Especially since Netanyahu was trying to revive Hamas prior to Hamas's attack, in order to starve off Fatah's Palestinian recognition efforts at the UN, according to the New York Times ( https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q... )
Turn on Israeli TV and they're showing the IDF raping prisoners in Sde Teiman. Degenerate behavior from the self-described Jewish state. The US taxpayer is paying the bills for all this bloodshed.
“This is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.“
(* deleted tweet by Netanyahu)
They spent a year bombing an inhabited city into rubble, killing tens of thousands of civilians. Whatever definition of "policy" you're using here isn't particularly useful I don't think.
They have been ethnically cleansed and told to move to "safe zones", then the IDF terrorists bombed the "safe zones". Rinse and repeat for over a year.
If some really weak person kept trying to kill you by punching you in the face would you hold your own punch back to only hurt them the same amount or would you absolutely deck them?
I know you are being downvoted (not by me). This is a good question, if all the context and history is removed, and we are only looking at who killed more.
I am trying to respond in good faith, but it looks like Hamas is accepted across the world as a terrorist organization for specifically targeting civilians. And as much as I loathe the loss of civilian life at the hands of IDF, this is not a conventional war, and Hamas hiding within civilian populations and tunneling under hospitals is on Hamas and not on IDF. Like it happened in history a million times, Hamas could've surrendered against a superior enemy and and returned hostages, to protect its own citizens.
So, that's why Hamas must cease to exist. Not Palestine itself, nor another government in Palestine - just Hamas. They could've stopped it, they didn't.
Let me know when IDF/Likud behave like this unprovoked (Yes, I know what's going on in West bank and its not remotely close to what Hamas did)
> Hamas could've surrendered against a superior enemy and and returned hostages, to protect its own citizens.
And then Israel would keep occupying more and more land, control their water, electricity, treat Palestinian people like sub-humans, occasionally shoot some children in the head, take palestinian hostages/prisoners without legal right (occasionally tortue and rape them).
What has violence solved here? Thousands of people have died, and Palestinians are not treated better. I am no sure what peaceful protests would have done, but "nothing" is still way better than what we have now.
The logic should apply to both, there are no good guys here, just two armies of savages fighting each other and people getting killed, including innocents that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I pointed out Palestine because Israel is in a dominant position, so it is unlikely that they would want to protest, peacefully or not. But it would be nice to see more "peace-and-love" movements like in the 60s that opposed the Vietnam war, among other things.
I think that's a naive and ignorant position considering what has been going on since 1948 (violence from both sides, yes, but effectively an apartheid-state with more and more illegal occupations).
Hamas is a designated terrorist organization by the US, EU, and others. Their stated purpose is to destroy Israel, and their founding charter including language about killing all Jews. They started this war by massacring over a thousand civilians, injuring thousands more, and kidnapping hundreds. They killed people brutally - beheadings with dull tools, rapes, burning people alive. They also continued launching tens of thousands rockets at Israeli civilians for the duration of the war, though it was basically not reported. If Israel did not have the world's best rocket defense, there would be tens of thousands more dead Israeli civilians.
IDF is the military branch of an actual state. Likud is a political party. Neither advocate for indiscriminate killing of civilians (though some Likud politicians might, just like the US or any other nation has crazy politicians).
"Right to exist" is granted either through law or force. Hamas doesn't have law, doesn't exist within a functioning state, and is illegal by the laws of most nations. IDF isn't.
If you actually think there's a moral equivalence between the IDF and Hamas, or that Hamas is somehow the moral group here, you really need to learn more. Stop consuming social media, stop reading things on the internet, go buy some books from a diverse array of sources, both pro-Israel and anti-Israel, and maybe you can gleam the truth out of there. It's not a guarantee, but it's your best shot.
I really think the TikTok age has amplified insanity where we actually have people asking, "Why does a military get to exist but not terrorists?".
