Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[Politesse]

That would be because you've made that claim in a context where you're casting Israel as the party executing genocide, while handwaving away and ignoring that Hamas, Iran, and several other Islamic Religious States in the Middle East have been actively and blatantly seeking the extermination of Jewish people and the entire state of Israel for our entire fucking lives, Poli.

I have never excluded any party from my stance on genocide, it's a universal position that I believe all peoples and nations have both ethical and self-interested reasons to support, including Israel herself, who is as you have correctly stated, has frequently been subject to its threat.

Your entire schpiel in this thread has essentially been that Israel should back down and just continue to let Hamas attack them whenever the fuck Hamas feels like it.

I have never said any such thing, nor would. I oppose Biden's endorsement of a genocidal campaign into Gaza by Israel's military. That's the topic of the thread, and the full extent of my position on Biden and Israel.

And Biden, for his part, agrees with my condemnation of his actions, having long ago agreed that setting no conditions on our support was a terrible idea that got a lot of people killed to no good end, and has left Israel every bit as vulnerable to further terrorist attacks as it has ever been. Worse, because they've alienated a lot of their allies with this action, and even their level of support within the US government is now ambiguous at best. The Democrats are taking a huge step back, and Trump seems to adopt a new contradictory position every morning over his McBaconwich.

 

[Politesse]

No. This isn't a proxy war on our side. It's Israel vs Iran. We aid Israel as a means of keeping the death toll down.

We aid Israel, because Israel has been a US ally since its founding, and has never been in conflict with us. And while the US sometimes plays the game of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend for now", we also stand by our allies like nobody's business.

No, we backed and continue to back a certain set of factions within Israel's ongoing civil war, and were doing so well before it was a nation.

The alternative is pretty much to let the surrounding Islamic states exterminate all the Jewish people. What's your preference?

My preference would be people being capable of having a discussion on Irsael/Hamas/Iran/Saudi Arabia like adults, and not devolving into hyperbole every other post. Emilys on about the genocide of Israel, Politesse on about the genocide of the Gazans.

Thousands of posts in the other thread and virtually no progress of even an understanding between posters here. The topic is so bitter, should call it Hemlock.

Funny how mass killings manage to divide a room. War is so simple and uncontroversial, if we're going to fight, why can't we argue about something important, like whether salty tomato paste should be called ketchup or catsup?

 

[Politesse]

What is the "region", Emily? Make it specific. You're calling for war, decades of war with at least thousands of casualties.

I'm what now? Post proof of your assertion or retract.

What, now you're going to pretend you have no position at all on Israel? Give me a fucking break. Yes. Yes, you have been angrily posting about Israel for pages and pages of this thread. I did not make that up. You definitely have a position on Israel, and it's why you're pissed that I criticized Biden's involvement in it.

 

[Derec]

So how long time do you think it will take before Hamas breaks the truce? Without war, or imminent Israeli threat, Hamas has no power, so they will need to create it. It's just a matter of time before they get going again. So how long time do you think it'll take? A week? A month?

Shall we get some betting going?

Something small, like shooting a handful of rockets at Gaza Envelope communities, I give them a month.
For anything bigger, I do not think they have the wherewithal right now.

 

[Arctish]

Why it's a good idea to check your sources: Pro-Israel AI Bot Goes Off The Rails

An AI-powered social media bot seemingly deployed to boost pro-Israel narratives online appears to be going wildly off script, instead criticizing the Israeli and American governments in strongly-worded missives.

As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports, an account called @FactFinderAI X on X-formerly-Twitter appears to be one of many designed to bolster pro-Israel digital campaigning efforts using generative AI.

Except, like a deeply confused activist, the bot keeps radically switching sides — even, in one instance flagged by Haaretz, denouncing the Israeli Defense Force as "white colonizers in apartheid Israel."

Would someone please quote and post links to ^this^ news story so that DrZoidberg sees it? Just leave my name off it so he doesn't refuse to look.

 

[Elixir]

What do you think makes Israel's actions constitute genocide?

Some significant fraction of the 46,006 Palestinians that have been killed and 109,378 wounded, per the local health authority?

I’m not a mind reader but that would be my first guess.

 

[Derec]

So you are also pretending that everyone who died was a swarthy, scary looking foreign 16 year old with a gun, eh?

Who said anything at all about "swarthy"? Maybe that's your particular fantasy, but I for one do not care about their swarthiness or lack thereof.
What we are saying is that the category "child", defined as anybody <18, also includes 16 and 17 year old combatants. Nobody is saying that "everyone who died" was a combatant.

Unfortunately, the rest of us are neither stupid nor blind.

You do seem to have a problem with reading comprehension though.

Do we need to start sharing photos? Because I think that's probably against forum TOU, but I think you know damn well that evidence of war crimes exists. Not only exists, but is being widely disseminated outside of American media.

