Israel-Gaza war

[BigSkyBob]

Though he genuinely believes that his stance is the correct and moral one.

Which makes it still more unsettling if anything.

Irrational partisans are irrational.

[GoTfan]

Vosem's statements are directly comparable to Ahmedinijad's statement on wanting to "wipe Zionism off the map [but not the Jews]." If Laki had repeated those words I would have requested a temp ban. Vosem should be put in the cooler till he stops his understandable frenzy because it's basically genocidal rhetoric disguised under some intellectual mumbo jumbo.

He still hasn't apologised for accusing me of supporting slavery. I would have thought accusing other posters of supporting slavery at least warranted a temp ban.

[Zinneke]

Vosem's statements are directly comparable to Ahmedinijad's statement on wanting to "wipe Zionism off the map [but not the Jews]." If Laki had repeated those words I would have requested a temp ban. Vosem should be put in the cooler till he stops his understandable frenzy because it's basically genocidal rhetoric disguised under some intellectual mumbo jumbo.

He still hasn't apologised for accusing me of supporting slavery. I would have thought accusing other posters of supporting slavery at least warranted a temp ban.

Nah that's pretty mild in terms of insults. I've called basically the entire GOP support base pedo-enablers (which I would stand by, because they want a society where the Prince Andrews of the world get away scott free but meth dealers are beheaded).

He should be temp banned for basically wanting the extermination of Palestinian identity.

[BigSkyBob]

Vosem's statements are directly comparable to Ahmedinijad's statement on wanting to "wipe Zionism off the map [but not the Jews]." If Laki had repeated those words I would have requested a temp ban. Vosem should be put in the cooler till he stops his understandable frenzy because it's basically genocidal rhetoric disguised under some intellectual mumbo jumbo.

He still hasn't apologised for accusing me of supporting slavery. I would have thought accusing other posters of supporting slavery at least warranted a temp ban.

Nah that's pretty mild in terms of insults. I've called basically the entire GOP support base pedo-enablers (which I would stand by, because they want a society where the Prince Andrews of the world get away scott free but meth dealers are beheaded).

He should be temp banned for basically wanting the extermination of Palestinian identity.

The creepy behavior of Joe Biden towards tweenage girls suggest the entire Democratic support base are pedo-enablers.

[Zinneke]

Vosem's statements are directly comparable to Ahmedinijad's statement on wanting to "wipe Zionism off the map [but not the Jews]." If Laki had repeated those words I would have requested a temp ban. Vosem should be put in the cooler till he stops his understandable frenzy because it's basically genocidal rhetoric disguised under some intellectual mumbo jumbo.

He still hasn't apologised for accusing me of supporting slavery. I would have thought accusing other posters of supporting slavery at least warranted a temp ban.

Nah that's pretty mild in terms of insults. I've called basically the entire GOP support base pedo-enablers (which I would stand by, because they want a society where the Prince Andrews of the world get away scott free but meth dealers are beheaded).

He should be temp banned for basically wanting the extermination of Palestinian identity.

The creepy behavior of Joe Biden towards tweenage girls suggest the entire Democratic support base are pedo-enablers.

Let's agree then : American political elites are all pedo-enablers. If there's one thing the Epstein affair shows it's that.

[Vosem]

But the Zionists did not appear as a conquering army; they immigrated, mostly in cooperation with government policy. (This is why I compare the response of the Palestinians at that time to the Know-Nothings). They declared independence and received international recognition much as other colonies did; everywhere else colonial-era borders have been respected, which means the British Mandate.

They used terrorism to force the British out, committed atrocities against communities that they had previously promised peaceful coexistence, then forcibly deported enough Palestinians to secure a demographic majority in a new state that included territory promised to the Palestinians in 1948. Then they did the same thing after 1967, seizing territory and building colonies in what little remained of what was supposed to be Palestine. For all intents and purposes done exactly this:

I think the currently existing Palestinian political parties have the destruction of Israel as a terminal goal rather than the establishment of an independent Palestine alongside Israel, and I think this is comparably evil to the Nazis conquering Czechia because they felt Germany was incomplete without it.

but in reverse. The Israelis conquered all of Palestine because the hardliners thought it would be incomplete otherwise. So they've already won, why is that acceptable when the reverse isn't?

Because immigrating, declaring independence, and then enforcing control of the accepted borders is not conquest. It was not Zionist armies that attacked Palestine in 1948, but armies from Syria, Transjordan, and Egypt. My point is not that all Zionists were good people; it is that Zionism is a relatively normal anti-colonial movement, with the main unusual thing about it being its unusually substantial level of non-indigenous buy-in, and Palestinian liberationism is strange and aberrant.

I think the problem with Hamas in particular is that their strategy for gaining international sympathy is driving up casualty counts using human shields, so if it were successful they would incentivize every other group which is defending or attacking a city to try to maximize casualties. (This happened to some degree in the early stages of the War in Donbass, in 2014-15). It would mean every other war on Earth becoming much more lethal

Israel accuses any time Hamas operates from within a civilian population as "using human shields" which would apply to literally every guerrilla force that has ever existed. Literally every guerrilla force ever goads the occupying force into slaughtering uninvolved civilians because it creates a new pool of recruits and wins international sympathy, it isn't a strategy unique to Hamas.

