Israel-Gaza war

[pppolitics]

Accusing anyone who doubts Israel is telling the unvarnished truth is not wanting to mass murder Jews.

This is true. There are plenty of people that doubt Israel about various things in good faith, and we should all be mindful of this.

However, it appears, at least to me, that pppolitics is not one of them.

We know this because back in this post a few pages ago, in this post, I asked pppolitics to clarify https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=566181.msg9330289#msg9330289

my reading of your use of the large font, bold, and exclamation mark is that you are happy about your (perception) that Hamas has won and you consider it a good thing.

Is that an accurate reflection of your intentions, or did you mean to convey some other sort of message?

...

I hope you will clarify that you do NOT support Hamas and that you condemn their actions in which they have deliberately murdered civilians

Unfortunately pppolitics declined to do so, which would seem to indicate that pppolitics does in fact support Hamas' action in which they deliberately murdered civilians.

This does not necessarily mean that pppolitics "is wanting to mass murder Jews," in your words, because supporting mass murder does not necessarily mean that pppolitics would directly commit in murder him/herself. In other words, pppolitics appears to be a supporter of terrorism, but being a supporter is not necessarily the same thing as being an actual terrorist, though it certainly isn't good.

However, it does appear to imply that, as Chancellor Tanterterg said, pppolitics is "only in this to cheerlead the mass murder of (((Jews)))."

If any of this is wrong, I would encourage pppolitics to correct the record.

Wait wait wait.

Are you saying that I support Hamas because I wrote “Hamas has won” in bold?

Talking about jumping to conclusions.

Israel said that it’s going to continue the war in Gaza until it wins.

My point is that this is nonsense because Hamas has already won (and Israel already lost).

Israel is continuing the war in Gaza to try to save face.

This has nothing to do with justice. Israel is just extracting revenge on civilians.

And just to be clear, I already said this before

Israel isn't fighting Hamas. It already lost.

Israel is just continuing to exact revenge on civilians to try to save face.

You are a leftist thug, plain and simple.

For what?

Practicing my 1st amendment right?

You are an anti-constitution fascist, plain and simple.

[pppolitics]

Wait wait wait.

Are you saying that I support Hamas because I wrote “Hamas has won” in bold?

No, I was saying that the fact it was bold, combined with the fact that it was in large font with an exclamation mark made it appear that you were happy about it ("your use of the large font, bold, and exclamation mark is that you are happy about your (perception) that Hamas has won and you consider it a good thing"). Or in other words, as Chancellor Tanterterg put it, you were "cheerlead(ing) the mass murder of (((Jews)))."

Surely you can see how someone reading in good faith would interpret that as the intended message from this:

Let's stop beating around the bushes and say the obvious:

Hamas has won!

It appears to be a celebratory post.

Are you a mind reader? Do you claim that you can determine my state of mind?

Wait wait wait.

Are you saying that I support Hamas because I wrote “Hamas has won” in bold?

No, I was saying that the fact it was bold, combined with the fact that it was in large font with an exclamation mark made it appear that you were happy about it ("your use of the large font, bold, and exclamation mark is that you are happy about your (perception) that Hamas has won and

Talking about jumping to conclusions.

Israel said that it’s going to continue the war in Gaza until it wins.

My point is that this is nonsense because Hamas has already won (and Israel already lost).

Israel is continuing the war in Gaza to try to save face.

This has nothing to do with justice. Israel is just extracting revenge on civilians.

And just to be clear, I already said this before

Israel isn't fighting Hamas. It already lost.

Israel is just continuing to exact revenge on civilians to try to save face.

OK. In the above, I still do not see you actually denying that you support Hamas. You cannot even bring yourself to acknowledge, as Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P! just did, that Hamas is a terrorist organization:

I can't speak for anyone else but my position is simple: Hamas are terrorists and the IDF are far worse than terrorists.

As Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P! just showed, you can do that while still being very critical of Israel. If what you really want is just to be harshly critical of Israel, you can do that, but that does not mean you need to resist condemning Hamas for what they objectively did - deliberately murder large numbers of civilians. Is that really the impression that you want to convey?

This ought to be a slam dunk for you. It should be easy for you to say "Of course I do not support Hamas" or at least "of course Hamas is a terrorist organization" (which at least carries the implication that Hamas is bad, because "terrorism" is generally taken to be a bad thing. If you did that, then you could say something like "see how reasonable I am, in contrast to these other people who cannot admit that Israel has ever done anything the slightest bit problematic."

Instead, by your deliberate avoidance of taking the easy dunk, you continue to convey the opposite impression.

Hamas are terrorists.

Bibi and his buddies are war criminals and just as bad as those Hamas terrorists if not worse.

_______________________________________________________________________________

You have to ask yourself: Why would I, an atheist, support a repressive Islamic militant group like Hamas?

It doesn't make any sense.

[Coldstream]

You can make plenty of moral high ground arguments about how Israel isn’t winning (if you care).

You can argue Israel is losing the propaganda ward (probably true, as much as it matters)

You can plausibly claim Israel’s actions will make it worse for them in the long run (I’d probably disagree, but it’s not impossible a more competent version of Hamas emerge or that there is some meaningful international fall out).

You cannot seriously claim Israel is losing the war militarily. Half of Gaza is occupied, the other half is in ruins. Hamas are on the run, either in exile or cowering in some tunnels.

It’s just cope at this point.

It's clear that the people who are claiming that I am antisemitic don't actually read my comments because they keep pointing out things that I've already addressed.

Let's stop beating around the bushes and say the obvious:

Hamas has won!

Hamas knows that it can't beat Israel militarily, so it baited Israel into committing genocide for the entire world to see.

Israel is now more isolated than ever and every terrorist killed will be replaced with 10 new ones.

I don’t know or particularly care if you’re an anti-Semite, but if I spent as much time as you do attacking anyone people might reasonably question my motives.

