fighting and were wearing civilian clothing or even each other's uniforms.  So if you showed me a video from the last days of Stalingrad of the Nazis assassinating someone dressed in civilian clothing, or even someone dressed in a Nazi uniform, and tried to tell me it was actually a Red Army soldier, I would probably believe you, or at least not care enough to change my worldview based on my not believing you, because I know that kind of thing was happening a lot at the time.

1. The specific bolded statement wasn't that Hamas was fighting in civilian clothing, which would put them in the same category as nearly every guerrilla force ever, but that they were raising the white flag only to launch an attack. The former is so ubiquitous as to be hardly even worth mentioning whereas the latter is actual perfidy. Do you have any actual evidence of this?

2. Okay, here's a real life example: when the Czech resistance assassinated SS arch-criminal Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazis responded by raiding the town of Lidice and conducting reprisals in the area, killing thousands. Normal people generally refer to this policy as collective punishment and a war crime but they were business as usual by your standards: the Czech partisans wore civilian clothes, they hid amongst the civilian population ("human shields"), and the reprisal raids did catch some actual partisans. Considering that the IDF defended bombing Jabalia and killing hundreds of civilians to get a single Hamas fighter the actual fighter-civilian ratio could well have been comparable to that of IDF operations. Would you say the Czechs or the Nazis bear ultimate responsibility for the reprisal massacres?

There's also the fact that Nazi Germany was an evil military force that deliberately targeted civilians for extermination, whereas Israel does not generally do that.  I know you are about to bombard me with links from your bookmarks tab of individual cases where individual Israeli soldiers did shoot civilians, but it is not the policy of the IDF to slaughter civilians, whereas it was the policy of the Nazis -- they literally had units whose entire job was to follow behind the main army and slaughter anyone who was still alive in the territories they conquered.

What the IDF claims their policy to be is irrelevant; the Wehrmacht would have said they were obeying the laws of war right up until they surrendered. What matters is their actual conduct, and in reality they've (sticking entirely to the cases they've admitted to) sniped civilians waving white flags, sniped women sheltering in a church and even shot their own hostages in a close quarters execution. In every case there has been zero accountability for the perpetrators and the IDF has consistently demonstrated a pattern of lying to protect its war criminals. For example, trying to cover up Shireen Abu Akleh's assassination by an IDF sniper and refusing to bring justice against the killer of a journalist from their supposed "greatest ally". If they won't do anything about an American citizen getting murdered then what chance do the Gazans have?

If the policy of the IDF is "we aren't explicitly telling you to slaughter civilians, we'll just protect you from prosecution if you do and also we'll let you keep anything you can loot" then it effectively is their policy to slaughter civilians.

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https://twitter.com/aghamilton29/status/1774927906055090668?s=46&t=4hxUtnUUq...

If we take the IDF at their word and assume that they

1. actually successfully neutralized Hamas militarily in Gaza City and
2. actually cared about Palestinian civilians

then the obvious question is: why didn't the IDF establish Al-Shifa as a humanitarian safe zone after they took it over the first time? Instead they raided it three times and left nothing but a burnt out husk

https://twitter.com/BTnewsroom/status/1774887473539141960

pretty incongruous with their stated claims, though they've got such a long record of blatantly lying that I'm surprised anyone believes them that isn't paid to believe them.

So here's what actually happened: JSIL rolled up on a hospital, established an "extermination zone" and began executing people including doctors and children. Not with the goal of achieving any military objective but with the goal of engaging in collective punishment by intentionally destroying the Gazan healthcare system. The fact that even the halfwit you're quoting says that they're firing around Al Shifa rather than inside Al Shifa suggests that the Israelis attacked and the bulk of the militants showed up after the fact.

Under those circumstances, firing RPGs at the ravaging horde of sick freaks trying to torture and slaughter a bunch of hospital patients is probably the most morally righteous thing Hamas has ever done. The IDF can't be allowed to commit atrocities without paying a cost.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

By contrast, the hospital complex raid was a pretty unambiguous military success and I don’t chide Israel at all for doing it.  This was an area where Israel had expelled Hamas before and then Hamas essentially came back and converted it into a military intelligence compound of sorts.  A lot of valuable intelligence and documents were seized, hundreds of Hamas and PIJ militants were captured, some notable lower-level Hamas intelligence operatives were killed, and one of the top ten guys in Hamas’ military hierarchy was killed in a gunfight while he tried to escape Israeli soldiers who found him hiding in the maternity ward (hot off the heels of another notable military guy turning out to have been unexpectedly killed in the Issa airstrike, making it a two for one).

That said, it is important to acknowledge that the Al-Shaifa raid was not without its downside.  Because Hamas made a major base in a large hospital complex upon quietly retaking it, tons of Palestinian civilians who had been sheltering there were in the line of fire.  While I think Israel was definitely right to drive Hamas from the complex and that the operation should be considered a success, it is still important to acknowledge and not hand waive away the very real human cost resulting from Hamas’ strategy of turning Palestinian civilians into human shields.  It makes the unnecessary loss of innocent lives inevitable and that is a horrible tragedy whether those lives are Palestinian, Israeli, or any other group.  Innocent lives are innocent lives and you can acknowledge the necessity of something like the Al-Shaifa Hospital operation while still mourning the innocent lives lost.