For anyone who needs a reminder of how this war started (warning, extremely graphic / not suitable for life): https://www.hamas-massacre.net/
Hamas is not an "Islamist" organisation (I hate that word BTW, as it's an Israeli invention to demonise Muslims).
The article you linked to is pure propaganda - Hamas' charter changed a long, long time ago. OTOH, Israeli politicians literally say genocidal things on a near daily basis - it's a deeply sick society.
> The article you linked to is pure propaganda - Hamas' charter changed a long, long time ago
No, it's not "propaganda". It's factual reporting that happens to be inconvenient to Hamas apologists.
It's also corroborated by the atrocities against innocent civilians that these monsters gleefully filmed themselves committing on October 7th, such as attacking children with grenades.
Islamist is used widely to mean Islamic supremacist. And Hamas absolutely is that. There are non-violent Islamists. Hamas is also jihadist, so they are violent Islamists.
Hamas' charter was changed recently when it was rewritten by a UColumbia grad. They still openly talk about destroying Israel and killing Jews. Learn Arabic, they don't use cover words there.
It wasn't changed "recently", it was 2017! Hamas, unlike many Israelis, are not supremacists; they lived peacefully alongside Christians in Gaza for example, and explicitly state they have no beef with Judaism.
> They still openly talk about destroying Israel and killing Jews
No, they really don't? Meanwhile, Israeli politicians talk daily of committing war crimes and genocide, but somehow that's fine because it's against Arabs?
Sir, 2017 is recent. And it is clear from their actions and speech that their intent has not changed, even if they have whitewashed their written calls for the extermination of Israel.
> they lived peacefully alongside Christians in Gaza
Christians are .13% of Gaza. Come on. If the Christians had any real power, they'd crush them just like they want to crush the Jews. They'd make it totally unworkable just like in Lebanon.
> No, they really don't? Meanwhile, Israeli politicians talk daily of committing war crimes and genocide, but somehow that's fine because it's against Arabs?
The far-right who does so, no that's not ok. But the IDF does not act in such a way.
> The blood of the Palestinian civilians that Hamas waged war from behind is absolutely on Hamas's hands.
Everyone is responsible for their own actions. Thousands of Palestinians children are dead, and for every single one, Israel could have chosen not to kill them, and the decision to do so is on them.
They had no choice. If you're Natanyahu on October 8, 2023, and the reports of the Hamas massacres on civilians come in, there is almost no leeway for reacting in a way differently than how the Israeli government and the IDF reacted. What I've heard from "pro-Palestine" (= pro Hamas) supporters as alternatives so far was utterly unconvincing, basically variations of the following:
- The "Israel should disband itself" reply: Give in to terrorists' demands, give them their country, and humbly negotiated for a freeing of the hostages without any military response. Hamas remains in charge as military dictatorship of Gaza.
- The military genius reply: I would have sent only special forces to Gaza to go after the Hamas leadership and free all hostages. No civilians would have been harmed and all collateral damage is avoided.
Neither of these are even remotely realistic. What was ordered and how events unfolded was more or less like any other country would have reacted. Two goals: #1 Destroy Hamas, #2 Free the hostages.
The problem right now with the hostage deal is that it leaves Hamas in charge. That's a huge problem.
They had a choice every single time they dropped a bomb! In fact, "the IDF is the most moral army in the world" supporters would like us to believe that very often, they chose not to.
If they want credit for the ones not dropped, they need to take responsibility for the ones they did. Not really that hard!
This is important because "it's all on Hamas's hands" is really just a refusal to engage with the ethical questions at all. Folks could (and clearly would!) say that, whether one child is killed, or a million. It's just a question of when it becomes untenable to brush the question away.
The idea that "this is more or less like any other country would have reacted" is the same trap; this makes Israel no worse or better than any other country, and conveniently means we don't have to ask ourselves about the morality of it all.
> If you're Natanyahu on October 8, 2023, and the reports of the Hamas massacres on civilians come in, there is almost no leeway for reacting in a way differently than how the Israeli government and the IDF reacted.