[Florida Man for Crime]

I can't speak for anyone else but my position is simple: Hamas are terrorists

I am glad that you are willing to say that, and while I will not agree with everything else you say, I think that shows you are at least coming at things in basic good faith. For my part I was NOT saying that anyone who criticizes Israel supports Hamas, it was in particular just pppolitics who seemed to me to be conveying that impression.

and the IDF are far worse than terrorists. They're currently engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against an imprisoned and dispossessed indigenous population and have committed countless atrocities that make October 7th look like a professional military operation with minimal collateral damage.

To me, that does not appear to be supported by what I can see (at least sitting from a distance behind my keyboard).

I think the simplest way to see that is not correct is to ask yourself the hypothetical question - what would happen if Hamas hypothetically had the same military capabilities that Israel actually has, and, instead, Israel had the same military capabilities that Hamas actually has?

Given what Hamas has done and certainly what they openly say are their goals, it appears to me that they would very much like to kill a lot more Israeli civilians than they have, and would like to eliminate the state of Israel. They do say this openly.

So hypothetically, if Hamas had a state of the art air force and a large well equipped modern conventional land army, as well as nuclear weapons, like Israel has, what would happen would probably be pretty similar to the Rwandan genocide. You would likely have mass indiscriminate deliberate killing of at least a million or two Israeli civilians and you would have an enormous outflow of millions of Jewish refugees stampeding the borders and floating out into the Mediterranean on small makeshift plyboard rafts, with people not caring whether other governments wanted to accept them, but just madly trying to escape mass imminent death like cornered animals.

Now contrast that to what is occurring in Gaza currently. Israel has made some attempts (as imperfect as they are) to limit civilian casualties and to get civilians evacuated from at least the worst most dangerous areas. Even if you take the reported figure of >20k dead (not even attempting to distinguish between Hamas fighters and genuine civilians) from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry at total unquestioned face value, and then if we generously round that up to 30k, that is ~1.3% of the 2.4 million population of the Gaza Strip.

If it were actually true that the IDF were worse than Hamas and if the IDF were actually genuinely seeking to commit systematic mass genocide against Palestinian civilians, I would suggest to you that the numbers would be far, far, higher. There would be at the least hundreds of thousands of Palestinians dead, and frankly I would think it would be most of the population by now - certainly well north of a million Palestinians dead in Gaza right now.

But (thankfully) that is not the case.

That doesn't mean that what is happening isn't terrible and horrible and deeply regrettable - obviously it is. And all the more so for the people who, unlike you and me, are actually there rather than sitting safely behind their keyboards like you and I are. To them, the fact that "it could be a million dead" is cold comfort. But nevertheless, compared to what is actually possible for advanced militaries to do if they are actually genuinely trying to commit large scale murder of civilians, and in the annals of comparison to modern wars and modern genocides, this is small potatoes.

This also is not to say that the IDF doesn't have problems or that it is perfect. I think it is fair to say that they have some problems with discipline and professionalism, but that is hardly surprising given that Israel has a small population and that consequently the IDF is a citizen army full of draftees and reservists. You can also make some reasonable policy-based criticisms of the rules of engagement if you want, which stem from the government policy of Israel/Netanyahu and military leaders.

This doesn't mean the situation is not bad, but it does mean that the idea that the IDF is worse than Hamas just appears at least to me to be outright wrong.

Simply put, if Hamas had the same capabilities as Israel, they would be doing unspeakably worse.

I think it might be possible to disagree with that, but if so the way you would probably have to disagree with it is to say something like "If Hamas had the same military capabilities as Israel, they would act differently and have different goals. They only want to eliminate Israel and mass murder Israelis because they do not actually have the capability to do so, basically as a way of expressing their feeling of powerlessness and desperation, stemming from their relative weakness."

If that is the direction you would take it, I think maybe you could have a reasonable and interesting possible point, but I don't really see any other direction to take it.



One last closing thought, back to this:

make October 7th look like a professional military operation with minimal collateral damage.

I think how you view this is a big part of the issue, and in particular it is a question of what standards you apply to whom. If hypothetically Hamas had sought to conduct something like a professional military operation on October 7, then I would view them a lot differently from the way I view them right now. If instead of deliberately seeking to target civilians they had deliberately sought to just target Israeli military bases and Israeli military installations, then they would have "just" been engaged in ordinary warfare, not terrorism.

From a tactical/strategic perspective, I understand why they don't do that - they would lose and they don't want to lose, but that does not mean that we should just say "ok, we understand you are the weaker party, so it is ok for you to commit terrorism." The fact that they are weaker doesn't just mean that we should all sit back and say, "ah, what a great job, you got Israel to kill civilians and are winning some international sympathy as a result."

Ordinary warfare is not great - not good at all, actually - but it at least has established and recognized rules, which have been loosely agreed to as humanity's way of at least trying to limit and restrain the horror of war somewhat.

The way I look at it, Hamas is the de facto government of Gaza. The only difference between "de facto" and "actual" is one of personal perspective, so to me these means that Hamas is in fact (or "de facto") a state actor. As such, we should expect that if it wants to engage in warfare, it should abide by those rules. Hamas also claims to be a national liberation movement representing the Palestinian people. While they are not the same thing as the Palestinian people any more than any other government is the same thing as the people they rule over, if they aspire to represent the Palestinian state, they must be held to equal standards as other states.

Whatever else you want to say about Israel, it does clearly make attempts to uphold those standards and rules of war. Israeli soldiers wear uniforms, for example. The purpose of that is to enable identification of combatants and non-combatants. The reason that is a thing is to protect civilians. Hamas does not do this because they do not want to protect civilians; they want the opposite.

This simple fact - that Hamas does not want to cooperate with the rules of war that are designed to clearly distinguish combatants from non-combatants - is undeniably a large part of the reason why Israel has inflicted many of the civilian casualties that they have inflicted.


I think a considerable part of the difference between our opinions is no more complicated than the fact that I would seek to hold Hamas to those same sort of standards, whereas for some arbitrary reason, you are seemingly choosing not to hold Hamas to any particular standards.