Once again, why did the IDF raid the hospital (three times!) instead of controlling the hospital and using it as an aid distribution site? That would obviously prevent Hamas from returning and would solve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza City while also letting whoever the Israelis want to replace Gaza gain some influence and reputation along the way.

Also, why would Hamas and PIJ hide out in a hospital when the IDF has made it abundantly clear that they have no problem sniping at, bombing or raiding hospitals without hestitation? Obviously human shields don't work against Israel, so why would they use the exact same tactic at the exact same location multiple times in a row?

Well, the picture starts to become clear when you realize that the highest ranking Hamas members to get eliminated weren't military operatives but members of the civil administration and police, the same police force Biden explicitly told Netanyahu to stop targeting for the sake of maintaining order and distributing aid. That would be pretty strange if it were a Hamas military headquarters but makes perfect sense if Hamas did what the Israelis should have been doing: using Al Shifa as an aid distribution site and a hospital.

But we don't have to speculate that the IDF's cover story about a "terrorist stronghold" is total BS because they were stupid enough to post a collage of "dead terrorists" that included people that aren't in Gaza, people that were dead before the raid even started, people that are still alive, doctors who clearly bear no affiliation with Hamas and duplicate entries that the intern tasked with pumping out propaganda forgot to remove

https://twitter.com/ihcentoo/status/1771312814746906809

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

https://twitter.com/SuppressedNws/status/1775143650063790563

As one xitter sage put it, they accidentally struck the first aid vehicle, then accidentally struck the second aid vehicle, then they accidentally struck the rescue vehicle to finish off the survivors. This had the "unintended" outcome of forcing international aid organizations, the ones that were supposed to replace UNRWA to leave Gaza, coincidentally achieving their goal of starving Gaza. Netanyahu "apologized" with a barely disguised grin and Israelis celebrated the deaths of those who would dare to feed their enemies

https://twitter.com/SuppressedNws/status/1775166616143094071

Might be an aid truck too far though, because this time they made the mistake of blowing up a bunch of Westerners instead of Palestinians. Not just any Westerners, though; World Central Kitchen is intimately tied to Washington DC and its leadership is full of people with personal connections to decision making ghouls right up to and including Joe Biden. So for once, the victims won't be Shireen Abu Akleh'd or Rachel Corrie'd but are being treated as actual victims and Western media outlets have suddenly realized the absurdity of trusting Israel to investigate itself. The founder was basically 100% pro-Israel from the start (though he sure isn't anymore!) so the tired excuses used to justify destroying UNRWA won't fly. Whether this will actually translate into political action before Israel is able to provoke a regional war with Iran remains to be seen

In other news, "‘Not a normal war’: doctors say children have been targeted by Israeli snipers in Gaza":

The IDF said it “completely rejects” allegations that its snipers deliberately fire on civilians. It said it cannot address individual shootings “without coordinates of the incidents”.

“The IDF only targets terrorists and military targets. In stark contrast to Hamas’s deliberate attacks on Israeli civilians, including men, women and children, the IDF follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm,” it said.

Doctors say otherwise.

Dr Vanita Gupta, an intensive care doctor at a New York City hospital, volunteered at Gaza’s European hospital in January. One morning, three badly wounded children arrived in quick succession. Their families told Gupta that the children had been together in the street when they came under fire and that there had been no other shooting in the area. She said no wounded adults were brought in to the hospital at the same time and from the same place.

“One child, I could see there was a shot to the head. They were doing CPR on this five- or six-year-old girl who obviously died,” said Gupta.

“There was another little girl about the same age. I saw a bullet entry wound on her head. Her father was there, crying and asking me, ‘Can you save her? She’s my only child.’”

Gupta said that a third young child also had a shot to the head and was sent for a CT scan.

“The neurosurgeon looked and said, ‘There’s no hope.’ You could see the bullet had gone through the head. I don’t know how old he was, but young,” she said.

Family members told Gupta that the Israeli army had withdrawn from the area about four kilometres from the hospital.

“They said people started returning to their homes because the army was gone. But the snipers stayed on. The families said they opened fire at the children,” she said.

Doctors who worked at the Nasser hospital in southern Gaza said what appeared to be targeted Israeli fire killed more than two dozen people, including children, as they entered or left the hospital in the first weeks of this year.

Among the casualties was 14-year-old Ruwa Qdeih. Doctors say she was shot dead outside the hospital in Khan Younis as she went to collect water. They said there was no fighting in the area at the time and that she was killed by a single shot and then men who went to recover her body were also shot at.

In Gaza City, three-year-old Emad Abu al-Qura was shot outside his home as he went to buy fruit with his cousin, Hadeel, a 20-year-old medical student, who was also killed. The family said they were targeted by an Israeli sniper.

A video of the pair lying together in the street shows Emad still alive after he is first hit and trying to lift his head. More shots hit the ground close by including one that strikes a plank next to Emad. The boy’s mother said he was then hit again and this time killed.

Hadeel’s father, Haroon, saw the shooting.

“The targeting of civilians is very clear. It is a deliberate direct targeting aimed at killing civilians without reason, without there being any events, without there being any resistance. They deliberately killed Hadeel and Emad,” he told Al Jazeera.