Any lack of political leeway to react differently is squarely within Israel's ethical score card. I.e. "Israel as an entity is not responsible for its choices because the entities constituent parts forced those choices" is reductive.
> The problem right now with the hostage deal is that it leaves Hamas in charge. That's a huge problem.
That this is the current outcome is maybe an indication that your framework of the three possible options (what Israel did + two strawmen) is lacking.
Israel was and still is fully justified to go to war against Hamas. You're the one who's dodging moral questions. You also fail to present any reasonable argument, only the usual sentiments and hand-waving. That's because you're unable to state any realistic path that the Prime Minister of Israel could have taken other than the one he took. That's exactly my point.
Do you think Palestine has a future under a Hamas government? If you do, you're supporting Hamas. If you don't, you need to come up with a plan to oust Hamas. Sadly, any realistic option would involve high collateral damage because Gaza is a densely populated area and the Al Aqsa brigades were comprised of about 40k prepared fighters with extensive tunnel systems.
I'm tired of hearing terrorist apologists coming up with vague "in between" replies that ultimately fall into one of the categories I've mentioned. If you can't even state how you would have dealt with the October 7 attacks, you should shut up.
At least I don't agree IDF is the most moral army. Armies and morality at wartime is an oxymoron. IDF retaliated with brutal force, and thats the fact. There is no defending IDF, just like there is no defending Hamas. There is no defending any war. In wartime, it is foolish to ask one party to be restrained. War is about military might. It is good for nothing, so everyone must be ultra careful not to trigger one.
Yep. Everyone is responsible for their own actions. Hamas could've just surrendered and returned hostages. Before every single Palestinian child lost life, Hamas could've chosen to do that. So its on them
I mean, realistically speaking, the IDF is a powerful force, while Hamas is not. Israel has the ability to completely take over Gaza, but Gaza does not have the ability to take over Israel. So, as macabre as it may be, Hamas' right to exist, technically speaking, is controlled by Israel.
(All of this assuming no outside intervention for 3rd-party nations or groups of nations, of course.)
That's not how dropping 2000lb American bombs from American F-35s by an Israeli flying vampires paid for by American tax dollars onto babies in refugee tents work.
The Nazi demons at Auschwitz also blamed their victims in between zyklon B top-up shifts.
Please don't abuse this word. If Israel was conducing genocide there wouldn't be Arab Israelis, and the population of Gaza would not grow over time.
Ethnic cleansing and insufficient proportionality consideration, likely. Not genocide. The Israelis don't want to remove Palestinians from the face of the earth, they want political and physical safety for the Jews, and history has worked out such that they feel they need an Jewish-majority ethnostate.
That has nothing to do with anything. If I steal from you, I steal from you, doesn't matter if you get more than I stole from elsewhere. By that logic, not even the Shoa would be a genocide. So how can people say this, and not even once, but over and over? It just means you're not even treating the charge seriously.
> The Israelis don't want to remove Palestinians from the face of the earth
It's nothing to do with "the Israelis". It's about the specific people and organizations espousing genocidal rhetoric and engaging in respective actions, such as starving off civilians. Whoever is guilty of that doesn't get to invoke all other Israelis as a blanket. Specific people are guilty of specific things. All Israelis want safety, but not all Israelis dance and sing "there are no schools in Gaza, because there are no kids in Gaza".
More importantly, wanting to wipe someone "off the face off the Earth" is not required to meet the standard of genocide, not even close. It might be required for the whole "Amalek" thing, but not for genocide.
> 25,609–33,071 Bosniaks and Croats killed (wider definition of genocide)
Not only are those "low" numbers compared to the survivors, not even in their wildest dreams would anyone ever claim the goal was to "wipe Croats off the face of the Earth".
Those who want to annex Palestine don't care if it's via ethnic cleansing or genocide, and made that clear in word and deed. There's no getting away from that.