But it takes 2 parties to make a war, and if you want rules to mean anything in practice, a necessary requirement of that is that rules have to apply to everyone.

[pppolitics]

You can make plenty of moral high ground arguments about how Israel isn’t winning (if you care).

You can argue Israel is losing the propaganda ward (probably true, as much as it matters)

You can plausibly claim Israel’s actions will make it worse for them in the long run (I’d probably disagree, but it’s not impossible a more competent version of Hamas emerge or that there is some meaningful international fall out).

You cannot seriously claim Israel is losing the war militarily. Half of Gaza is occupied, the other half is in ruins. Hamas are on the run, either in exile or cowering in some tunnels.

It’s just cope at this point.

It's clear that the people who are claiming that I am antisemitic don't actually read my comments because they keep pointing out things that I've already addressed.

Let's stop beating around the bushes and say the obvious:

Hamas has won!

Hamas knows that it can't beat Israel militarily, so it baited Israel into committing genocide for the entire world to see.

Israel is now more isolated than ever and every terrorist killed will be replaced with 10 new ones.

I don’t know or particularly care if you’re an anti-Semite, but if I spent as much time as you do attacking anyone people might reasonably question my motives.

...you mean the people on the forum attacking me

[Florida Man for Crime]

Are you a mind reader? Do you claim that you can determine my state of mind?

No, that's literally why I asked you to clarify.

As I said (emphasis added):

Second of all, I will let you clarify this, but my reading of your use of the large font, bold, and exclamation mark is that you are happy about your (perception) that Hamas has won and you consider it a good thing.

Is that an accurate reflection of your intentions, or did you mean to convey some other sort of message?

And that's also why I said:

If any of this is wrong, I would encourage pppolitics to correct the record.

Hamas are terrorists.

Thank you, I am glad you have now acknowledged that.

Bibi and his buddies are war criminals and just as bad as those Hamas terrorists if not worse.

_______________________________________________________________________________

You have to ask yourself: Why would I, an atheist, support a repressive Islamic militant group like Hamas?

It doesn't make any sense.

As another left of center poster (and fwiw also an atheist, if that mattered), I would agree that I also don't like Bibi or his policies. As to them being "just as bad" "if not worse" than Hamas and "war criminals," I would refer you to my other post in response to Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!. This seems like an emotional argument which you are making out of some sort of expression of your presumably genuine sympathy for Palestinian civilians rather than an informed one based in fact.

If you want to say that you think something Israel did is bad, fine, but you should not feel like in order to say that you need to stretch the truth to say that Israel is even worse than the other guys.

It does make me a bit sad to see this as your response though, because it is literally exactly what Hamas wanted to achieve on Oct 7 (to provoke an Israeli response which would provoke international sympathy and an emotional reaction against Israel from people such as yourself), and since you have now agreed that Hamas are terrorists, you must surely agree that what they wanted cannot be a good thing, presuming you would agree with the implication that terrorism is bad.

As to why people would support a repressive Islamic militant group like Hamas, it is a good question that I have been asking myself more often than I would like recently with respect to various left of center people who seem reluctant to criticize Hamas out of some sort of misplaced desire to view the world through some sort of misleading oppressor-oppressed ideological framework.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Grand-daughter talks about October 7

Bracha

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1UywIUNr02/

Hamas militants used her phone to live stream her murder to her relatives.

[pppolitics]

Are you a mind reader? Do you claim that you can determine my state of mind?

No, that's literally why I asked you to clarify.

As I said (emphasis added):

Second of all, I will let you clarify this, but my reading of your use of the large font, bold, and exclamation mark is that you are happy about your (perception) that Hamas has won and you consider it a good thing.

Is that an accurate reflection of your intentions, or did you mean to convey some other sort of message?

And that's also why I said:

If any of this is wrong, I would encourage pppolitics to correct the record.

Hamas are terrorists.

Thank you, I am glad you have now acknowledged that.
 framework.

This particular thread gets tons and tons of comments.

My comments also get quoted often.

It is completely unreasonable to expect me to monitor this thread 24/7...

Yet, you immediately jump to the conclusion that because I didn't reply to your comment, it is because of a nefarious purpose.

Bibi and his buddies are war criminals and just as bad as those Hamas terrorists if not worse.

_______________________________________________________________________________

You have to ask yourself: Why would I, an atheist, support a repressive Islamic militant group like Hamas?

It doesn't make any sense.

As another left of center poster (and fwiw also an atheist, if that mattered), I would agree that I also don't like Bibi or his policies. As to them being "just as bad" "if not worse" than Hamas and "war criminals," I would refer you to my other post in response to Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!. This seems like an emotional argument which you are making out of some sort of expression of your presumably genuine sympathy for Palestinian civilians rather than an informed one based in fact.

If you want to say that you think something Israel did is bad, fine, but you should not feel like in order to say that you need to stretch the truth to say that Israel is even worse than the other guys.

It does make me a bit sad to see this as your response though, because it is literally exactly what Hamas wanted to achieve on Oct 7 (to provoke an Israeli response which would provoke international sympathy and an emotional reaction against Israel from people such as yourself), and since you have now agreed that Hamas are terrorists, you must surely agree that what they wanted cannot be a good thing, presuming you would agree with the implication that terrorism is bad.

As to why people would support a repressive Islamic militant group like Hamas, it is a good question that I have been asking myself more often than I would like recently with respect to various left of center people who seem reluctant to criticize Hamas out of some sort of misplaced desire to view the world through some sort of misleading oppressor-oppressed ideological framework.

Hamas and Israel's government are two sides of the same coin.

Hamas indiscriminately killed Israelis.

Israel's government is indiscriminately killing Palestinians.

The difference is that Hamas is considered a terrorist group while Israel's government is not, so Israel's government is held to a higher standard than Hamas...

...that is unless you want Israel's government to be considered a terrorist group and held to the same standard as Hamas.

[Devils30]

Accusing anyone who doubts Israel is telling the unvarnished truth is not wanting to mass murder Jews.