This was legitimately an unheard-of tactic before the 1980s and remains a moderately unusual one today. No, guerrilla forces do not normally goad occupiers into slaughtering uninvolved civilians, because this would normally be an excellent way to lose the sympathy of those uninvolved civilians. This is only a plausible course of action when credulous basically modern Western media exist; this is why it is crucially important to dramatically lose sympathy for forces which behave like this, and to gain sympathy for the "occupiers".  

One could also point out that the Israelis have literally admitted to sniping civilians waving white flags (including Israeli hostages!!!) and to intentionally destroying civilian infrastructure to increase the spread of disease and famine. Do you think allowing that might make every other war on Earth much more lethal? Have you considered that starving literally every single Gazan man, woman and child might be a worse precedent to set than the precedent that sometimes guerilla warfare works?

No, because all of this seems basically in line with the norms of modern urban warfare as practiced in Fallujah and Mosul and Donbass and a dozen other places. Your whole post is written in a way calculated to make the normal seem strange and the strange seem normal, because otherwise the whole project of Palestinian liberationism is unsupportable.

Vosem's statements are directly comparable to Ahmedinijad's statement on wanting to "wipe Zionism off the map [but not the Jews]." If Laki had repeated those words I would have requested a temp ban. Vosem should be put in the cooler till he stops his understandable frenzy because it's basically genocidal rhetoric disguised under some intellectual mumbo jumbo.

He still hasn't apologised for accusing me of supporting slavery. I would have thought accusing other posters of supporting slavery at least warranted a temp ban.

Nah that's pretty mild in terms of insults. I've called basically the entire GOP support base pedo-enablers (which I would stand by, because they want a society where the Prince Andrews of the world get away scott free but meth dealers are beheaded).

He should be temp banned for basically wanting the extermination of Palestinian identity.

Vosem's statements are directly comparable to Ahmedinijad's statement on wanting to "wipe Zionism off the map [but not the Jews]." If Laki had repeated those words I would have requested a temp ban. Vosem should be put in the cooler till he stops his understandable frenzy because it's basically genocidal rhetoric disguised under some intellectual mumbo jumbo.

No? My whole point is that there should be a two-state solution and no one's identity needs to be exterminated. That means that there can't be a Palestinian state led by forces which don't want the Israeli state to exist. "You can't wipe out your neighbors" is a perfectly normal condition of modern statehood which applies to all other countries, and everybody is very familiar with the consequences of not following it.

I don't want to wipe Palestinian nationalism off the map. The idea that there should be a Palestinian state which promotes Palestinian culture is fine and healthy (though there is no right to independence under international law, it is a reasonable demand). Palestinian liberationism (here the ideology of the PLO and what many posters in this thread are suggesting, that Israel is not legitimate for some mumbo-jumbo nonsense original-sin-1948 reason and should be wiped off the map) is a straightforwardly evil ideology, very similar to other straightforwardly evil ideologies, and should not be tolerated by mankind. Until Palestinian culture shifts away from it, Palestine should remain occupied by its neighbors, much as Germany was (legally for 45 years).

If German nationalism was severable from Nazism, then Palestinian nationalism should be severable from Palestinian liberationism. The catch is that this requires the world to lose sympathy for it, which I do think is gradually happening as people become more aware of its violent methods and attitudes (I think this is fundamentally why Europe has become much more pro-Israel), but is only happening very slowly.

Though he genuinely believes that his stance is the correct and moral one.

Which makes it still more unsettling if anything.

It feels like a pretty basic exercise in empathy to realize that "others sincerely believe the things they're saying", right? My projections of the future have changed (mainly gotten more optimistic over time for this conflict), but my arguments on the morality of both sides have not really shifted since 2012 or so, when I conducted my first deep dive and really examined the pro-Palestinian narrative, and found it severely nonsensical and self-contradictory. I think the morality of the two sides is absolutely clear-cut and not really in serious dispute, except among individuals with very different moral compasses from mine.

[Vosem]

Like, to be clear in one paragraph: my position is not just that we should create a world free from Palestinian liberationism. My position is that we should create a world where everyone, including the Palestinian people themselves, can agree that the destruction of Palestinian liberationism, as represented in this operation, was morally not just good but obligatory. Then there can be peace.

The irony of claiming "then there can be peace" when your position is that there will be war until they renounce their legitimate interest in political self-determination is stunning. No, the war against Palestinian political self-determination has been fought by highly irrational zionists partisans such as yourself and Bibi, and will only be ended when zionists such as yourself and Bibi are made to understand that the lives of over four million Palestinians are in fact worth more than a Jewish fingernail[as another highly irrational zionist put it.]

No; no country has any legitimate interest in the territory of any other without that country's consent. The Second World War was fought to make that clear; 73 million did not die in vain.

Gaza simply isn't part of Israel. As you put, "no country, including Israel, has any legitimate interest in Gaza without the people of Gaza's consent."

But, under international law, Israel is the successor to the British Mandate of Palestine, and so it is. Israel has made particular concessions to Palestinian nationalism, like not unilaterally extending citizenship and Israeli law to areas likely to form part of a future Palestinian state (...like Gaza), but in fact the normal procedure of international law is that there is no Palestinian right to independence without Israel's consent, and Gaza is a territory occupied by a criminal organization, which would not normally be entitled to the protections of IHL at all.