Read the article you linked to. In Srebrenica there were 40,000 Bosnian Muslims. 8,000 killed (and many more deported) with the goal of exterminating the rest is 20%. In Gaza, according to the highest Hamas estimates, it's 40,000, most of them apparently militants. Out of 2 million inhabitants that's 2%.
And Bosnian Muslims did not initiate a pogrom that killed 1200 people, out of the blue, against Bosnians when that happened.
Perhaps you can enlighten me on this topic. So, for the sake of argument, let's consider Israel's recent actions as a genocide. Then what? What's the UN going to do? Send a nasty letter to Israel? Create a fake warrant for Bibi that every country just ignores?
From a military perspective, Israel is highly useful to the United States and many other Western countries. Israel is basically the Guam of the Middle East. So, genocide or not, I bet good money not a single thing will happen to Israel. Sure, there might be some theatrical cases in which some soldiers are imprisoned for war crimes and some high-rankers being dishonorably discharged. But it's all just for show.
Israel basically is what keeps Iran from overstepping too much. To the West, that is far more valuable than the lives of Palestinians. I am not trying to be insensitive, and I truly feel empathy for all the poor Palestinian people that lost their lives over this senseless conflict. However, if the rest of the world cared, then the rest of the world would have intervened.
Point being, call it whatever you want. It won't make a difference.
>Point being, call it whatever you want. It won't make a difference.
It does make a difference. If it didnt, Israel wouldnt be fighting back against the accusations so vehemently. They wouldnt be accusing the ICJ of anti semitism.
US and EU leaders wouldnt be going out of their way to downplay this.
It makes a difference becausr undermines US and European moral legitimacy. This makes it harder for us to get what we want out of diplomacy. This wouldnt be such a problem if western economic and military global primacy were maintained but they're also collapsing. Ukraine is a military disaster for us and China's industrial might eclipses ours.
The worst time to be seen to be the bad guy is when you are showing weakness.
How vehemently are we talking? Perhaps it's all subjective, but Israel doesn't seem to be fighting back too hard. Besides, all they have to do is just respond with PR, which isn't exactly taxing nor difficult.
> US and EU leaders wouldnt be going out of their way to downplay this.
Again, theatrics.
> It makes a difference becausr undermines US and European moral legitimacy.
To whom? Neither care about the opinions of 3rd world countries. The countries that matter do not mind, and the countries that mind do not matter.
How is Ukraine a military disaster? The US and Europe have been trying to tip-toe the line, but it's not like the US nor Europe has lost much of value -- excluding poor Ukraine obviously.
I do not think the West is showing weakness, but rather restraint.
Equal to the amount Israel spends on PR, lobbying and astroturfing to try and downplay this. Which is a ginormous amount.
>To whom?
All of the world that isnt in a western, Chinese or Russian club.
This group is routinely ignored, taken for granted and generally treated with disdain and so far that hasnt backfired too badly.
>How is Ukraine a military disaster?
They've thrown billions of weapons and drastically drained their inventories, achieving nothing except slowing Putin down after jubilantly declaring that he would be soundly defeated on the battlefield. It's transitioned the west's image from that of an unchallenged global hegemon to something of a military paper tiger. This has already resulted in a number of countries transitioning out of the western sphere of influence.
>It's transitioned the west's image from that of an unchallenged global hegemon to something of a military paper tiger. This has already resulted in a number of countries transitioning out of the western sphere of influence.
Interesting. I drew the opposite conclusion. Using (mostly) just NATO's old equipment, Ukraine has fought basically to a standstill what was previously considered the second greatest army on earth. That army and the security guarantees it provides to various dictators are greatly humiliated, especially after Russian allies Armenia and Syria were defeated with their backer Russia lifting hardly a finger in defense, due to it's great commitments and losses in Ukraine.
Meanwhile the US is still ready to fight and win a war in the Pacific and Atlantic simultaneously.