This is true. There are plenty of people that doubt Israel about various things in good faith, and we should all be mindful of this.

However, it appears, at least to me, that pppolitics is not one of them.

We know this because back in this post a few pages ago, in this post, I asked pppolitics to clarify https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=566181.msg9330289#msg9330289

my reading of your use of the large font, bold, and exclamation mark is that you are happy about your (perception) that Hamas has won and you consider it a good thing.

Is that an accurate reflection of your intentions, or did you mean to convey some other sort of message?

...

I hope you will clarify that you do NOT support Hamas and that you condemn their actions in which they have deliberately murdered civilians

Unfortunately pppolitics declined to do so, which would seem to indicate that pppolitics does in fact support Hamas' action in which they deliberately murdered civilians.

This does not necessarily mean that pppolitics "is wanting to mass murder Jews," in your words, because supporting mass murder does not necessarily mean that pppolitics would directly commit in murder him/herself. In other words, pppolitics appears to be a supporter of terrorism, but being a supporter is not necessarily the same thing as being an actual terrorist, though it certainly isn't good.

However, it does appear to imply that, as Chancellor Tanterterg said, pppolitics is "only in this to cheerlead the mass murder of (((Jews)))."

If any of this is wrong, I would encourage pppolitics to correct the record.

Wait wait wait.

Are you saying that I support Hamas because I wrote “Hamas has won” in bold?

Talking about jumping to conclusions.

Israel said that it’s going to continue the war in Gaza until it wins.

My point is that this is nonsense because Hamas has already won (and Israel already lost).

Israel is continuing the war in Gaza to try to save face.

This has nothing to do with justice. Israel is just extracting revenge on civilians.

And just to be clear, I already said this before

Israel isn't fighting Hamas. It already lost.

Israel is just continuing to exact revenge on civilians to try to save face.

You are a leftist thug, plain and simple.

For what?

Practicing my 1st amendment right?

You are an anti-constitution fascist, plain and simple.

I'm a Biden voter for christ sakes, if I am fascist then I hate to inform you that another 47% of the United States is even more fascist! The Israel/Palestine debate as far as US support has nothing to do with the constitution, it is purely a matter of policy. Yes, you can be a leftist thug and freely express your opinion under the 1st amendment. White nationalists do it from the right all the time.

I find atheist supporters of the Hamas cause fascinating, it makes no sense. The only reason why people on the left even care about this conflict is the obsession of academia. It is disappointing to see leftist Dems become as brain-dead as MAGA Republicans. If Hamas had real power, leftists like you would absolutely make excuses when they killed 1-2 million Jews.

Your posts are obsessively anti-Israel. Outside of the past dozen or so posts, I mostly comment on things like redistricting, state/local trends and not I-P.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Hamas and Israel's government are two sides of the same coin.

Hamas indiscriminately killed Israelis.

Yes, Hamas sought to kill (or kidnap and use as hostages) every Israeli that they could manage to kill (or kidnap and use as hostages). When they went into Kibbutzes and when they paraglided into the desert rave, they made their best effort to ensure that there were no survivors. That is what it means to indiscriminately kill - you kill everyone that you can, not caring who is who at all, and you seek to leave no survivors. In other words, the idea is to "shoot anything that moves."

Israel's government is indiscriminately killing Palestinians.

Well, that's just the thing - Israel is not indiscriminately killing Palestinians, certainly not in anything like the manner that Hamas did of setting out to try to kill any and ALL civilians they could find and could manage to kill.

If Israel were truly indiscriminately killing Palestinians, how do you explain the fact that the Palestinian casualties are so low - even by Hamas estimates, not more than 1% or so of the population of Gaza or so? If it were true that they are indiscriminately killing civilians in the same manner that Hamas had done - seeking to kill (or perhaps kidnap) every Palestinian they could find, then there would be a lot more dead Palestinians.



If you want to have a real fact-based discussion about what actual indiscriminate killing of civilians looks like, then you should look to some historical examples of civilian casualties in war for comparison. Knowledge of history can help you to better contextualize and understand the true nature of what is actually occurring in Gaza today (hint - it's not what you suggest).

I will look at 4 examples:

1) The 2nd Battle of Fallujah (7 November – 23 December 2004; 1 month, 2 weeks and 2 days)
2) The Battle of Huế (31 January – 2 March 1968; 1 month and 2 days)
3) The Battle of Berlin (16 April – 2 May 1945; 2 weeks and 2 days)
4) The Battle of Nanking (1937) AKA the Rape of Nanking



Fallujah:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Fallujah

First off, a relatively contemporary example, also in the same general region (the middle east). It is also fairly similar in the sense that the insurgents did not wear military uniforms and sought to blend into the civilian population as much as they could (which obviously makes it more difficult for the other side to avoid civilian casualties).

According to wikipedia, an estimated 30,000-90,000 civilians were in Fallujah during the battle and there were 581-800 civilians killed. That works out to between ~0.6% and 2.7% of the civilian population in the city.

While it is obviously not good that there were civilian deaths, this clearly cannot be considered a case in which civilians were indiscriminately killed. The US military certainly could have killed far more civilians than 581-800 if it had wanted to.

So far (even taking completely at face value Hamas' reported numbers of 20k+ civilian casualties and not attempting to distinguish genuine civilians from Hamas fighters), civilian casualties in Gaza are in the same general range, around 1% of the population. But ground combat in Gaza has been going on for at least twice as long as the Battle of Fallujah lasted (about 2 months, compared to 1 month in Fallujah), and in addition there was bombing for several weeks before that as well. So per day, in proportion to the total civilian population, Israel appears to be inflicting (even according to Hamas) on the low end of the intensity of civilian casualties that he US inflicted in Fallujah.




Huế:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hu%E1%BA%BF

~844 civilians were killed out of a population of 140,000, or a bit less than 1% civilian casualties. This is also in the same general range as Fallujah. Like Fallujah, this battle lasted about a month, so again the civilian casualties in Gaza currently seem quite in line with this, and if anything on the low end, in proportion to population size and length of the battle.