Other young victims include 14-year-old Nahedh Barbakh, who was hit by sniper fire alongside his 20-year-old brother, Ramez, as they followed Israeli military orders to evacuate an area west of Khan Younis in late January, according to the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

According to a witness interviewed by Euro-Med Monitor, Nahedh was carrying a white flag to lead the way for his family, but after walking just a few steps from the house he was hit in the leg by a bullet. As the teenager attempted to turn back home he was shot in the back and head, the witness said.

Ramez was shot through the heart when he tried to rescue his brother.

The family decided it was too dangerous to recover the bodies and eventually fled the area, leaving the brothers still lying in the street. A last photograph shows Ramez stretched across Nahedh’s body with the white flag tangled between them.

Witnesses said the shots came from the rooftop of a nearby building taken over by Israeli soldiers.

https://time.com/6962557/china-us-asean-southeast-asia-rivalry-survey/

"Is Southeast Asia Leaning More Toward China? New Survey Shows Mixed Results"

A clear swing in SE Asia opinion toward PRC and away from USA.  This is mostly about the Muslim states.  The reason is clear: Israel-Hamas War

It's pretty underreported in the media but this war is just a total catastrophe for American influence. Jordan was about the most pro-American Arab country there is (excluding a few tiny Gulf states) and now they're out on the streets calling for blood. The Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood has been angling to take advantage while the UAE and Saudis were sufficiently spooked to issue a declaration of their full support for King Abdullah. Iraqi Kataib Hezbollah even threatened to send 12,000 militiamen to Jordan and Israeli papers are starting to take the risk of a Jordanian crisis seriously, though it's still unclear how serious KH is and whether the Iranians actually want chaos in Jordan.

https://twitter.com/misra_amaresh/status/1775390863419711698

At the same time, attempts by the Palestinian Authority to crack down on armed groups in Tulkarem backfired and has resulted in outright combat between the two, combat that the PA seems to have gotten the worst of

https://twitter.com/warfareanalysis/status/1775219076077584518

to make it worse, the only anti-PA force to take casualties was the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, nominally part of the same Fatah movement that the PA is a part of. If even the AAMB are fighting the PA then their political legitimacy in the West Bank is basically nonexistent.

Some Israelis seem to think the PA and Heshemites are actually their enemies, but both are actually silent allies of Israel who release pressure from the Palestinians and Jordanians through tough rhetoric while quietly suppressing more radical forces. Netanyahu's repeated humiliations of these regimes trying to get even the most basic concessions might make Israeli voters think he's tough and doesn't bow to Arabs but they also destroy the illusion that the collaborationists are anything other than puppets. If they think King Abdullah or Abbas are enemies of Israel then they'll discover what a real enemy can do when they're replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

Israeli war cabinet agreed on increasing humanitarian aid to Gaza, hours after the phone call between Netanyahu and Biden. New aid corridor will open on land, and another on the sea. The IDF is conducting an investigation on the WCK attack and several officers already fired. Pressure works.

I am very glad that this has happened, but it is frankly shameful that this is what it took for Biden to apply sufficient pressure to Israel even though pressure is clearly very effective.

Kind of kills the idea that Biden was doing everything he could and that he's simply powerless to stop Netanyahu. The IDF applied their usual targeting standards to foreign employees of a DC bigshot instead of Palestinian UNRWA workers and suddenly Joe discovers the ability to force open the land crossings

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Israeli military fires two senior officers as report finds strike on aid workers was in ‘serious violation of commands’

The IDF fired two senior officers and reprimanded a top commander as it admitted a catalog of failures in a a drone strike on an aid convoy in Gaza, including that it killed aid workers who had survived an initial attack.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Friday that “those who approved the strike were convinced that they were targeting armed Hamas operatives,” calling the attack “a grave mistake stemming from a serious failure due to a mistaken identification.”

It said the strike was carried out in “serious violation of the commands and IDF Standard Operating Procedures,” and dismissed a major and a colonel in reserve. Three other IDF officials were formally reprimanded; the commanders of the brigade and division involved, and the commander of the Southern Command, who bore “overall responsibility.”

Seven aid workers – three Britons, a Palestinian, a US-Canadian dual citizen, an Australian and a Pole – were killed in Monday’s strikes on cars operated by the World Central Kitchen (WCK), setting off fury in those countries.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/05/middleeast/israel-idf-world-central-kitchen-strike-report-intl/index.html

Not good enough. They need to be court-martialled at a minimum, and that assumes that they're not just being used as scapegoats.

The investigation will likely take a while, but this is a clear first step. Even if they don't wind up convicted, they can't be allowed to stay in control of the division.

Who gives a sh*t what an investigation led by the Israelis says? Would you trust an investigation of Russian war crimes from Russia or an investigation of Hamas war crimes from Hamas?

There needs to be a full investigation from a reliable third party, not the IDF.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

Israeli war cabinet agreed on increasing humanitarian aid to Gaza, hours after the phone call between Netanyahu and Biden. New aid corridor will open on land, and another on the sea. The IDF is conducting an investigation on the WCK attack and several officers already fired. Pressure works.

I am very glad that this has happened, but it is frankly shameful that this is what it took for Biden to apply sufficient pressure to Israel even though pressure is clearly very effective.

Kind of kills the idea that Biden was doing everything he could and that he's simply powerless to stop Netanyahu. The IDF applied their usual targeting standards to foreign employees of a DC bigshot instead of Palestinian UNRWA workers and suddenly Joe discovers the ability to force open the land crossings

I don't really agree. Biden is tied most by US public opinion. US public opinion generally was more pro the entire package until now. Now that Americans are opposed enough to facets of this operation he has the room to move if he wants.