The British held Palestine by brute force, not by moral right. The nauseant Zionist entity overran Palestinian territories, and held them by brute force, not moral right. In 1967 it overran more Palestinian territories and held them by brute force, not moral right.

What, because they fought off conquest attempts? How does this not apply to every country in the world?

[Zinneke]

Vosem, thank you for your clarification, it somewhat reassures me you aren't on the same level as the Ayatollahs and their "wipe Zionism, not Jewry" canard when it comes to your view on Palestinian identity ans legitimacy to a state in the region.

 but I'm just saying if you come out with statements saying the Israeli military overreaction is justified because "Palestinian liberationism" ceases to exist, you're gonna come across as no better than the unhinged Kahanists. And also I'm not sure what your citation of the PLO means in your own context when it's stance has been 2-state solution since the Oslo accords, as opposed to Hamas who wants the elimination of both states in favour of an Islamic caliphate.

For me it seems you want a change of leadership at the head of the Palestinian self-determination movement, which is de jure in the ineffectual Fatah hands and de facto in Hamas's hands. But then why does Israel not attack the leadership as opposed to what they are doing now, which is a massive propaganda boost to every political Islamist in the region. Children in Gaza dont deserve death because of their political leadership. It's really as simple as that.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

But the Zionists did not appear as a conquering army; they immigrated, mostly in cooperation with government policy. (This is why I compare the response of the Palestinians at that time to the Know-Nothings). They declared independence and received international recognition much as other colonies did; everywhere else colonial-era borders have been respected, which means the British Mandate.

They used terrorism to force the British out, committed atrocities against communities that they had previously promised peaceful coexistence, then forcibly deported enough Palestinians to secure a demographic majority in a new state that included territory promised to the Palestinians in 1948. Then they did the same thing after 1967, seizing territory and building colonies in what little remained of what was supposed to be Palestine. For all intents and purposes done exactly this:

I think the currently existing Palestinian political parties have the destruction of Israel as a terminal goal rather than the establishment of an independent Palestine alongside Israel, and I think this is comparably evil to the Nazis conquering Czechia because they felt Germany was incomplete without it.

but in reverse. The Israelis conquered all of Palestine because the hardliners thought it would be incomplete otherwise. So they've already won, why is that acceptable when the reverse isn't?

Because immigrating, declaring independence, and then enforcing control of the accepted borders is not conquest. It was not Zionist armies that attacked Palestine in 1948, but armies from Syria, Transjordan, and Egypt. My point is not that all Zionists were good people; it is that Zionism is a relatively normal anti-colonial movement, with the main unusual thing about it being its unusually substantial level of non-indigenous buy-in, and Palestinian liberationism is strange and aberrant.

1. Yes it is.
2. They were not "accepted borders": once again, they seized territory beyond their "accepted borders" in 1948 and then again in 1967
3. The Zionist forces started their campaign of ethnic cleansing in 1947, the "armies" (really only the army of Transjordan was a real "army" and their hearts were hardly in it) of the Arab states only attacked after the Palestinians had already been crushed

I think the problem with Hamas in particular is that their strategy for gaining international sympathy is driving up casualty counts using human shields, so if it were successful they would incentivize every other group which is defending or attacking a city to try to maximize casualties. (This happened to some degree in the early stages of the War in Donbass, in 2014-15). It would mean every other war on Earth becoming much more lethal

Israel accuses any time Hamas operates from within a civilian population as "using human shields" which would apply to literally every guerrilla force that has ever existed. Literally every guerrilla force ever goads the occupying force into slaughtering uninvolved civilians because it creates a new pool of recruits and wins international sympathy, it isn't a strategy unique to Hamas.

This was legitimately an unheard-of tactic before the 1980s and remains a moderately unusual one today. No, guerrilla forces do not normally goad occupiers into slaughtering uninvolved civilians, because this would normally be an excellent way to lose the sympathy of those uninvolved civilians. This is only a plausible course of action when credulous basically modern Western media exist; this is why it is crucially important to dramatically lose sympathy for forces which behave like this, and to gain sympathy for the "occupiers".  [/quote]

It's incredible to me that you write out long screeds while remaining utterly ignorant of history.

No, goading occupiers into slaughtering uninvolved civilians wins the support of those uninvolved, as they typically want revenge against those who wronged them. I can understand why this would be a difficult concept for someone who thinks bombing civilians turns them against their own government but normal people hold the most anger against those who drop the bomb or pull the trigger, not their enemies. Winning international sympathy is just icing on the cake.

Every Maoist insurgency ever going back to Mao himself intentionally provoked brutality from the local authorities for political benefit, it's called "heightening the contradictions". Even the Spaniards fighting Napoleon used guerrilla tactics and hid among the civilian population over 200 years ago. If you want to stop this dangerous precedent from somehow making war more lethal than you'll have to invent a time machine.

[Vosem]

Vosem, thank you for your clarification, it somewhat reassures me you aren't on the same level as the Ayatollahs and their "wipe Zionism, not Jewry" canard when it comes to your view on Palestinian identity ans legitimacy to a state in the region.

 but I'm just saying if you come out with statements saying the Israeli military overreaction is justified because "Palestinian liberationism" ceases to exist, you're gonna come across as no better than the unhinged Kahanists. And also I'm not sure what your citation of the PLO means in your own context when it's stance has been 2-state solution since the Oslo accords, as opposed to Hamas who wants the elimination of both states in favour of an Islamic caliphate.