Berlin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Berlin
https://haydncorper.com/index.php/the-final-battle-for-berlin/

There were an estimated 125,000+ civilians killed, out of a bit more than 2 million civilians estimated in the city when it was encircled. This comes out to about 6.25% of the civilians dead. That 2 million figure is particularly informative because it is similar to the population of Gaza (but Berlin is a geographically larger area, making it more difficult to avoid civilian casualties (if you are trying to avoid them).

In the Battle of Berlin, the Soviets did not have a policy of just indiscriminately trying to kill any German civilian that they could find. That said, they had large (obviously unguided) artillery barrages and they committed plenty of atrocities and obviously didn't hold German civilians in high regard:

If a street surrendered immediately to the Soviet attackers, hanging out white cloths and offering no resistance, usually it came to little harm.  However, SS units particularly would take revenge on these perceived ‘traitors’, and if they re-occupied the area, as they often did in the very fluid fighting, they would shoot or hang men as examples.  If resistance was offered to the Red Army then little mercy was shown.  Buildings were blasted into rubble by tanks and artillery, burned out with flamethrowers or saturated with small arms fire and then explosives and grenades were thrown in.  Usually any male still alive after that would be shot out of hand by the attackers.  Rape was rare at this stage.  It only became widespread towards the end of the fighting, especially when second-echelon Red Army units, notorious for ill-discipline, moved into the city. Figures for civilian casualties sustained during the fighting are uncertain but most estimates suggest that 125 000 or more were killed and many, many more wounded.  Perhaps 100 000 or more suffered rape during the latter stages of the fighting and during the immediate period of occupation that followed until order was restored.

So the ~6.25% civilian casualties is in the range of what you might expect in a city of 2 million if an army does not have a deliberate overall policy of intentionally killing civilians, but on the other hand has limited means to avoid it (inaccurate artillery etc) and does commit significant atrocities.

So this 6.25% and 125k dead is clearly a lot higher than what is happening in Gaza. Moreover, the Battle for Berlin only lasted 2 weeks, so if it had instead lasted for 2+ months like the fighting in Gaza, and if civilian casualties continued at the same rate per day, then more like 20% of the civilian population in Berlin would have been killed. That would be more like 400k+ dead civilians - in a city the size of Berlin, so that would also be 400k+ dead in a city the size of Gaza.




Nanking:

The last example is the most depressing, but if you want to know what indiscriminate killing of civilians actually means, this is unfortunately it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nanking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_Nanjing_in_December_of_1937

The battle of Nanking lasted about 2 weeks, December 1–13, 1937 (but the killing of civilians went on for weeks afterwards also)

According to Wikipedia's summary, 200,000-300,000 civilians were killed. Nanking had a population of more than a million at the time, but "various recent estimates put the population of the city in December at as many as 500,000 civilians and 150,000 soldiers or as few as 200,000 civilians and 70,000 soldiers."

So that comes out to about half of all civilians in the city killed, a truly horrendous affair that makes what is happening in Gaza look like a picnic. Moreover, there were about 200,000-250,000 who survived in John Rabe's safety zone. And what that means is that virtually 100% of the civilians who were NOT in the safety zone were killed. Close to 100% of every man, woman, and child.

Ironically, he was a Nazi, but even Nazis like him could be revolted by the Japanese atrocities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe

John Heinrich Detlef Rabe (23 November 1882 – 5 January 1950) was a German businessman and Nazi Party member best known for his efforts to stop war crimes during the Japanese Nanjing Massacre (also romanized as Nanking) and his work to protect and help Chinese civilians during the massacre that ensued. The Nanking Safety Zone, which he helped to establish, sheltered approximately 250,000 Chinese people from being killed. He officially represented Germany and acted as senior chief of the European-U.S. establishment that remained in Nanjing, the Chinese capital at the time, when the city fell to the Japanese troops.

What can we conclude from these examples, in comparison to the Gaza war?

What happened in Nanking is a true example of indiscriminate killing of civilians and of genocide, and could hardly stand in sharper contrast to what Israel is doing.

Japanese soldiers in Nanking were much less well-armed than Israeli soldiers in Gaza are right now. While the typical Israeli soldier has (at least) an assault rifle, the typical Japanese soldier had only a bolt action rifle with a bayonet. If a soldier is trying to indiscriminately kill civilians, they can do it a lot faster with an assault rifle (or modern machine gun or modern artillery or airpower or whatnot) than the Japanese could do it in Nanking.

The Battle of Berlin, a prominent battle in which civilians were not totally indiscriminately killed, but also there were plenty of atrocities and the combatants certainly did not particularly try to avoid civilian casualties, was also clearly much worse than what is happening in Gaza (while also being much less bad than Nanking).

The Japanese in Nanking (or the Soviets in Berlin) certainly did not make an effort to set up civilian evacuation corridors or anything remotely like that (only John Rabe did, and did so to thwart the Japanese). If there had been a known collection of civilians, rather than making any effort to avoid it, the Japanese would have sought that area out and tried to kill them all.

By contrast, the civilian casualties appear to be very much in line with the relatively more modern and recent examples where the US army was a combatant (Hue and Fallujah). If anything, the casualties in Gaza at least so far may be a bit more on the low end of those more recent comparisons, in comparison to the number of civilians, the geographical density of civilians in the combat area, and the length of time of the battles.

There are definitely some things Israel could be doing better/more to avoid civilian casualties. For example, the fact that Israeli soldiers shot even some Israeli hostages who had a white flag shows that clearly to a greater or lesser extent the same thing will be happening to Palestinian civilians as well. And a well trained and disciplined army ought not to be shooting at white flags, that is a violation of the laws of war. On the other hand, these things do happen in every war, and happen all the more so when soldiers are reservists and draftees. To some extent, it is just the nature of war.

But if you want to criticize Israel for that sort of thing, you can do so reasonably.

On the other hand... indiscriminate mass killing of civilians? This ain't it.