Despite what some Democrats seem to think, Joe Biden isn't a powerless old man: he's the President of the United States of America. If he really wanted he could have put his foot down, threatened serious consequences, and gotten concessions. He could have drawn the line at any of the countless atrocities up to this point, though politically the strongest opportunities probably would have either been the 1st Al Shifa raid where babies were pulled from incubators or right after the those hostages in Shujaiya were gunned down by their "rescuers". Instead he repeatedly refused to apply any pressure until people working for Washington DC's favourite chef were triple tapped by the IDF, and even then he had to be basically dragged into doing anything by angry DC elites. Even former members of the Bush administration are openly talking about conditioning aid at this point; imagine being more hardline in your support for Netanyahu than a Condoleezza Rice staffer!

This is the same Joe Biden who said to Menachem Begin in 1982,

“If attacks were launched from Canada into the US, everyone here would have said, ‘Attack all the cities of Canada, and we don’t care if all the civilians get killed.’”

in response Begin, former Irgun terrorist mastermind, had to explain to Joe Biden that killing civilians is bad actually. There's no sign Biden's views have moved an inch since then: Netanyahu could wipe out the Palestinians and he wouldn't care because to him Israeli life is infinitely valuable and Palestinian life is worthless. It's only when his personal acquaintances took action that he reacted. Frankly even Trump would have pulled Netanyahu's leash long before this point.

The tweet is just direct quotations from a piece written by a couple of NYT correspondents. Which is a weird way to share an important piece of journalism covering details of a process that most Americans know little about, to be fair, but Atlas can't seem to lay aside the assumption that Twitter is "what's happening"

I think most of us use Xitter in excess because it's easy to search for news if you know something happened but don't have a good source and more importantly because it embeds nicely and is visible to guests

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The drones are just the first wave to test air defenses, the cruise missiles and ballistic missiles just launched. The Houthis also just launched a drone-missile attack and it seems likely that Hezbollah will start their own barrage pretty soon.

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If I wanted my accusations to be taken seriously, I would simply not use an outlet named after a mass murder pogrom.

Fair enough, is this more suitable for your liking Ray?

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-17/ty-article/.premium/unrwa-israeli-army-forced-staff-to-confess-ties-to-hamas-using-torture/0000018e-ed4f-d5d5-a59f-ef5f32280000

Nope, strike two (can’t speak Ray, but I’m sure he’ll agree).  All this article says before the paywall is that UNRWA is making these allegations.  Given that they are facing extremely credible and serious allegations of deliberately and actively aiding a genocidal terrorist group, I’m not sure why anyone should trust a word they say.

The IDF is not "extremely credible", they're serial liars, there isn't a less credible source in existence. They tried to pass off Shireen Abu Akleh as a "crossfire victim" until the evidence that they were responsible was overwhelming. They tried to claim a scared girl was a legitimate target to gun down without repurcussions. They tried to pass off a calendar as a list of terrorist leaders. The fact that even the most sycophantic of IDF believers like the Germans are backing off should be a clear sign that they were, as usual, lying.

In other words, the group that got caught actively aiding Hamas’ genocidal terrorist campaign is attempting damage control by basically saying “umm…uhhh…I know!  The (((Israelis))) were torturing us!  Yeah, that’s it!  We didn’t do anything wrong when we aided Hamas and some of our employees took part in the 10/7 attack because the (((Israelis))) tortured false confessions out of our people!  Evidence?  Evidence?  We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence!  #TotalExoneration”

The fact that Israel tortures false confessions out of people, including children, isn't in question.

https://twitter.com/jakeshieldsajj/status/1733272221601390636

 It's utterly bizarre that you think UNRWA needs to provide evidence that they aren't guilty of being terrorists but Israel doesn't need to reveal any evidence that they are for you to believe them.

Also, there's nothing in this world that's more effective at promoting anti-semitism than the state of Israel and the would-be camp guards like you insisting that Jews and Israel are inseparable and if you have a problem with the state of babykilling freaks then you have a problem with Jews.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

The fact that Israel routinely uses torture isn't seriously in doubt.

Israel: Palestinian children still being tortured in Israeli prisons

Inside Israel’s torture camp for Gaza detainees

DEMOCRACY AND THE MIS-RULE OF LAW: THE ISRAELI LEGAL SYSTEM'S FAILURE TO PREVENT TORTURE IN THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Horrific testimonies: Israeli army tortures Palestinians in Gaza physically and psychologically

Israel/OPT: Horrifying cases of torture and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees amid spike in arbitrary arrests 

This stuff is just so obviously indefensible that most Israel defenders don't even try, they just pivot to how their feelings are hurt by words on the internet. Case in point,

Jake Shields is a more reliable source than the IDF, prove me wrong

(also he isn't the source the confessing IDF soldier is)

Just keep on telling on yourself. That's right, the CTE Nazi who calls people "Lying Jews" is a credible source. You're in good company.

I know this might be tough for you to understand but the point of the comparison was not "Jake Shields is trustworthy, just like the IDF", it was "the IDF is less reliable and trustworthy than a guy who gets punched in the face for a living"

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1787694082627694690

It's like a temper tantrum with tanks

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Trump just won the election today.