For me it seems you want a change of leadership at the head of the Palestinian self-determination movement, which is de jure in the ineffectual Fatah hands and de facto in Hamas's hands. But then why does Israel not attack the leadership as opposed to what they are doing now, which is a massive propaganda boost to every political Islamist in the region. Children in Gaza dont deserve death because of their political leadership. It's really as simple as that.

I think my point is that Palestinian leadership has generally behaved in a way which implies that their goal is the destruction of Israeli statehood (eg, Fatah refused to accept a peace deal which did not involve a change to Israeli immigration policy), and that they are here motivated by an ideology which needs a name; I've used the name of the initial most prominent organization. Self-determination is a reasonable demand; the destruction of others is not.

A change of leadership might be enough, but I think it broadly requires a change in hearts and minds, not just in Palestine but also outside the region, away from the idea that Israeli statehood is in some sense illegitimate.

I think attacking a city or province controlled by people who want to destroy your internationally recognized country would be justified even if you didn't have a right to control that city or province (...which Israel does). I think the details of Hamas's ideology are such that an attack by all countries on Gaza would be justified.

No, children in Gaza do not deserve death. Nobody deserves to die in warfare. But it does not follow from that that no war is justified.

But the Zionists did not appear as a conquering army; they immigrated, mostly in cooperation with government policy. (This is why I compare the response of the Palestinians at that time to the Know-Nothings). They declared independence and received international recognition much as other colonies did; everywhere else colonial-era borders have been respected, which means the British Mandate.

They used terrorism to force the British out, committed atrocities against communities that they had previously promised peaceful coexistence, then forcibly deported enough Palestinians to secure a demographic majority in a new state that included territory promised to the Palestinians in 1948. Then they did the same thing after 1967, seizing territory and building colonies in what little remained of what was supposed to be Palestine. For all intents and purposes done exactly this:

I think the currently existing Palestinian political parties have the destruction of Israel as a terminal goal rather than the establishment of an independent Palestine alongside Israel, and I think this is comparably evil to the Nazis conquering Czechia because they felt Germany was incomplete without it.

but in reverse. The Israelis conquered all of Palestine because the hardliners thought it would be incomplete otherwise. So they've already won, why is that acceptable when the reverse isn't?

Because immigrating, declaring independence, and then enforcing control of the accepted borders is not conquest. It was not Zionist armies that attacked Palestine in 1948, but armies from Syria, Transjordan, and Egypt. My point is not that all Zionists were good people; it is that Zionism is a relatively normal anti-colonial movement, with the main unusual thing about it being its unusually substantial level of non-indigenous buy-in, and Palestinian liberationism is strange and aberrant.

1. Yes it is.
2. They were not "accepted borders": once again, they seized territory beyond their "accepted borders" in 1948 and then again in 1967
3. The Zionist forces started their campaign of ethnic cleansing in 1947, the "armies" (really only the army of Transjordan was a real "army" and their hearts were hardly in it) of the Arab states only attacked after the Palestinians had already been crushed

1. No it's not. Immigration is not conquest. Argentina was not conquered by the Italians, nor Massachusetts by the Irish, nor (for some spicier examples) Natal or Plymouth by the English, or Fiji by the Indo-Fijians.

2. No? The 1949-1967 boundaries of Israel included no territories outside the former British Mandate of Palestine, which they were the legal successors of. The post-1967 boundaries did (and some, in the Golan, were annexed outright rather than merely occupied), on the grounds that territory can be legally annexed from a country which invaded you first (the same grounds that permitted the Soviet Union to annex -- and then trade away -- East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia).

This is strained in some ways (it is a precedent that applies almost exclusively to the USSR and Israel, though one could also add the case of the US conquest and partial annexation of the formerly-Japanese TTPI), but I don't think it's insane. I think Ukraine would be justified in pushing further than the former border in the current Russo-Ukrainian conflict, or that Britain could have attacked the Argentine mainland in response to the Falklands offensive if they had chosen to do so, or that Kuwait or Iran could have held on to Iraqi territory after they were attacked.

3. No? In 1947 there were basically race riots in which hundreds of people died on both sides. (You are correct that by this point a substantial number had fled in anticipation of the Arab offensives but that just isn't ethnic cleansing.)

I think the problem with Hamas in particular is that their strategy for gaining international sympathy is driving up casualty counts using human shields, so if it were successful they would incentivize every other group which is defending or attacking a city to try to maximize casualties. (This happened to some degree in the early stages of the War in Donbass, in 2014-15). It would mean every other war on Earth becoming much more lethal

Israel accuses any time Hamas operates from within a civilian population as "using human shields" which would apply to literally every guerrilla force that has ever existed. Literally every guerrilla force ever goads the occupying force into slaughtering uninvolved civilians because it creates a new pool of recruits and wins international sympathy, it isn't a strategy unique to Hamas.

This was legitimately an unheard-of tactic before the 1980s and remains a moderately unusual one today. No, guerrilla forces do not normally goad occupiers into slaughtering uninvolved civilians, because this would normally be an excellent way to lose the sympathy of those uninvolved civilians. This is only a plausible course of action when credulous basically modern Western media exist; this is why it is crucially important to dramatically lose sympathy for forces which behave like this, and to gain sympathy for the "occupiers".  