One last minor point - one of the things that (earlier) you said means Israel is "indiscriminately" killing civilians is that a lot of the bombs being used in Gaza are unguided. That is not true either (more precisely, it is true that they are using unguided bombs, but it is not true that this implies you are indiscriminately killing civilians).

Simply using unguided bombs does not mean that bombs are being dropped randomly like in WW2 (or for that matter Vietnam) carpet bombing. Modern fighter/bomber pilots train extensively to drop unguided bombs as accurately as possible, and in good conditions when flying at low altitude can bomb pretty accurately even with unguided bombs because modern computerized targeting equipment is relatively good and can fairly accurately predict for a pilot where a bomb will land. Since Hamas doesn't have much in the way of air defense, this is generally possible. Clearly it is not perfect, but it is also not just randomly dropping bombs in any old place without a care in the world.

They will also use unguided bombs in particular on larger targets and structures where they know they will have to bomb it multiple times (in which case it doesn't mater so much exactly where they hit, since they will want to hit multiple parts on multiple bombing runs in any case).  Especially in a larger area that is supposed to have been evacuated or cleared of civilians (as is ideally supposed to be the case in the north of Gaza, though obviously will never be perfectly because some people will just not evacuate) it can be reasonably accurate under the circumstances.

Example from a relatively realistic flight simulator - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es2mjkzPR-I

Yes - In a perfect world, every bomb would be a "smart" bomb (actually in a perfect world, there would be no bombs), but in the real world, these things cost money and there are tradeoffs.

The difference is that Hamas is considered a terrorist group while Israel's government is not, so Israel's government is held to a higher standard than Hamas...

...that is unless you want Israel's government to be considered a terrorist group and held to the same standard as Hamas.

You know, there is a third alternative you are not considering. Rather than evaluate Israel on a higher standard than Hamas, and rather than dragging Israel down to Hamas' level and evaluating them on the same (seemingly extremely low) standard that you evaluate Hamas on, why not instead evaluate Hamas on the same level that you evaluate Israel on?

[Meclazine for Israel]

Support for Israel is big in Oceania.

PNG Dance for Israel

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1VcIOGJ7Ap/

Following the release of details on October 7, supporting Israel is a whole lot easier for your fair minded person.

I guess it is much harder to support Hamas rapists, kidnappers and murderers of innocent women and children

Certainly, the multiple Islamic nations surrounding Gaza have a huge spotlight on them now to take refugees

Why Won't Islamic Countries Take Palestinian Refugees?

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1VgHp3IYo9/

[Comrade Funk]

Everyone here knows Hamas is a terrorist organization. People happy? Okay. The difference is that most on here (including "Biden voters") are not willing to accept the notion that Israel promotes an apartheid-esque occupation of the West Bank (and have for 50 years).

[certified hummus supporter 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

https://twitter.com/VarrockianG/status/1739354408033337428

Anything else in this vile little collection of libelous tropes aside, my God. I'm convinced that the eliminationists want to force Israel to use its nukes simply so they can be proved right that the Jews will end the world.

Ray for God's sake, not everything critical about Israel is libel ffs

[Horus]

I don't see how anyone can think about the future of Israel and remain at all hopeful. The new generation there is far more imperialist, reactionary and religious. They are on a dark path and it's going to get worse.

https://twitter.com/nukedeverywhere/status/1740021580405842392?t=GmEDi1KnTmN_q75...

[Reactionary Libertarian]

I don't see how anyone can think about the future of Israel and remain at all hopeful. The new generation there is far more imperialist, reactionary and religious. They are on a dark path and it's going to get worse.

https://twitter.com/nukedeverywhere/status/1740021580405842392?t=GmEDi1KnTmN_q75...

You would think this would cause Palestine supporters to become ardent supporters of some kind of two-state solution and fiercely oppose terrorist attacks that push Israeli society further right, further harming the Palestinian cause. Strangely, pro-Palestine activists tend to support maximalist Palestinian demands and extreme violence, while also believing Nakba II is just around the corner.

[CumbrianLefty]

I do wonder how much many young Israelis are brainwashed by fundamentalist US "Christians".

[pppolitics]

Hamas and Israel's government are two sides of the same coin.

Hamas indiscriminately killed Israelis.

Yes, Hamas sought to kill (or kidnap and use as hostages) every Israeli that they could manage to kill (or kidnap and use as hostages). When they went into Kibbutzes and when they paraglided into the desert rave, they made their best effort to ensure that there were no survivors. That is what it means to indiscriminately kill - you kill everyone that you can, not caring who is who at all, and you seek to leave no survivors. In other words, the idea is to "shoot anything that moves."

Israel's government is indiscriminately killing Palestinians.

Well, that's just the thing - Israel is not indiscriminately killing Palestinians, certainly not in anything like the manner that Hamas did of setting out to try to kill any and ALL civilians they could find and could manage to kill.

If Israel were truly indiscriminately killing Palestinians, how do you explain the fact that the Palestinian casualties are so low - even by Hamas estimates, not more than 1% or so of the population of Gaza or so? If it were true that they are indiscriminately killing civilians in the same manner that Hamas had done - seeking to kill (or perhaps kidnap) every Palestinian they could find, then there would be a lot more dead Palestinians.

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

[Florida Man for Crime]

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

I provided a lot of facts and references and arguments in my post. Rather than dispute even a single one of them, instead your response is to make a classical well-known logical fallacy:

https://fallaciesoflogic.com/appeal-to-authority-fallacy/

The appeal to authority fallacy, also known as an argument from authority, is a type of logical fallacy that refers to the different ways of fallaciously using the statements or opinions of authority figures in order to support a conclusion.

For instance, someone may assume that something must be true if a so-called expert believes it to be true, and no other evidence is needed.

What is even stranger though is that you use a politician, of all classes of people, as your authority figure to which you appeal.