Israel winning the war is more important than the outcome of the election

Israel won the actual "war" long ago.

This is all about killing and destruction for the hell of it.

And keeping one deeply sociopathic individual in power for its own sake.

Is this what you "stand with Israel" for? To be reviled by the entire civilised world, and only supported by the most amoral monsters?? Is this what the old Zionist vision has come to?

Trump just won the election today.

Israel winning the war is more important than the outcome of the election

Israel won the actual "war" long ago.

This is all about killing and destruction for the hell of it.

And keeping one deeply sociopathic individual in power for its own sake.

Is this what you "stand with Israel" for? To be reviled by the entire civilised world, and only supported by the most amoral monsters?? Is this what the old Zionist vision has come to?

Considering that rockets are still being fired at Israel, it has arguably not one.

The only two ways those rockets stop - and stay stopped - is a long-term ceasefire or levelling Rafah. I think most of us would prefer the former.

Yes, I would agree Zionism has gone down a dark path.

Except the rockets aren't just fired from Rafah but from Khan Younis, Gaza City, even Beit Hanoun, all places that have been already leveled and where the IDF declared victory months ago.

So actually, there's only one way to make the rockets stop (or to rescue the hostages, or to stop Hezbollah and the Houthis) and that's a ceasefire, full stop. Going into Rafah won't change anything, it'll just lead to a bunch of pointless civilian deaths that alienate Israel from the rest of the world even more than they already are

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Can GMac or Ray explain where the Palestinians in Rafah are supposed to go? Egypt isn’t taking them, and Rafah is the southernmost town.

I mean, you basically just summed up the problem here. The people who ostensibly should be advocating for them are fine with them dying.

If you'll look carefully at what Israel is doing, they're going sector by sector rather than trying to take the whole city at once with overwhelming force. I think they're far more interested in dismantling Hamas infrastructure than anything else right now, and that essentially allows the civilians to evacuate to other areas of Rafah, shuttling them around as needed.

It's far from the ideal solution that could happen if Palestinian civilians actually had any friends in the Arab world, but what's unfolding is far from the worst-case scenario either.

"Dismantling Hamas infrastructure"

https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1787810091065917444

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Maybe if the Israelis acknowledged some kind of right to return then the Palestinians and Arabs wouldn't be so opposed to any kind of "temporary" displacement.

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Maybe if the Israelis acknowledged some kind of right to return then the Palestinians and Arabs wouldn't be so opposed to any kind of "temporary" displacement.

A good number of refugees never go back even when their previous country becomes safe. They've settled in their new country and put down roots.

Or it never becomes safe in their lifetime.

The problem here isn't that the Palestinians don't want to return, it's that they can't return.

Again, this is not a principled stand in favour of the dignity of the Palestinian people, it's Egypt not wanting to handle a bunch of refugees. The level of doublethink needed to believe that the Palestinians are currently victims of a genocide but also it would be morally wrong for their neighbour to take even a single refugee is staggering

The actual doublethink here is coming from the people who can't recognize the blatant injustice of someone from Milwaukee with zero connection to the land holding a permanent "right to return" to Israel when the actual recent inhabitants can never return. It's like if the Navajos had no rights or citizenship, were periodically bombed and then when anyone calls it out they go "why don't those damn Mexicans take them!"

Maybe if the Israelis acknowledged some kind of right to return then the Palestinians and Arabs wouldn't be so opposed to any kind of "temporary" displacement.

They can return to any part of the West Bank/Gaza as part of a negotiated settlement. Israel is not going to allow millions of the great-grandchildren of refugees into Israel. Anyone who pushes for this or for the idea that Israel does not have to dismantle settlements 25 miles inside the West Bank is just proposing a poison pill that gets things nowhere.

Putting aside the question of returning to pre-48 territory, it isn't remotely clear that they can return to "any part of West Bank/Gaza" at all. The precedent the Israelis have set after every war is that they have an unlimited right to establish settlements wherever they want from which they can exclude whoever happened to live there prior with zero repercussions. Even now they've occupied a corridor in northern Gaza from which they've repeatedly shot civilians attempting to return to their homes. If there weren't a few hundred thousand Gazans still in the north it's not hard to imagine some of those freaks currently blocking food aid managing to miraculously "sneak past" the IDF to establish new settlements in the rubble.

Anyway, the idea that there's going to be any kind of negotiated settlement regardless of "poison pills" seems far fetched. Neither side has any incentive. This war is the only thing keeping Netanyahu out of jail and even if he were to be removed there's zero political appetite for compromise from the Israeli public. At the same time, Hamas is politically stronger than ever and if the Israelis continue down their current path they'll become a pariah state and burn through all the advantages that let them dominate the Palestinians in the first place.

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The fact that the Nazis wanted to conquer most of Europe is kind of a defining feature of the Nazis. Without a constant stream of plunder to fund their war machine, without conquered Polish territory to hide their death camps and without constant expansion taking over major Jewish population centers or unwittingly "recapturing" Jewish refugees who had fled to France, Poland or the Soviet Union there would have been no Holocaust as we know it.

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The only situation where Israel's existence would be in question would be if the Israelis themselves destroyed their international support. South Africa was a nuclear power but all the nukes in the world couldn't stop the economic impact of boycotts, divestments and sanctions.

The only real power Hamas has is to provoke Israel into making stupid, self destructive decisions.