It's incredible to me that you write out long screeds while remaining utterly ignorant of history.

No, goading occupiers into slaughtering uninvolved civilians wins the support of those uninvolved, as they typically want revenge against those who wronged them. I can understand why this would be a difficult concept for someone who thinks bombing civilians turns them against their own government but normal people hold the most anger against those who drop the bomb or pull the trigger, not their enemies. Winning international sympathy is just icing on the cake.

Er, yes, I have ancestors that fought in multiple guerrilla campaigns and they did not try to provoke their enemies into killing civilians, because that is how you lose support. They tried to disrupt communications and infrastructure and launch attacks on bases (and certainly civilians died as a result of attacks on communications and infrastructure), but they did not kill civilians to "heighten the contradictions". People don't like it when you kill them or their family members, and while "there is a war, we did what we had to do" is something they understand, your galaxy-brained take is totally alien and removed from the human experience. By no means do guerrilla forces always (or even usually) try to protect civilians, but they lose support when they use civilians for target practice or encourage others to do so.

Every Maoist insurgency ever going back to Mao himself intentionally provoked brutality from the local authorities for political benefit, it's called "heightening the contradictions". Even the Spaniards fighting Napoleon used guerrilla tactics and hid among the civilian population over 200 years ago. If you want to stop this dangerous precedent from somehow making war more lethal than you'll have to invent a time machine.

Ah, yes, this is why every Maoist insurgency has been so successful and beloved by the population, as opposed to Mao himself succeeding because he promised land reform and received support from the USSR at the critical moment early in the war*, and subsequent Maoist insurgencies succeeding or failing mostly through pure terror. (But, crucially, in spite of an effort towards this in the 1970s Maoists have never been portrayed as the more moral side in Western media, deserving sympathy for fighting in a way that tended to increase civilian casualties.)

No, I don't think Spanish guerrillas in the Napoleonic Wars, or French ones in the Franco-Prussian War, deliberately tried to kill civilians to gain support either among foreigners or among those civilians. Certainly armies have used scorched-earth tactics to prevent advancing armies from making use of land, which consigned the people living there to death -- this is common in Russian history -- but this wasn't done to make the people who live there like you; their opinions were just considered irrelevant.

Anyway, no, all of this is nonsense, causing people to die does not make them like you and should not make foreigners like you. Where it is done in war despite being unnecessary it is a grave crime. Hamas should unconditionally surrender and agree to follow the orders and directives of the Israeli occupiers, and the future Palestinian education system should teach that it's good that things happened that way.

*Yes, I know that later Stalin was very apprehensive about Mao taking over all of China, but in fact the CPC's survival in 1945-46 was entirely due to the Soviet Union's existence. Rather similarly the USSR permitted Israel to be armed and then almost instantly regretted it.

[Wiswylfen]

https://twitter.com/AmichaiChikli/status/1753376889232662889

[SnowLabrador]

https://fxtwitter.com/ShaykhSulaiman/status/1753198140839153700

Israel bombed the Belgian embassy in Gaza. We need to activate Article 5 - not just because this is itself an act of war, but also because if we don't, it'll show that NATO is basically toilet paper. I can't even.

[Vosem]

Would be kind of an insane violation of international law for Belgium to have an embassy in Gaza, no? (Also, it appears to be the office of a Belgian aid agency, rather than an embassy.) Anyway, good, all organizations distributing aid to Gaza which are not explicitly pro-occupation should be destroyed.

[Anti-Trump Truth Socialite JD Vance Enjoying Juror]

https://fxtwitter.com/ShaykhSulaiman/status/1753198140839153700

Israel bombed the Belgian embassy in Gaza. We need to activate Article 5 - not just because this is itself an act of war, but also because if we don't, it'll show that NATO is basically toilet paper. I can't even.

You expect people to believe that you aren't a troll when you post sh**t like this?

Stop hyperventilating and think about what you're asking for: You want NATO to declare war on a nuclear power, for what was likely an accidental strike. Are you insane? Do you think China should have started WWIII by declaring war on all of NATO in 1999 after the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was hit? Do you think the USA should have invaded Iran after the Beirut embassy bombings?

[Blue3]

https://twitter.com/democracynow/status/1752875163035594774

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

https://twitter.com/democracynow/status/1752875163035594774

I don't see how she would possibly have inside information of this.

[Meclazine for Israel]

I don't see how she would possibly have inside information of this.

Only through an autopsy could they find a chemical residue in his lungs of a gas molecule that perhaps is only used by the IDF.

That would be the only way.

You can do a lot of nasty things to people in tunnels.

Gas, flooding, ignition. All used in the Vietnam war.

[Comrade Funk]

https://twitter.com/AmichaiChikli/status/1753376889232662889

Israeli hawks have alienated everyone but Atlas centrists and anti-Arabs

[certified hummus supporter 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

Would be kind of an insane violation of international law for Belgium to have an embassy in Gaza, no? (Also, it appears to be the office of a Belgian aid agency, rather than an embassy.) Anyway, good, all organizations distributing aid to Gaza which are not explicitly pro-occupation should be destroyed.