Of all classes of people, politicians are well known for:

1) Saying things that are politically convenient to say, regardless of whether the politician even actually believes it to be true themselves.
2) Saying multiple contradictory things at different times to different audiences when convenient, to appeal to multiple audiences.
3) Believing things to be true that are actually wrong.
4) Doing things for reasons other than that they are well-supported by sound arguments/facts.
5) Even in some cases outright lying.
6) Etc.


If you want to do a good job of making your logical fallacy, you should at least try to find someone who is considered an "expert" on the middle east or something to appeal to as your authority figure, rather than a politician of all people.

[pppolitics]

Hamas and Israel's government are two sides of the same coin.

Hamas indiscriminately killed Israelis.

Yes, Hamas sought to kill (or kidnap and use as hostages) every Israeli that they could manage to kill (or kidnap and use as hostages). When they went into Kibbutzes and when they paraglided into the desert rave, they made their best effort to ensure that there were no survivors. That is what it means to indiscriminately kill - you kill everyone that you can, not caring who is who at all, and you seek to leave no survivors. In other words, the idea is to "shoot anything that moves."

Israel's government is indiscriminately killing Palestinians.

Well, that's just the thing - Israel is not indiscriminately killing Palestinians, certainly not in anything like the manner that Hamas did of setting out to try to kill any and ALL civilians they could find and could manage to kill.

If Israel were truly indiscriminately killing Palestinians, how do you explain the fact that the Palestinian casualties are so low - even by Hamas estimates, not more than 1% or so of the population of Gaza or so? If it were true that they are indiscriminately killing civilians in the same manner that Hamas had done - seeking to kill (or perhaps kidnap) every Palestinian they could find, then there would be a lot more dead Palestinians.

Less than 1% of Rohingya people who lived in Myanmar were killed, so the Rohingya genocide isn't genocide, right?

[ChiefFireWaterMike]

I do wonder how much many young Israelis are brainwashed by fundamentalist US "Christians".

Your bigotry is showing

[Florida Man for Crime]

Less than 1% of Rohingya people who lived in Myanmar were killed, so the Rohingya genocide isn't genocide, right?

Less than 1% of Rohingya people who lived in Myanmar were killed, so the Rohingya genocide isn't genocide, right?

Wrong again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides

Estimates of dead in the Rohingya genocide are as much as 4% of the population. In addition to that:

Since 2015, over 900,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to south-eastern Bangladesh alone, and more to other surrounding countries, and major Muslim nations. More than 100,000 Rohingyas in Myanmar are confined in camps for internally displaced persons.

So even if one were to argue that it was not a "real" genocide, it would clearly be ethnic cleansing due to the displacement. That is not the case in Gaza, given that 98-99% of the population remains in Gaza.

Hypothetically, if hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza were forced by Israel over the Egyptian border and not allowed back in, I would agree with you that would constitute ethnic cleansing. The possibility of something like that is something we should watch out for and seek to prevent, but it is not something that has actually happened.

But, if you take a quick look at that list of genocides on wikipedia, you will nevertheless see that as genocides go, the Rohingya is in fact more of a questionable edge case (in terms of the death at least, as opposed to the displacement) where the strict definition is more questionable. More typically genocides either include a larger number of dead (at least in the hundreds of thousands) and/or a much larger percentage of the population killed.

And of course, this comparison also overlooks the fact that Israel is not by and large not deliberately killing Palestinian civilians, but is rather killing them accidentally, whereas in the case of the Rohingya genocide the Myanmar junta government deliberately sought to kill civilians. Genocide requires intent as well - for example, the fact that a lot of civilians were killed in the Battle of Caen does not mean that the Allies on DDay were committing genocide there. Instead, the level of civilian casualties in Gaza is typical (or even on the low end) of what you would expect from historical cases of urban warfare where the attacking army is making an effort to avoid civilian casualties.



As for the 1% dead estimate in Gaza, that itself is a high estimate of how many Palestinians have been killed. It is Hamas' figure, and includes combatants. It also uses only the population of Gaza as the denominator, which is not what you would use as the denominator to judge whether a genocide of Palestinians was occurring, because most Palestinians live in places other than Gaza.

The population of the west Bank is about 3 million. Israel has just as much ability to kill Palestinian civilians en masse in the West Bank as it has in Gaza, but is not doing so for the obvious reason is that its goal is not to commit genocide, but rather to fight Hamas. Including the West bank in the denominator would cut the percentage more than in half.

In addition, there are another 2 million or so Palestinians/Arabs live in Israel itself, many of whom are not just not being subjected to genocide, but also have voting rights and are represented in the Knesset. I promise you that countries which are committing genocide do not normally provide democratic political representation to the group they are genociding. There was certainly no Jewish political party allowed in Nazi Germany.

There are another 3 million plus in Jordan, plus another million in Syria and Lebanon which are all within the Israeli military's range where they have the ability to kill them en masse if they actually wanted to.

So in total, the civilian casualties in Gaza would amount to a small fraction of a percentage point (something like 0.1% to 0.3%) of the Palestinian population in the overall immediate area, again even if we totally unquestioningly take Hamas' claimed numbers at face value, and also if we totally ignore the other issues such as intent.

[pppolitics]

Less than 1% of Rohingya people who lived in Myanmar were killed, so the Rohingya genocide isn't genocide, right?

Less than 1% of Rohingya people who lived in Myanmar were killed, so the Rohingya genocide isn't genocide, right?

Wrong again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides

Estimates of dead in the Rohingya genocide are as much as 4% of the population. In addition to that:

Since 2015, over 900,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to south-eastern Bangladesh alone, and more to other surrounding countries, and major Muslim nations. More than 100,000 Rohingyas in Myanmar are confined in camps for internally displaced persons.

So even if one were to argue that it was not a "real" genocide, it would clearly be ethnic cleansing due to the displacement. That is not the case in Gaza, given that 98-99% of the population remains in Gaza.

Hypothetically, if hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza were forced by Israel over the Egyptian border and not allowed back in, I would agree with you that would constitute ethnic cleansing. The possibility of something like that is something we should watch out for and seek to prevent, but it is not something that has actually happened.