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Israelis don't give a crap because they've never faced any consequences.

That's a rather broad statement for several million people. Quite a few Israelis definitely faced consequences for Israel's actions before they migrated there and whenever they mention they're Israeli.

Hamas launched an attack and ordinary Palestinians are paying the price. Netanyahu and the Israeli political establishment stirred up conflict for decades prior for short term political benefit and ordinary people who lived near the border paid the price. As international opinion turns against Israel it won't be the decisionmakers at the top of the IDF who will be the first to bear the consequences but ordinary diaspora Jews, even people totally unrelated to Israel, because they're the easiest targets.

That's the whole trouble with ethnoreligious conflicts, the people who cause problems are rarely if ever the ones who pay the price because they're powerful, instead the most powerless people from their tribe are punished instead.

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The IDF's problem isn't that they're bad on offense, it's that they're have a conscript army that's designed to win a conventional war as quickly as possible using overwhelming firepower so they can be demobilized ASAP. Against huge, unmotivated conscript armies like those of Syria or Egypt this strategy worked great, but groups like Hezbollah and Hamas have learned that "Shock and Awe" can be beaten by waiting out the "Shock" underground and stretching out combat as long as possible. The IDF can't maintain the initial level of firepower for months if not years even with unconditional American support so if their enemy doesn't surrender they don't really have a solution besides blowing up civilian infrastructure in hopes that they get demoralized.

I really don't understand your point here is supposed to mean? Of course fighting a conventional war is easier than an assymetrical one. Hamas could easily be destroyed by the IDF but that would require them actually carrying out the genocide of gazans (the real one, not what twitter leftists call genocide).

Yeah and Putin could have easily destroyed the Ukrainians with a nuclear strike. Is this proof that Putin is a merciful soul, that the Russian Army is a model of humanitarian conduct and that we should send Putin billions of dollars worth of weapons to make sure he wins without nuking anyone?

If America seriously wanted to stop Israel then stopping the supply of weapons and imposing sanctions on companies doing business with Israel would cripple them pretty quickly. Israel's defense industry is totally dependent on imports and international trade for revenue, as a pariah they'd be totally incapable of replenishing most of their stocks. For all the tough talk I suspect the Israelis would pile into Ben Gurion right quick if their Iron Dome was depleted, their fighter jets were grounded for lack of parts and Hezbollah started obliterating targets anywhere freely. Without American backing Israel is like North Korea, a pissant pariah state with a few nuclear missiles.

Last I checked, North Korea's regime is very much still functioning. It would take some months or years for sanctions to have any real effect.

In the meantime, there is another method they could use against Rafah - a siege.

North Korea is optimized to survive autarky whereas Israel is completely integrated into international markets. Also, North Koreans are indoctrinated from birth to obey their leaders who have spent the past several decades optimizing their control over their population whereas a pretty huge number of Israelis either have dual citizenship or the skills necessary to get citizenship somewhere else.

How many Israelis do you think would tolerate North Korean living standards to maintain a siege over Rafah? There may be some but certainly not enough to maintain a cohesive society and military. Not to mention that once a critical mass of Israelis leave it becomes demographically extremely difficult to maintain power thanks to the million plus "Israeli Arabs". I doubt even Netanyahu himself would sacrifice an easy life in Miami for one looking over his shoulder as the unpopular ruler of a dysfunctional pariah state.

Also also, putting aside equipment issues the IDF would face, a siege without international backing would collapse instantly without the Egyptians keeping the border closed and cracking down on tunnels. The IDF has demonstrated little ability to actually destroy tunnels besides caving in a few entrances; if Uncle Sam wanted to break the siege then he could show Hamas and North Korea how real tunnel digging and siege breaking is done. It would be an infinitely simpler task than "destroying Hamas".

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

North Korea is optimized to survive autarky whereas Israel is completely integrated into international markets.

Russia was completely integrated into international markets. A lot of coal, wood and natural gas came from there.

Also, Israel now has the Gazan side of the southern border; how long is it going to take Hamas to dig a decent tunnel - without it being detected?

Rafah's population is avoiding quick mass starvation because of outside aid in the first place. If Israel cut the water supply off, then dehydration would come within a few days.

Russia also shares borders with several countries that pretty much openly ignored the sanctions and is one of the few that could be said to be fully self sufficient in terms of natural resources. Whereas Israel shares borders who only tolerate their existence because they receive several billion dollars from the American taxpayer every year to keep quiet and have a military totally dependent on imports. The amount of pain Western pressure could inflict on Israel is on a completely different level from that which they could inflict on Russia.

Also, I'd be skeptical of any Israeli claims of control; they've had northern Gaza under total blockade for the better part of the past several months and yet Hamas is still fighting there and operating tunnels without much sign of collapse so clearly the IDF's "tunnel detection technology" isn't all it's hyped up to be. They aren't likely to be any more successful destroying Hamas's infrastructure in Rafah than they were in Khan Younis or Zaytoun.

Regardless, I didn't say Hamas could break the siege outright but that Uncle Sam could. If breaking the siege of Gaza had the same political priority as supporting the Ukrainians did it wouldn't last five minutes, period.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

Israeli strike kills at least 33 people at a Gaza school the military claims was being used by Hamas

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli strike early Thursday on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed more than 30 people, including 23 women and children, according to local health officials. The Israeli military said that Hamas militants were operating from within the school.