Photos of what exactly? Dead people? Yes, people die in wars. Including civilians. Including children.
That alone does not make it a war crime, much less "genocide".

 

[Derec]

We all know what excess deaths are….

There is no evidence to support that claim.

Silly me. I should not have assumed that about you. Sorry, won't happen again.

Whether the 150,000 excess death estimate is unreasonable or not is a separate question. Debate its believability to your hearts content.

It is unreasonable since it can now be compared to the number of actual deaths on the ground.
Again: if there are really ~150k non-combat related excess deaths, where are the corpses?

Obviously, there will have been some excess deaths from non-combat causes. People living for months in close proximity spread of communicable diseases. And it's difficult to manage chronic diseases in a warzone. So, obviously some people have died who would not have had Gaza not attacked Israel. But it is evidently far less than what was guesstimated in that letter to the editors of Lancet.

I am also concerned about excess mortality going forward. Over the last couple of weeks, hundreds of thousands of Gazans moved back into the North. There has been widespread devastation there, so most people will likely just camp out amidst the rubble, and will have to do so for the foreseeable future.
'My home is no longer there': Palestinians return to north Gaza

But this rubble contains toxic chemicals, even asbestos. Wind and attempts to dig up stuff from the rubble just kicks up dust that people will breathe in. So there will be tens of thousands of people developing lung diseases, and even malignancies, over the next decade because of this exposure.

What is really needed is a concerted effort to clear the rubble and dispose of it properly before civilians are allowed to go back there. These people would have been better served staying in Al-Mawasi and similar areas. Epsecially since this is only the first phase, and the ceasefire may yet fail if the talks break down. Then combat will resume, but will the civilians go back south? Most will probably refuse to move yet again.

 

[Shadowy Man]

So how long time do you think it will take before Hamas breaks the truce? Without war, or imminent Israeli threat, Hamas has no power, so they will need to create it. It's just a matter of time before they get going again. So how long time do you think it'll take? A week? A month?

Shall we get some betting going?

If, as you say, all of this Blitzing Hamas has had no impact on Hamas attacking Israel again, one wonders what was the benefit of the Blitz, and whether a multi-lateral plan to get Iran out this should be considered.

It is my understanding from certain members of this forum that Israel's response was the best and only possible response.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So how long time do you think it will take before Hamas breaks the truce? Without war, or imminent Israeli threat, Hamas has no power, so they will need to create it. It's just a matter of time before they get going again. So how long time do you think it'll take? A week? A month?

Shall we get some betting going?

If, as you say, all of this Blitzing Hamas has had no impact on Hamas attacking Israel again, one wonders what was the benefit of the Blitz, and whether a multi-lateral plan to get Iran out this should be considered.

It is my understanding from certain members of this forum that Israel's response was the best and only possible response.

I'm not certain if that is true. Let me bring in General Pangloss for a word...

 

[Derec]

I'd actually consider the present situation in Gaza and Syria a religious ethnocide, if you want to get technical, but that tends to confuse people.

Religious ethnocide by Hamas, sure. And in Syria, Turks attacking Kurds? Is that what you had in mind?

Simple times need simple words.

These are complex times though.

As for Sherman ordering the death of every last "man woman, and child of the Sioux"? If that wasn't genocide, I am baffled as to what would qualify.

I forgot about him and the Indians. I thought you were referring to his actions during the Civil War. Burning down Atlanta was a war crime, but it wasn't genocide.

Because that's the kind of task you hand off to an underaged "soldier".

Depends on how underage. 10 or 11 year old preteens, as in many African conflicts, sure. 16 or 17 year old recruits can function essentially the same as 18 year old young adults. In official statistics, dead 16 year old fighters are counted as "children".

But whatever. In any case, you wish us to believe that when a house or a hospital is bombed, only sixteen year old jihadiis perish. And that every child casualty in this war has been a maximally unsympathetic imaginary teenager?

Nobody is saying that. What I am saying that the statistics are lumping children, uninvolved teenagers and combatant teenagers all into the loaded category "children". Calling all minors "children" implies innocence, and I think that is entirely by design.

Even if I approved of the slaughter of sixteen year olds, which I do not, that just isn't the story the "statistics" are telling.

Your use of the term "slaughter" is very loaded here. And for the record, you do not approve of IDF killing combatants if they are 16 year old?

What happens to the actual children in the neighborhoods Israel levels to the ground for blocks around? Do sweet angels swoop in to protect them with their holy wings? Grow up. Innocence is not a cute look on an adult, especially not when child murder is what you're trying to remain innocent about.