Which countries are transitioning out of the western sphere of influence due to security concerns?
>Interesting. I drew the opposite conclusion. Using (mostly) just NATO's old equipment
Not true since 2023. Plenty of the high end stuff was sent - abrams, leopard 2s, patriots.
There's also a dire shortage of shells to send - the meat and potatoes of a war like this.
Some of the high end stuff (e.g. F-35s) were also arguably not sent because western military planners were afraid of them performing badly (F-16s performed very badly).
>fought basically to a standstill
That's how wars of attrition are. The front line is 1) static for months/year and a half. Then it moves 2) slowly. Then 3) fast. Then collapse.
It's between 2 and 3 now.
Unless a peace deal is secured (unlikely, there is no zone of possible agreement) a Ukrainian military collapse is coming and it will be a humiliation for western hegemony to see Russia sweep forward unchallenged on their front door.
Trump seems to know that it's coming and wants to wash his hands of it while European establishment are freaking out and doing stupid, rash and even Putinesque shit like canceling the Romanian election.
> Unless a peace deal is secured (unlikely, there is no zone of possible agreement) a Ukrainian military collapse is coming and it will be a humiliation for western hegemony to see Russia sweep forward unchallenged on their front door.
Not unless the Russian economy collapses first. Last I heard, industry leaders from key sectors like metallurgy were saying that with a 21% interest rate, the market economy is effectively dead because their margins are nowhere near sufficient to service such debts. They either need government handouts (a thinly veiled return to a planned economy, and we both know what that looked like) or face a complete crash and burn in the currently unfolding corporate debt crisis: https://static.themoscowtimes.com/image/1360/35/Screenshot20...
> Plenty of the high end stuff was sent - abrams, leopard 2s, patriots.
Reagan-era Leopard 2A4s are not "high end". The truly high end stuff has performend beyond expectations, particularly the Patriot missile defense system. Quite a few planes were lost, including two rare and prized radar planes, before Russians finally understood that unlike their overhyped "has no analogues in the world" wonder weapons, western tech actually meets and often exceeds offical specs.
> Some of the high end stuff (e.g. F-35s) were also arguably not sent because western military planners were afraid of them performing badly (F-16s performed very badly).
Quite the opposite story. The F-35 is treasured so much that no-one wants to risk it being lost, especially with the limited experience UAF has flying western planes. As to F-16s, a single pilot shooting down 6 cruise missiles while equipped with only 4 AA missiles was nothing short of spectacular, and according to seasoned F-16 pilots, shows that Ukrainian air force is developing rapidly: https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-record-f16-win-shows...
> Trump seems to know that it's coming and wants to wash his hands of it while European establishment are freaking out and doing stupid
Trump is doing (and seems, more effectively) what every single American president since at least GWB has attempted: to get Europe to increase military spending. If you think this predicts anything positive for you, better brace for a surprise.
>Not unless the Russian economy collapses first. Last I heard
Last I heard in 2022 the overwhelming consensus in 2022 was that it was supposed to collapse at the end of 2022. I think it's time to put this neocon fantasy to bed rather than keep making fresh wrong predictions based upon the same wrong dogma.
> Point being, call it whatever you want. It won't make a difference.
Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and people knowing what actually happened matters a lot more in the long term than any indifference and apathy in the short term.
I hope you are correct, but my inference based on the history of humanity does not leave me as much confidence. History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.
> Under international law, the crime of genocide is defined by “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” as noted in the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
So can we also say Hamas is genocidal? Because complete success is not necessary, intent matters and magnitudes don't matter. Right? My disagreement is just that - We cannot just accuse one side in this unfortunate event.
No, because intent matters, and Hamas do not have genocidal intent - all they want is freedom from Israeli occupation and dehumanisation, and their stolen land back.
There's an argument to be made that they do have intent, but it hasnt been acted upon.
The killing of 800 civilians and ~400 soldiers in a single
military attack isnt a genocide it's at worst a terrorist attack.