It was the latest instance of mass casualties among Palestinians trying to find refuge as Israel expands its offensive. A day earlier, the military announced a new ground and air assault in central Gaza, pursuing Hamas militants it says have regrouped there. Troops repeatedly have swept back into parts of the Gaza Strip they have previously invaded, underscoring the resilience of the militant group despite Israel’s nearly eight-month onslaught.

Witnesses and hospital officials said the predawn strike hit the al-Sardi School, run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees known by the acronym UNRWA. The school was filled with Palestinians who had fled Israeli operations and bombardment in northern Gaza, they said.

Ayman Rashed, a man displaced from Gaza City who was sheltering at the school, said the missiles hit classrooms on the second and third floor where families were sheltering. He said he helped carry out five dead, including an old man and two children, one with his head shattered open. “It was dark, with no electricity, and we struggled to get out the victims,” Rashed said.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-news-6-6-2024-3d07e712f8abc1e08339163180823fb8

Hamas is providing those figures; Israel has claimed no civilians were killed and the only casualties were somewhere between 20 and 40 of the Hamas militants operating out of there.  One of these sources is credible and it’s not Hamas.

Israel has claimed = not credible

Yeah, no kidding. The IDF doesn't just make mistakes, they actively lie and cover up their crimes. They lied about the 2014 bombing of kids playing on a beach, they lied about Shireen Abu Akleh, they even lie when they have nothing to gain like when they tried to claim that a calendar was a list of hostages. No honest person could seriously take anything the IDF claims at face value when they lie so reflexively.

Also, it's pretty telling that doctors, women, children and civilian refugees are all categorized as "Hamas". Of course if you call everyone in Gaza "Hamas" then there are no civilian casualties but that says a lot more about the IDF than it does about Hamas.

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Nonsense. That would require Hamas to be reasonable. You'd also have to deal with the lesson Hamas would learn from that. Rape and murder 1000 people and the only consequence is getting your way.

That's the lesson the Stern Gang, the Haganah and the Irgun learned in 1948. If we wanted to stop people from internalizing the lesson that sometimes terrorism works then we'll have to invent a time machine.

Otherwise, I have a hard time seeing how killing hundreds of Palestinians and dozens of hostages to rescue a handful by force is anything approaching a win except psychologically. Putin killed about a third of the hostages at Beslan and a significant proportion at Nord-Ost and there was pretty widespread international condemnation of his tactics in both cases.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

What happens to all the people who participated in October 7th if Israel frees 5 digits of security prisoners in exchange for the hostages, many of whom were actually dead the whole time?

Will the international community demand the surrender of the participants or will they simply walk away successful?

If they'd done it on October 10th then Sinwar would have had a day of victory and then the next day he'd have had no leverage whatsoever over the IDF. They could have freely rearrested whoever they wanted in the West Bank and assassinated whoever they wanted in Gaza and taken as long as they wanted to subsequently remove Hamas from power. That's not my idea either, that's was the plan that was put forward by the one guy who predicted a security failure like October 7th, retired IDF Gen. Yitzhak Brick.

But political and military leadership didn't want to give Hamas a temporary victory early on for the only possible path to achieve both of their stated goals, so now they're failing to achieve either.

The problem with your argument is that killing something like 15000-20000 innocent civilian Palestinians is bad. And Israel being more effective in avoiding casualties is good. But that won't resolve the core issue. Nor would the pro-Hamas and anti-Semite groups limit their reaction if Israel cut the innocent casualties in half or in quarters.

It is one thing to criticize the lack of care for civilians from Kahanist ministers and officers in the government and the IDF. It is a totally different thing to say that a peaceful exchange of a few hundred hostages for thousands or tens of thousands of security prisoners which will doubtlessly include more Sinwars, as the Shalit deal did, with over 1000 dead Israelis including many people who were peace activists and children and rape victims would be an acceptable outcome.

The idea that freeing the small number of hostages and letting Hamas walk away would be an acceptable response is just delusional.

To be clear, I'm making two more or less entirely separate arguments.

Morally I think that the "core issue" here doesn't go back to October 7th because the Palestinians have been getting murdered or kidnapped and taken hostage long before the so-called "truce" broke down. And yes, abducting someone on their own internationally recognized territory and holding them under "administration detention" by the judgement of a foreign military court without charges is kidnapping and that person is a hostage. The "core issue" is that the Israelis have totally dominated the Palestinians for decades and the Palestinians who tried to put down their weapons for negotiations have been humiliated at every turn.

Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization but they could have never become so powerful if not empowered by Israel's attitude that they could simply beat down the Palestinians without taking them into consideration. As Nelson Mandela said,

A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a point, one can only fight fire with fire

The proto-Israeli terror groups embraced the use of violence and terror against their enemies right from the start and after decades they created their own mirror image in the form of Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations uniquely suited to the use of violence and terror. Over the past several decades despite past crimes they still could have easily concluded a permanent peace on favourable terms just as they did with Egypt and Jordan but they didn't because they thought they'd never have to. Israel will never be in a stronger position vis-a-vis the Palestinians than it was on October 6th, 2023.