But keep telling us all about how you really care about the well being of the Palestinian people of Gaza  

[Horus]

Would be kind of an insane violation of international law for Belgium to have an embassy in Gaza, no? (Also, it appears to be the office of a Belgian aid agency, rather than an embassy.) Anyway, good, all organizations distributing aid to Gaza which are not explicitly pro-occupation should be destroyed.

But keep telling us about all how you really care about the well being of the Palestinian people of Gaza  

He doesn't. He really does want them wiped out.

I don't think he views it that way (though it's certainly what would happen if we took his ideas here to their logical conclusions), but he does expect everyone to look at this conflict and really life through his ideological lense, and seems very befuddled that human nature doesn't really match his extremely militaristic, zero sum game at all times ancap adjacent worldview. A right wing tankie of sorts.

[GoTfan]

Meclazine, you believe that only white people are legitimate refugees.

[CumbrianLefty]

Would be kind of an insane violation of international law for Belgium to have an embassy in Gaza, no? (Also, it appears to be the office of a Belgian aid agency, rather than an embassy.) Anyway, good, all organizations distributing aid to Gaza which are not explicitly pro-occupation should be destroyed.

But keep telling us about all how you really care about the well being of the Palestinian people of Gaza  

He doesn't. He really does want them wiped out.

I don't think he views it that way (though it's certainly what would happen if we took his ideas here to their logical conclusions), but he does expect everyone to look at this conflict and really life through his ideological lense, and seems very befuddled that human nature doesn't really match his extremely militaristic, zero sum game at all times ancap adjacent worldview. A right wing tankie of sorts.

An ex Trot, isn't he? Which certainly fits.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/AmichaiChikli/status/1753376889232662889

Israeli hawks have alienated everyone but Atlas centrists and anti-Arabs

They should have, but they haven’t. The servility of our government (and others) to Netanyahu’s  is almost without compare, and should dispel any notions about Israel being a “European colonial outpost” or a “Western puppet.”

We (specifically, our electorates and governments) need to understand why this is, or we will be at serious risk.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

1. No it's not. Immigration is not conquest. Argentina was not conquered by the Italians, nor Massachusetts by the Irish, nor (for some spicier examples) Natal or Plymouth by the English, or Fiji by the Indo-Fijians.

CONQUEST: Conquest is the act of military subjugation of an enemy by force of arms.

Israel was founded by militarily subjugating the Palestinians, dispossessing them of their land and forcing them into Bantustans. That they immigrated first doesn't make it not conquest, but okay, if we call Hamas "prospective immigrants to Israel" does that make Oct 7 "not conquest" too?

Invest in a dictionary before wasting my time.
 

2. No? The 1949-1967 boundaries of Israel included no territories outside the former British Mandate of Palestine, which they were the legal successors of. The post-1967 boundaries did (and some, in the Golan, were annexed outright rather than merely occupied), on the grounds that territory can be legally annexed from a country which invaded you first (the same grounds that permitted the Soviet Union to annex -- and then trade away -- East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia).
This is strained in some ways (it is a precedent that applies almost exclusively to the USSR and Israel, though one could also add the case of the US conquest and partial annexation of the formerly-Japanese TTPI), but I don't think it's insane. I think Ukraine would be justified in pushing further than the former border in the current Russo-Ukrainian conflict, or that Britain could have attacked the Argentine mainland in response to the Falklands offensive if they had chosen to do so, or that Kuwait or Iran could have held on to Iraqi territory after they were attacked.

You are making sh**t up. The Soviets simply applied the traditional pre-WW2 right of conquest, there wasn't some special right granted to countries that get attacked. The reason Israel stands out is because it is literally the only country on Earth granted the right to continue to conquer since the aftermath of WW2, hence why you have to reach deep into your ass to even imagine hypotheticals in which countries hypothetically could have exercised such a right when in reality they did not.

Also it wouldn't even apply in 1967 because even the Israelis recognize that they started that war.

Er, yes, I have ancestors that fought in multiple guerrilla campaigns and they did not try to provoke their enemies into killing civilians, because that is how you lose support. They tried to disrupt communications and infrastructure and launch attacks on bases (and certainly civilians died as a result of attacks on communications and infrastructure), but they did not kill civilians to "heighten the contradictions". People don't like it when you kill them or their family members, and while "there is a war, we did what we had to do" is something they understand, your galaxy-brained take is totally alien and removed from the human experience. By no means do guerrilla forces always (or even usually) try to protect civilians, but they lose support when they use civilians for target practice or encourage others to do so.

The Viet Cong, the Algerians, the Nepalese and literally every Latin America rebel group ever intentionally created conditions where the occupiers would kill a ton of civilians, thereby creating new recruits for their forces. It's like guerrilla warfare 101. But I guess Vosem Khan knows more about guerrilla strategy than Ho Chi Minh and Mao.  You're either being dishonest or illiterate by equating "provoking the enemy to kill civilians" and "killing civilians yourself", by the way. The former wins recruits, the latter not so much. Incidentally you have yet establish a single thing Hamas has done that the Viet Cong didn't.

Ah, yes, this is why every Maoist insurgency has been so successful and beloved by the population, as opposed to Mao himself succeeding because he promised land reform and received support from the USSR at the critical moment early in the war*, and subsequent Maoist insurgencies succeeding or failing mostly through pure terror. (But, crucially, in spite of an effort towards this in the 1970s Maoists have never been portrayed as the more moral side in Western media, deserving sympathy for fighting in a way that tended to increase civilian casualties.)