If they committed that kind of atrocity once every 3-4 days for over a year - as Israel did to them in retaliation for that attack then yeah, genocide.
Realistically some of the Jews in Polish ghettoes probably had genoidal intent against the Germans too. Doesnt matter.
Genocide does not require success in exterminating the whole race. The holocaust was not successful, Bosnia wasnt successful, neither was Gaza. Roughly 7-10% of Gaza were killed, mostly women and children, and the intent to kill them because of their race was clear and well evidenced by South Africa.
Please, dont deny genocide -not the holocaust. Not the armenian genocide. Not the bosnian genocide. Not this either. It is disrespectful to every victim.
China gained even more from this genocidal spree & exercise in ignoring international law. BRICS got a new lease on life. And NDB is shaping up to be a legitimate competitor to the IMF.
Israel's actions in the last 75 years simply cannot be compared to genocide in any rational sense of the word. The number of Palestinians has been rising steadily for decades and life expectancy for Palestinians has been increasing as well. Israel has not killed two million or three million or five million Palestinians.
Everything that happened since October 7th was avoidable. You can't expect to murder 1200 Israelis in this fashion and think nothing will happen. It would only invite more murders and more murders.
A slaughter might have been avoidable, but ethnic cleansing wasnt avoidable. It has persisted in the west bank for decades. Israel tried to dump all the Gazans in Congo. This was materially no different to when Hitler tried to dump all German jews in madagascar. For Israel this a racial problem, and whilst theyd prefer expulsion (like Hitler), theyre not above extermination (like Hitler) if the "dump them all in africa" project falls through.
Netanyahu is on record saying that he intended to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze the Palestinians and never stop.
Israel will not give up on its ethnic cleansing dreams unless it is forced to . That may require the end of Israel - just as South African apartheid was ended once it lost support from racist western backers.
A side effect of this slaughter is that it has ripped off the mask of liberal, egalitarian Israel. The liberal, egalitarians in the west no longer support the country - only racists who believe that genocide is provokable still do.
I appreciate that you took the time to respond, but I think that analysis of the population of Gaza clearly shows that there hasn't be any ethnic cleansing either. The Palestinian population has been going up since 1948. So has life expectancy. These facts destroy the narrative of ethnic cleansing.
> For Israel this a racial problem, and whilst theyd prefer expulsion (like Hitler), theyre not above extermination (like Hitler) if the "dump them all in africa" project falls through.
Right, Israel doesn't want any Arabs within its borders. If there are any Arabs living in Israel they are there as a class of indentured servants who can't vote or serve in the government. Are there any Arabs in Israel?
I am personally sorry for what happened in Gaza, but Hamas chose to start a war and civilian deaths are an unavoidable fact of war. What would you want done if your family had been the victims of a barbaric, unprovoked attack, or if your family were kidnapped and taken from you?
And you're stating your opinion as if it were fact. You believe that no one on the left still supports Israel except if they are racist. That's just your opinion. It's not a fact. You believe that anyone who does support Israel is a racist. That's your opinion. It's not a fact.
You are definitely entitled to your opinion, but it's very telling that your opinion seems to deny and disregard quite a lot of facts.
> A side effect of this slaughter is that it has ripped off the mask of liberal, egalitarian Israel.
Is Israel a democracy? Can women vote in Israel? Can women serve in the army? Is it illegal to be gay in Israel? Can Israeli Arabs vote? Can they serve in parliament? Do they serve in parliament? What happens to gay men and women in Gaza and the West Bank? Why do they want to flee to Israel?
Again, you can have whatever opinion you want but the facts don't agree with you.
In in the modern age ethnostates are distasteful, why can't we all just get along etc, but the Jewish Israelis argue that history has shown they are not safe in other countries and need a state they have political control over.
IDF 100% should cease to exist as well. It's long overdue. I don't know how an organization can officially be labelled as genocidal and be allowed to continue functioning as they do