Practically, even putting aside the morality of the conflict it's clear that there is no way that the IDF removes Hamas from Gaza at this point. We're eight months in and every urban stronghold of Hamas, including the ones in northern Gaza where the IDF declared victory months ago, is still under the effective control of Hamas. American intelligence estimates that the majority of their tunnels are intact, that a majority of their fighters are still alive and that they've even recruited thousands of new fighters over the course of the war. Putting aside the obvious problem that there isn't even an official theoretical alternative to Hamas, there also isn't any reason to think that Israel is willing to take the casualties necessary to impose such an alternative.

The stated official Israeli strategy at this point is to occupy strips of territory in Gaza kind of like the West Bank and to defeat Hamas through attrition over months or years but it says a lot that even Israeli leadership is implicitly conceding that they can't replace Hamas anytime soon. Of course, the "war of attrition" strategy can't work either because Hezbollah is escalating in the north and they've caught the IDF in a catch 22: they don't have the manpower to fight Hezbollah without sending the forces stationed in Gaza north, and Hezbollah won't agree to a negotiated solution until their forces are out of Gaza. But whether they choose to cut a deal with Hezbollah or to militarily force them across the Litani, either way they're going to have to withdraw their forces from Gaza.

Unless Sinwar decides to unilaterally surrender within the month they aren't getting displaced from Gaza regardless of what the IDF, the "international community" or any of us think. Netanyahu can recognize that reality and at least bring back the surviving hostages or he can extend the war indefinitely and Israel will pay an even higher price than it already has.

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Well all the way back in the 10s/20s/30s/40s it was in fact not the case that Israel held total power over the region the way they do now. And furthermore there was equal hatred on both sides and both sides had militias and did horrible things. I'm not going to go back and litigate that because it isn't a serious argument.

Right, and my argument is that little has changed besides Israel's relative strength. Both sides had militias that did horrible things but whether any given militia's crimes make concessions to them "unacceptable" solely depends on which side they fought for.

It is not in fact true that Israel could have simply gone into the West Bank and Gaza following a successful deal to return the hostages, and 1000+ people would still be dead regardless.

Why not? Hamas wasn't demanding a "permanent ceasefire" on October 10th and international opinion largely had yet to turn against Israel by that point, there would have been nothing stopping them.

Netanyahu doesn't care about the hostages. As soon as the war ends his government will collapse and he'll go to prison. If Hamas agreed to a reasonable deal then perhaps Bibi could be pressured to take it because his government would collapse regardless since some Likud members would defect if he rejected it. But certainly none of the deals Hamas has proposed so far would meet that qualification.

If Hamas leaders agreed to go into exile and the PA absorbed Hamas in combination with PIJ and Fatah and other groups under a united technocratic Palestinian administration then sure Bibi wouldn't be able to do anything. But Hamas has no interest in a deal because they believe they can simply keep throwing their civilians into the meat grinder until they believe, *incorrectly*, that Israel would be forced to give in to whatever sh**t deal they propose.

Hamas doesn't think the IDF can defeat them or remove them from Gaza so obviously they aren't going to agree to a deal that forcibly removes them from Gaza. If the IDF were actually winning the war and actually replacing Hamas's governance instead of aimlessly blowing up civilians then perhaps Hamas would actually be under pressure to shift their conditions.

If Hamas had engaged in a terrorist action against purely military installations then perhaps they'd have some ground to stand on but they literally slaughtered, tortured, in some cases raped, and then kidnapped 100s of civilian and foreign national women and children. This caused basically nobody in Israel to be willing to accept any deal Hamas would be willing to propose.

Israel was founded by terrorists who literally slaughtered, tortured and in some cases raped and then kidnapped at least thousands of civilians, yet Arabs were expected to accept the deals they proposed. From long before October 7th to this very day Palestinian civilians are kidnapped from their own territory and murdered or raped in Israeli prisons and yet Palestinians are expected to accept deals they propose.

Why do the crimes of Hamas preclude negotiation with them when that standard isn't applied to Israelis who commit the exact same crimes? Ben Gvir supported literally burning a Palestinian baby to death (again, long before October 7th) and they didn't just "negotiate" with him, they made him a minister in the government and gave him control over the police!

Similarly many Israelis have the justified belief that they are getting attacked for the large number of civilians deaths during the hostage rescue when in fact those deaths are purely on Hamas. If Hamas didn't flood the market area with hundreds of heavily armed militants to try and kill as many Jews as possible, even knowing they had no chance to win and no chance to prevent the rescue, none of those civilians would have died. Hamas is actively making it harder to end the war, intentionally, because they think that if they get enough Palestinians killed they'll "win".

Israelis have a galactic victim complex. Putin received enormous international criticism for his reaction to Chechen terrorist attacks. For some reason when Putin "solves" a hostage situation by killing all the hostages we can recognize that his "solution" bears responsibility for the outcome without absolving the Chechen terrorists but when the Israelis do the same we have to pretend every subsequent death is on Hamas no matter how stupid, counterproductive and murderous their strategy is.

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Yeah, I've made clear my opinions on Israel in this conflict, but I really don't see how you can get too worked up over collateral damage in a successful effort to rescue hostages, especially since Hamas seems to have escalated the encounter and attacked the Israelis as they got the hostages. I'm more skeptical of the convenient timing of this whole operation.

If Hamas prior to October 7th had attacked across the border and killed hundreds of Israelis including children to rescue 4 Palestinians unjustly held in an Israeli prison would you consider that to be acceptable?