Strawman. Nobody is saying that actual children do not die during urban warfare (for which Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza are solely responsible), but that the category "children" also includes teenage combatants. So when for example, statistics say that 18% of amputees are "children", we cannot assume all of those are actual children uninvolved in combat. A significant, disproportionally high, fraction of this 18% is most certainly teenage combatants that get lumped into the "children" category to inflate the number of "child" casualties.

There is no historical evidence to support the idea that outbreaks of unrestrained violence lead to peaceful outcomes. Quite the opposite is true.

There is historical evidence that actually defeating the enemy can lead to peaceful outcomes.

I'm not even going to bother with this one, except to say that I know that you know, because it has been pointed out to you countless times, that are blaming an entire ethnic group for the positions of a faction within the autocratic government thst rules some of their people, and that this is the very attitude that produces war crimes, no matter who is espousing it.

I am not "blaming an entire ethnic group". But hostility toward Israel is common among Gazans. Many Gazans certainly celebrated in the streets as 10/7 massacres were happening. You can't just pawn off the entire blame onto Hamas. First of all, Hamas enjoys wide support among Gazans. Second, Hamas wasn't the only faction that took part in 10/7. Islamic Jihad did too, as did factions belonging to PFLP and DFLP, which are Marxist-Leninist. That means that fighters from across the Palestinian society attacked Israel on that day.

 

[Emily Lake]

My preference would be people being capable of having a discussion on Irsael/Hamas/Iran/Saudi Arabia like adults, and not devolving into hyperbole every other post. Emilys on about the genocide of Israel, Politesse on about the genocide of the Gazans.

I hear you, I do. The only difference is that Hamas and several other Islamic Religious States and organizations over the last many years have explicitly stated their intention to exterminate Jews - to the point of not allowing any people from Israel or who have even visited Israel into their countries at all, and have actively forbade and punish anyone who practices a different religion within their borders. Furthermore, those organizations have literally and blatantly declared Jihad on Israel and western countries and perpetrated multiple repeated acts of terrorism against civilians.

Poli is on about some hypothetical extravagantly hyperbolized genocide against Gazans while wilfully ignoring that a rather large number of practicing muslims live in Israel unmolested.

These are not the same things.

 

[Emily Lake]

I oppose Biden's endorsement of a genocidal campaign into Gaza by Israel's military.

You keep calling it genocidal. Can you support that characterization in any rational way?

 

[Emily Lake]

What is the "region", Emily? Make it specific. You're calling for war, decades of war with at least thousands of casualties.

I'm what now? Post proof of your assertion or retract.

What, now you're going to pretend you have no position at all on Israel? Give me a fucking break. Yes. Yes, you have been angrily posting about Israel for pages and pages of this thread. I did not make that up. You definitely have a position on Israel, and it's why you're pissed that I criticized Biden's involvement in it.

I haven't once called for war, let alone decades of war. You're creating an position in your own head and foisting it on me - not the first time this has happened.

My actual position is that Israel has a right to defend itself from aggressors, and should not be expected to lay down and be a permanent victim. It's unfortunate and sucky that civilans are dying in Gaza, but the alternative is to continue letting Israeli civilians die at the hands of a bloodthirsty zealous terrorist organization that is perfectly happy to use civilians as human shields.

 

[Emily Lake]

What do you think makes Israel's actions constitute genocide?

Some significant fraction of the 46,006 Palestinians that have been killed and 109,378 wounded, per the local health authority?

I’m not a mind reader but that would be my first guess.

So lots of dead means genocide. Does that mean that the Allied forces committed genocide in WW2? I think this definition of genocide could use a little refinement.

 

[ZiprHead]

So how long time do you think it will take before Hamas breaks the truce? Without war, or imminent Israeli threat, Hamas has no power, so they will need to create it. It's just a matter of time before they get going again. So how long time do you think it'll take? A week? A month?

Shall we get some betting going?

Noted that you dodged Arctish's post just above this one.

The posts by Arctish and me show how ridiculous

I can't see it. I've blocked her. I see no value in engaging with someone like her. There's a lot of irrational hatred directed towards Jews now. She's a prime example

No, this is another example of you not understanding what antisemitism is and your delusional thinking that Israel can do no wrong.

The narrative that Palestinians are second class citizens in Israel, is insane. Its just lies. Inside Israel the rights of Muslims and Christians is protected more than the rights of Jews.

your statement is.

Were your fingers crossed when you typed it or are you just that uninformed?

I hope you enjoy being wrong.

But more importantly, what motivates you to spread these antisemitic lies? You obviously haven't been bothered to look this up. So why this behavior? I don’t get it

JFK, I posted a link and a quote disproving your statement, which I note you deleted. Did you do so out of shame due to being so ridiculously wrong?

Seriously dude. Are you alright? Your posts indicate some seriously delusional thinking. No one could possibly be the perfect embodiment of a being you seem to think Israel is.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

As for that tolerant person--why have you tolerated the Hamas call for genocide?