No, I don't think Spanish guerrillas in the Napoleonic Wars, or French ones in the Franco-Prussian War, deliberately tried to kill civilians to gain support either among foreigners or among those civilians. Certainly armies have used scorched-earth tactics to prevent advancing armies from making use of land, which consigned the people living there to death -- this is common in Russian history -- but this wasn't done to make the people who live there like you; their opinions were just considered irrelevant.

So to be clear, you're conceding that the actions of Hamas aren't remotely unprecedented, just that the proliferation of media today makes Hamas doing what literally every guerrilla group ever has done slightly more effective than in the past at convincing foreigners to cut their support to Israel.

Of course, this strategy wouldn't work if the Israelis didn't fall right into the trap of responding with excessive and pointless brutality but that would imply that the precedent being set here will actually reduce civilian casualties since future invading armies will be incentivized to not just bomb anything that moves

Anyway, no, all of this is nonsense, causing people to die does not make them like you and should not make foreigners like you. Where it is done in war despite being unnecessary it is a grave crime. Hamas should unconditionally surrender and agree to follow the orders and directives of the Israeli occupiers, and the future Palestinian education system should teach that it's good that things happened that way.

From the perspective of Hamas, why should they? They're well on track to achieving their goals, the Israelis are starting to fold on the terms of hostage release, over 80% of their tunnels are intact and they're able to keep fighting even in areas the IDF has declared "secured". The Israelis don't have a plan besides killing Gazan civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure, acts that only make Hamas stronger.

[Vosem]

1. No it's not. Immigration is not conquest. Argentina was not conquered by the Italians, nor Massachusetts by the Irish, nor (for some spicier examples) Natal or Plymouth by the English, or Fiji by the Indo-Fijians.

CONQUEST: Conquest is the act of military subjugation of an enemy by force of arms.

Israel was founded by militarily subjugating the Palestinians, dispossessing them of their land and forcing them into Bantustans. That they immigrated first doesn't make it not conquest, but okay, if we call Hamas "prospective immigrants to Israel" does that make Oct 7 "not conquest" too?

Invest in a dictionary before wasting my time.

Right, but it wasn't. It was founded by people who immigrated under a British Mandate, then defended that Mandate against a 1936-1939 uprising, came to dominate its government, and then declared independence. The Mandate became Israel through a regular process of decolonization, rather than having been conquered by some Jewish army. (I guess one could say that the British conquest in 1917 was to some extent motivated by political Zionists in the British government, and Zionists fought alongside that conquest, but then so did the Arabs.)

This is the equivalent of saying the Somalis conquered Cedar-Riverside, Minneapolis, because they immigrated and then took political control. No, that isn't conquest.
 

2. No? The 1949-1967 boundaries of Israel included no territories outside the former British Mandate of Palestine, which they were the legal successors of. The post-1967 boundaries did (and some, in the Golan, were annexed outright rather than merely occupied), on the grounds that territory can be legally annexed from a country which invaded you first (the same grounds that permitted the Soviet Union to annex -- and then trade away -- East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia).
This is strained in some ways (it is a precedent that applies almost exclusively to the USSR and Israel, though one could also add the case of the US conquest and partial annexation of the formerly-Japanese TTPI), but I don't think it's insane. I think Ukraine would be justified in pushing further than the former border in the current Russo-Ukrainian conflict, or that Britain could have attacked the Argentine mainland in response to the Falklands offensive if they had chosen to do so, or that Kuwait or Iran could have held on to Iraqi territory after they were attacked.

You are making sh**t up. The Soviets simply applied the traditional pre-WW2 right of conquest, there wasn't some special right granted to countries that get attacked. The reason Israel stands out is because it is literally the only country on Earth granted the right to continue to conquer since the aftermath of WW2, hence why you have to reach deep into your ass to even imagine hypotheticals in which countries hypothetically could have exercised such a right when in reality they did not.

Again, no. The important threshold here is not the Second World War but the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, which has been widely interpreted (as in the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials) as preventing launching an offensive war. Annexing territories in response to a war in which you were attacked is permitted (as demonstrated by numerous examples in the aftermath of the Second World War); the prohibition on conquest hasn't really been amended since Kellogg-Briand.

The Soviet Union is a good example here because it carried out both illegal conquests -- those of the Baltic states, which were never recognized by countries which were not its satellites -- and legal ones from the territories of the former Axis powers (East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, Karelia, South Sakhalin), some of which were traded to Poland for other territory. These laws have not changed -- they are rarely applied because offensive wars for conquest, like the ones launched by Egypt/Transjordan/Syria in 1948, have become very rare.

Also it wouldn't even apply in 1967 because even the Israelis recognize that they started that war.

I mean, no, legally the war launched by Syria when they attacked Israel in 1948 has never ended, and has only had periods of ceasefire. Syria held (and pretended to annex, contrary to international law) territories within the former Mandate during the period 1949-1967.