But, if you take a quick look at that list of genocides on wikipedia, you will nevertheless see that as genocides go, the Rohingya is in fact more of a questionable edge case (in terms of the death at least, as opposed to the displacement) where the strict definition is more questionable. More typically genocides either include a larger number of dead (at least in the hundreds of thousands) and/or a much larger percentage of the population killed.

And of course, this comparison also overlooks the fact that Israel is not by and large not deliberately killing Palestinian civilians, but is rather killing them accidentally, whereas in the case of the Rohingya genocide the Myanmar junta government deliberately sought to kill civilians. Genocide requires intent as well - for example, the fact that a lot of civilians were killed in the Battle of Caen does not mean that the Allies on DDay were committing genocide there. Instead, the level of civilian casualties in Gaza is typical (or even on the low end) of what you would expect from historical cases of urban warfare where the attacking army is making an effort to avoid civilian casualties.



As for the 1% dead estimate in Gaza, that itself is a high estimate of how many Palestinians have been killed. It is Hamas' figure, and includes combatants. It also uses only the population of Gaza as the denominator, which is not what you would use as the denominator to judge whether a genocide of Palestinians was occurring, because most Palestinians live in places other than Gaza.

The population of the west Bank is about 3 million. Israel has just as much ability to kill Palestinian civilians en masse in the West Bank as it has in Gaza, but is not doing so for the obvious reason is that its goal is not to commit genocide, but rather to fight Hamas. Including the West bank in the denominator would cut the percentage more than in half.

In addition, there are another 2 million or so Palestinians/Arabs live in Israel itself, many of whom are not just not being subjected to genocide, but also have voting rights and are represented in the Knesset. I promise you that countries which are committing genocide do not normally provide democratic political representation to the group they are genociding. There was certainly no Jewish political party allowed in Nazi Germany.

There are another 3 million plus in Jordan, plus another million in Syria and Lebanon which are all within the Israeli military's range where they have the ability to kill them en masse if they actually wanted to.

So in total, the civilian casualties in Gaza would amount to a small fraction of a percentage point (something like 0.1% to 0.3%) of the Palestinian population in the overall immediate area, again even if we totally unquestioningly take Hamas' claimed numbers at face value, and also if we totally ignore the other issues such as intent.

Okay, so you are using the high estimate.

What percent killed do need to be considered genocide?

So 4% is genocide.

Is 3.5% genocide?

Is 3% still genocide?

The Palestinians can't leave Gaza because the border is closed, so they can't become internally displaced refugees.

Also, plenty of dead (probably most of the dead) are still under the rubble.

[Comrade Funk]

Even if Israel isn't committing "genocide", surely you are against the 50+ years of occupation/colonization of the West Bank? Because ignoring that is ignoring the elephant in the room.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Okay, so you are using the high estimate.

What percent killed do need to be considered genocide?

So 4% is genocide.

Is 3.5% genocide?

Is 3% still genocide?

No, as I mentioned (and as you predictably ignored), there is not some particular percentage of a population being killed that makes something genocide. Other things such as intent also matter:

And of course, this comparison also overlooks the fact that Israel is not by and large not deliberately killing Palestinian civilians, but is rather killing them accidentally, whereas in the case of the Rohingya genocide the Myanmar junta government deliberately sought to kill civilians. Genocide requires intent as well - for example, the fact that a lot of civilians were killed in the Battle of Caen does not mean that the Allies on DDay were committing genocide there. Instead, the level of civilian casualties in Gaza is typical (or even on the low end) of what you would expect from historical cases of urban warfare where the attacking army is making an effort to avoid civilian casualties.

I'd suggest that you try to educate yourself some more. Perhaps go read that wikipedia article on genocide I linked to as a starting point, and perhaps get some books about genocide/ethnic cleansing/war, the Israeli-Arab conflict specifically, and more generally about modern world history, international affairs. Read them, and then come back and resume discussions a few months from now after you have read them.

The Palestinians can't leave Gaza because the border is closed, so they can't become internally displaced refugees.

Exactly. No ethnic cleansing has occurred (much less genocide) in Gaza in 2023.

Of course, you could argue that the Nakba way back in 1948 was ethnic cleansing, and I would agree with you there. That is obviously true!

You could also even argue that slow-burning ethnic cleansing is occurring in the West Bank via Israel's settlement policy, and I would even be inclined to agree with you there as well.

But none of that is not what you are arguing. Instead, you are arguing that not only ethnic cleansing, but also genocide is occurring right now, today, in Gaza. That is absolutely patently false.

What is actually happening in Gaza right now is a fairly typical modern urban military operation in which a modern military (the IDF) is taking reasonable/normal (but imperfect - because war is extremely imperfect) measure to avoid and limit civilian casualties, but is fighting against an opponent who seeks to make that as difficult as possible by not wearing uniforms and trying to blend into the civilian population as much as possible in order to maximize unintentional Israeli civilian casualties.

It's not nice, it is not pretty, but it is also not genocide.

You are determined to come to a particular conclusion, and are willing to ignore as many facts as necessary to get there.

Also, plenty of dead (probably most of the dead) are still under the rubble.

I am literally taking Hamas' own figures at face value here, and you are still complaining that I am being unfair to Hamas.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Even if Israel isn't committing "genocide", surely you are against the 50+ years of occupation/colonization of the West Bank? Because ignoring that is ignoring the elephant in the room.

Sure, although personally I would phrase it more in terms of "Israel's settlement policy" than "occupation/colonization" because "occupation" and "colonization" are somewhat loaded words which serve more to inflame emotions than to promote reasoned analysis.

It's just that that doesn't give you license to throw out all reason and all facts and make unsupported accusations of genocide or that Israel is indiscriminately killing civilians (at least without making a genuine good faith effort to actually support it).

Making well-reasoned arguments based on facts and truth matters, and should be embraced in favor of wildly making stuff up and throwing it at the wall and seeing if it sticks.