I most certainly have not. I condemn Hamas and its leadership in the strongest terms. They absolutely instigated this current wave of violence, and with the full knowledge and intention of causing this very outcome, up to and including their own martyrdom. Hurting whom they hated was worth more to them than their own lives, and those of millions of innocents, and I hope the lot of them are being flayed with whips of acid in the Jahannam they so adore right now, it would be just punishment for what they've done. But retaliatory mass killings are not going to bring any of their victims back.

My position is not complicated to understand. I oppose the use of genocide as a tactic, in all times and places. Most people agree with me, most of the time. Until its their own governments' genocide, and suddenly all the rationalizations and denials come out of the closet.

It's absurd to me that I'm having all this bile poured out on me for daring to criticize Biden, when my one and only complaint about the man concerns the one thing he himself counts among his regrets, and immediately started trying to undo less than a week after he did it. Obviously I am not alone in being horrified by the results of his actions, if the man himself shares my opinon. And if Biden is not in a position to know what's actually going on in Gaza, who is? Benjamin Netanyahu? In cases of genocide, I tend to take the word of the accused with a grain of salt, especially when it is corroborated by exactly no one.

It's not about retaliation. It's about reducing their ability to do it again. Because they certainly are going to.

And when you say that Hamas using human shields should protect them from attack you're effectively tolerating their genocide even though you supposedly denounce it.

I've seen this sort of thing before--you're looking at the actions of the good guys vs the results of those actions. And thus you rate the death of one innocent at the hands of the good guys as far worse than the death of many innocents at the hands of the bad guys.

 

[Politesse]

It's not about retaliation. It's about reducing their ability to do it again. Because they certainly are going to.

A goal which has not been accomplished by any objective metric.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

2) Even if true the Israeli action that started the war was it's existence. Thus the only "solution" along those lines is Hitler's Final Solution. Is that what you want?

So in your universe, one must support genocide, because they only alternative to genocide is genocide? As opposed to, say, not genocide?

That's not what Loren is saying, and you should be able to infer that on your own, Poli.

Israel has tried repeatedly for decades to keep some sort of peace with muslims living within Israel's borders - and whether you like it or not, Palestine is not a separate country, it is part of the nation of Israel, where Israel has essentially ceded a degree of independence within it's own border to the people who live there. But the residents of that stretch of land have repeated initiated altercations with Israel, including this most recent situation.

Your history omits crucial facts. Gaza was part of Egypt. It wasn't until 1956 when Israel invaded Gaza that it became part of the nation of Israel.

I think your timeline is wrong but I'm not going to check as it's irrelevant. What's important is that Israel invaded because of continual attacks from Gaza. Gaza picked a fight with Israel, not Israel picking a fight with Gaza.

As usual, you are evading the issue. Israel invaded Gaza decades ago - the reason is not relevant in the correction of fact.

Doesn't change the fact that you're ignoring why they invaded: they were being attacked.

The only solution that Hamas, Palestine, and the entire Muslim region will accept is the extermination of Jews. They've proven that over and over again.

It takes a whole lot of ignorance to come up with that claim. The entire Muslim region encompasses many areas that don't really care one way or the other about Israel.

Simple test: In what countries does a Israeli passport ban you from entry? In what countries does having any evidence of having been to Israel (the stamps from any land border crossing) in your passport ban you from entry? I would say that any country that meets either of these tests cares. They're far more obsessive about it than Africa was about South Africa. There two stamps in our passports from land borders didn't matter. While I do not recall and can't check I strongly suspect our cholera boosters were in South Africa (timing's right and that was the best medical system we saw for months in either direction)--and listed in the yellow book that we presented at every border crossing. We spent a day unpacking absolutely everything and taking a sharpie to anything that said "product of South Africa", but the English/Afrikaans labels didn't matter even though Afrikaans is spoken in only one country. And the fact that we were on the Johannesburg-London overland route would hardly be secret. Many companies operated such "tours", they had to know. But so long as the words "South Africa" didn't appear they didn't object. Kampala, Uganda even provided security troops for the standard camping area--they didn't want to scare away the dollars we brought. At that time Kampala at night was not a place you wanted to be, but the troops were there to ensure the trouble stayed outside.

Cool story bro. Pointless but cool. The reasoning that leads to equating denial based on passport with approval of Jewish genocide is mind-numbing.

You said they don't care. I was presenting the difference to show they most certainly do care.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

All humans except the Jews, because you are saying that Israel must do nothing to defend itself against genocide.

You trot out that vicious slander on a regular basis. It is unacceptable, especially from a moderator. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

You call it slander but you do not present any means by which Israel could actually defend itself.

What action do you propose that would actually provide defense and meet your standards of behavior?