Er, yes, I have ancestors that fought in multiple guerrilla campaigns and they did not try to provoke their enemies into killing civilians, because that is how you lose support. They tried to disrupt communications and infrastructure and launch attacks on bases (and certainly civilians died as a result of attacks on communications and infrastructure), but they did not kill civilians to "heighten the contradictions". People don't like it when you kill them or their family members, and while "there is a war, we did what we had to do" is something they understand, your galaxy-brained take is totally alien and removed from the human experience. By no means do guerrilla forces always (or even usually) try to protect civilians, but they lose support when they use civilians for target practice or encourage others to do so.

The Viet Cong, the Algerians, the Nepalese and literally every Latin America rebel group ever intentionally created conditions where the occupiers would kill a ton of civilians, thereby creating new recruits for their forces. It's like guerrilla warfare 101. But I guess Vosem Khan knows more about guerrilla strategy than Ho Chi Minh and Mao.

No, I don't have to know more about strategy than Ho Chi Minh or Mao to have lived with people who did guerrilla warfare. Provoking the enemy into killing civilians does not win you support if people see you as responsible for those deaths. This is incidentally why the movements you cite, which were mostly supplied by foreign powers, tended to either lose their wars or establish intensely authoritarian regimes if they won -- support among the people was actually lacking. Fighting a 'people's war' for an extended period of time is a good way to turn much of the people against you. (Much of the rhetoric against the war in Gaza, like insisting on talking about children who become casualties rather than political justifications, is also descended from the shameful legacy of the anti-Vietnam movement.)

 You're either being dishonest or illiterate by equating "provoking the enemy to kill civilians" and "killing civilians yourself", by the way. The former wins recruits, the latter not so much.

No, it doesn't. And yes, they are equivalent if you live in the area. You're from Argentina, right? Have you met someone who was actually part of a guerrilla movement funded by a hostile foreign state, or had interacted with one? I was raised with individuals like this in my family. (Although Argentina also had this in the 1970s, but like...it was very small in its scope, more like the pre-WWI Bolsheviks with scattered terrorist attacks than something actually approaching professionalism. And they also succeeded in turning the population against them.)

Incidentally you have yet establish a single thing Hamas has done that the Viet Cong didn't.

I don't know where your theory that I'm pro-Vietcong comes from. I think the Vietcong deserved the same fate that Hamas deserves (either death or forced conscription into enemy ranks -- incidentally a common tactic in inter-guerrilla fighting). I don't think they had the same reputation for deliberately fighting in a way that tended to increase casualty counts even if their interactions with civilians tended to put those civilians in harm's way; the deaths of allied civilians were not the point.

Ah, yes, this is why every Maoist insurgency has been so successful and beloved by the population, as opposed to Mao himself succeeding because he promised land reform and received support from the USSR at the critical moment early in the war*, and subsequent Maoist insurgencies succeeding or failing mostly through pure terror. (But, crucially, in spite of an effort towards this in the 1970s Maoists have never been portrayed as the more moral side in Western media, deserving sympathy for fighting in a way that tended to increase civilian casualties.)

No, I don't think Spanish guerrillas in the Napoleonic Wars, or French ones in the Franco-Prussian War, deliberately tried to kill civilians to gain support either among foreigners or among those civilians. Certainly armies have used scorched-earth tactics to prevent advancing armies from making use of land, which consigned the people living there to death -- this is common in Russian history -- but this wasn't done to make the people who live there like you; their opinions were just considered irrelevant.

So to be clear, you're conceding that the actions of Hamas aren't remotely unprecedented, just that the proliferation of media today makes Hamas doing what literally every guerrilla group ever has done slightly more effective than in the past at convincing foreigners to cut their support to Israel.

I don't think they're unprecedented (I think I have already said that they originated in Sri Lanka), but I think they're distinctively modern, belonging to the 1980s and later, because earlier guerrillas did not have raising civilian casualty counts as a goal. I think it's good that the LTTE was crushed, with their territories coming under the rule of their enemies, and I think Hamas should have the same fate.

Of course, this strategy wouldn't work if the Israelis didn't fall right into the trap of responding with excessive and pointless brutality but that would imply that the precedent being set here will actually reduce civilian casualties since future invading armies will be incentivized to not just bomb anything that moves

This strategy wouldn't work if not for the cooperation of Western media, insisting on not ascribing blame for all casualties to Hamas. Thankfully, with the bankruptcy of news outlets, even the hypothetical effectiveness of such a strategy is limited, and we won't see arguments advanced like the ones against this conflict (or like the ones against the Vietnam War).

Anyway, no, all of this is nonsense, causing people to die does not make them like you and should not make foreigners like you. Where it is done in war despite being unnecessary it is a grave crime. Hamas should unconditionally surrender and agree to follow the orders and directives of the Israeli occupiers, and the future Palestinian education system should teach that it's good that things happened that way.

From the perspective of Hamas, why should they? They're well on track to achieving their goals, the Israelis are starting to fold on the terms of hostage release, over 80% of their tunnels are intact and they're able to keep fighting even in areas the IDF has declared "secured". The Israelis don't have a plan besides killing Gazan civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure, acts that only make Hamas stronger.

Well, of 30,000 militants, 10,000 are dead and 10,000 are captured. All of their international allies have abandoned them. If they continue fighting, then the IDF will continue destroying Gazan infrastructure until they do surrender, as most of the world continues happily arming them. The only problem is that the rest of the world is too cowardly to join in the bombing of Gaza themselves.